September 12, 2018

Open letter to Marise Payne: Will Australia let James Ricketson unjustly spend 6 years in Cambodian prison?

Dear Foreign Minister,

Human Rights Watch writes to urge you to press the Cambodian Government to quash the conviction and immediately release imprisoned Australian journalist and filmmaker James Ricketson.

January 18, 2016

John Tulloh. In praise of those who bring you the evening news.

Updated version of what appeared in Australian Cinematographer.

In the world of television news, if there is one group which can rightfully claim a grievance for lack of recognition, it is the cameramen* who bring you what it is all about: the pictures, the vision, the actuality and the reason you watch news bulletins. They are the special forces of the news industry. Unlike the reporters and producers, they have to be at the front line. Otherwise, those news reports count for little. Yet their contribution is so often overlooked. It is disappointing in an industry which likes to trumpet its successes. And now they face extinction with the gradual switch to the squirt-and-run style of video journalists (VJs).

September 24, 2018

GEOFF MILLER. The Moon-Kim Summit---what did it do, what did it amount to?

The Moon-Kim Summit in North Korea made some modest but significant achievements. The two leaders seemed surprisingly at ease with each other. How the meeting is assessed depends very much on the mind-set of the assessor, and what it achieves will depend very much on what the principals really want.

September 14, 2018

Have Kids Stopped Trying on PISA and NAPLAN?

A much-ignored aspect of school results in Australia over the past decade or more is the sharp contrast between declining or stagnating scores on international and national tests for Years 9 and 10 and solid improvements in Year 12 results. How is it that trends in school outcomes only two or three Year levels apart are so different?

September 18, 2019

ERIC HODGENS. Where Do We Find the Authentic Catholic Voice?

Cardinal Pell got his voice heard from prison. Furthermore, surrogate Pell voices are heard from bishops he has promoted in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart. But, on three current issues polls show that most Catholics disagree with them. So, which voice is authentically Catholic?

May 2, 2019

Behrouz Boochani, No Friend but the Mountain: Writing from Manus Prison

In the foreword to this harrowing narrative about asylum seekers incarcerated on Manus Island, Australian author Richard Flannagan writes: Reading this book is difficult for any Australian. We pride ourselves on decency, kindness, generosity, and a fair go. None of these qualities are evident in Boochanis account of hunger, squalor, beatings, suicide and murder. Flanagan has put his finger on an ugly irony in Australias national self-imagining. Many Australians would be amazed that they might not be viewed as decent, kind, and generous folk with an acute sense of social justice. Arent they a people intuitively practising the virtues of mateship and egalitarianism? Dont they thumb their noses at pretentious authority? Arent they a great sporting nation? Arent they universally acclaimed as the most successful multicultural country in the world? Arent they famous for their plain-speaking, robustly democratic life-style they of the lucky country, the land of barbeques, beaches and long weekends? Whats not to love about them?

November 5, 2018

Morrison fakes authenticity

The French playwright Jean Giradoux once said something to this effect: If you can fake sincerity, youve got it made.

October 28, 2018

JAMES LAURENCESON. American Interest

Australia is a US ally, and Washington is inevitably interested in understanding Canberras approach to managing its relationship with Beijing. It can also be expected that the US will seek to influence the approach that Australia adopts in view of its own national interests. There is nothing inherently untoward about this. But with the US switching to an adversarial stance on China, Australia will need to have its eyes wide open about US attempts at influence.

August 17, 2018

JAMES ONEILL. Caspian Sea Agreement Symptomatic of Wider Geopolitical Changes.

On 12 August 2018, the five littoral states to the Caspian Sea (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan) signed a historic agreement governing the use of the Caspian Sea.

October 30, 2019

IAN McAULEY. Reclaiming the ideas of economics: Globalisation

Globalisation is too broad a term to have any useful meaning.

May 29, 2019

MILES LITTLE. Democracy?

‘We have two Australias’: Election results show a growing divide within the nation. So read a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, May 25th, to an article by Matt Wade.

May 21, 2018

JOHN AUSTEN. Newcastle port restriction action not words please!

Instead of handwringing politicians should act to reverse the outrageous restriction on Newcastle port.

June 27, 2018

PATTY FAWKNER. Silence is golden and it also kills.

Will we be loyal to the silence or will we interrupt the silence that has left many Catholics feeling disenfranchised within their own Church.

November 7, 2017

ROBERT MANNE. A Symbol of Inhumanity: Australia's Uniquely Harsh Asylum Seeker Policy - How Did It Come to This?

Robert Manne is Emeritus Professor and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University. An earlier version of this analysis was published a year ago, but Professor Manne has written a new postscript in light of some disturbing recent events on Manus Island.

If you had been told thirty years ago that Australia would create the least asylum seeker friendly institutional arrangements in the world, you would not have been believed.

In 1992 we introduced a system of indefinite mandatory detention for asylum seekers who arrive by boat.

October 2, 2018

STEPHEN LONG. Tesla battery proves a leading source of dispatchable power, AEMO says .

Scott Morrison said it would be about as useful for the electricity system as the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour or the Big Prawn at Ballina in NSW. He has a habit with fake news.

August 22, 2018

MICHAEL WEST-Dee Why RSL: pokies, prodigious profits and personal tragedy.

Gary van Duinen took his own life after a thirteen-hour binge on the pokies two months ago. His body was found by a walking trail near Narrabeen lagoon. The tragic death of the 45-year old husband and father has cranked up the spotlight once again on Australias predatory poker machine industry and the shameful connivance of governments, pubs and clubs in sharing the billions in loot.

September 21, 2016

MICHAEL McKINLEY. The unmooring of our national defence from our national interest. Part 4 of 4.

Australia is currently courting offence rather than, as governments so often assert, defence - a transformation which might only charitably be attributed to absent mindedness if the alternative, stealth, is excluded. It is, moreover, a change wrought, in the first instance, as a consequence of the ways in which Australia thinks about its national defence, but also of both the logic and the inherent dangers arising from and within the Australia US alliance. While an extraordinary number of avenues of inquiry are possible, there are four which are pursued, the drift to offence itself, followed by, second, the emergence of the post-democratic military and security complex in the US; third, the strategic dimension to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and fourth, Australias developing relationship with NATO.

**Part 4.**Australia and NATO

December 27, 2017

MICK PALMER. Australias Illicit Drugs Policy - There Really is a better Way A REPOST

It happens time and time again. We are told breathlessly by the media with photos of bags of seized drugs flanked by Border Protection officials and police officers about how successful we are in containing the drug problem.. But is it ‘success’ when despite the new records in drug seizures the drug problem in the community gets worse and worse. Do Border Protection officials and police officers ask the key questions about whether existing policies are working?

. A former Police Commissioner did this earlier this year in Pearls and Irritations after another record drug haul

.For over half a century Australian Governments have relied heavily on law enforcement to curb the drug trade, but, despite increasingly sophisticated and efficient policing strategies and operations Australias illicit drugs problems have continued getting bigger and the marketplace ever more dangerous, and prosperous If we are to improve the outcomes we achieve we have to stop simply being tough on drugs and start being smart about drugs. There is a way, we have a responsibility to explore it.

July 4, 2019

KEVIN PEOPLES. Is the Male Clerical Church Irrelevant?

I first met the clerical God in 1964. I was 27. This was at Springwood, in the Blue Mountains. I met him while hiding away at St. Columbas seminary. He was not to my liking and we parted in just under three years. Unlike my God, this distant and patrichal God lived somewhere outside his created world.

March 14, 2018

ROSS GITTINS. Who is to blame for the housing crisis and how to fix it

_There aren’t many material aspirations Australians hold dearer than owning their own home - but dear is the word. There are few greater areas of policy failur_e.

September 24, 2018

KATE GRIFFITHS, CARMEL CHIVERS, DANIELLE WOOD. Influence in Australian politics needs an urgent overhaul heres how to do it (The Conversation, 23.09.18)

Public policy should be made for all Australians not just those with the resources or connections to lobby and influence politicians. And mostly it is. But sometimes bad policy is made or good policy is dropped because powerful groups have more say and sway than they should.

June 20, 2018

SOPHIE VORRATH. Coal to be kaput in Australia by 2050, as renewables, batteries take over

Australias coal-fired generation capacity could be little more than a twinkle in Tony Abbotts eye by as early as 2050, when it will have been all but snuffed out by cheap renewables and battery storage, and household energy investments.

August 18, 2019

Things haven't been this bad between Australia and China in 30 years (Crikey, 14 August 2019)

The Morrison governments increasing ties to the Trump administration is, by consequence, achieving quite the opposite of its previous goal of resetting Australias relationship with China.

May 8, 2018

JIM COOMBS. APRA gone mad?

What on earth were APRA thinking when they let off the CBA with a stern reprimand ? What were AMP thinking appointing David Murray to chair their Board? It looks like telling the fox that next time youll shoot him, and in the other case appointing the fox to guard the chicken coop.

January 4, 2020

BOB BOWKER.-Iran and the United States: Where to from here?

The assassination, at President Trumps instruction, of the emblematic Iranian military leader Qassem Sulaimani has almost certainly moved the Iran-US contest into a new phase.

November 12, 2018

JACK WATERFORD. Let's hope independents take lead on corruption. (Canberra Times 10.11.2018)

Perhaps the greatest service the House of Representatives’ six independent MPs could do for themselves and the nation over the dying days of this Parliament is to take charge of progress with a federal anti-corruption commission. Good for them indeed, all six have an excellent chance of being re-elected and good for the country. They probably won’t have a balance of power over the next government, and anything Labor cooperates in putting on the statute book over the next three months is likely to be stronger than what it would initiate in government.

June 19, 2019

ALLAN PATIENCE. America- Australia's Fool's Paradise

Deeply ingrained into Australias collective psyche is the nave conviction that the United States is the countrys most important, entirely reliable, and utterly benevolent ally. This obsequious sentimentalism was embarrassingly expressed in the words of former Prime Minister John Howard: The relationship we have with the United States is the most important we have with any single country. This is not only because of the strategic, economic, and diplomatic power of the United States. But of equal, if not more significance, are the values and aspirations we share.

May 28, 2019

STEPHEN ROACH. What comes next in the USChina trade war? (East Asia Forum)

The escalation of tit-for-tat tariffs between the United States and China is now in the danger zone. Surely, reason will ultimately prevail. At least that is the common refrain in the echo chamber, especially in light of the dark history of earlier trade wars.

July 2, 2018

MICHAEL SAINSBURY. Malaysia's 'new' 92-year-old leader is an old man in a hurry.(UCANEWS on 30 June 2018)

In multi-ethnic, religiously diverse Penang most people couldnt be happier, but the government has plenty of work to do.

September 5, 2019

MICHAEL LEAHY. The Catholic Weekly: seeking justice for Pell or waging a culture war?

As a former colleague in the seminary and priesthood, and friend, of Cardinal Pell, it gives me no pleasure to see him fall so dramatically from grace. Along with all Australians of good will, I want to see him get justice from our legal system.

March 21, 2018

ANNE HURLEY. Former Internet Australia directors support NSW Business Council call for a National Broadband Service Guarantee

Last year the NSW Business Chamber conducted a statewide survey of members. It has since called for changes it believes will help save business an average $9000 per year resulting from problems related to the NBN rollout. Four former directors of Internet Australia, the NFP peak body representing Internet users, have come out in support of the call for a National Broadband Service Guarantee.

November 6, 2017

JERRY ROBERTS. The Corruption of Representative Democracy

John Menadues lament in his Thursday post for the loss of trust in our public institutions was so comprehensive that it left me feeling devastated. His re- posting was inspired by Senator Jacquie Lambies criticism of lobbyists and it is to the Senate that we must look for assistance.

June 30, 2019

NOEL TURNBULL. A slight yearning for the 'mother country'

UK Tory Government climate policy is enough to create a slight yearning for the days when Australian conservatives looked to the so-called Mother Country for guidance.

August 3, 2020

We Need a Freestanding Trade Department

Our difficult relationship with China in recent years highlights once again the need for a free-standing Department of Trade, led by a very senior Minister, to ensure our trade and commercial relationships with other countries are adequately represented in any Cabinet deliberations.

May 31, 2018

RUTH ARMSTRONG. Four Corners- Mind The Gap episode: a one dimensional look at a multifaceted problem.

A single tweet put Monday nights Four Corners episode into perspective for me.Id been trying to put my finger on what seemed out of kilter with the whole segment and there it was: the program had virtually ignored the bedrock of Australian health care, the public hospital system.

April 21, 2019

JOHN MENADUE. Easter and the banality of evil. An edited repost

Our policies towards asylum seekers that are cruel,evil and immoral,depend on our first dehumanising and then demonising them. Ministers,even the Prime Minister have recently reminded us that some of them are rapists and murderers.They infer that they are not like us and do not deserve empathy and protection. It is an attempt to chloroform our consciences.

October 31, 2018

MICHAEL THORN. Cricket Australia: Culpable without consequence

Australias disgraced cricket trio, Steven Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, may have engineered the ball tampering scandal in South Africa this year, but the damning cultural review released yesterday has found an arrogant and controlling Cricket Australia essentially to blame.

July 25, 2018

ANTHONY PUN. The Battle for the South Pacific.

The Battle for the South Pacific is on!China is already in Australias backyard, the South Pacific, wooing and cultivating friends with soft power. As part of China BRI initiative, Chinese investment with the South Pacific nations totalled US 1.78 billion outstripping Australias AUD137M for subsea internet cable connecting Australia-PNG-Solomon Islands. The current scorecard is China 10 nations and Australia 2 nations. Is Australias or New Zealands security being threatened? Would the formation of a South Pacific block a risky option for Australia or New Zealand economic health? Or if you cant beat them, join them?

October 18, 2017

JOHN AUSTEN - Road pricing; an update

Reports about the Grattan Institutes assessment of Sydney and Melbourne traffic is the latest re-ignition of road pricing arguments. However, the risk that policy falls further into the hands of vested interests needs to be addressed. There is an urgent need for Commonwealth advisers to lift their game.

April 11, 2016

Institute for Public Affairs: the think tank with arms everywhere.

In this blog on 1 April 2016, Greg Bailey wrote about the close relationship between the Liberal Party and the Institute for Public Affairs.https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/blog/?p=6023

In the SMH on April 7, Elizabeth Farrelly also wrote about the Institute for Public Affairs ‘The think tank with arms everywhere’. See link below:

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/institute-for-public-affairs-the-think-tank-with-arms-everywhere-20160406-gnzlhq.html

May 28, 2018

MASHA GESSEN. In the Trump Era, We Are Losing the Ability to Distinguish Reality from Vacuum.

The Trump Presidency is an age of unanswerable questions and lose-lose propositions. How is one to maintain sanity, decency, and a measure of moral courage? In a pair of thoughtful essays in Slate, Dahlia Lithwick tackles the problems of dealing with the everyday nature of our current political disaster and of deciding on the best way to try to save the country from Donald Trump: by staying close to him, or by walking away. The latter is a question for members of the Administration and for congressional Republicans. This is the time, Lithwick writes, to think about what combination of exit and voice can make a meaningful difference if a real crisis were to happen. Or rather, when the real crisis happensif we are not there already.

October 9, 2019

IAN McAULEY. Reclaiming the ideas of economics: Society, Economy and Environment

Policymakers and journalists generally talk about society, the economy and the environment as if they are separate entities, implying a tradeoff of objectives. Such a classification leads to poor policy and promotes unnecessary division.

July 3, 2019

NARGES BAJOGHLI. Trumps Iran strategy will fail (New York Times, 2 July 2019).

As tensions with Tehran escalate, Washington has been struggling to understand the internal thinking of the Iranian government, and especially that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The organization, which functions as an elite military branch and a bulwark of the countrys revolution, is today the most powerful force within Irans complicated political structure. Understand the Revolutionary Guards, and you understand a good part of what makes modern Iranian politics tick.

November 21, 2019

DAVID SOLOMON. The climate strikes.

The political consensus on climate change is changing has already changed. Prime Minister Scott Morrison knows it, but is in an awful, strangling bind. He knows he has to adopt policies that recognise climate change and will help alleviate its impact (all the while remaining reluctant to join those countries trying to reduce its seemingly inevitable progress). But he is trapped by his coalition partner and, more important, the baying hounds within the Liberal Partys parliamentary ranks and their media whippers, who could destroy him if he were to give any significant ground.

August 17, 2018

MICHAEL WEST. Exempt: how Defence dodges the taxman (Michael West blog 15.08.18)

Foreign military contractors have been awarded a staggering $73 billion in contracts, apparently tax-free, because successive governments have struck contracts directly with offshore companies, even as far afield as the Atlantic tax haven of Bermuda.

April 19, 2018

We know where your kids live John Bolton to OPCW DG Jos Bustani, March 2002

In justifying her decision to commit the UK to joining the US and France in the unilateral air strikes on Syria on 14 April, PM Theresa May said in Parliament on 16 April that a requirement for UN authorisation would effectively give Russia a veto on British foreign policy. Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn called for a new War Powers Act to force the government to get parliamentary approval before launching military action instead of going along with the whims of the US president. There is no more serious issue than the life and death matters of military action, he said. Australias Labor Party should take note.

January 15, 2018

JENNY HOCKING. The palace treats Australia as the colonial child not to be trusted with knowledge of its own history-A REPOST from September 11 2017

Forty-five years after Governor-General John Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, records of his communications with the British monarchy in the lead-up to that event are still withheld from us, the Australian people.

January 1, 2018

PHIL GRANO. A personal response to the marriage equality postal survey.

A_t first I was angry and irked by Sydney Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fishers linking of an annus horribilis with the passing of marriage equality laws in Australia. Now, a few days later, I feel saddened that the leader of the Catholic Church in Australia is incapable of reading the Spirit in our times, is so mean-spirited about love, the celebration of love and institutional support for love._

March 14, 2018

CASSANDRA GOLDIE. The tax cut war and why everyone must pay for essential services, including wealthy shareholders

Labors policy on tax refunds for shareholders released on 13 March 2018 is a starkreminder that policies addressing the huge gaps in Australias revenue base are necessary.This is a media release by Cassandra Goldie

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal