January 19, 2015

Michael Keating. The Financial System Inquiry. Part 2: Superannuation and Retirement Incomes

I am reposting Part 2 of this important series which you may have missed during the holiday period. John Menadue.

Australias retirement income system is based on three pillars:

A means-tested age pension funded from general revenue which alleviates poverty by guaranteeing a base level of income support for retirees
Compulsory saving through the superannuation guarantee which was introduced in the early 1990s
Additional voluntary superannuation saving.

This system has received considerable support from overseas authorities, such as the OECD and the World Bank, as providing a model for other countries to follow. Compared to most European and North American countries Australias system has a much lower level of unfunded promises and thus limits the risks to future tax payers. Australias retirement incomes system is also more flexible and provides better assistance for those on very low incomes and/or who have had broken work histories.

September 25, 2019

KIM WINGEREI. The Curious Case of a Telco Merger Opposed

On one side of the courtroom: TPG, a consumer-oriented telco grown large on acquisitions and minimalist customer service, run by a reclusive billionaire. Next to them is Vodafone, a mobile carrier with a global brand, the perennial number three in the Australian market, no stranger to customer service issues, and yet to make a profit after more than a decade of trying. Across the floor: the ACCC, telling them they cannot merge.

September 26, 2018

MARIE COLEMAN. Fixing the Women problems: Retirement Incomes, Parental Leave, and the Gender Pay Gap.

With a statement imminent from Minister for Women Kelly ODwyer, Labor has announced modest changes to improve Paid Parental Leave ( $400 million over the out years) and proposed new measures to diminish the gender pay gap. Both measures should contribute to the position of older women in retirement. The P.M. says he doesnt oppose the gender pay gap measures while being concerned that revealing ones wage to a co-worker could provoke bad feelings (!)

December 31, 2017

JOHN CARMODY. Who is Joan Sullivan?

Does the Fairfax slogan, Independent. Always, really mean independent of truth, reliability and knowledge? Or should my humble response to the extraordinary headline and story in the Sun-Herald of 31 December have been an admission that, even after an operatic obsession of more than 50 years, there might have been a great Australian singer whom Id never heard of: New Joan Sullivan theatre to hit high note. Worse still, the story that followed then wrongly mentioned that legendary name twice. Talk about rubbing salt into wounds (not to mention the clich of the headline, even if it were correct).

November 13, 2018

NCR EDITORIAL STAFF-Open letter to the US Catholic bishops: It's over (National Catholic Reporter).

Dear brothers in Christ, shepherds, fellow pilgrims,

We address you as you approach this year’s national meeting in Baltimore because we know there is nowhere left to hide.

It’s over.

August 15, 2019

ALEXANDER HOLDEN and HEIKO SPALLEK. Private Health Insurance Under the Lens: Dental Providers and Patients Should Contribute to the Discussion.

While Stephen Ducketts and Kristina Nemets recently released Grattan Institute report The history and purposes of private health insurance predominantly deals with the medical part of private health insurance (PHI), many questions that are raised are of vital interest to all dental professionals and their patients. In an attempt to stimulate a public debate, we are juxtaposing the debate about Australian PHI and two recent papers published in The Lancet that feature within a series on oral health.

August 15, 2019

PETER DALY. Tackle clericalism first when attempting priesthood reform | National Catholic Reporter

In his 2018 “Letter to the People of God,” Pope Francis condemned the sins of sexual abuse and the abuse of power in the church. He linked those sins to clericalism. “To say no to abuse is to say an emphatic no to all forms of clericalism.”

July 31, 2018

GEOFF RABY. An Australian-ASEAN Hedging Strategy on China

Australias diplomacy in recent years can at best be described as underwhelming, if not at times inimical to Australias national interests. In March, however, the presence of ASEAN Heads of Government in Australia, meeting at Prime Minister Turnbulls initiative, was an event of major significance. It is to be hoped that it will mark a return by Australia to its previous, activist, middle-power role in the Asia-Pacific Region.

