September 5, 2018

KIM WINGEREI. Au dair - it may be legal, but it aint right.

From waving Au Pairs through the immigration queue, throwing money at unsuspecting charities and denying medical treatments for children - to ignoring climate change and the bullying culture that is endemic to party politics; what the last few weeks of politics have shown above all, is that our political leaders just don’t know the difference between being right and doing right.

September 17, 2019

JOHN MENADUE. We have surrendered our sovereignty to a very dangerous and violent ally. An update

As China reasserts its historical world role, its influence will grow in Australia and elsewhere. But that influence is minimal compared with the US which has ‘agents of influence thick on the ground in Australia. Our media ,including the ABC, is saturated with US content and a large part of it is controlled by an American citizen with close ties to Donald Trump. We have a reasonable degree of domestic political autonomy despite foreign ownership of our major companies but we have ceded effective foreign and defence power to the US military,industrial and intelligence complex. All our major political parties are happy to maintain our quasi colonial status.

September 28, 2018

JOHN WARHURST. The power of the Catholic lobby. (Canberra Times 27/9/2018)

_The continuing education funding controversy invites scrutiny of the power of insider politics. Political insiders are those who use economic clout, political connections, extensive networks and privileged access to decision-makers to consistently influence political outcomes.

August 12, 2019

The Fascinating Christian Story.

We all have our personal story. And it is just one part of the bigger story of our family, our tribe, our nation the things that have shaped us. Institutions, too, have a life of their own and their own story. Where did they come from? What made them as they are? Religions are such. We need storytellers with long memories. And, if we get really serious about understanding all this, we need good historians. Christianity has the story and the historians who, over the last couple of centuries, have become better at their game.

August 10, 2018

WILLIAM FINNEGAN. California Burning.

On the northwestern edge of Los Angeles, where I grew up, the wildfires came in late summer. We lived in a new subdivision, and behind our house were the hills, golden and parched. We would hose down the wood-shingled roof as fire crews bivouacked in our street. Our neighborhood never burned, but others did. In the Bel Air fire of 1961, nearly five hundred homes burned, including those of Burt Lancaster and Zsa Zsa Gabor. We were all living in the wildland-urban interface, as it is now called. More subdivisions were built, farther out, and for my family the wildfire threat receded.

July 4, 2019

LOUIS COOPER. Trudeau fights for re-election

Canada has a national election in October and a recent poll shows the electorate is feeling worried and conflicted. Will Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus Liberal Party be re-elected?

May 19, 2019

IAN MCAULEY. Dutton knew what he was doing when he booted out Turnbull

Australias Trump/Brexit moment came on Saturday night, when Antony Green called the election for Morrison.

September 2, 2018

DUNCAN GRAHAM. A done deal - or a deal not yet done?

Trying to do business in Java on a Friday is seldom a good idea.

The chantings that Prime Minister Scott Morrison heard mid-morning last Friday were not part of the standard welcome to overseas VIPs, but calling the faithful to prayer. That included Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo, much of his Cabinet and most senior bureaucrats.

That Widodo took time to talk to his visitor on the Islamic holy day, when the Asian Games are concluding and campaigning about to start for next Aprils presidential election, suggests he sees its important to maintain relationships with Australia, even if other politicians are indifferent or openly suspicious.

March 16, 2020

MIKE SCRAFTON. Shades of herd immunity stalk COVID-19 government responses.

_Seeping faintly through the pronouncements and policies of some government responses to the coronavirus pandemic are the vapours of older belief systems; a whiff of utilitarianism, the scent of social Darwinism, and the fetid reek of eugenics.

January 25, 2018

STEPHEN LEEDER. Forget the Dog: make 2018 the Year of the Sceptic.

Much medical research is incomplete or wrong. The participation of drug companies in sponsored research and continuing education for doctors whereby the results of research are communicated to them demands healthy scepticism.

July 23, 2019

JULIAN CRIBB. Age of Darkness: the plan to lobotomise Australia

Centuries from now, future historians will be able to assign a date to the start of the Australian Dark Age: it began in July of 2019. That was the date the nation turned its back on the enlightenment of reason, evidence, science and rationality and forged into a befogged future of political fantasies and wild, unfounded beliefs. Not unexpectedly, the state failed and darkness settled over the land.

May 9, 2019

QUENTIN DEMPSTER. Why the Libs cannot be trusted with the ABC..

2 March 1996. Journalist: **The commitment to maintain (ABC) funding in real terms does that stand?**Senator Alston (on behalf of incoming Prime Minister John Howard): Absolutely. 6 September 2013. Incoming Prime Minister Tony Abbott: .. and no cuts to the ABC and SBS.

These reassuring public commitments were soon exposed as lies.

January 21, 2018

MICHAEL McKINLEY. Defence policies and alliances have become a new religion. PART 1 of 5

Government pronouncements in Australia, especially in the fields of Strategy and National Security, it is claimed, are determined by scientific rationality and definitely not configured according to religious belief. This is both fraudulent and a dangerous conceit: religion, has not been banished; indeed, the present reeks of ecclesiastical history and religion (more specifically, its deformation, religiosity). Accordingly, the proposition is that a more politically accurate understanding of Australias mindset is to be afforded by an interrogation of five aspects: the present state of world politics in history; the acutely deranged state of the present; the emergence of the Papal Presidency in the US; the religious state of the Australia-US Alliance; and White Papers and their like as religious documents.

August 20, 2019

TONY WRIGHT. Spy versus spy: in Canberra, cover is where you find it. (SMH 16.8.2019)

_I have wondered occasionally whether ASIO has a few grainy pictures of me sauntering to the front door of the forbidding embassy of the USSR in Canberra.

June 13, 2018

GARETH HUTCHENS. Australia should not join US in South China Sea operations, says retired defence chief (The Guardian 21/2/2017)

_Activities in the South China Sea continue to be in the news. Published below, are comments made in February last year by Sir Angus Houston, who was formerly Australia’s defence chief. John Menadue.

April 8, 2016

John Menadue. Bad apples, corporate culture and leadership.

The recent scandals at CBA,ANZ and now Wespac have focused us on business culture. But the CEOs keep telling us that there is no business culture problem but only a few bad apples. If only that were true. The issues are more systemic than they would suggest and the problem covers a wide range of companies and not just the banks massive tax avoidance by large multinational and private companies, the Seven/Eleven franchise, labor hire companies, child care and vocational education and training.

November 29, 2018

JOHN TONS. Testing times for South Australian schools.

Coming soon to your local school is news about South Australias ranking on the McKinsey Universal Scale. Most likely you will have never heard about the McKinsey Universal Scale, or McKinsey for that matter. McKinsey is yet another international company that is seeking to cash in on the international preoccupation with constructing league tables about education performance.

July 14, 2019

JOHN McCARTHY. The Darroch Affair.

The comments from Sir Kim Darroch, British Ambassador to Washington, in a wad of his classified messages to London are a juicy read. President Trump “radiates insecurity” while his administration is “uniquely dysfunctional” and riven by “knife fights”. Trump could very well “crash and burn”. Leaked to the Mail on Sunday, they have cost him his job.

July 31, 2018

MARK BEESON. Politics and climate change: Academias missing contribution

Academics who specialise political science are frequently not taking the implications of their discipline seriously when it comes to climate change.

August 8, 2019

NOEL TURNBULL. It's not only the Russians

As well as having to keep an eye out for Russian electoral interference we now need to watch out for the fake news promulgated by knights of the realm and the employee whistle blowers who provide the evidence of what their knightly employers, such as Sir Lynton Crosby and his company CTF Partners, do.

July 1, 2019

ALLAN PATIENCE It's time for a democratic socialist agenda for Australia

Australians have suffered greatly because of the free-market fundamentalism that has been running riot across the political landscape for nearly half a century. Neoliberalism has at last run its destructive course. Its time for a new era of public policy reconstruction for which a democratic socialist agenda has much to offer.

December 3, 2019

Pearls and Irritations China Series.

Spying. Lobbying. Corruption. Debt trap diplomacy. It seems Australias relations with the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) have sunk to an all-time low. It is therefore all the more important to understand that country. Criticisms of its present government and of the Chinese Communist Party are often justified but not when they are based on flimsy evidence, supposition and innuendo. This is no basis for a serious relationship, which Australia certainly needs.

September 30, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison does not get it.

His thought bubble about inaugurating a public holiday well, perhaps not a holiday, but something or other to celebrate indigenous Australia is about to be shoveled into the back drawer. Thats the one where the former Treasurer keeps his cast offs the GST increase, the limitations on negative gearing, and of course the great corporate tax cut.

August 27, 2019

CHRIS LOWNEY. How Pope Francis Can Revitalize a Church in Crisis

_Pope Franciss foremost priority should be top-to-bottom culture change in the Catholic Church, specifically: fostering a spirit of urgency, bringing new talent to all decision-making tables, and creating openness to radically new ideas._Without this thoroughgoing cultural transformation, a Church now enduring its worst crisis in five centuries will continue to deteriorate.

June 25, 2019

ANDREW FARRAN. War games - more than burnt fingers

Are policy makers driving policy or is it the countrys spooks and their ideological soulmates in the so-called security establishment whose views are amplified in the conservative media? (Tony Walker, The Age)

August 26, 2019

Hail & Farewell

To Australian Catholics the date 3 December is a holiday. In the Calendar of Saints this date marks the feast of Australia’s ‘patron saint’, sixteenth century Spanish Jesuit and companion of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, colloquially Jesuits, Francis Xavier.

September 5, 2018

PETER WOODRUFF. Open letter to Pope Francis on The Pope as a Game Changer

Dear Pope Francis,

Greetings from Australia. I am a priest who worked for many years in parishes in poor barrios of Lima, Peru. I am now retired in Melbourne, Australia.

October 3, 2018

DAVID BOOTH, JOHN TURNBULL. The backflip over Sydneys marine park is a defiance of science.

The New South Wales governments decision to back away from establishing no-fishing zones in waters around Sydney leaves significant question marks over the plan, which is open for public consultation until September 27.

May 2, 2017

Making Housing Affordable Series. MICHAEL PERUSCO. Revitalising social and affordable housing

The discussion and commentary about housing affordability in Australia has reached a crescendo in recent months. But an important piece of the housing puzzle cannot be overlooked in the debate: the role of social housing.

It is time for governments across the country to recognise that a well-functioning social housing sector is critical to balancing the housing markets equilibrium. It cannot be pushed aside for more populist political topics.

January 25, 2017

John Menadue. Australia Day - the Queen and the Asian Century

This is a repost from 26/1/2013

A major barrier to our future in the region is our dependence on foreign institutions and powers. First it was the British and now the Americans. We cling to others.

February 22, 2018

PAUL FRIJTERS. Our Countries Need Us

Humanity is at a high point. What our ancestors dreamed of is slowly becoming a reality: a world without hunger in which the vast majority of mankind live peaceful and long lives. We are not there yet, but in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and even in Africa (our cradle), mankind is emerging from dark times. People live longer, healthier, happier, and more educated lives. Paid for and organised by countries, helped by international flows of people and information.

And yet, our countries are under threat from a disconnect between the elites and the population of individual countries.

May 26, 2019

CAVAN HOGUE. Business as Usual in the World.

Australia’s vote in the UN on the Diego Garcia issue suggests there will be no change in our Government’s approach to foreign policy.

April 10, 2018

GIOVANNI DI LIETO. Move over Canada and EU, Australia is best placed to benefit in the US-China trade tug-of-war

Australian firms are in a sweet spot between the bickering United States and China, where they can sell more and buy more cheaply because of weaker competition in both markets. Essentially, the mutual tariffs are a double blessing for Australia.

August 27, 2019

Time to revisit Agent Orange

The recently deceased former Nationals Leader Tim Fischer was widely respected for his sincerity and integrity, two qualities in short supply in parliament today. He always behaved with dignity and self-control. While some of that self-discipline might be attributable to his time in the military, his service in Vietnam could have shortened his life.

June 9, 2019

Shadows of Uniformity

The Shadow Cabinet mirrors the Government in more ways than intended, uninspiring in its uniformity, offering limited hope for new beginnings or imagination.

December 27, 2018

STUART REES. Free speech about Israel/Palestine at an American and Australian university.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise across Europe and the United States. So too are accusations of anti-Semitism as a means of stifling any criticism of Israeli policies towards Palestinians.As with any racially motivated prejudice, anti-Semitism is completely unjustifiable. So too are the attempts by governments and by the managers of major institutions to not tolerate strong criticism of Israeli government policies towards Palestinians.

October 6, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison joins the dark side.

The conservative line about Donald Trump used to be that really, he himself was not all that important. What mattered was the unbreakable link between Australia and the United States, our great and powerful ally.

December 31, 2017

HELEN CLARK. The health of future generations is at risk.

The health of future generations is being mortgaged as a result of environmental degradation that threatens to reverse the health gains achieved over the past century, according to Dr Helen Clark, a global health advocate.

Clark, formerly Administrator of the UN Development Programme and Prime Minister of New Zealand, told the recent launch of the University of Sydneys new Planetary Health Platform that political will and leadership from civil society and the private sector are needed to tackle the major threats to planetary health as well as collaborations across silos.

Her speech is published in full below with permission, and is also available at her website.

July 3, 2019

NOEL TURNBULL. The curious incident of the dog that didn't bark

There is nothing more beloved of apocalyptic thinkers, intelligence agencies, conservative politicians and general scare-mongers than the threat of some disaster. It is even better when the threat is insidious, little understood and able to be transformed into policies which actually have other purposes.

January 4, 2016

Jenny Hocking. The Dismissal Forty Years Later: When Everything Old is New Again

Repost from 10/12/2015

The 40th anniversary last month of the dismissal of the Whitlam government by the Governor General Sir John Kerr met with the predictable flurry of breathlessly delivered revelations and history-making hyperbole. Among the excitable claims of dramatic new never before released material we were offered the charred remains of a burnt Liberal party memo showing surprise! dissension in the ranks [http://www.afr.com/news/politics/afr10featuresgraphic–20151110-gkvd2c ]; a found, lost, and found again hand-written note by Malcolm Fraser written during his conversation with the Governor-General on the morning of 11 November 1975 - first revealed in 1986 and reproduced in 2005 and 2010 before its latest rediscovery; and even a statutory declaration from Fraser swearing that, this time, he really was telling the truth about their contested conversation.http://www.theage.com.au/comment/its-time-to-dismiss-knockout-punch-politics-20151105-gkrvzz.html

June 12, 2019

JANE McADAM An evidence based refugee policy agenda

Summary

A successful refugee policy not only manages national borders but also protects people who need safety, and demonstrates leadership in meeting the global challenge of displacement. Thats why the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law has set out an independent, nonpartisan, evidence-based refugee policy agenda, challenging policymakers and the public to reimagine Australias current approach so that both refugees and the nation can prosper amid todays real challenges.

May 17, 2018

MICHAEL McKINLEY. Australia, China and three fragments of militarisation in context.

The term militarisation is the new portmanteau expression for describing Chinas initiatives in the South China Sea; it is at once accusatory and exculpatory: China is the instigator, the Western powers and those Western-aligned (defensively-minded, and innocent) are exonerated from any guilt their reactions might attract. The term, however, is misused in the current context, dangerous, and a form of bubble-gum for a distracted strategic imagination.

October 29, 2017

ALLAN PATIENCE. Is Australia a morally backward society?

Earlier this year a national conference of First Nation Australians at Uluru recommended that a Council representing all Indigenous Australians be enshrined in the Constitution. The purpose of the Council would be to advise governments on policies affecting Indigenous Australians. It would not have legislative powers; it would be a strictly consultative body, advising governments and making recommendations to improve the living conditions of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The decision of the Turnbull government to reject this extremely important recommendation is evidence that Australia is a morally backward society.

December 12, 2017

ANDREW GREENE. Spies need scrutiny, new NXT senator warns.

Federal Parliament lacks the power to properly monitor Australia’s “growing” intelligence community and the billions spent on their clandestine activities, the country’s newest senator has warned.

November 21, 2017

GILES PARKINSON. LNP, One Nation would force Queensland energy prices up; Greens, ALP down

A new analysis of the energy policies presented by the major and smaller parties contesting the Queensland state election shows that the Greens would deliver the biggest electricity savings, Labor would also push prices down, while One Nation and the LNP policies would force prices to rise.

November 13, 2017

ROSS GITTINS. Economists are giving up on smaller government.

You may not have noticed, but the Productivity Commission’s search for “a new policy model” for reform, in reaction to the breakdown of the politicians’ “neoliberal consensus”, offers better prospects for finally getting the budget under control. T__hat’s because, although the commission doesn’t say so, its reformed approach to reformrepresents a retreat from a central tenet of neoliberal doctrine for the past 30 years: the goal of Smaller Government.

August 28, 2019

Dysfunction in Home Affairs officially confirmed

The dysfunction in the Home Affairs Department that has been long reported on (see here, here, and here) has now been officially confirmed in a survey conducted by the Australian Public Service Commission.

December 17, 2017

MARK BEESON: Agents of influence

A form of groupthink about relations with China and the United States has become pervasive in Canberra. Ironically, this situation is encouraged by the influence of the US, despite the current hysteria surrounding relations with the PRC.

April 8, 2018

MIKE WALLER. The real problem with our banks- its leverage, stupid

When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results. Warren Buffett

There is no evidence that the growth in the scale and complexity of the financial system in the rich developed world over the last twenty to thirty years has driven increased growth or stability, and it is possible for financial activity to extract rents from the real economy rather than to deliver economic value. We need to challenge radically some of the assumptions of the last thirty years and we need to be willing to consider radical policy responses. (Adair Turner, UK Financial Services Authority 2010).

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal