February 7, 2019

ERNST WILLHEIM. Secret Trials: The illegal bugging of the Timor Leste Cabinet and the extraordinary prosecution of Bernard Collaery and Witness K

Australians reading about secret trials in foreign countries tend to content themselves in the belief that in Australia we have an open court system and an independent judiciary. After all, freedom of speech, the rule of law and an open and independent court system are basic bulwarks of our democracy. Aren’t they? This brief paper challenges that comfortable assumption.

August 27, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. Julie Bishop – Foreign Minister or Senior Consular Officer A repost from 16 May 2018

In this blog and elsewhere, Geoff Raby, a former Australian Ambassador to China, has pointed out that Australia’s relationship with China is unlikely to improve until Julie Bishop is sacked as Foreign Minister. The departure of Julie Bishop as Foreign Minister is necessary, but it is unlikely that Malcolm Turnbull will act. If he did so, it would imperil his own tenuous hold on Liberal Party leadership.

Almost two years ago on 14 June 2016, I wrote about Julie Bishop’s continual and serious failings as Foreign Minister. Those failings have increased since then particularly with the management of our relations with China and more and more major cuts in ODA

That article of two years ago is reproduced below

December 27, 2016

OLIVER FRANKEL. Exploiting our under-used housing capacity – a way to ease the affordable housing crisis

The substantial under-used capacity within our existing residential built environment offers a quick, and capital light, opportunity to ease the affordable housing crisis. … There are an estimated 90,000 properties empty in Sydney and 83,000 in Melbourne.

March 28, 2016

Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd (researchers). School Myths Busted.

What My School really says about our schools. (Text of press release of 28 March 2016)

In the wake of the latest version of My School two researchers have published a startling account of what the numbers behind the website actually show. Former school principals Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd have revealed new findings which challenge myths about Australia’s schools.

While reports are frequently about the ‘drift to the private schools’ Bonnor and Shepherd have found that the drift could be equally seen as one from low socio-educational advantage (SEA) schools to higher SEA schools. As recently reported on Lateline, they show that enrolments are increasing in higher SEA government schools, but declining in low SEA government schools.

June 6, 2016

LESLEY BARCLAY. Diagnosing rural health gaps in the election.

It is timely as the federal election approaches to consider whether all Australians are getting the healthcare they need. Approximately 30 per cent of Australians live in rural and remote areas.

Arguably they do not get a ‘fair go’ in relation to their healthcare compared to the rest of us.

Rural and remote Australians are disadvantaged by social circumstances that influence their health status and ripen them for avoidable chronic disease when compared to counterparts in Australia’s major cities.

May 27, 2014

John Falzon. Time to stand and fight

There are measures in this Budget that rip the guts out of what remains of a fair and egalitarian Australia. These measures will not help people into jobs but they will force people into poverty.

You don’t help young people or older people or people with a disability or single mums into jobs by making them poor. You don’t build people up by putting them down.

This Budget is deeply offensive to the people who wage a daily battle to survive. The content of the Budget is offensive. The lies told to justify the Budget are offensive.

October 10, 2024

A five-minute scroll

A journalist takes on the US state briefing, a Palestinian captive takes on his captor. David Shoebridge takes on the government’s immigration policy and the Deputy PM in Belgium speaks out. Ben Gvir draws a gun in the West Bank, while Palestinian journalists flee drone fire. A personal view on destruction in Lebanon. Our five-minutes on X.

April 11, 2013

Fear of Asia. John Menadue

This fear has been with us since European settlement – a small, relatively wealthy white community living on the rim of the large populations of Asia. This fear stunts our own human growth and is an obstacle to trusting relations with our own region.

Although we have broken the back of ‘white Australia’, fear of Asia and the ‘yellow peril’ is still alive. We see it in so many ways.

July 25, 2024

American obeisance

I have just witnessed the most pathetic and humiliating hour which I, as an American, have experienced in my lifetime.

November 24, 2016

RICHARD BUTLER. Our white man's media.

In this blog, I will be posting occasional pieces under the title ‘our white man’s media’ about the inadequate coverage of important issues in world affairs and in particular, in our region. So much of our media coverage reflects the interests and views of the US.

Is the Wretched situation in Yemen of no interest to Australians?

The civil war in Yemen has been underway for over a year. In 2015 Saudi Arabia led a coalition of 3 other Arab states and Pakistan in invading and attacking Yemen, its southern neighbor. Saudi’s role was the significantly largest one and by now virtually the only one. What tied this group together was their interest in opposing the growth of Shia influence in the region stretching from Bahrain in the Gulf to Syria in the west. In plain geopolitical terms, the growth of Iranian influence.

The invasion was assisted by the US, mainly through air assistance.

May 17, 2017

NICOLE GURRAN and PETER PHIBBS. Policy sentiment rather than substance in housing policy

The Federal Treasurer clearly understands the housing affordability pressures facing moderate and low income renters and Australia’s growing homeless. His budget speech set the scene for a package of measures to boost affordable housing supply and recalibrate demand settings. A record number of new and recycled measures recognise the spectrum of crisis housing to home ownership, but there’s little in the way of substantive policy change.

September 24, 2016

CHRIS BONNOR. Institutionalised farce: funding Australia's schools.

The nation’s education ministers have just had a day together to sort out school funding. There was considerable posturing but little agreement. And they managed to sidestep real problems and urgent solutions. They do have some awareness of the institutionalised inequality created, in part, by school funding - but no real will to fix it.

In a new report Bernie Shepherd and I outline the problem, starting with the contrasts between the schools in Albury and Wodonga, two of our most prominent border towns. One school on the NSW side is Albury Public School. Across the Murray is Wodonga Primary School with students who are less advantaged. After all the talk about equity you’d expect the strugglers at Wodonga to be better supported. Quite the opposite: while NSW annually provides over $8000 for each of the students at Albury Public, those in the Victorian school make do with $2000 less.

July 9, 2014

Kieran Tapsell. Rolf Harris and the Vatican.

Rolf Harris, aged 84, was found guilty of sexual assaults on children in the long distant past, and was sentenced to 5 years jail. The judge took into account his age in determining the sentence. Many people still thought it was inadequate, and there is talk of an appeal by the Attorney General to increase the term.

The policy widely accepted in society and reflected by the courts is that the sexual abuse of children should be punished severely, even if it occurred a long time ago, and the convicted man is in his eighties. That view seems to have little traction in the Vatican. The harshest punishment that the Vatican can impose on a priest under canon law is his dismissal from the priesthood, whose secular equivalent would be striking off the rolls or register for a lawyer or doctor.

October 28, 2024

A five-minute scroll

Francesca Albanese warns the entire population of Gaza at risk of genocide, while the Israeli army herd Palestinian men in Jabalia and a child trapped in rubble waits for help. Courage to continue to help the injured from Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyah, Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital whose son died in the attack and horror from Al Shati refugee camp attacks. Jeffrey Sachs asks where is western civilisation while tens of thousands are massacred before our eyes and Seyed Mohammad Marandi sets the BBC straight on Israel and Iran while Woody Harrelson sets the record straight on the US.

March 23, 2016

Ian McAuley. The government says that tax cuts are good for workers!

Arthur Sinodinos’ suggestion of a cut to the corporate tax rate doesn’t seem to be the smartest way to start an election campaign.

For a start, it’s not clear how such generosity would be funded. Earlier this month there was a flurry of excitement when iron ore prices rose. For a few days the idea that higher commodity prices might boost the government’s tax revenue was getting kicked around. But that commodity price rise was short-lived.

July 8, 2014

Joanne Yates. The G20 and the C20.

The G20 has become regarded as the premier forum for the promotion of economic cooperation. It is comprised of 19 nations and the EU and together account for 85% of global GDP, 75% of global trade and two thirds of the global population. As a consequence, its policy decisions have a significant impact on the well-being and life prospects of all citizens, but particularly on the poorest communities in the world, including those contained within G20 nations themselves.

April 6, 2014

Ian McAuley. Inequality in Australia.

A Financial Review article on March 24 claimed “Inequality in Australia has not deteriorated over the last 25 years, according to Reserve Bank of Australia research that undermines claims the gap between rich and poor has worsened”

The essence of the argument is that while, between 1993-94 and 2009-10, the distribution of income has become more unequal, we have all increased our consumption – what we spend on food, transport, housing health care, recreation etc – by the same amount. Therefore we aren’t becoming more unequal.

January 29, 2015

John Menadue. Health Policy Reform: Part 3 – Principles for reform

In Part 1 of this series I described the areas in our health sector that need reform. In Part 2 I spoke of the obstacles, particularly those imposed by vested interests in the health sector to protect their own interests by delaying or stopping reform. In this article, I will be suggesting ways in which we can overcome these obstacles to health reform. But make no mistake: it will be hard without political leadership and political will.

July 14, 2014

Creating a Long-Term Framework for Asylum Seeker Policy

Last Friday 11 July 2014, I attended a roundtable at Parliament House, Canberra to discuss possible actions that could be taken to find a way out of the present divisive and harsh treatment of asylum seekers. The media release following that roundtable is reproduced below. The roundtable drew on discussion paper ‘Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders’, prepared by Peter Hughes and Arja Keski-Nummi. That discussion paper can be found by clicking on my website at the top of this page. The paper is described on the website as ‘Final Policy Paper - Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders’. John Menadue.

June 12, 2014

Nicholas Carney. Advancing the Australia-India relationship under Prime Minister Modi

Narendra Modi’s ascension to the prime ministership of India has sparked interest around the globe, including here in Australia.

The world is right to pay attention to Mr Modi’s rise. In the recent Lok Sahba (‘House of the People’) election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that he leads took 282 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sahba. The result gives the BJP a majority for the first time in its history, and India its first majority government since the 1984 election. The new government’s majority rises to a commanding 336 seats if those won by the BJP’s coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance are included.

February 1, 2016

Ian Webster. Alcohol and Sport.

The facts about alcohol should stop politicians in their tracks. But they are unmoved.

A quarter to a third of the work of a general hospital is alcohol-related. On Australia Day one in seven ED attendances were caused by alcohol; in some EDs it was one in three. The Senior Australian of the Year, Gordian Fulde, time and time again, has described the carnage at St Vincent’s Hospital’s ED late on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights; as many as 70 percent of cases at peak periods are intoxicated.

January 23, 2013

Rio Tinto - Corporate Governance and Asia

Since 2007 Rio Tinto has written off $US 35 billion in failed investments. It must be a world record. There are probably more write-downs to come with its investments in Mozambique coal and in aluminium in North America.

Tom Albanese has been sacrificed but the remainder of the Rio Tinto board are apparently unscathed. They have been too lax with shareholders money that they have washed so comprehensively down the drain. The boards of some of our mining companies in the mining boom must think that they are playing with monopoly money. Booming commodity prices and demand lulled them into being careless on major investment decisions. They became very gullible. Not only have they been lax in investment decisions but they have been careless in allowing costs to balloon.

May 7, 2015

The British Election

The Observer newspaper in the UK has an interesting background piece on the issues facing people in the UK. It raises many of the questions that concern Australians about the disfunction and the loss of trust in our political institutions. See link to article below. John Menadue

http://gu.com/p/48435/sbl

April 20, 2016

Douglas Newton. The hard questions we should face on Anzac Day 2016.

On Anzac Day 2016, the centenaries of 1916 should loom large. In April 1916, the Australian divisions that had been mauled at Gallipoli were being despatched to the Western Front. The industrialised kill-chain at the Somme awaited them. Other centenary moments from 1916 are coming: of diplomatic deals that escalated the war, and of lost opportunities to end the war.

The cataclysm of that war for Australians ought to prompt hard questions – beyond the nationalist obsession over whether ‘the mettle of the men’ shone bright on the battlefield.

June 18, 2014

Out-of-Pocket Costs in Australian Healthcare and the $7 Co-payment.

In my blog of May 12 on health co-payments I set out my objections to the proposal including that we already have a very high level of co-payments, that they are a “dogs breakfast” and that the proposal on its own would be unfair. The debate has moved on since then which raises further concerns about a proposal which covers not only GP consultations but pathology and radiology tests and pharmaceutical prescriptions as well.

May 17, 2017

ANDREW FARRAN. More troops to Afghanistan: at best a patch job; at worst perpetuating futility

Whereas economic globalisation might seem for a time to be on the wane, in the military sphere globalisation is on the rise. Regional alliances are being transformed into global alliances. ANZUS has been merged de facto into NATO, and where NATO is persuaded to go so shall we. Australia has been involved in Middle East conflicts – in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – and is now under pressure to expand its Afghanistan commitment. We should be clear about the purpose and intended outcomes of such commitments.

April 18, 2016

Tony Wood. The $50 b. submarine project.

Jon Stanford’s papers on the submarine project make an important contribution and deserve widespread circulation particularly among our decision makers. The replacement submarine decision has profound implications for all Australians. Its intention is to provide a deterrent to “potential adversaries”, but also to offer to the young members of our defence force weapons at least comparable with those they might face in opposition. To achieve this it is proposed we spend more on this project than we have ever spent before on military equipment.

April 16, 2015

Marilyn Lake. Fracturing the nation's soul.

You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue.

During World War 1 Australia lost its way. Its enmeshment in the imperial European war fractured the nation’s soul.

World War I had consequences for individuals as well as nations. HB Higgins’s life would be deeply affected by the British decision to invade the Ottoman empire in early 1915. As a member of the new federal parliament in 1901, Higgins had opposed Australian participation in the Boer War, fearing that this would set a terrible precedent for involvement in other imperial wars, whose purpose, goals and strategy would always be determined by other powers. He also doubted the legitimacy of the European war, writing to his friend Felix Frankfurter, Professor in Law at Harvard, ‘What do you think of it? … [T]here are higher ideals than attachment to a country because it is my country. I blame our British jingoes…’ Higgins was deeply troubled when his only child Mervyn elected to join British forces fighting in the Middle East.

October 1, 2016

JULIE WALKER. Australia should compare CEO and average worker pay like the US and UK.

Australia should follow the lead of the United States in requiring public companies to disclose how much their CEO makes each year directly compared to an “average” rank and file employee. Ballooning executive pay contributes to income inequality and the CEO pay ratio provides a measure of the extent of the pay gap between the top and bottom income levels in the economy.

US companies will be required to disclose from 1 January 2017 the ratio of pay of a CEO’s annual total remuneration to the median annual total remuneration of all company employees. UK companies are also subject to a variation of the CEO pay ratio rule, with relevant regulation requiring disclosure of the CEO’s remuneration compared to their employees. In Australia companies don’t have to disclose this ratio, although companies do disclose information about remuneration for executives.

August 13, 2013

Minimizing PNG and Nauru. John Menadue

Before I outline what I suggest we should do after the federal election let me first raise a few important background issues.

The Indo China program

In working with Malcolm Fraser and Ian Macphee I was actively involved in the Indochina refugee program under which Australia took 240,000 people, including family reunion. It was a successful humanitarian program which most Australians now look back on with pride. It also broke the back of White Australia but did not fully banish it. It still shows up to today in a de facto form, in hostility and demonization of asylum seekers.

January 7, 2016

John Tulloh. The Cost of the star-spangled arms banner.

Repost from 05/10/2015

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched, we’re so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

March 17, 2017

HANS J OHFF. A Future Submarine bonanza for France

Seen through the eyes of an engineering contractor and shipbuilder I suggest that the French have hit the jackpot. They will be falling over themselves to sign the proposed Framework Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the French Republic concerning cooperation on the future Submarine Program.

May 17, 2017

JEAN – PIERRE LEHMANN. Conspicuous Western & Japanese Absence from Belt & Road Initiative Summit is a Big Mistake

The conspicuous absence of the heads of state from the major Western economic powers and Japan at the 14/15 May Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in Beijing is a big mistake and a missed opportunity for enhancing dynamic and cooperative globalisation.

August 23, 2016

IAN WEBSTER. Malcolm Turnbull and homelessness - reaching mentally ill people

This week our PM, Malcolm Turnbull, was admonished when he gave $5 to a homeless man in Melbourne. He was sorry if people thought he should not have done this. He said, “I felt sorry for the guy”….”there but for the grace of God go I.”

George Orwell wrote after being ‘down and out’ in Paris and London, “Still I can point to one or two things. I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.”

June 9, 2017

MICHAEL KELLY. Time to think outside the square for the Church in China

Joseph Jiang’s timely essay on the Church in today’s China will annoy some but asks all the right questions.

July 17, 2013

Joining the dots on Asia. John Menadue

The advocates of stronger ties with Asia spend a great deal of time with seminars and press statements about the importance of the region to our future. They are correct but they refuse to join the dots and advocate the changes on the really important issues impeding our relations with our region. Some of those impediments are symbolic and some are real. They include:

How can we expect our region to take us seriously when we have an English Queen as our head of state? Many Asians that I have spoken to are polite but shake their head with bemusement that we have a foreign head of state living in London.
Many in Asia are sceptical about our dependence on the US and allowing our foreign affairs and defence policies to be determined very largely by our relationship with the US at the expense of relations with regional countries. They have not forgotten John Howard’s reference to Australia as being the US’s ‘deputy sheriff’ in the region. Regional countries do place importance on the continuing role of the US in our region, but not in the slavish way that we do.
We have a clubbish Anglo-Celtic business sector that espouses better relations with the region but closes its ranks against persons with serious Asian experience or competence in the language.
The continuous demonization of asylum seekers is a disingenuous re-run of White Australia – appealing to our fear of the foreigner which was the key driver of White Australia in the past. Malaysia is continually bashed by the Greens, the Coalition and NGOs when it offered the prospect of building a regional arrangement for asylum seekers.
Our media reflects our overwhelming ties to the UK and the US. Just look at the inflated coverage of the Boston bombings compared with the civil war broken out in Iraq with thousands of bombing deaths. By our own involvement in the Iraq war we have contributed to this catastrophe. But three deaths in Boston is much easier and cheaper TV footage.
We give lip service to the importance of Asian languages, but we are not prepared to fund it.
Working holiday programs with countries in our region which provide opportunities for young Australians to live and work in the region have been largely stalled for the past twenty years.

So much of the public debate about our relations with the region is froth and bubble. We avoid the hard issues. If we address them we would really show a genuine determination to build our future in our own region.

April 26, 2017

ALLAN PATIENCE. How much lower are we going to go?

The current Australian values and new immigration visa debates, blusteringly initiated by Malcolm Turnbull and his would-be successor Peter Dutton, represent one of the lowest points in recent Australian political history. Are these panicking populists capable of dragging the country any lower? Very likely they will try, because the politics they have now so fully embraced can take them nowhere else.

October 8, 2016

LAURIE PATTON. Essentially, our NBN is just not good enough (but please don't say so!)

… And don’t tell Malcolm Turnbull, who was Minister in charge of the NBN.

This week’s Essential poll found that dissatisfaction with the National Broadband Network is both widespread and pretty even across the political spectrum. Only 22 percent of respondents believe the NBN will adequately meet our future Internet requirements [ http://www.essentialvision.com.au/future-internet-requirements].

For those of us focussing on Australia’s potential to become an Innovation Nation and who’ve been watching the NBN debate with increasing despair this was no surprise. Although, as you dig deeper there appears to be a well-developed appreciation of the benefits of high speed broadband underlying peoples’ concerns.

July 26, 2017

STEPHEN LEEDER. Review of the Medicare Benefits Schedule.

The Medicare Benefits Schedule, or MBS, is the basis for Medicare payments made for medical care in the community. It runs to over 900 pages and contains 5,700 items. Well over $2Ob pass through its ledger each year. It includes long and short clinical consultations and surgical procedures ($17b), pathology tests ($2.65b) and x-ray and other imaging ($3.2b) that form the bulk of out-of-hospital care, mostly but not entirely ($1b not) provided by doctors.

September 27, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. 'Faster economic growth demands better chief executives'.

There was a revealing heading in a recent article by Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the SMH, ‘ Faster growth demands better chief executives’. He concluded his article by pointing to the need for business leadership to seize the economic opportunities .‘ Our overpaid and underperforming chief executive officers are getting (it) wrong’.

He says ‘Deloitte Access estimates that if the gap in management quality between Australia and the US were halved today, our productivity would rise to 80% of the US level, up from its present level of 77%. Achieving such an increase today would lead to a 5.3% increase in gross domestic product over its present level. This represents an increase in GDP of about $70 billion, equivalent to about $3,000 a person per year. … Deloitte Access concludes from other research that fast-growing businesses “take an attitude that success is in their hands and nobody else’s.” But so often our business sector keeps running to government for help . The rubric it invariably uses is ‘getting rid of regulation and red tape’.

In this blog I have often remarked that some business people and particularly the Business Council of Australia spend a great deal of time lobbying governments to advance their business interests rather than running their businesses, or ‘sticking to their knitting’.

February 7, 2019

RICHARD DENNISS. Our regulators fail to protect the vulnerable from the greedy. Let's find out why. ( A repost from 19 September 2018)

Neoliberalism’s best trick was convincing us that ‘empowering’ citizens to shop around would deliver better services at a lower cost.

June 9, 2016

ANDREW LEIGH. Why the government's company tax cut is a carnival sideshow.

In the 1890s, Texan cowboy Clark Stanley began marketing a new product at medicine shows.

A man who could kill rattlesnakes with his bare hands, Stanley promised people that his rattlesnake extract would bring relief from rheumatism, sprains, swelling, back pain and toothache.

It wasn’t until 1917 that Stanley’s operation was finally shut down, with a court finding that the product not only didn’t provide a cure; it wasn’t even made from snakes. And so the term ‘snake oil’ was born.

January 20, 2015

Robert Douglas. Senate report on Australian inequality.

Bridging our growing divide: Inequality in Australia is an important report tabled without fanfare in the Senate by its Community Affairs References Committee. The report is clearly argued and well-buttressed by data and references. The points it makes about an issue central to the kind of society we are developing in Australia deserve wide community discussion.

The inquiry terms of reference called for a review of the extent of income inequality, the rate at which it is increasing and its impacts on access to health, housing, education and work.

November 24, 2016

LAURENCE TROY. Sydney needs higher affordable housing targets.

The release this week by the Greater Sydney Commission of city-wide draft plansmandating some measure of affordable housing in new developments is a step in the right direction. However, the target of 5-10% on rezoned land is too low to make a serious impact on the city’s affordable housing shortage. It must be more ambitious.

Research highlights the central importance of affordable, stable housing to economic and social wellbeing. Yet, in Sydney, the lack of affordable housing has reached crisis point. Everyone from community housing providers to Commonwealth Treasury secretary John Fraser is pointing out that rising house prices are creating massive social and economic problems.

May 17, 2017

JUDITH WHITE. Arts policy and the need to counter the undermining of public cultural institutions

Writing a book is a solitary occupation, but with this one I’ve been constantly aware of the hosts of people – staff, members, volunteers, benefactors – who are concerned about what is happening to our public institutions. And they are public institutions: they belong, by Acts of Parliament, to the people.

March 27, 2013

The Pacific Solution has failed. John Menadue

The Government fell for a dud Coalition “policy” that suggested that by re-opening Nauru/Manus the flow of asylum seekers by boat would be reduced or even cease. We recall that many times Tony Abbott said that on becoming Prime Minister, the first thing he would do would be to get on the phone to the President of Nauru to re-open the Nauru detention centre.

Following the Houston Report and in a spirit of political compromise, the Government foolishly accepted the Coalition policy to re-open Nauru/Manus as deterrents to boat arrivals. It was part of a larger package.

September 12, 2019

TROY BAISDEN. New Zealand launches plan to revive the health of lakes and rivers (The Conversation 6 Sep)

New Zealand’s government released a plan to reverse the decline of iconic lakes and rivers this week. It proposes higher standards for water quality, interim controls on land intensification and a higher bar on ecosystem health.

August 16, 2016

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Merchants of Death - the Weapons Trade

According to Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick in The Untold History of the United States (2012), North Dakota Senator Gerald Nye persuaded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1934 to investigate the enormous profits made by American weapons makers during the Great War. Amplifying public indignation, Fortune magazine ran an article in March of that year claiming that it had cost the US Treasury $25,000 to kill an enemy soldier in 1917-18: ‘Every time a burst shell fragment finds its way into the brain, the heart or the intestines of a man in the front line, a great part of the $25,000, much of it profit, finds its way into the pocket of the armament maker.’

June 24, 2015

John Menadue. Facts on the $11b per annum private health insurance industry subsidy.

The Minister for Health and Ageing, Sussan Ley has said she wants to canvas community and expert views on PHI (private health insurance).

If she does consult the community on this issue that will be a welcome change, for consideration of the PHI is usually a private discussion with the vested interests – the PHI industry, doctors and private hospitals.

I am not holding my breath about real consultation with the community. So much ‘consultation’ is purely token. Furthermore the community is genuinely confused about the range of look-alike policies that are very hard to understand until the patient has to pay.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal