January 9, 2026

Best of 2025 - Don’t mistake truth for hate, prime minister

Anthony Albanese says Palestinian children are taught to hate. My daughter’s first trip home proves otherwise.

October 7, 2025

World water in crisis

Almost two-thirds of the world’s rivers are in a dire condition, either drying up or supercharged with floodwaters, according to the latest report on the emerging global water crisis by the World Meteorological Organisation.

February 25, 2026

Why security-first critical mineral policy risks slowing the energy transition

Western efforts to secure critical mineral supply chains from China are increasingly driven by security logic. That approach risks raising costs, slowing decarbonisation and undermining the global energy transition.

January 17, 2026

Best of 2025 - Richo’s grave should be extra deep

Graham Richardson was a very successful operator of the Labor Party from the late 1970s who was distinctly short on redeeming virtues.

December 13, 2025

A West Bank farmer left for dead – and a system that looks the other way

A Palestinian farmer survived a near-fatal settler attack – raising urgent questions about protection, impunity, and the role of Israeli authorities.

October 9, 2025

Shadow of McCarthyism looms over controversial firing of Texas professor who taught about gender identity

Texas A&M University announced the resignation of its president, Mark A. Welsh III, on 18 September 2025, following a controversial decision earlier in the month to fire a professor over a classroom exchange with a student about gender identity.

March 14, 2026

Prevention that pays: stop ranking children and start understanding them

Standardised testing and rankings dominate school systems, but improving student wellbeing and engagement requires deeper integration between education and health support.

January 12, 2026

Best of 2025 - Disarming extremism in the algorithmic age

Amelie Szczecinski is one of six talented young Australians who will travel to the UN General Assembly in New York next week as part of the Global Voices project.

December 10, 2025

Ellen Hansen: At 75, UNHCR is needed more than ever – but its funding is being cut

As global displacement reaches record highs, UNHCR marks its 75th anniversary facing deep funding cuts that threaten its ability to protect refugees and save lives worldwide.

November 3, 2025

It’s official! Accounting tricks denied public schools more than $2b in funding in 2023

A new report by the National School Resourcing Board reveals that public schools lost more than $2 billion in funding in 2023 because of accounting tricks used by state governments under the Commonwealth-State funding agreements operating at the time.

March 12, 2026

Escaping the tough-on-crime media trap

Decades of tough-on-crime rhetoric have narrowed political debate, but safer communities may depend on shifting the conversation toward prevention, accountability and repair.

October 21, 2025

The armistice of 1918 and the 'ceasefire' of 2025

Remembrance Day is coming. More accurately it is Armistice Day. The armistice between Germany and the Western Powers was signed at Compiègne in France on the morning of 11 November 1918, after four years of war. Sadly, there are heart-chilling parallels to today.

October 25, 2025

APEC: The curdled yoghurt of middle-power diplomacy

When APEC was born in 1989, it was more than another acronym. It was a moment of triumph for middle powers — Australia, Canada, South Korea, and others — asserting that the post-Cold War world could be shaped not just by the great powers but by those who knew how to manage co-operation.

November 14, 2025

Seoul’s submarine ambitions – what do they mean for the region?

South Korea is currently in final negotiations with the US on a deal that could reshape the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific: the construction of nuclear-powered submarines.

January 28, 2026

Australia, bravery and the case for an Earth System Treaty

Rising inequality, climate instability and ecological collapse are not separate crises but interacting threats that demand coordinated global action.

January 7, 2026

Best of 2025 - Albanese’s sliding doors moment on climate

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has just been handed an unflinching mirror at the Pacific Islands Forum.

October 30, 2025

The morality we need, the asylum they seek

Like many grumpy hacks from an age of lost standards, I’ve belittled colleagues’ usage of the perpendicular pronoun. We’re not the Mums needing attention – only the midwives bringing the stories of others into the world. We report and depart.

March 4, 2026

Thirty years on, the Howard legacy still defines our limits

John Howard marks 30 years since the Coalition’s 1996 victory with a familiar story of stability and economic management. But the deeper legacy is the set of political and economic defaults both major parties now treat as common sense.

February 17, 2026

When both sides chant 'lower tax', the country pays in division

As the Coalition reasserts “lower tax” as political identity and Labor rushes to deny the high-tax label, Australian politics is losing the language needed to fund shared purpose, rebuild trust and sustain public life.

January 31, 2026

Trolling for genocide

Debate over Gaza has increasingly shifted from mainstream media into online spaces. What was meant to democratise discussion has instead become a terrain shaped by abuse, intimidation, and growing attempts to silence dissenting voices.

January 11, 2026

Best of 2025 - Australia faces a looming crisis of older women retiring in poverty. Here’s what we can do

Australia faces a serious challenge. Despite important progress on gender equality over recent decades, a looming crisis now threatens the economic security of older women. Without urgent and bold action, we risk consigning further generations of women to poverty in retirement.

November 21, 2025

UN Members complicit in genocide

UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese discusses why, in her most recent report, she called out more than 60 nations for their collective-crime roles in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

November 12, 2025

The coming class war against Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City should be seen as a repudiation of everything the Democrats have been doing since the DNC shafted Bernie Sanders to get Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden nominated as the party’s presidential candidates in 2016 and 2020.

October 15, 2025

Shameful distortion that lies at the heart of US conservative politics

The news of ceasefire and release of hostages in Gaza is cause for great rejoicing and for giving credit where it is due. But the big questions remain: where to from here, and how did the world allow this to happen in the first place?

February 26, 2026

Remembering Robert Macklin – truth, courage and clarity

Pearls and Irritations contributor Robert Macklin has died aged 84. His brilliant writing combined political critique, historical insight and moral urgency, leaving a lasting mark on Australian public debate.

November 13, 2025

Lame duck syndrome emerging

Reality finally starts to bite in the US and it hasn’t come in a misspelt all-capital letters post Truth Social.

October 27, 2025

On No Kings day, a new America came to life

This is who we are. And this is what our country must be: people with a soul-deep love for Planet Earth and all who inhabit it.

January 14, 2026

Best of 2025 - Trump’s risky American economy

Trump’s tariffs, migration and fiscal policies are endangering the American economy, and risk destroying American claims to global leadership.

January 6, 2026

Best of 2025 - Judaism and Zionism are not the same

No doubt about it. We live in a topsy-turvy world. How Kafkaesque can it get, when some of Zionism’s most fervent supporters have been politicians like Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton or — God help us — the Mad King of Mar-a-Lago?

October 22, 2025

At best, a respite for Gazans

Reading Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan is like venturing into the world of the eccentric early-twentieth-century British cartoonist, Heath Robinson, who unwittingly lent his name as a descriptor for any “unnecessarily complex and implausible contrivance".

March 18, 2026

Why did Dennis Richardson walk away from the antisemitism commission?

Dennis Richardson’s resignation from the antisemitism royal commission has been widely portrayed as a setback, but the episode raises deeper questions about the inquiry.

November 28, 2025

What does Labor actually stand for in the Albanese era?

Sean Kelly’s Quarterly Essay The Good Fight asks a harder question than whether Labor is governing competently – it asks whether it still knows what it believes, and whether belief is translating into action.

November 27, 2025

After Gaza, the next target is Iran

US–Israel manoeuvring over Gaza is already widening the conflict. As Sudan burns and propaganda intensifies, Iran may be the next target — with Australia again at risk of being drawn in.

October 16, 2025

Remembering my Palestinian father

In these awful times of genocide and massacre, I particularly remember my late Palestinian father.

December 3, 2025

Afghanistan silence is a dangerous illusion

As Afghanistan disappears from global headlines, media neglect enables extremist resurgence, regional instability, and a deepening humanitarian crisis.

February 8, 2018

St.Vincent de Paul Society

INDEPENDENT, NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS (Three opportunities)

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Applications close on Monday 19 February 2018.

February 8, 2024

Jewish Council of Australia launches to provide expert voice on antisemitism and racism in Australia

A dynamic coalition of Jewish scholars, historians, human rights lawyers, and writers has joined together to establish the Jewish Council of Australia.

January 30, 2026

Australia’s sugar shame: why we’re falling behind in the fight for our health

Australia once led the world in confronting tobacco harm. On sugar consumption – a major driver of obesity and chronic disease – more than 100 countries are now ahead of us, and health ministers face a critical test.

January 15, 2026

Best of 2025 - The second Dismissal – the loans affair and meetings with Kerr

The second part in a series of first-hand accounts of the Dismissal, from the man who was there: John Menadue.

January 8, 2026

Best of 2025 - Vale Pat Power, a true minister

The Australian Catholic Church lost one of its genuine leaders on Monday morning with the death of 83-year-old Bishop Patrick Power, retired Auxiliary-Bishop of Canberra Goulburn.

November 17, 2025

Forecasting the impact of Sino-Indian relations on changing world order

Geopolitics is in shock. Agile strategic thinking must acknowledge and respond to qualitative changes to the world order. A new “New World Order” is emerging.

November 14, 2025

The Global South is drowning in climate debt

As deadly storms rip through the Caribbean, a new United Nations report delivers a sobering warning: the world is failing to prepare for the climate it has already created.

January 13, 2026

Best of 2025 - On Israel, Zionism and being Jewish

No political conflict contains as many journalistic minefields as that between Israel and Palestine.

December 10, 2025

Victoria government unfussed by Grand Prix debt

Victoria’s Grand Prix continues to post record losses, quietly adding to state debt while public services are cut and financial scrutiny is avoided.

October 23, 2025

To avert war, the West must shatter the mirror by which it views China

The concept of the Thucydides Trap, predicting conflict between China and the US, projects the West’s conquest-driven history onto Chinese civilisation.

January 28, 2026

Why billionaires building doomsday bunkers can’t predict the next global catastrophe

Reports of billionaires building doomsday bunkers are often read as signs of looming catastrophe. Psychology suggests they reveal something else entirely.

November 19, 2025

Stop pretending punishment works

When Premier Jacinta Allan is photographed proudly advancing Victoria’s Treaty process, she is rightly praised.

February 12, 2026

Cowardice dressed up as authority on Sydney’s streets

The violence surrounding protests against the visit of Israel’s president was not an accident of crowd control. It reflects a deeper political failure – where authority suppresses dissent rather than confronting uncomfortable truths about Gaza, protest rights and democratic responsibility.

November 10, 2025

China planning ahead with 15th five-year plan

In business, the five Ps are often referenced: “Poor preparation prevents proper performance.” That extends to planning a national economy.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal