May 31, 2018

PETER JOHNSTONE. Bishops in the headlights.

Catholic bishops throughout the world should regard themselves as on notice following the dramatic offer of resignations by all the bishops of Chile. There are already calls ( _Paul Collins_) for Australian bishops to emulate the Chilean bishops in light of the damning report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, not to mention the recent conviction of an Australian archbishop on concealment charges and the imminent trial of another on sex abuse allegations. In many ways, the Catholic hierarchy is becoming increasingly isolated from the faithful.

September 1, 2018

WALEED ALY. Dutton’s au pair drama shows hypocrisy of immigration policy (SMH 31/8/2018)

“As a discretionary and humanitarian act to an individual with ongoing needs, it is in the interests of Australia as a humane and generous society to grant this person a tourist visa.”

That’s Peter Dutton, then immigration minister, in the official document by which he intervened to allow an au pair to enter the country.

_And what an incredible sentence it is! A humanitarian act. An individual with ongoing needs. A humane and generous society. So … a tourist visa? What humanitarian situation serious enough to require intervention from the immigration minister himself can be relieved by a spot of tourism?

August 30, 2019

State and federal issues upset WA Labor State Conference

A long-running dispute within the West Australian Labor Party about the future of Fremantle Harbour was the issue behind the rocky start to Labor’s State Conference but the fight between Anthony Albanese and union leader John Setka added spice to the political weekend in Perth.

October 9, 2017

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Rejoicing in the good old days.

I may be getting nostalgic n my old age – hell, I am getting nostalgic in my old age. But it was hard not to rejoice in the good old days as Bob Hawke and Gareth Evans arrived at the National Club Press last week to spruik Evan’s memoir.

September 18, 2019

MARK BUCKLEY. Voters of Australia You're doing it all Wrong

_These days, in the dumbed–down media, there are often articles which tell the reader she has been brushing her hair wrongly, or he has been cutting the avocado incorrectly. I thought I would explain to the voters of Australia just where they got it so terribly wrong.

December 23, 2016

ANDREW AILES. Peace on earth - the children of Aleppo.

Peace on Earth

Peace on earth. Goodwill to men, Echoes like Sullivan’s Great Amen: The chord he lost when sitting by, His brother as he watched him die.

February 3, 2015

Brian Johnstone. The Right to Freedom of Speech

During his flights to Sri Lanka and the Philippines, Pope Francis spoke of the massacre of the staff of a French magazine Charlie Hebdo and others at a kosher supermarket, which killed 17 persons. The attack was in reprisal for satirical depictions of the prophet Muhammad.

“One cannot make war [or] kill in the name of one’s own religion, that is, in the name of God,” Francis said. “To kill in the name of God is an aberration.” But, the Pope added, freedom of speech does not imply total license to insult or offend another’s faith. “Every religion has its dignity . . . and I cannot make fun of it.”

September 24, 2018

America First or America Isolated: The Case of the International Criminal Court.

Donald Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, has acted on his long-stated distaste for the International Criminal Court by declaring it dead to the US Though a few of Bolton’s protestations have merit, the US is setting a dangerous precedent in condemning the court.

October 1, 2019

MUNGO MACCALUM. Morrison shock troops chase Greta

Not only Donald Trump in the USA and Boris Johnson in the UK struggling to bluff and bluster their way out of their self-inflicted problems, but even the previously untouchable Canadian Justin Trudeau was embroiled in decades old controversies over black face pranks.

June 3, 2019

RICHARD DENNISS. What's 'left' and 'right' in Australian politics today? The lines are shifting (The Guardian)

Remember when the right was accused of obsessing over market forces and the left of not understanding economics?

September 14, 2018

GARRY WILLS. Resistance Means More Than Voting (New York Review of Books Daily, 10.09.18)

When former president Barack Obama called on the nation to oppose Donald Trump at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign last week, he said there was only one way to do it, by voting. This was a criticism of the internal resistance supported by the anonymous op-ed writer in The New York Times. Obama said that people who “secretly aren’t following the president’s orders” are not defending democracy: “These people are not elected. They’re not accountable.”

June 12, 2019

NOEL TURNBULL. When you think of Twitter what at do you think of first?

The automatic response when you hear the word Tweet is to associate it with Trump. Yet some recent Pew Research Center suggests the Tweeter in chief is out of step with most other Tweeters.

November 28, 2016

MICHAEL KEATING. Donald Trump and the ANZUS Alliance - Quo vadis series.

Quo vadis - Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

Summary. Dennis Richardson, the Secretary of the Defence Department, recently informed us that the ANZUS Alliance was ongoing, irrespective of who was President of the United States. Of course, this is true, but so what? What was the point of Richardson’s admonition, and what was he hoping to achieve? It would be most unfortunate If Richardson’s comment was a crude attempt to stop the much-needed debate in Australia about how we should adjust to changing circumstances in the Asia-Pacific region and develop a more independent foreign policy as advocated in numerous articles posted on this blog. To my mind it is now more important than ever for Australia to forge an independent foreign policy, given the uncertainties attaching to future American policies and priorities under President Trump.

August 14, 2019

'Australia agrees to everything'

Australia and the United States see the world through the same eyes, Scott Morrison told sailors on USS Ronald Reagan during the Talisman Sabre war games on 12 July.But after hearing what Mike Pompeo and John Joseph Mearsheimer had to say in Australia in recent days, we might conclude that if our eyes are the same, the world we see is different.

December 27, 2018

TONY BOYD. 'Trump's evidence-free trade war', Australian Financial Review, 22 Dec 2018, p.56

Rarely has there been a more comprehensive dissection and damnation of a government policy founded on misinformation than economist Stephen Roach’s analysis of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Roach, who traded his job as chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia for faculty membership at Yale University in 2012, was masterful in his use of humour, satire, irony and hard facts to tear apart the arguments put by Trump and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to justify US protectionism.

March 2, 2018

MACK WILLIAMS. Australia : US - Limits and responsibilities of mateship!

The recent quick visit of the Prime Minister to Washington has raised more questions than it has answered about the state of Australia’s relations with the US and China. Have the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister set out a new policy on China and the South China Sea or are they just playing at trying to distance themselves modestly from Washington?

October 5, 2017

RAMESH THAKUR. Incorrigible Optimist by Gareth Evans, a Political Memoir - A review-Part 1of 2

Gareth Evans’ memoir makes clear his vision of good international citizenship would have foreign ministers pursuing national self-interest within the ennobling vision of global moral purposes.

October 27, 2018

MICHAEL HIRSH. Who Will Speak for the Democrats?

Nancy Pelosi believes she has one more great task left in her long career—saving American democracy. If, as expected, the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives on November 6, Pelosi may become the first Speaker to regain the position in more than six decades (the legendary Sam Rayburn did it in 1955). And at what a moment: Pelosi and the House Democrats believe—and a huge number of voters agree—that they are all that stands between the future of the republic and the broad-based assault on democratic values led by Donald Trump, one of the few people in Washington who’s demonized even more than Pelosi is.

This article was published by The New York Review of Books on the 10th of October 2018.

June 4, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Overburdened with lightweights.

It’s an old line, but a good one and unfortunately usually a true one: the front benches of parliament are top heavy with lightweights.

September 24, 2018

SPENCER ZIFCAK. No Friend But the Mountains’:* Behrouz Boochani’s Extraordinary Narrative Of Life on Manus Island

Behrouz Boochani is an Iranian journalist, writer and refugee. He arrived in Australian waters by boat seeking refuge after a near fatal journey from Indonesia. He never made it to the mainland. Kevin Rudd had shut down access to Australia. Tony Abbott had opened out the desolate encampments on Manus Island and Nauru. Boochani was rescued at sea, transferred to Christmas Island and then flown to Manus. He’s been incarcerated there for more than five years. Thanks to the High Court’s morally indefensible decision in the case of Al-Kateb, he’s slated to remain on the island, isolated and alone, indefinitely.

September 26, 2019

PETER MILLER. Politicians who become lobbyists can be bad for Australians’ health

The ‘revolving door’ of people between government and the alcohol, tobacco and gambling industries is now recognised as an increasing threat to public policy making. In a new study by Deakin University researchers this revolving door has revealed for the first time the influence of lobbyists on public health policy.

August 30, 2019

KELLIE TRANTER. Defence exports - what are we subsidising?

Last month Australian defence company, Electro Optic Systems (EOS), again denied its weapons system was being used in the Yemen war when photographs surfaced of four consignments of its Remote Weapons System for export in June and July to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. But what slipped through in relation to EOS is its February 2019 media release confirming its collaboration with Israeli company, Elbit Systems to develop a turret that ‘adds a next generation, medium calibre turret to the EOS family of weapon systems and has been designed to meet a rapidly emerging global market worth more than AUD$4 billion.’

August 22, 2019

The conversation about China

Senator Wong’s call for a mature conversation aboutf the issue of China is more than welcome. A serious discussions of the implications for Australia flowing from the rise of China was sadly missing from the recent election. However, there is an unexpected naivety in her suggestion that MPs and Senators receive ‘foreign affairs and national intelligence briefings about China’ to remedy the government’s failure to discuss Australia’s relationship with the emerging superpower.

September 29, 2018

Denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula: Explaining the Stalemate

With the conclusion of the third inter-Korean summit last week, the next challenge will be to find common understanding.

November 14, 2017

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Turnbull acts tough while crisis brews.

So Malcolm Turnbull’s big idea to end the dual citizen crisis is to ask (or perhaps tell – it is not clear which) his troops, and presumably the rest of the parliament, to explain openly and concisely whether they believe they are compliant with the constitution or not.

June 21, 2018

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. North Korea and the Trump Bashers

President Trump declared at his post-Summit press conference in Singapore on 12 June that US-ROK war games were expensive and provocative and he would abolish them, starting with ‘Ulchi Freedom Guardian’ next August. His decision has drawn some surprising reactions.

June 3, 2019

GREG BAILEY. The Australian Electorate and the ‘Sensible Centre.’

Now that the grieving over the electoral loss of progressive political forces is beginning to be transformed into sustained soul searching about the characteristics of the Australian electorate and the tactic used by the ALP, it is time to ask whether the ALP could have won given the forces rallied against them. In truth the election was close, but the effect of unrealistic expectations has led to anguished questioning of whether a party with comprehensive progressive policies for an increasingly fractured future will ever be successful in Australia and whether the ‘sensible centre’ is the only option.

July 2, 2018

STEPHEN LEEDER. Reviewing the Book of Kells’ schedule of medical fees.

Government contributions to medical fees are set out in a large book of rules. It is under review. But are rules for individual fees for individual services the way to go? Fee-for-service may be running out of date.

October 10, 2017

MICHAEL KEATING. Trump’s Economic Policies: Part 1 of 2

President Trumps economic policies have so far received much less attention than his foreign and national security policies. The examination here and in a following article concludes that the economic policies are based on fundamental contradictions and are therefore bound to fail. This failure will be felt by Americans and by the rest of the world.

May 30, 2018

GREG BAILEY. John Lloyd and the IPA: Friends of the Public Service?

As if the Public Service did not have enough pressure placed on it - over the past three decades it has been politicized, it has been continually downsized and its professionalism has been called into question by an homogenous collection of party hacks, consultants and lobbyists, perhaps picking up on a long-standing public disdain for the efficiency of public servants. If this is not enough, it is now under attack from John Lloyd, Commissioner, Australian Public Service Commission, and at times an IPA member.

November 22, 2017

DUNCAN GRAHAM. Wanted: The real refugee story

There should be no asylum seekers in offshore camps funded by Australia. They’re getting food, healthcare and accommodation - even money. But the prolonged wait is inhumane and damaging. Impractical solutions and unbalanced reporting are compounding the problem.

June 14, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. Strategy In A Bubble: ASPI’s war plans

ASPI’s relentless push for ever greater defence spending gets another iteration in Malcolm Davis’s _Forward defence in depth for Australia_ . As a breathless list of ‘key horizon technologies’, Davis’s paper makes entertaining and informative reading. As a justification for putting Australia on a permanent war footing it is wanting.

September 14, 2018

NICK DEANE Invictus and the arms manufacturers connection.

The Invictus Games will be familiar to all who watch the ABC, their promoter and sponsor. The Games will be taking place in Sydney in October, the participants being injured service personnel from 18 countries.But why are major arms manufactures ‘official supporters’?

September 24, 2018

PETER SAINSBURY. Action on climate change depends on, but not guaranteed by, a change of government

Greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and the devastating consequences of climate change for the environment and humanity march on. The Morrison government is set to continue Australia’s disgraceful inactivity in combating climate change. The election of a Labor government and a climate action pact between Labor and the Greens provides some hope but no reassurance that this might change.

December 27, 2018

KATHERINE FRANKE. The pro-Israel push to purge US campus critics.

_There are signs that we’ve reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel’s suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campuses across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, and hold it to the same human rights scrutiny we apply to other nations around the globe. Global companies such as Airbnb have recognized that their business practices must reflect international condemnation of the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Natalie Portman, Lorde and other celebrities have declined appearances in Israel, acknowledging the call to boycott the Israeli government on account of its human rights violations. And The New York Times published a column arguing, with unprecedented forthrightness, that criticism of ethno-nationalism in Israel (for example, defining Israel exclusively as a “Jewish state”) isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic.

September 27, 2018

ABUL RIZVI. Privatising visa processing - the alarm bells are ringing (Part 1)

Major ICT transformation projects conducted ‘in partnership’ with a big IT company are high risk. Privatisation of core government functions such as visa processing are also high risk, especially when undertaken under the cloak of commercial-in-confidence type secrecy. Doing the two together multiplies the risk big time. But that is exactly what the Home Affairs department is doing.

September 28, 2017

MICHAEL MULLINS. Proper scrutiny will expose 'traditional marriage' as dangerous.

Pope Francis has confirmed his resolve to dump Pope John Paul II’s legacy regarding marriage and the family. He will replace it with his own more inclusive vision, which he outlined in a speech in October last year. This suggestion of openness has obvious implications for Australia’s Marriage Law Postal Survey ‘no’ campaign, which presents traditional marriage as a virtuous institution that is beyond question and beyond change.

April 25, 2019

ANDREW FROST. Alternative Histories, the ANZAC legend re-imagined on canvas

The assumption of ANZAC as the foundation of conservative Australia has been used to mobilise popular sentiment into dubious alliances in wars of questionable purpose. In this context, Rodney Pople’s latest exhibition, Shell Shocked, has urgency. His paintings are a vehicle for questioning more than a century of myth-making.

December 18, 2017

JERRY ROBERTS. Will today's Labor Government in Western Australia repeat the mistakes of 1983?

Dominating the front page of Wednesday’s West Australian newspaper (6 December) was a picture of the State’s Premier, Mark McGowan, striking a tough-guy pose. Ghosted over the photo of the Premier was a big headline saying “Fat Cat Cull.” The fat cats are public service chiefs and the story revived memories of Premier Brian Burke in the days following Labor’s election victory in 1983. The difference lies in what happened to the public service between then and now.

September 29, 2018

GREG BAILEY. On Lobbyists And the System That Sustains Them.

Lobbyists are increasingly being recognized as a blight on the political landscape and as one of the negative forces in the progressive weakening of democratic processes in government. That they have come to form a distinct component in creating and distorting policy, indeed in creating politics almost as a “privatized sphere” is now become incontestable. But how does one change the system of governance back to one more firmly representing the electors?

October 9, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison actually does something.

Sound the trumpets, fire the cannons, stop the presses – Scott Morrison’s fledgling government has actually managed a result.

September 6, 2018

RAMESH THAKUR. Importing private sector efficiency or infecting the public service with the ‘greed is good’ disease

There has never been a more exciting time to be a critic of the ‘greed is good’ philosophy of the corporate sector. The revelations from the banking and finance royal commission have been gobsmacking. There was also the beat up of my university for having the temerity to weigh the attraction, of substantial funding from the Ramsay Centre, against demands for having voice and veto in academic decisions on staffing and curricula.

August 7, 2018

ROGER SCOTT. “WHITHER POLITICAL SCIENCE? – An International Perspective”

Fundamental questions are starting to be asked by governments everywhere about the value-for-money of tertiary education in general and about various components of the humanities and social sciences in particular. A world congress of political scientists meeting in Brisbane confronted this topic from a number of different perspectives and noted growing expectations that political scientist academics should be focussing their efforts on making an impact on the policy process.

September 5, 2019

ANDREW SHENG, XIAO GENG. Hong Kong’s Real Problem Is Inequality (Project Syndicate 29-8-19)

A powerful, but oft-ignored factor underlying the frustrations of Hong Kong’s people is inequality. And, contrary to the prevailing pro-democracy narrative, the failure of Hong Kong’s autonomous government to address the problem stems from the electoral politics to which the protesters are so committed.

March 2, 2013

The Candidate. Guest blogger Chris Geraghty

It’s frightening, isn’t it? I saw Cardinal George Pell on television recently claiming that his election to the top job was not impossible. He explained that because he’s a Catholic, a bishop, and a member of the College of Cardinals, he was a chance. Is that all one needs to be pope?

The applicants for the biggest job on earth are gathering in the Vatican to be assessed, to go through their interviews, to do some politicking and count the numbers. The successful candidate must of course be a member of the masculine branch of the human race. Being a paid-up member of the episcopal workers’ union and therefore both ordained as a priest and consecrated as a bishop, he must not be of illegimate birth, disabled physically or intellectually, or deformed, or suffering epilepsy whether caused by some form of insanity or by possession of the devil (Canons 983-987 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law). Slaves and soldiers are also ineligible, though Julius II proved to be a fierce warrior during his reign.

November 23, 2017

STEPHEN LONG. The Adani lobbyist and Labor insider who smoothed the way for the mega mine

Adani’s lobbyists resigned recently after a job well done.

Key points:

Lobbyists made 33 contacts with Queensland politicians or their staff for Adani
60 per cent of meetings the Queensland Premier held with lobbyists were for Adani
Adani lobbyist played key role in Labor’s 2016 federal election campaign

October 5, 2017

THOMAS ALBRECHT. Australia's refugee policy is a failure. This is not the time to shirk responsibility.

Australia’s current refugee policy has been an abject failure. A proper approach by Australia must include, at a minimum, solutions for all refugees and asylum seekers sent to Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and an end to offshore processing.

September 9, 2019

DAVID TIMBS. Archbishop Comensoli needs to cut the ecclesiastical umbilical cord.

Peter A Comensoli has been the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne for just on a year. So far he has demonstrated very little understanding of the disastrous situation he inherited. Nor has he shown any clear indication of the kind of vision and leadership needed to navigate a way though.

November 30, 2018

ROBERT KUTTNER. The crash that failed.

Review of “Crashed: How a decade of financial crises changed the world” by Adam Tooze, Viking.

The historian G.M. Trevelyan said that the democratic revolutions of 1848, all of which were quickly crushed, represented “a turning point at which modern history failed to turn”. The same can be said of the financial collapse of 2008. The crash demonstrated the emptiness of the claim that markets could regulate themselves. It should have led to the disgrace of neoliberalism—the belief that unregulated markets produce and distribute goods and services more efficiently than regulated ones. Instead, the old order reasserted itself, and with calamitous consequences. Gross economic imbalances of power and wealth persisted. We are still experiencing the reverberations.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal

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