June 28, 2018

SUSAN RYAN. Class warfare or fighting for fairness

Every time Labor in Opposition proposes to remove or reduce a publicly funded benefit from a high earning individual, or a medium to large company, anguished cries of class war ring out

Is it class warfare to reduce investor tax concessions at a time when in NSW alone over five years homelessness has increased by 48%?

August 28, 2019

GEORGE MICKHAIL. There is no freedom in a society, if there is no public order!

The French Polices brutal force against the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protesters since November 2018 did not attract the same international media outrage as that directed at the Hong Kong SAR police force despite being a lot less violent than the mainstream media would make us believe.

December 17, 2017

CAVAN HOGUE. More blessed to give than to receive?

Provoking China to score cheap political points domestically does not advance Australian interests. While most Australians would prefer the US domestic political model to the Chinese, we are not going to change the Chinese system and so must learn to live with it. Complaints about Chinese attempts to influence Australian attitudes are naive. All countries, including Australia, try to influence the policies of others and China is no different. Our American ally has a long history of influencing other countries clandestinely and of overthrowing democratic governments that didn’t suit its interests. Nobody is in a position to cast the first stone. The government’s unnecessary public attacks on China achieve nothing and pose the risk of threats to Australian interests from China. If you lead with your chin you are asking for trouble.

February 10, 2019

JOHN MENADUE. Asylum seekers are pouring into Australia in record numbers by air, but the media and politicians are not interested in the facts.

Our discussion on asylum seekers is ill-informed .It is a disgrace. Our politicians and our media have failed us. This was made obvious to me yesterday on Insiders. Do Christopher Pyne and Phillip Corey think we are fools. They were both pushing the cruel partisan Coalition line on refugees and boats. Both see refugees not as people but as political opportunities to be exploited.

With boat arrivals stopped, people smugglers have turned to the air to bring asylum seekers to Australia in record numbers. .Peter Dutton and the media have turned a blind eye to this breakdown in our border protection.

October 3, 2018

China and the New World Order. ChinaUSA Part 2

Westerners may believe that the growing integration and interdependence of China with the regional and international economy makes armed conflict too costly to contemplate and that the Pacific military balance is so heavily in US favour that China would not be foolish enough to challenge Washington. But what if Beijing believes that the costs to Washington would be so high that the US would back down? Along many such misperceptions and miscalculations do the bloody rivers of human history flow into the ocean of oblivion for once-great powers.

December 12, 2017

JIM COOMBS. Get a better court, eh, what?

The electors rightly regard the citizenship saga as a pile of nonsense. It did not need to be so, but the High Court was not up to its job. Worse, latter day xenophobia is being fed by the security industry to interfere with our freedoms and our capacity to deal with other nations (except the US).

April 7, 2019

LESLEY RUSSELL: The Budget as an Election Campaign Document

This years Government budget documents and the Oppositions response are budgetary in name only they should be seen as election campaign commitments. As such, they provide a telling story about the parties focus on health and healthcare and the underlying political ideologies.

September 2, 2018

BEHROUZ BOOCHANI. Australia needs a moral revolution (the Guardian 31.08.18)

Five years ago, on a boiling hot day, Australian immigration minister Scott Morrison entered Manus Prison. A number of refugees who represented various groups were invited to meet with him. In that meeting, the refugee representatives found themselves being threatened Morrison pointed his finger at them and yelled: You have no chance of coming to Australia and you must return to your countries. I depict this exact scene and its aftermath in my book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison.

September 7, 2017

JOHN MENADUE. Abbott and Turnbull are the real culprits on the energy policy mess. (repost)

This is a repost of an article that was originally posted on 14 June 2017. I have reposted this in light of current controversy on extending the life of coal fired generators.

In his journal, The Constant Investor, Alan Kohler sheeted blame very directly to the Coalition and Malcolm Turnbull. He said

_Those crises have now arrived in the form of blackouts, and they are not caused by too much renewable energy its due to a lack of investment, in turn due to a lack of policy certainty and clarity.__This is entirely the Liberal Partys fault not just Malcolm Turnbulls, although he is a rather pathetic figure now. If he didnt go along with the hoax, hed be sacked and another PM would.__By taking the low road in 2009 instead of the high road, and deciding to mislead Australians about the true cost of energy, the Liberal Party condemned the country to a decade of confusion and stasis on energy policy.__That reached a nadir of absurdity last week with the Treasurers coal stunt._The rest of Australias leaders, in particular the CEOs of our largest companies, should declare now that enough is enough, and pull these idiots into line.

July 27, 2018

JOHN WARHURST. Let's talk about the Catholic bishops.

While knowledge of individual bishops is helpful, what is more useful is a sense of how they operate and where they stand collectively.

September 30, 2018

PAUL COLLINS. Dont say I didnt tell you!

I know its obnoxious to say I told you so, but Im going to nevertheless. Back in June I told Pearls and Irritations readers that the greatest danger to the ABC comes from within, from the board and the corporations management. Last weeks events have proved me right. The current board represents a very narrow slice of Australian society, mainly conservative business-types and most were directly appointed by IPA member and communications minister Mitch Fifield. Now that theyve revealed themselves as compromised, the question is: where do we go from here?

June 13, 2018

THE LOCAL. Italy demands apology for France's 'hypocritical' criticism on migrants.

Italy on Wednesday summoned the French ambassador and postponed planned finance talks, in an escalating diplomatic spat with France over the handling of a migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.

June 9, 2019

HAJO DUKEN. High time for Australia to understand and embrace the EU

_It has been said that in the world order of the 21st century, countries will end up as a colony of either the US or China or be a member of the EU. This may sound overly simplistic but one thing appears to be clear: whilst the US and China are headed for a new cold war, the Brexit saga and the recent European elections have strengthened the EU. For Australia, who is dangerously exposed not only by the US/China conflict but also by losing th_e UK as its gateway to Europe, it would be inexcusable to not give top priority to the ongoing free trade negotiations with the EU and use the opportunity to seek the closest possible ties with it. However, this requires a much better understanding of the EU.

June 4, 2019

KATE FINLAYSON and TIM BUCKLEY. Queensland government about to make poor economic decision on Adani mine.

Following the Labor partys defeat in Mays general election, the Queensland Labor government seems keen to approve the development of the Adani thermal coal mine as quickly as possible. However, a report released this week by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) exposes the Queensland governments poor economic analysis and failure to recognise the accelerating global trend from coal to renewables in energy generation, and the difference between thermal and coking coal.

July 26, 2018

IAN BURUMA. American fascism: Reading the signs of the times (Asian Times, 13.07.18)

Comparing todays demagogues with Adolf Hitler is almost always unwise. Such alarmism tends to trivialize the actual horrors of the Nazi regime and distracts attention from our own political problems. But if alarmism is counterproductive, the question remains: At what point are democracies truly in danger? What was unimaginable only a few years ago a US president insulting democratic allies and praising dictators, or calling the free press enemies of the people, or locking up refugees and taking away their children has become almost normal now. When will it be too late to sound the alarm?

May 7, 2019

MICHAEL KELLY SJ. The real culture war just down the road

Continuing the brutal ideological contest born of fear of difference and at times invincible ignorance only serves to maintain the power of the dominant

April 4, 2018

FRANK BRENNAN. Lets be less shrill about Church-State relations

I had the good pleasure of celebrating Easter masses out in the country Adaminaby and Nimmitabel in the Snowy country. At Adaminaby we had a full church and a very happy baptism. At Nimmitabel, the numbers were very modest but we delighted in the peace and tranquility of the Easter full moon. Upon returning to the city I was greeted by the Murdoch headline: ‘Christianity under attack: Archbishop Anthony Fisher’.

January 1, 2021

EXCLUSIVE - National Archives to release hundreds of letters between the Queen and Governors-General.

The National Archives of Australia is set to release decades of correspondence between the Queen and Governors-General, from Sir Richard Casey in 1965 to Bill Hayden in 1996. The decision follows the High Courts ruling in my landmark Palace letters case against the Archives which, in May 2020, overturned the Queens embargo over her correspondence with Governor-General Sir John Kerr, much of it relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

May 12, 2019

MICHAEL McKINLEY. Returning to the time of Able Archer and Australias need to remember 1983

Nearly thirty-six years ago NATO carried out its annual Able Archer command post exercise designed to simulate an escalation in conflict with the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations which culminated in a coordinated nuclear attack against the Soviet homeland.

November 29, 2018

FINTAN O'TOOLE. Saboteur in Chief (The New York Review of Books).

Writing about her friend the famously unpleasant Evelyn Waugh, Frances Donaldson reflected that.

September 16, 2018

JAMES FERNYHOUGH. Ten years on, theres just one positive legacy of the Global Financial Crisis.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if hed only had good intentions; he had money as well.

January 17, 2019

JOHN KERIN. Free Trade (sic), Some Fundamentals (Part 1).

Australian trade policy has dramatically changed over the last fifty years. What we now face is nothing like the situation we have been used to. The general public has little idea of the complexity and importance of trade negotiations, the reality of what we now face and the current implications of the US/China imbroglio and Brexit. None the less, some trade policy fundamentals for Australia persist, having been the main historical features of our endeavours. Agricultural trade policy has been central in the past, where we have still not advanced much, which is still relevant, but is no longer the main game.

March 21, 2016

Jonathan Karnon. No-one should get dud hospital care.

In 2013-14, Australian governments spent A$105 billion on health; A$44 billion of that was on public hospitals.

The Commonwealth government is increasingly concerned with the size of the health budget and has acted to reduce the inappropriate use of Medicare benefits. But the Commonwealth government has less influence on public hospitals because the state and territory governments control their expenditure.

State governments are facing tighter budgets as demand for heath care increases due to an ageing population, greater rates of chronic disease and more service use generally.

April 29, 2018

GARRY EVERETT. Consultation as seduction.

The Catholic Church in Australia is about to engage in a major consultation of its members. This is the first such consultation in almost 70 years. Why now? There could be any of a number of reasons. Nationally, Mass attendance has dropped from over 50% in the 1950s to about 10% today. Many parishes are struggling financially. The Royal Commission into institutional responses to the sexual abuse of minors in the Australian Catholic Church, delivered a caustic report revealing that the very culture of the Church is now toxic.

October 5, 2017

WE ARE ALSO READING AND LISTENING TO ...

Pearls and Irritations provides the following links for weekend reading and listening:

May 12, 2019

ROGER SCOTT. Queenslanders being different again?

David Solomon and others have correctly identified the coming election as a simple moral choice about the role of government. Queensland voters face the same challenge, but the perspective varies as widely as the character of the state. My wife and I are working in the trenches in the leafy electorate of Ryan. This ought to be a lost cause but isnt..

September 2, 2018

MICHAEL PASCOE. Billions wasted on drought aid thats not helping those who need it most.

Wealthy people are stuffing their kitchen cupboards with donated goods and their sheds with free hay while animal welfare is being ignored and low-paid rural workers go without favours.

March 8, 2018

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. American Malaise and Malice.

_The key to the Trump presidency is its malice. Trump daily mocks Lincolns noble intent: with malice toward none.__There is now not a country or region in the world untouched by Trumpite malice, defined as the irrational desire to do harm or mischief, fuelled by a sense of imaginary grievances._Australia cannot expect to be exempt.

November 13, 2017

JULIAN CRIBB. Can we avert ecocide?

As humans progressively kill off the living creatures which inhabit the planet, do we risk at the same time killing off ourselves?

September 30, 2018

MARGARET REYNOLDS. ABC Friends calls for Australians to rally to defend the independence of our ABC

The firestorm that hit the ABC this week is an opportunity for Australians to demand that all political parties commit to absolute independent governance of the ABC.

October 15, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison channels Joh Bjelke-Petersen

We are now more than six weeks into the ScoMo regime, but most of us and that includes some of our most recent Prime Ministers close colleagues as well as a tentative opposition are still trying to figure out just who the man really is trying to be.

June 11, 2019

KIERAN TAPSELL: Has the Pontifical Secret Been Secretly Buried?

After the criticisms of the pontifical secret at the February summit conference in Rome on child sexual abuse, it was widely expected that it would be abolished. It never happened, but recent announcements by two bishops’ conferences suggest that it may have been quietly buried behind closed doors.

October 26, 2018

OLIVER YATES. Scott Morrison needs to realise Liberals are prepared to lose the election over climate change.

After Wentworth the government should know how passionate Liberal party members are about the environment.

This article was published by The Guardian on the 23rd of October 2018.

September 16, 2018

TAMSIN SHAW. Edward Snowden Reconsidered (New York Review of Books Daily 13.09.18)

This summer, the fifth anniversary of Edward Snowdens revelations about NSA surveillance passed quietly, adrift on a tide of news that now daily sweeps the ground from under our feet. It has been a long five years, and not a period marked by increased understanding, transparency, or control of our personal data. In these years, weve learned much more about how Big Tech was not only sharing data with the NSA but collecting vast troves of information about us for its own purposes. And weve started to see the strategic ends to which Big Data can be put. In that sense, were only beginning to comprehend the full significance of Snowdens disclosures.

April 17, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. The Coalition and media myth about stopping the boats.

With the appointment of Angus Campbell as the new Chief of the General Staff we have witnessed again the repetition of the nonsense that the Coalition and Operation Sovereign Borders stopped the boats. As if the media farce over a Chinese military base in Vanuatu was not enough the media has climbed aboard again to continue the myth about the stopping of the boats. Perhaps being careless in the first place the media finds it embarrassing to admit error.

September 3, 2019

STEPHANIE DOWRICK. Powerful men vs. Powerless Children: A worse than unequal "battle"

As I write this, from the safety of my inner-city home, two little Australian-born girls are held on Christmas Island with their Sri Lankan-born parents, desperately awaiting some flicker of insight, common sense, common decency, act of mercy thats most unlikely to come.

October 22, 2017

JOHN DWYER. The folly of looking at private health insurance as a single issue rather than a policy failure .Part 1 of 2

So private health insurance is in the DNA of the Coalition government, we hear from Minister Hunt. That may well be the case but there is no evidence to suggest that the delivery of equitable, quality health care to all Australians is so programmed. Indeed many have commented that the recent focus on private health insurance and the need for younger Australians to embrace a very poor deal is couched in rhetoric which suggests that private hospital care is better than public hospital care and, in any case, the public hospital system may not be there for you when you need it.

April 4, 2018

TIM WOODRUFF Who Cares About My Toothless Patients?

The inequities in the status of oral health in Australia are appalling because of a lack of political will and a resistance to recognising that all Australians deserve to receive adequate dental care. This resistance is rooted in the elitism of those in power, the belief that if one cant earn an adequate income, then second rate access to dental care is ones lot.

May 24, 2018

RICHARD BUTLER. US Ultimatum to Iran: A Classic or a Fake?

Secretary of State Pompeos speech to roll out the US Plan B on Irans nuclear programme was an ultimatum and, a plan for regime change in Iran. The ultimatum will be rejected but without the classic follow up; in this case, an attack on Iran. It will be proven to be an undeliverable fake.

June 26, 2019

Beyond climate tipping points: greenhouse gas levels exceed the stability limit of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets

The pace of global warming has been grossly underestimated. As the world keeps increasing its carbon emissions, rising in 2018 to a record 33.1 billion ton CO2 per year, the atmospheric greenhouse gas level has now exceeded 560 ppm (parts per million) CO2-equivalent, namely when methane and nitric oxide are included. This level surpasses the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The term climate change is thus no longer appropriate, since what is happening in the atmosphere-ocean system, accelerating over the last 70 years or so, is an abrupt calamity on a geological dimension threatening nature and civilization. Ignoring what the science says, the powers-that-be are presiding over the sixth mass extinction of species, including humanity.

October 1, 2017

JON STANFORD. Australias Future Submarine - Part 1: The problems

At the National Press Club in Canberra on 27 September 2017, Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies at the ANU, launched an independent report by Insight Economics on Australias future submarine (FSM). The report, Australias Future Submarine: Getting This Key Capability Right, was commissioned by Gary Johnston, a Sydney businessman and owner of the website, submarinesforaustralia.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal