January 7, 2026

Best of 2025 - NATO in Asia-Pacific: Dragging us into a fight we can’t win

Is the future of Australia and New Zealand really as NATO forts, armed to the teeth glaring menacingly at an ever-rising China?

October 9, 2025

A century of deceit: Towards a new understanding of the colonisation of Palestine

Political and media commentary on the Hamas killings of October 2023 have been preoccupied with claims that these were not only the worst terrorists but that their actions were without precedent.

October 23, 2025

Greening the city: Community vegetable gardens create self-sufficiency

More frequent droughts and floods in rural and regional eastern Australia are increasingly disrupting the growth cycle and supply chain of staple fruit and vegetables.

October 14, 2025

The West’s crucial strategic failures

“The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that once believed they were eternal.” Camille Paglia.

November 1, 2025

A collective voice for peace with justice

Earlier this year, the Sydney Peace Foundation separated from the University of Sydney after 27 years.

October 20, 2025

Proposed housing development in Ipswich raises red flags

A proposal to build about 500 apartments on flood-liable land on the banks of the Bremer River in Ipswich, west of Brisbane, raises many questions about our continuing lack of respect for the potential severity of the consequences of flooding.

November 14, 2025

Building a strategic movement for Gaza

I’ve spent the past two years deeply involved in actions, campaigns and community organising for Gaza. But as the so-called ceasefire begins and talk of ‘peace plans’ fills the headlines, I find myself asking a harder question: what now?

October 18, 2025

Counting what doesn’t count: How consultants are hollowing out the university

When Western Sydney University announced it would shed hundreds of staff, its vice-chancellor described the decision as part of a “necessary transformation".

January 10, 2026

Best of 2025 - The Chris Hedges Report: We are all antifa now

The designation of the amorphous group antifa as a terrorist organisation allows the state to brand all dissidents as supporters of antifa and prosecute them as terrorists.

November 15, 2025

Tackling vehicle emissions – the next big climate task

Reducing transport emissions is fast approaching as the next big issue in Australia’s climate debate.

October 8, 2025

How the ALP outsourced the soul of higher education

For most of its history, the Australian Labor Party spoke of education as a public good, the “light on the hill”, a vision of collective progress through strong institutions, universal access, and the elevation of ordinary citizens.

October 17, 2025

War without end, peace without justice

The Gaza war has become the most searing mirror of our century’s political and moral contradictions.

October 10, 2025

Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say matter?

In an age when millions feel invisible to those in power, these aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the foundational need that either builds democracies or tears them apart.

October 25, 2025

From proletariat to boxetariat: The new working class

When Holden shut its gates at Elizabeth in 2017, Australia lost more than a car factory. It lost a symbol of national self-belief that we could design, build and export complex, high-value goods from Australia.

November 21, 2025

US alliance holding us back

Australia’s US alliance is preventing the country from signing and ratifying the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, despite overwhelming public support for the government to do so.

January 12, 2026

Best of 2025 - Ignorance is complicity: Australia must end its arms trade with those committing crimes

Rayana Ajam 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.

January 5, 2026

Best of 2025 - Australia must defend International Criminal Court

If it were China or Russia, the imposition of sanctions and threats of harm to prosecutors and judges of the International Criminal Court would be front page news in Australia.

December 20, 2025

Chile swerves to the right and into the past

José Antonio Kast’s election marks the first time since Chile’s return to democracy that an admirer of the dictatorship has reached the presidency. The implications run deep.

December 4, 2025

A practical answer to Australia’s AI ethics vacuum

As Australia shies away from meaningful AI regulation, a new framework offers a practical way to embed human moral responsibility at the centre of AI use.

November 4, 2025

Death by plastic

“Mummy…Daddy, what are clouds made of?” Almost every parent has fielded the innocent, eager question, perhaps explaining about mist, fog, water vapour, raindrops. Today, if you said that, you’d be wrong.

October 27, 2025

The politics of democracy’s decline

A report on voter pessimism casts more light on why Australian democracy is failing. The answer is to deepen political debate.

November 24, 2025

Innovation talk, austerity walk: Australia’s failing science policy

Despite constant rhetoric about innovation, Australia is steadily dismantling its scientific capacity. Public schools, universities and the CSIRO are all under pressure – the result of decades of market-driven policy-making that prioritises short-term cost-cutting over long-term national capability.

November 22, 2025

Only a republic can reverse executive power creep

A democratic republic would end the structural uncertainties that allowed both the Whitlam dismissal and Scott Morrison’s many ministries, as well as bringing the Australian people into a new constitutional relationship.

October 6, 2025

Orwell foresees the 21st century

George Orwell completed his most famous novel 1984 in 1948, shortly before his early death at 46. A few years earlier, in a remarkable short 1945 essay, Orwell foresaw a future world order overseen by America, Russia and China.

December 1, 2025

The great failure of the property industry

In every era, certain industries become so large, so politically embedded, and so culturally unexamined that their performance ceases to matter.

November 26, 2025

Why Indonesia’s new criminal rules matter

Indonesia’s overhaul of its Criminal Procedure Code could modernise justice – or entrench a system where police power expands, judicial oversight shrinks and civic life becomes riskier. With the clock ticking towards implementation, the choices made now will shape Indonesia’s democratic identity for decades.

November 17, 2025

Violence in prisons isn’t a surprise: It’s inevitable

In recent months, we’ve seen prisons across Australia buckle under the weight of the very system they were built to uphold.

November 13, 2025

Stealing the breath of life

When you suffocate or drown, every fibre of your being cries out for the breath of life, oxygen. It is the body’s ungovernable response to the extinguishing of your flame.

December 3, 2025

What the ICJ’s climate law decision means for Australia

A landmark advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice clarifies that states have a duty under international law to prevent climate harm – with serious implications for Australia’s fossil fuel approvals and future litigation.

November 18, 2025

The last Boomer

Somewhere around 2075, even the longest lived baby boomer will die. But their story is not, in the end, a story about age.

December 9, 2025

The pecking order: how class blindness governs Australian schools

Australia prides itself on fairness and opportunity, yet an unspoken pecking order shapes who advances and who is blamed for falling behind. In schools and public institutions, structural inequality is dressed up as personal failure, with shame doing much of the work.

January 29, 2026

A war without headlines

The annihilation of Gaza has rendered the violence in the West Bank seemingly secondary in the global imagination.

October 21, 2025

The onus is on Israel and its allies to end the genocide, not their victims

It’s actually never legitimate to withhold aid from starving civilians. It was never legitimate at any time.

January 14, 2026

Best of 2025 - The three core myths driving Israel’s war on Palestine

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, one of the most outspoken moral critics within Israel itself, once summarised what he called the “three core values of Israeli society”: the belief that Jews are the chosen people; that they are the world’s ultimate victims; and that Palestinians are not equal human beings.

November 20, 2025

From Whitlam to AUKUS: Sovereignty silenced

When governor-general Sir John Kerr dismissed Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975, Australia lost more than a government. It lost a measure of its independence a loss that still shadows our politics half a century later.

October 7, 2025

Loot boxes are still rife in kids’ mobile games, despite ban on ‘gambling-like’ features

In September 2024, Australia introduced a new classification approach for games with gambling-like content.

November 29, 2025

You can’t regulate your way to quality early childhood education

Recent safety failures have triggered tighter regulation in early childhood education and care. But compliance alone cannot deliver quality. Real reform begins with professionalising the workforce.

October 16, 2025

Trump and climate change

Donald Trump does not accept that climate change is a real and significant phenomenon. In fact, he has said those who propound it are perpetrating the “greatest hoax” in the history of the world.

October 30, 2025

Daydreaming about a legend: Review of Hawke PM: The making of a legend

David Day’s book Hawke PM is the latest in a long list of books covering the Hawke era and may well be the last we’ll see for quite some time.

December 10, 2025

Trump’s Ukraine peace deal would leave the country vulnerable to future Russian attacks

A US-backed peace proposal negotiated with Moscow but excluding Ukraine risks entrenching Russian gains and leaving Kyiv dangerously exposed.

October 24, 2025

Managing bullying or manufacturing shame? How neoliberal bureaucracy gets it wrong – again

When Education Minister Jason Clare announced the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review in early 2025, he spoke with the gravity such tragedies demand.

November 3, 2025

Vaping: A disruptive innovation of smoking and rapidly replacing cigarettes

Recognised as a concept over three decades ago, “disruptive innovations” are new and improved ways of meeting consumers’ needs that generally sweep away conventional approaches of market-leading firms by a process of creative destruction.

September 24, 2013

Fukushima - the trouble when regulators and operators are too close. Guest blogger: Walter Hamilton

Speaking in support of Tokyo’s bid for the 2020 Olympics, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on 7 September that the situation at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power station was ‘under control’. Recent disclosures, however, about leaks of radioactive water from storage tanks at the site and the contamination of ground water flowing into the ocean make his claim appear brave at best and dishonest at worst. The ‘everything is fine’ stance means the government is still relying primarily on the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., to see through the clean up and decommissioning process. Though TEPCO might be expected to know more than anyone else about the situation at Fukushima, its performance so far does not inspire confidence.

April 16, 2014

Kieran Tapsell. Things are improving.

Héctor Abad Faciolince, El Espectador, Colombia, 29 December 2013, http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/el-espantoso-mundo-vivimos-columna-466312

Summary: The world we live in is frightening, but it is less frightening than it used to be.

One of the best definitions of the word, “intellectual” that I have read is: “a person who has studied beyond his own capacities”.

There are those incapable of comparing the world of today with that of yesterday, of weighing up the gains and losses; their obsession consists in outraged criticism, arrogant moralising, scorn for any progress, enjoyment or happiness, in the conviction that there is no creature more repugnant that the human being, nor a place more inhospitable than the Earth.

January 7, 2018

A Human Rights Bill 2009

As part of our campaign for a national Human Rights Act, a Bill was drafted to ‘respect, protect and promote Human Rights for Australia’. This model Bill formed the core of our group’s submission to the National Human Rights Consultation, chaired by Frank Brennan SJ OA. See following draft of Human Rights Bill 2009.

July 13, 2015

Kerry Breen. The Australian Medical Association vs. The Medical Journal of Australia.

Troubles at the Medical Journal of Australia and the birth of ‘Friends of the MJA’

The Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) has been in existence for over 100 years and has become the most important national publication for every aspect of the health and health care of Australians. It is owned by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and is published by the Australasian Medical Publishing Company (AMPCo), a wholly owned subsidiary of the AMA. AMPCo makes a profit on its Medical Directory* but, like other journals of medical associations around the world, makes a loss with the MJA. The loss is subsidised by the annual membership fees of AMA members and the current subsidy per member is believed to be approximately $80 per member. Annual membership of the AMA costs up to $1446. [*The Medical Directory is the only available comprehensive listing of all doctors, with information about qualifications, special interests, practice addresses, publications etc.]

January 7, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. A campaign from 2005, for a Human Rights Act for Australia.

In 2005, Susan Ryan, Spencer Zifcak, I and others, in association with New Matilda, launched a campaign for a Human Rights Act for Australia. This campaign is outlined in the following. It formed part of a submission to Frank Brennan SJ who was Chair of the Commonwealth Government, National Human Rights Consultation.

As a result of the campaign, a draft Human Rights Bill 2009 was developed.

September 18, 2013

Commodifying and dehumanising asylum seekers. Guest blogger Michael Kelly SJ

The rejection by the Indonesian foreign minister of Tony Abbott’s suggested ways of “stopping the boats” is only the latest assertion of how the Coalition’s policy on asylum seekers was never going to work. It might have made political sense at election time, allegedly in marginal seats though the results in western Sydney throw some doubt on that.

But now a factious Senate that will be difficult for a Coalition government to woo, a High Court to appeal to about the implementation of a policy that has all to many features similar to the one struck down when the “Malaysian Solution” failed and the unparalleled damage done by the policy to Australia’s standing in the region all indicate that, however loudly proclaimed and possibly significant at the polls, it was never a goer.

January 20, 2019

ANDREW FARRAN. Brexit: Running out of time or anticipating a delay?

What explains an unprecedented, disastrous political defeat ever of a government on the floor of the British Parliament (432/202, a loss by 230 votes), followed within a day by its reaffirmation in government - prevailing over a no-confidence motion by a healthy margin of 19 votes? Essentially the Tories still cannot agree on an outcome for Brexit but bunch up to prevent their worst fear, the possibility of a Jeremy Corbyn led Labour Government.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal