May 30, 2019

NATHAN GARDELS. The Digital Curtain Descends (The World Post)

While Chinas last few decades of opening up and reform welcomed foreign investment and the global integration of supply chains for manufacturing and export, it followed an import substitution strategy in the digital realm. This kept out the likes of Google and Facebook and cleared the way for indigenous giants such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent to capture the worlds largest wired consumer market. Chinas authorities were the first to invoke Internet sovereignty and build the Great Firewall of censorship.

March 21, 2018

PETER BROOKS and IAN KERRIDGE The Royal Australasian College Of Physicians Examination Debacle Leaves Serious Unanswered Questions.

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), comprising more than 16,000 medical specialists, advises governments on matters of health and medical care, and has a respected voice in the community. However, its raison dtre is to train specialist physicians. 8,000 aspiring physicians are now in training. Assessing their road-worthiness includes a high-stakes, high-stress, barrier examination.

This years exam, offered at 20 centres in Australia and New Zealand, was computer-based.It was a debacle.

September 6, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. Why dental care was excluded from Medicare and why it should now be included

In 1974, the Whitlam Government decided to exclude dental care from Medicare for two reasons. The first was cost. The second was political in that Gough Whitlam felt that combatting the doctors would be hard enough without having to combat dentists as well.

Forty-four years later, with Australia much richer and the proven success of Medicare, it is now time for dental care to be progressively included in Medicare.

September 10, 2018

ELIZABETH EVATT. Where are the threats to religious freedom?

The Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called recently for laws to protect religious freedom, in order, he says, to safeguard personal liberty. While there is little evidence that religious freedom is under threat in Australia, there is a demand in some quarters for legislation to extend the exemptions from laws which protect against discrimination on the ground of sexual preference. This is unnecessary and would be regrettable.

October 16, 2018

WILLIAM PESEK. In Asia, ghosts of crises past return amid Trumpian trade war.

In a region where traces of the 2008 and 1997-98 carnage linger, Washingtons assault on Asias biggest growth engine could ignite another disaster.

October 23, 2016

SUSAN RYAN. Older women - the new homeless.

It is more than timely that focus on increasing inequality in Australia include recognition of a massive contributing factor: the lack of affordable housing, especially for older women.

Several groups have been identified as severely disadvantaged by the lack of affordable housing: unemployed young people, single parent families, and low paid workers who need to live near their place of work. Older women, especially single older women need to be recognised as facing an increased risk of homelessness.

How has this come about?

December 11, 2019

JAMES CURRAN Our China panic is stepping into the world of paranoia (AFR 10.12.2019)

The China debate is close to losing all sense of rationality and proportion. Where’s the confidence in our institutions?

May 13, 2019

JAMES ONEILL. There are Nutters and then there are Nutters

In interview given to Australias ABC network former Prime Minister Paul Keating referred to the Australian intelligence agencies as nutters. The comment was in the context of the advice that those intelligence agencies were giving the government on relations with China, Australias most important economic partner by a considerable margin.

November 5, 2018

Time to pull the curtain on memorial industry (Canberra Times 3.11.2018)

A fairly safe rule of public life is that the more flag lapels one wears, and the more one speaks of love of country or national greatness, the less likely the person has served in the nation’s armed forces and put himself in harm’s way, least of all in a time of national need.

_Two bellicose recent United States presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, come to mind. In Australia, it’s hard to go past John Howard, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Brendan Nelson, a former defence minister who has perpetually thrust himself to the forefront during the World War I remembrance extravaganza due, we hope, to conclude over the next few weeks.

June 10, 2016

JENNIFER DOGGETT. Midway through the election campaign, how is health travelling?

Its half way through the election campaign and both major parties have made some significant health policy announcements with Labor outspending the Coalition on health by over $2 billion (over four years).

However, despite the fact that health consistently rates as the number one issue for voters, neither major party has satisfactorily addressed the key issues essential to ensuring that our health system is fair, efficient and equipped to meet future challenges.

July 22, 2019

BE SEO. Australia is turning into a car park for dirty vehicles (AFR 15.7.2019)

Australia’s most popular cars emit between 8 and 42 per cent more carbon dioxide than their UK counterparts, raising concerns that the country has become a parking lot for dirty vehicles.

July 1, 2019

Slandering Assange, Conning the Public, Why This Process Must End

On June 26 at the National Press Club, media bosses demanded greater protection for whistleblowers and journalists, yet in the treatment of journalist /whistleblower Julian Assange, mainstream media have colluded in slander promoted by the US, UK and Australian political establishment. In response to this campaign, journalists have been negligent. Perhaps intimidated by threats from governments and intelligence agencies, they have stuck their heads in the sand.

March 19, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Batman conquered

So far so good.

To the surprise of many including, one suspects, Bill Shorten himself the Batman by-election is done and dusted and it appeared that the confected furore over the great dividend imputation refund had little, if anything, to do with it.

November 11, 2018

GREG LOCKHART. Armistice and Remembrance Day in Australia

The signing of the armistice at 11 am on 11/11/1918 did not raise great enthusiasm among members of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), because their first thought was for sleep. It then took a year for the battlefield silence to spread across the Empire.

January 15, 2018

IAN DUNLOP. Facing Disaster Alley, Australia shirks responsibility- A REPOST from June 27 2017

The first responsibility of a government is to safeguard the people and their future wellbeing. The ability to do so is increasingly threatened by human-induced climate change, the accelerating impacts of which are driving political instability and conflict globally. Climate change poses an existential risk to humanity which, unless addressed as an emergency, will have catastrophic consequences.

March 7, 2019

ERIKA FELLER. Bridging the divide on refugee policy

Australias refugee policies are rarely outside the political and public discourse. This is even more so now with a Federal election looming. Everyone has an opinion. The shades are many and the starting points for any discussion are wide apart.

March 6, 2018

CATHERINE KING AND ANDREW LEIGH. It's no wonder we're questioning the value of private health care.

Australians are questioning the cost and value of private health more than ever.

March 14, 2018

IAN McAULEY. Labors superannuation changes: clever cosmetics but a failure on equity, public revenue and economics.

There is something wrong when self-funded retirees can enjoy a six digit tax-free income, while others who earn their income through their own efforts pay normal rates of income tax. But Labors proposals on dividend imputation would sustain that inequity, would compromise public revenue, and would divert Australians savings away from high-return quality investments.

May 17, 2020

MICHAEL KEATING. Covid-19: What we need to know.

An international inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 virus misses the main point: what the world really needs is an inquiry into the effectiveness of the response.

May 10, 2018

BRENDAN BYRNE. History taints Turnbull's fight against corruption

While it is a matter of public record that the Turnbull government blocked attempts to establish a royal commission into the financial services sector on multiple occasions, the question as to why the government has been so recalcitrant on this issue especially when it expeditiously facilitated a similar inquiry into corruption within the union movement is of more than academic interest.

February 20, 2018

RANALD MACDONALD. Stop the presses.

Well, they have almost stopped running around this country with so few papers being sold nowadays, but let us stop them anyway.

August 3, 2018

ANDREW STARK. Oh, Canada! (New York Review of Books 19.07.18)

A cover of The Economist in 2003 featured a moosethat universally recognized symbol of Canadawearing sunglasses. Inside, the magazine extolled Canadas new sophistication: its openness, even then, to legalizing gay marriage and decriminalizing marijuana; its cosmopolitan cities (Toronto would soon become the most diverse metropolis in the world, with over half of its residents foreign-born); and its growing international cultural clout.

(Perhaps surprisingly Australians and Canadians have very little contact or knowledge of each other..John Menadue)

December 13, 2018

Peter Drake- Vale FRANK HAMBLY AM.

Francis Sutherland Hambly, the doyen of university education in Australia, died in Canberra on 21 November 2018, aged 83. Frank served the universities as Director and Secretary of the Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee (AVCC) from 1966 to 1996; indeed he personified the AVCC.

November 8, 2018

KIM WINGEREI. US Mid-Terms: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I hail from a country (Norway) that doesn’t have mandatory voting, yet gets close to 80% of eligible voters turning up at the polling booths, around the same as in Australia. Although I am philosophically opposed to mandatory voting as a contradiction in terms of a free democracy, I am also not too fussed about it. It is not on my list of important democracy reforms.

The United States have a very different system of voter registration, obfuscation and various other means of limiting participation - let alone the strange notion of voting on a workday. Around 57% of eligible voters turned out in the 2016 Presidential election, but traditionally the number is much lower for the mid-term elections - last time (2014) it was 37%.

Early calculations by Time Magazine shows around 50% turned out on Tuesday. It may prove to be the highest ever mid-term turnout, but it still puts the US well down the list of voter participation in “true” democracies.

January 10, 2019

BOB BEADMAN. Financial Crisis in the Northern Territory.

Clearly, budget outcomes rely on two simple issues income and expenditure.

On the income side of the ledger, the Northern Territory is hugely reliant on our share of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). We have been gutted.

On the expenditure side, the Northern Territory Government has been under enormous pressure to spend. The armchair experts (usually in leafy suburbs on the east coast) seem to expect that the Territory has a limitless capacity to provide gold plated social services, of EVERY kind found in the big cities, to every small pocket of population in the bush.

The Australian Government was quick to appoint a Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory (but not the States who all have serious problems I notice), but slow to assist with implementation of the 189 recommendations. And it has for decades tried to get away with providing the capital funds for something, and then dumping the recurrent costs of operating it on the NT. We could go on and on.

September 10, 2018

MICHAEL D BREEN. Head, Heart and future Hope.

Now there is talk about a new generation in Australian Politics. So what is new? Not the players. Not the structures, nor the rules of engagement. Could it be a more basic factor is needed? Could it be, for want of a better term, the moral infrastructure? Is this the bedrock foundation, the sine qua non for any successful rebuild? This would involve the ways in which individuals and groups regulate their behaviour.

October 16, 2018

KIM WINGEREI. Wentworth Democracy

Our Prime Minister has declared that the Wentworth election threatens the stability of our country unless a majority vote for the Liberal candidate. It may be the most hotly contested in living memory, and the Wentworth by-election also reveals much about why our democracy is broken and needs fixing!

July 4, 2018

PATRICIA EDGAR. Going Round the Twist with Telstra and the NBN Co

NBN Co claims their focus remains strongly on improving customer experience on the network including a smooth connection to the network. In fact the experience is a fiasco.

November 27, 2017

CAVAN HOGUE. The White Paper - a curate's egg?

There is much to be commended in the Government’s White Paper but there are some assumptions which need to be questioned. The focus on Asia is welcome and most of the analysis of our changing world is good, in particular the recognition that the balance between China and the USA has been changing. The Prime Minister’s claim that we will be guided by Australian interests is on the surface timely but is open to interpretation. The major weakness in the paper is the way it clings to the US as the unshakeable bedrock of our security while at the same tine arguing that the balance of power between China and the US will continue to move in favour of China.. In other words we will back the loser.. It also takes a naive view of American international behaviour and ignores its claim to ’exceptionalism’. The paper regards America as a force for stability in our region without showing how American policies have and will be a force for stability.

November 5, 2018

BRENDAN COATES, JOHN DALEY, TONY CHEN. Abolish stamp duty. The ACT shows the rest of us how to tax property.

This week were exploring the state of nine different policy areas across Australias states, as detailed in Grattan Institutes State Orange Book 2018. Read the other articles in the series here.

This article was published by The Conversation on the 1st of Novemeber 2018.

October 27, 2019

STEPHEN LEEDER - GRETA THUNBERG- A child shall lead them.

Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg has changed the conversation about global heating. Her passionate concern and emphasis on its likely impact on people her age has stirred public concern in a fresh way. How dare we, she asks of us older generations, respond with complacency, arrogance and inertia to such a threat? Wisdom, concern, and attention to the science can enable us to respond much better.

December 15, 2015

Peter Day. God: tiny, unassuming; lying at our feet

To some of us its a time to pause, to reflect, to stand in awe. But to the vast majority of us its the silly season: a time of over-eating, drinking, buying, selling, worrying, partying, beaching, and pressured family gatherings.

And dont the silly season preachers love it; out of hibernation they come to herald their version of the good news - news that is best delivered away from pulpits and outside of Sundays.

May 27, 2018

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Demonising Iran.

It was the hope of all observers around the world wanting peace in the Middle East that President Donald Trump would revalidate the nuclear deal with Iran on 12 May. Not only did he not do so, but later that month his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched an inflammatory and inaccurate attack on Iran and its leaders, impugning them with the worst possible motives. Hopes for a nuclear-free Middle East have faded as a result. So has the United States’ erratic record for honouring its international undertakings. This has, in turn, reduced hopes for a successful outcome to a summit between Trump and North Korean President Kim Jong-un, even if the two leaders decide to reconvene it following Trump’s cancellation on 25 May.

October 18, 2017

PAUL BUDDE. The future NBN might look rather different.

Some of the new technologies that are now arriving on the horizon could well mean that a different NBN scenario might unfold a merging between fixed and wireless broadband.

April 8, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. Warners blinkered warnings

Geraldine Dooge interviewed Nick Warner Director General of the Office of National Intelligence (podcast) for Radio National. As Warner is the principal adviser to the Prime Minister on intelligence matters his assessments of the strategic environment are of great interest.

August 28, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS Politics and Religion

Fraser Anning has given us the most spectacular take on The White Australia Policy since Labor legend Arthur Calwells 1947 quip: Two Wongs dont make a White. Calwell later explained that he was making a joke at the expense of the member for Balaclava, T.W. White. I accept his explanation just as I accept Senator Annings statement that he did not know the dark Nazi use of the words, final solution.

November 2, 2018

JESSICA IRVINE. Labor's housing tax changes will help cure our property addiction (SMH 1.11.2018)

It seems a requirement of modern political scare campaigns that they be not only breathless, but logically inconsistent.And so it is with the mounting fear campaign being waged against Labors policy to, if elected, reform the tax treatment of investment properties.Labors changes would, we hear, both accelerate price falls under way in Sydney and Melbourne AND also choke the supply of new homes. Come on, guys.

May 30, 2018

Chinese, Russian firms look to exploit Europes retreat from Iran (Asian Times Staff)

_Iranian president to be hosted in Qingdao next month as Beijing and Moscow-led bloc looks to protect business interests._As European companies react with trepidation to the Trump administrations efforts to blow up the Iran nuclear deal, pulling out of business deals in the face of looming sanctions, Chinese and Russian firms wait in the wings.

May 7, 2018

LAURIE PATTON. Whats going on at auDA? The battle over Internet domain names.

Anyone who uses an Internet domain name which means most Australian companies, educational institutions, government departments and not-for-profits should know whats currently happening with the domain names registration process.

December 13, 2018

BILL EDEBOHLS. Advent Pulling no punches

Christians know that Advent is about preparing - getting ready - for the coming of Christ. Getting ready for his second coming at the end of time and also getting ready for the celebration of his birth at Christmas.

April 3, 2016

Mike Steketee. COAG and hospitals: look beyond the funding to fix our health system.

Before Malcolm Turnbull and the states start haggling over hospital funding, it’s worth looking at why the system costs so much to run. Maybe it’s not just cash, but waste and inefficiencies that need addressing, writes Mike Steketee.

Why do our hospitals cost so much to run? Like$55 billion a year and rising rapidly?

It is the question worth asking before Malcolm Turnbull and the premiers start haggling at today’s COAG meeting over how best to pour more money into hospitals. Yes we are an ageing population and the health system is devising ever more clever ways to treat us.

December 19, 2019

NEAL HUGHES and STEVE HATFIELD-DODDS. New study: changes in climate since 2000 have cut Australian farm profits22% (The Conversation, 18 December 2019)

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences farmpredict model finds that changes in climate conditions since 2000 have cut farm profits by 22% overall, and by 35% for cropping farms.

June 21, 2018

JOHN TULLOH. Turkey - Erdogan faces his toughest test.

Recep Tayyip Erdoan would have been pleased when a recent edition of Time had him on the cover as one of the Strongmen Era. The Turkish president is indeed and he hopes the election this weekend will make him even stronger - a kind of 21st century sultan in the style of the Ottoman rulers he admires so much. But he has run into unexpected resistance: an opposition alliance gathering popular support and led by someone who can match Erdoan himself for firebrand rhetoric.

August 13, 2018

Time to name and call out unconscious racism in the treatment of Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians suffer racism when they seek or require medical treatment. The good news is that the medical profession acknowledges there is a problem. The bad news is that doctors are not doing nearly enough to bust the systemic bias against our First Peoples.

June 27, 2018

LAURIE PATTON. Domain names issue closer to resolution.

Next week the group attempting to oust board directors at Internet domain names authority auDA will have an opportunity to explain in detail the reasons for their concern and their solutions.

December 5, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull will do anything to secure an outcome.

Malcolm Turnbull’s experience in negotiation has been in the boardroom of Goldman Sachs, but the atmosphere of the Senate crossbench is more akin to that of the Istanbul Souk.

May 16, 2019

ANTHONY HOGAN. The Christian Left a case study of value driven social progressives?

Perhaps being socially progressive and Christian are not such mutually exclusive value positions after all?

April 2, 2018

IAN McAULEY. A warning about team players

Bad behaviour by young cricketers in South Africa has unleashed strong reactions, including references to a decay of moral standards in the wider society. It should also prompt us to realise that team loyalty is not an unmitigated virtue.

December 18, 2017

MICHAEL MULLINS. Its likely Pope Francis would support killing off confession to support abuse victims

At his media conference following Friday’s release of the report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Archbishop Anthony Fisher said that ‘killing off confession is not going to help anybody’. The report recommended legal strictures against the seal of confession to allow the reporting of sex abuse. A Melbourne canon law expert is much less worried than Archbishop Fisher, and it seems that even Pope Francis would give less priority to the seal than addressing the needs of the most vulnerable.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal