December 18, 2017

Instead of congratulating ICAN on its Nobel Peace Prize, Australia is resisting efforts to ban the bomb

Last week in Oslo, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was officially given to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a global campaign that was launched in Melbourne in 2007.

December 24, 2019

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.-A Sermon for Christmas Day

“THERE ARE two principal lessons which we are taught on the great Festival which we this day celebrate, lowliness and joy.

August 18, 2020

The current signs are ominous, and Australia is possibly stumbling blindly towards war.

Todays risks and the history of war: recognising the unknowable. The point of no return is mostly only evident in hindsight, and nations occasionally find themselves unexpectedly teetering on the edge of conflict.

November 10, 2019

JOHN KERIN: The Latest Commonwealth Government Drought Package.

The latest ad hoc response to the current drought cannot be criticised in terms of the politics of the situation we are now in. If it rains in, say, by March, or in the first six months of 2020, then we will be back to the status quo of drought policy. We simply dont have a National Drought Policy, nor can I see one being agreed between the Commonwealth and the States which will ever be agreed by all parties and commentators, or which may have predictability or flexibility. The debate about the Murray Darling Basin plan, after30 years of development, is in the same basket. There are so many actors with so many responsibilities that everyone cannot be satisfied.

February 21, 2019

SPENCER ZIFCAK. Offshore Processing: The New Legal Attack.

Two new legal actions designed to put an end to Australias policy of offshore processing have just landed at the High Court of Australia. In a novel twist, the cases will not depend on the High Courts interpretation of the Migration Act. Nor are they constitutionally founded. Instead, the National Justice Project, the law firm representing detainees, is arguing that the Commonwealth has acted negligently. The negligence, it is said, is constituted by crimes against humanity committed by Australian authorities against refugees in the immigration detention camps on Manus Island and Nauru.

November 7, 2018

FRANCESCA BEDDIE. The common-sense test for assessing research applications.

In 2014, the last year for which complete data is available on the Australian Research Councils website, 20.7 per cent of applications for research grants were successful; 1,417 grants were made, at a cost of $1,018,017,312. The Australian taxpayer deserves to know if sums of such magnitude are being well allocated.

June 16, 2019

JOHN TNS JP. Is the trend towards Artificial Intelligence a threat to Employment?

If todays (12/06/19) National Press Club address by Chris Richardson is to be believed then the trend towards artificial intelligence presents no threat to employment. The analysis presented, however, reminded this listener to Mark Twains comment that there are lies damned lies and statistics.

January 21, 2019

LUKE FRASER. The roads that ate the Australian economy - Part 1 of 2

Australias current approach to road spending will soon generate up to $20 billion every year in new public sector debt - making it impossible for any new Commonwealth government to benefit from much-needed tax reform and revenue increases. This also cooks the goose of the road freight sector which Australias economy relies upon, while the perverse pattern of spending neglects our local road networks thanks to the endless fascination with dubious new motorway mega-projects.

September 12, 2020

Sunday environmental round up, 13 September 2020

Per head of population Australians produce a lot of greenhouse gases but with the right support household consumption and emissions can be reduced. Unfortunately, governments are currently more enthusiastic about subsidising fossil fuels. Shippings emissions continue to rise. The USAs emissions in four charts.

June 18, 2019

JOHN HUDSON. Pompeo pledges not to wait for Britains elections to push back against Corbyn and anti-Semitism (Washington Post 8.6.2019)

_Secretary of State Mike Pompeo weighed in on British politics during a closed-door meeting with Jewish leaders, saying he would not wait for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister of Britain to push back against him or any future actions he might take against Britains Jews.

October 10, 2019

PROFESSOR JENNY HOCKING I never had any doubts about the Palaces attitude: Sir John Kerrs Royal secrets exposed

Letters between Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace show that the Palace pressured Kerr to omit from his autobiography his secret exchanges with the Queens private secretary before his dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. This Royally sanctioned erasure is one of several crucial omissions from Kerrs autobiography, which raise key questions about the Palace letters between Kerr and the Queen leading up to the dismissal.

December 21, 2019

LORENA ALLAM and NICK EVERSHED.- Too hot for humans? First Nations people fear becoming Australia's first climate refugees.

Aboriginal people in Alice Springs say global heating threatens their survival.The town has had 55 days of above 40C in the year to July 2019. Central Australian outstations are running out of water. Poor quality housing in town camps cannot be cooled effectively. Indigenous leaders fear extreme heat will cause an influx of internal refugees.

See the following link to The Guardian of 18 December 2019 for this ominous prospect.

Photos are by Mike Bowers.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/18/too-hot-for-humans-first-nations-people-fear-becoming-australias-first-climate-refugees?CMP=Share

March 11, 2019

MICHAEL KEATING. Why is our economic growth rate less than half its potential, and what to do about it?

The poor performance of the Australian economy, as further revealed in last weeks release of the National Accounts, raises questions about the longer-term economic outlook and whether the conventional diagnosis of our major economic challenges is correct. Notwithstanding resistance from the Government and some business interests, most economists believe that increased wage growth is essential. However, there is much less agreement about how and when that might occur.

August 28, 2018

JAMES KYNGE. The US cannot halt Chinas march to global tech supremacy.

The moment may one day be glorified in propaganda art. As the mist rolled off the Yangtze River, Xi Jinping stood on top of the Three Gorges hydropower dam in Yichang, a proud symbol of engineering prowess, and proclaimed that China would blaze its own trail to become a technology superpower.

December 4, 2024

Martial Law: US backed Yoon pledges to "eliminate anti-state elements", Koreans rise up in resistance

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared Martial Law for the first time in 45 years, suspended the South Korean legislature, and banned elected representatives from accessing the National Assembly building with massive police mobilisation.

May 5, 2020

JACK WATERFORD. We intended Covid inquest idea as an insult - for no good reason

_There is nothing wrong with thinking that there would be an appropriate moment for an extensive international scientific review of the arrival of the 2019 coronavirus.

September 11, 2018

VIC ROWLANDS. The Education funding battle and public education.

When then minister Simon Birmingham accepted the recommendations of the Gonski 2 Education funding model it was a courageous attempt to redress the mistakes of the past. His replacement post Turnbull by Dan Tehan sent a message that the traditional powerful education lobbies are still well and truly the influential players. It doesn’t auger well for government schools which historically end up the greatest loser because their primary source of revenue, the states, cannot or won’t match the federal largesse and they don’t have the capacity of the non government sector to game the system.

April 26, 2018

VIC ROWLANDS. Reclaiming Democracy

Liberty and Equality are simple characterisations of the right and left in politics and Fraternity is what enables the two to co-exist productively. A substantial moderate centre still represents the best chance of resolving difficult and contentious issues, and achieving a consensus.

January 1, 2018

ANDREW FARRAN. The Iranian demonstrations.

There are few signs that the country is yet a tinder box for a counter-revolution requiring just a spark to set it off.

December 29, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM.-And so, gritting our teeth and holding our noses, we prepare to face 2020.

And once the new years eve fireworks have been cleaned up, it does not look promising.

October 17, 2018

JIEH-YUNG LO. Morrison attempts his own Australia-China reset.

When you see a Prime Minister wonder into a marginal seat, you know a federal election is on the horizon. Scott Morrison did just that at the start of this month when he joined local member David Coleman in the ultra marginal seat of Banks. The purpose: to reconnect with the electorates large Chinese-Australian population and at the same time send a message to our largest trading partner.

November 19, 2019

GREGORY CLARK- WE badly need some context on Xinjiang.

_Australian Foreign Minister, Marise Payne: I have previously raised Australias strong concerns about reports of mass detentions of Uighurs in Xinjiang. These disturbing reports today reinforce Australias view and we reiterate those concerns._Australian politicians have traditionally had a hard time making up their minds over Chinas distant Xinjiang province.

October 22, 2019

ABUL RIZVI. Pezzullo in Denial

At Senate Estimates this week, Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo denied the record number of (largely non-genuine) asylum applications under his watch is a crisis. This is like the black knight in Monty Pythons Holy Grail insisting losing his arms and legs was just a flesh wound. But more seriously, Government allowing Pezzullo to get away with this denial suggests the size of the problem is going to get a lot worse.

July 3, 2018

GREG BAILEY. Are Public Servants too elitist? What should their role be?

A recent article published on The Conversation found attitudes of elitism among public servants, which effectively led them to resist public input and that A clear democratic conduit between citizen and policymaker is largely absent. But is this the best way to understand the present status of the Public service and public servants attitudes?

June 25, 2018

DENNIS ALTMAN. Australias dangerous obsession with the Anglosphere

Australias cultural obsession with the US and the UK has real impacts on our politics.

June 13, 2019

MICHAEL JOHNSTON. Taming the beast - a challenging new initiative.

Corporations unbridled pursuit of self interest (aka shareholder interest) has plunged the planet into an existential crisis. It is no longer a radical proposition to suggest that the community should expect its corporations to pursue stakeholder interest on an equal footing with shareholder interest.

The law locks up the man or woman

who steals the goose from off the common

but lets the greater villain loose

who steals the common off the goose. Anon

April 21, 2019

TIM BEAL. The clash of diasporas.

On 11 April New Zealands spy chiefs, as the media labelled them, gave evidence to the Justice Select Committee of Parliament. Rebecca Kitteridge, director-general of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), and Andrew Hampton, director-general of the Government Security Communications Bureau (GCSB), gave dark warnings to MPs about foreign interference in NZ politics. China was not mentioned in the public session though that was clearly the thrust and no doubt they were more explicit when the session was closed to the public and media. It was a scene which is frequently, and increasingly, being played out in a similar fashion elsewhere, especially in Anglophone countries with large Chinese diasporic communities such as the United States, Britain and Australia. There are many ways of looking at what is happening but for New Zealand, and in slightly different ways for Australia, it is useful to see it as a clash between diasporas.

September 10, 2018

ADAM HUGHES HENRY. Unresolved questions of Independence.

One of the core areas of interest for Gough Whitlam and his government in the realm of international affairs was a process of modernisation in Australias engagement with international law and its impact on the domestic scene. Some of this related to imperial practices that continued to play a central role in national civic life (God Save the Queen or Imperial Honours), but most other activities were strongly connected to numerous international treaties that the Whitlam government endorsed and legal domestic offshoots within areas such as indigenous rights or racial discrimination. The desire to present a more modern and even cosmopolitan Australia to the world (and its own region) was a driving factor in leaving behind the last vestiges of the White Australia policy, earnestly opposing Apartheid and promoting multiculturalism. In terms of the cultural and political relationship with Asia (another key part of the Whitlam program), this was not only sensible but a practical objective.

August 26, 2018

BRUCE WEARNE. Has the Party Ended?

“I’m not doing anything until I get legal advice as to whether his (Dutton’s) membership of the Parliament is constitutional.”

January 9, 2019

JOHN MENADUE. The Pandora's box of excessive medical specialists fees! An update and repost from April 19 2017

Perhaps [we could consider] a review of what Pierre Trudeau and his government (in Canada) did in 1984 when they took on a system not dissimilar to ours uncontrolled fee for service and legislated that doctors could charge what they liked BUT unless they adhered to the fee negotiated between the provincial government and the profession (on an annual basis) the doctor lost all access to a Medicare reimbursement. The system still works today in Canada and few doctors opt out of it. Now there is a thought and a significant game-changer.

December 27, 2017

CHRISTINA HO. Racist reporting still rife in Australian media

Half of all race-related opinion pieces in the Australian mainstream media are likely to contravene industry codes of conduct on racism.

May 8, 2016

Our better angels.

Wasim Buka was sentenced recently on two charges of people-smuggling. He came to Australia as a boat person and has settled in Australia. Unfortunately, two of his brothers were executed in Iraq and one sister, following in his footsteps to Australia, drowned along with her husband and five children in the waters between Australia and Indonesia.

Her Honour Judge Hampel decided to release him upon a recognizance release order to be of good behaviour for a period of two years. He was released on a $1,000 bond.

September 19, 2019

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM. China Slaps Britain: You Cant Afford Hostility (Strategic Culture 13-9-19)

China gave Britain a stern warning this week that any naval maneuvers conducted with the US near its declared territories in the South China Sea will be met with a military response.

BeijingrappedLondon further, telling it to dump its colonial attitude with regard to Hong Kong. However, the ultimate leverage, was the caustic reminder to Britain that if it wants to trade with China in the future, then it better mind its manners.

August 23, 2018

MAX HAYTON. New Zealand bans foreign home buyers.

The New Zealand Governments ban on foreigners buying homes is a break from the deregulation of the past when New Zealands doors were thrown open to all comers. The new ban is not very different from the law in Australia.

July 22, 2018

IAN DUNLOP. Climate Risk Minerals Council of Australia Directors Breach Duties of Care and Due Diligence

After 30 years of inaction, the focus on climate risk is accelerating as the physical impact of climate change worsens and the transition risks to a low-carbon world intensify. Despite effusive official rhetoric, nothing has been done to seriously address climate change, notwithstanding increasingly urgent warnings[1] [2]. Global climate-related losses are running at record levels [3].

June 11, 2018

YANIS VAROUFAKIS. The Italian crisis was the lefts final warning: it must adopt a new, credible EU policy agenda.

Its time toexplainhow the bloc, and the euro, could be run differently, democratically and sustainably.

January 6, 2020

MICHAEL EBURN AND STEPHEN DOVERS: What sort of inquiry should come after these fires?

Disasters are always followed by inquiries. Since 2009, there have been over 140 such inquiries across Australia, of varied types and processes of operating.

January 5, 2017

WALTER HAMILTON. An Emperor Asks to Step Down

In August 2016, Japan’s Emperor Akihito took the highly unusual step of asking publically to be relieved of his duties - to be able to abdicate. The government is still mulling over its response many months later. The article below is a repost from August 9, 2016.

May 12, 2019

J.A. DICK My Religion, Your Religion, Our God

Theological understandings change over time. My own theological understanding of world religions has been greatly influenced by the Second Vatican Councils Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. It was issued on October 28, 1965, shortly after my arrival as a younger man and a theology student in at the University of Louvain/Leuven.

December 30, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM.-There is no reason to believe that Scott Morrison is becoming a serious Prime Minister

He is only confident when attacking his opponent.

October 1, 2017

DENNIS ARGALL. Not so scary under Korean skies

Australia has had yet another high level former US defence official breeze in, this time to warn that we might be attacked by the DPRK. Whether there is or is not a concerted plan to all this, the visits of the grave and famous and warnings about improbable threat serve a purpose of keeping us from wandering away from Uncle Sams skirt in these strange times. It is useful to step away from speculation and look at some things actually happening, taking the last few days as a slice of life.

June 16, 2019

BERNARD KEANE. Corporations start to question Business Council's climate denialism (Crikey)

With Westpac joining the growing list of corporations that are questioning the climate policy stance of the Business Council of Australia (BCA), it seems that major companies that take climate change seriously have sussed out the strategy of one of Australias most toxic denialist lobby groups.

April 21, 2019

IAN DUNLOP, DAVID SPRATT. Is the Australian Public Service fit-for-purpose to handle existential climate risk?

The first duty of a government is to protect the people, their safety and well-being. Nowhere is this duty more important than in addressing climate change, which now constitutes a near-term existential threat to human civilisation. It is an open, and pressing, question whether the Australian Public Service (APS), and particularly the intelligence services, currently have the capacity to properly consider and assess the climate threat to the people of Australia, and to offer sound advice on action to minimise that threat.

November 14, 2018

PAUL COLLINS. ABC -Shenanigans at Ultimos Level Fourteen.

Mondays Four Corners on the ABCs management shenanigansthe Guthrie-Milne, she said-he said fiascoand the failure of the rest of the ABC Board to own-up and answer publicly for their performance tells you everything about whats wrong at the top of the national broadcaster. Its not imagined left-wing bias, or inaccurate and unbalanced reporting, or Emma Alberici, or Andrew Probyn. Its the bevy of management and business clones appointed by government to the Board of the ABC and the kind of person they chose to run the organization.

November 7, 2018

MICHAEL SAINSBURY. Beijing's spin on Xinjiang camps is not fooling anyone.

Communist regime has offered a string of justifications for its inhumane treatment of the Uyghur people.

This article was published by UCA News on the 6th of November.

May 9, 2016

Ian Webster. Is community medicine dead?

John Menadue said in the NSW Health Council Report of 2000, Services should be based where patients and consumers live. The autonomy and dignity of each patient is best serviced by providing services wherever possible outside hospital. So a shift to community multi-disciplinary health teams is a major issue still ahead of us. He returned to this theme in a recent blog, A major aim of good health policy for Australia must be to keep people out of expensive hospitals.

January 2, 2018

ALLAN PATIENCE. Towards a social democratic future for Australia.

The neoliberal war on western economies is finally collapsing under its own contradictions. In Australia its attacks on public wellbeing have been devastating. Politicians in thrall to the neoliberal ideology have vandalized manufacturing industries. Productivity and wage levels remain static. Inequality has ballooned while CEOs have plundered profits to enrich themselves while depressing workers wages and returns to shareholders. Neoliberalism was the midwife of the Global Financial Crisis and is the ugly sister of alt-right extremism, populism and racism in all the advanced economies witness Trump in the USA and Brexit in the UK. The good news is that its end is nigh. What, then, is the way forward?

May 18, 2018

PETER DAWSON. Review of Sunburnt Country.

Peter Dawson reviews Sunburnt Country - Dr Joelle Gergis new book on Climate Change

Climate Scientist, Dr.Joelle Gergiss book pulls together from wide-ranging sources the story of the Australian climate since white settlement, but also reaches back 1000 years and more. She seeks to convince us that the climate change challenge we face is, by every measure, real, menacing and urgent. It is both a comprehensive and a compelling answer to the climate sceptics.

September 11, 2018

CHRIS MILLS. Electrifying News: Power From The People.

Now that the Coalition (should that be COALition?) Government has announced that it will abrogate is duty to formulate and implement a national energy management policy, it is up to the Australian people to do so. We can express our choices through our State and Territory Governments via the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), which can coordinate the development of a National Electricity System (NES).

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal