September 12, 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).

September 14, 2018

ANTHONY PUN. History of multiculturalism: Part 1 - Early development - Chinese Australian community involvement and Chinese students.

Early development of multiculturalism under PM Gough Whitlam and Immigration Minister Al Grassby and its passage through to the Hawke-Keating government; community organisations played an important role in convincing the Hawke government to grant residency to 42,300 Chinese students.

October 27, 2017

MICHAEL WEST. BCA investigation: power of the business lobby in Australia

This is part in a series of investigations by Michael West into Australia’s most powerful business lobby groups and rent seekers. To begin, we have selected the Business Council of Australia, the most elite and influential peak body of them all. Among the findings, the nation’s premier corporate lobby group has broken the law at least 11 times in 20 years.

January 5, 2020

ALLAN PATIENCE. The Flimflam man.

Amid the devastation of the bushfires and drought, what has become bleedingly obvious is that Australia is bereft of the leadership so urgently necessary at this time of national crisis. Morrison is the emperor without clothes, revealing his total lack of moral authority.

July 29, 2019

JAMES LAURENCESON. The efficacy of being very vocal: Australia and human rights in China (ACRI)

Last week’s news that the Australian Dr Yang Hengjun was being moved to a criminal facility in China was, to use Foreign Minister Marise Payne’s words, “deeply disappointing” to say the least.

May 12, 2018

CAMERON HILL. China’s policing assistance in the Pacific: a new era?

While there has been renewed discussion and debate surrounding China’s infrastructure assistance to Pacific nations over the last several months, less attention has been paid to China’s growing policing and law enforcement presence in the region. While still in its early stages, this presence spans several of the Pacific Island countries which recognise the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and, in some cases, has expanded beyond the provision of facilities and equipment to include training, secondments and joint operations.

October 14, 2016

JIM COOMBS. “CIRCLE” Bail Hostels

One of the common reasons for incarceration of Aboriginal children is failure to appear at court and breach of bail conditions (often a residence condition). One way to overcome this is to establish “bail hostels” like those in the U.K. Too often ignorance of the need to comply, losing court papers, illiteracy, and homelessness militate against compliance with the requirement to appear at Court on the appointed day. This often leads to an arrest warrant being issued, arrest, incarceration, and often refusal of renewed bail. This is both costly and administratively time consuming, when the infraction that led to it would rarely lead to a prison penalty. Research by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics (BOCSAR) shows that this is so for persons before the courts generally.

June 22, 2018

SPENCER ZIFCAK. Vigil for Eurydice Dixon

Eurydice Dixon was raped and murdered no more than shouting distance from where I live. Had she screamed I might have heard her cry from across Melbourne Cemetery. But if she did, no one heard her.

May 5, 2018

SCOTT BURCHILL. The China Syndrome

The deceitful exaggeration of the threat that China’s rise allegedly poses for countries in the Asia-Pacific has been exposed by a number of analysts in Australia, including Brian Toohey. There is no need to reprise their arguments here, other than to say that in what passes for scholarship in the West, it is has become routine to portray China as being “aggressively expansionist” with much less discussion about its legitimate historical claims in the Asia-Pacific.

October 9, 2019

JOHN MCCARTHY. The Morrison Doctrine.

Dear Prime Minister,

I see you are developing a foreign policy doctrine of your own. Good. We haven’t had one for a while.

Congratulations on taking this stuff seriously. The management of our external environment will be your toughest job as Prime minister. Our external challenges are of a scale not seen since the Pacific War.

June 11, 2019

JOHN STAPLETON Australia's Vicious Assault on Freedom of Speech...

World’s most secretive democracy. Absurd overreach of power. Secretive, ruthless and vindictive executive government.

May 2, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. The rules-based international order; or a ‘dead parrot’.

Strategic policy is perhaps the most challenging area of government. For decades policy settings have largely been perfunctory with the US alliance occupying the central place. The post-Cold War setting of a single dominant hegemon has meant policy makers haven’t had to operate in an international order characterised by balance-of-power considerations. Even the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the West was atypical. The main feature of future geopolitical relations is likely to be dispersed centres of power and influence with overlapping and competing interests. Australian policy makers appear unprepared for this shift.

July 4, 2018

ROSS GITTINS. Memo Canberra: it's not taxes, it's wages, stupid. (SMH 2/7/2018)

With the season of peak political bulldust already upon us, and the media holding a microphone to all the self-serving and often stupid arguments the politicians are having with each other, here’s a tip: if you want sense about our economic problems and their solutions, turn down the pollies’ blathering and turn up the considered contributions from the econocrats.

June 26, 2018

SAM BATEMAN. Reflections on the United States Navy

The U.S. Navy had a horror year in 2017 with tragic accidents and a major corruption scandal. Rather than the cause mainly being a budgetary one with inadequate resources allowed the Navy, deeper cultural issues might also be involved.

August 22, 2019

RALPH REGENVANU. Vanuatu will host the next Pacific Islands Forum. We want to know if Australia really wants a seat at the table (The Guardian, 20 August 2019)

Last week at the close of the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu I described the leaders’ discussions as frank and fierce. It is now well-known that the leaders debated the text of the Kainaki II Declaration for Urgent Climate Change Action Now for many hours. I do not want to comment on the tone of the debate, as many others have done that already.

May 11, 2018

RAMESH THAKUR. VIP culture is a blight on India's democracy - a culture of impunity lies behind India's rape epidemic

Solving India’s sexual violence crisis means holding the perpetrators of wrongdoing accountable – no matter their power in society. For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this means ending the VIP culture within his own party.

November 14, 2019

IAN McAULEY. Reclaiming the ideas of economics: Wealth

Money can’t buy me love: nor can it buy me wealth

July 20, 2018

PATTY FAWKNER. How power has hijacked the parable of the Good Samaritan.

We can easily highjack the parable of the Good Samaritan, says Sister Patty Fawkner, if we don’t see it within the context of the overarching message of the Bible.

November 28, 2017

A whitewash rather than a white paper on how we go to war

The ‘organising principle’ of the 2017 foreign policy White Paper is the importance of and commitment to a rules-based order. At the heart of that order lies the United Nations and “Australia is a principled and pragmatic member of the United Nations, contributing to its vital security, environmental and humanitarian endeavours_” (p. 81). In one important respect,how we go to war,it is a whitewash rather than a white paper._

December 9, 2016

JOHN THOMPSON. Privatising Medicare by stealth.

Like the frog in hot water, Medicare’s privatisation by stealth can only result in an unfortunate end - despite the current government’s protestations of innocence.

May 3, 2019

RIVKA T. WITENBERG The paradoxical nature of freedom of speech and hate speech.

The shocking events which have taken place in recent times has again ignited the debate about the paradoxical nature of freedom of speech and the right to express hateful opinions or beliefs without restriction or limits including hate towards others who are different in colour, creed or nationality. How can we guard against hate speech when freedom of speech is highly cherished in democratic societies? Undoubtedly, education has a role to play above and beyond legislation and regulation.

January 2, 2020

CAMERON LECKIE. The Australian Mainstream Media: Propagandists on Chemical Weapons

One of the most effective tools of the propagandist is the power of leaving out.

May 3, 2019

JACK DE GROOT. The hidden cost of low rent housing

Although just paying the rent is enough of a challenge for most low-income households - as Anglicare’s latest Rental Affordability Snapshot demonstrates - their housing affordability challenge is further impacted by the cost of energy and transport. For them, it obviously forms a much higher proportion of their take-home pay and therefore puts housing affordability even further out of reach. An increased supply of social and affordable housing is an essential part of the solution, as too are more energy efficiency and public transport solutions.

November 8, 2018

CHRIS MILLS. Australians’ Choice: A Wasted Hourglass or Golden Egg Economy?

These simplifying images of Australia’s future Federal, State and Territory economies have been deliberately chosen to be evocative and provocative. Our stark choice is to continue to pursue the Neoliberalism ideology that is failing so many ordinary Australians, of take a giant leap back to a future of social equity and a fairer go for most.

November 21, 2019

IAN McAULEY. Reclaiming the ideas of economics: Competition

Competition generally brings tremendous benefits to consumers, but when it becomes an end in itself those benefits can be outweighed by the costs of competition.

December 21, 2018

COLIN HESELTINE. In a war against Huawei, we are the likely losers. (AFR 20.12.18)

Let’s call a spade a spade. The efforts by western powers, Australia included, to cut Huawei out of major telecommunications projects such as 5G, where Huawei is arguably the world’s leader, are aimed at containment of China (of course, we don’t officially call it this – we call it “push-back”). Much has been reported recently about the so-called technology war between China and the west (“Huawei: Australia fears the Canadian Club, AFR, 16 December 2018). Huawei is clearly at the centre of this battle. The recent arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, is the latest – and most dramatic - development in this saga (“Meng arrest is part of America’s economic war on China”, AFR 13 December 2018).

December 4, 2019

PETER SAINSBURY. Health professionals stepping up to support action on climate change

Climate change is already causing injuries, illness and premature death. This is only going to get worse. Health professionals, individually and collectively, are taking action to highlight the health problems, including being arrested for blocking development of the Adani mine.

September 12, 2018

VIPS STEERING GROUP. Trump should involve himself in worsening Syria crisis

Respected US public interest group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) has issued a public warning that uncontrolled escalation of the final battle for Idlib in Syria is worsening the risk of direct US-Russian military clash there. They appeal to Trump to seek better advice and to get involved.

December 14, 2018

JEFFREY D. SACHS. The War on Huawei (Project Syndicate, 11.12.18)

The Trump administration’s conflict with China has little to do with US external imbalances, closed Chinese markets, or even China’s alleged theft of intellectual property. It has everything to do with containing China by limiting its access to foreign markets, advanced technologies, global banking services, and perhaps even US universities.

June 19, 2019

MARK BUCKLEY. The climate is now personal for us all

When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can’t eat money.

July 23, 2018

VINCENT CHEOK. Understanding China and the Chinese - An Australian Perspective - Part 1.

My parents were Hakka Chinese from Malaysia. I came to Australia as a minor in 1968 and have been here ever since. The first time that I knew I was ‘special’ as a Chinese was when I was working in a rural town in South Australia over Christmas 1968 while waiting for my matriculation results. An old lady ‘encountered’ me on Main Street and tapped me solidly on the shoulder. I immediately thought I was being reprimanded. ‘Touch a Chinaman for good luck!’ - she said with great rapturous glee and hilarity, and then rushed off.

January 7, 2020

JACK WATERFORD.- Coalition burning up its electoral credit.

PM can’t find the fitting gesture or demonstrate our solidarity with bushfire victims.

December 10, 2018

MICHAEL PASCOE. Irony: Record number of asylum seekers arrive on Dutton’s watch (The New Daily, 09.12.18)

For all the government’s tough-on-asylum-seekers rhetoric, protection visa applications have blown out to record numbers on Peter Dutton’s watch.

August 24, 2018

VIC ROWLANDS: Where on earth are we going?

John Howard could smell political advantage under water. Tampa changed politics in this country for the worse and made any future rational discussion of immigration and refugees thereafter political poison. Howard was in Washington when the Twin Towers were struck and it understandably had an immense impact on him, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he also sensed opportunity. The “We will decide” 2001 campaign speech fed into the world wide climate of fear and enabled him to set in place refugee policy which became a race to the bottom in the treatment, detention and demonising of refugees and their children. Underpinning this policy, supported shamefully by both sides of parliament, was and is, whether we like it or not, racism .

January 9, 2020

NOEL TURNBULL. It's not the marketing - it's the marketer

Scott Morrison has failed a fundamental marketing test-communicating authenticity.

April 24, 2019

JAMES O’NEILL: When Better than at an Election to Have a Serious and Overdue Debate About Defence and Foreign Policy Objectives?

The current election cycle presents a golden opportunity to have a serious discussion about Australia’s defence and foreign policies. These have been notably lacking from both major parties.

September 6, 2019

MICHAEL FURTADO. Playing Devil's Advocate for the Catholic Plenary Counci.

On November 4, 1956, the Soviet regime violently suppressed the Hungarian Uprising. Earlier in that year, at the Twentieth Congress of the USSR Communist Party,Khrushchev had bitterly denounced Stalin, deceased three years prior, for his crimes.

June 17, 2019

JOHN AUSTEN. Post-election infrastructure review

The NSW and Federal 2019 elections saw the return of Coalition Governments. My perspective – from western Sydney – is: Coalition infrastructure policies have been dreadful, Labor’s offerings weren’t any better.

December 31, 2015

Jack Waterford. It's time: The Dismissal gave us knockout punch politics, now we should get rid of it.

One has to be of a certain (old) age to remember intimately, as I do, the tumultuous events of November 11, 1975. I knew then that I was being a witness to history and, sometimes, metaphorically pinched myself to be sure I remembered.

Nearly 40 years on, it remains the most sensational event of Australian politics since federation, but it is now, for three quarters of the population something that happened before they were born or before they had the least interest in Australian politics.

December 19, 2017

MATTHEW FISHER. Ministers for Health in name only

Evidence on social determinants of health, health inequities and primary disease prevention and health promotion present many, currently under-utilised opportunities for Australian Government Health Ministers to genuinely be Ministers for health as well as for remedial healthcare services.

October 9, 2017

JON STANFORD. Australia's Future Submarines: A response to Christopher Pyne

Last week at the National Press Club, Hugh White launched a report by Insight Economics, Australia's Future Submarine: Getting This Key Capability Right, of which I was the principal author. The report was sponsored by Gary Johnston, a Sydney businessman with no commercial interest in the SEA 1000 Future Submarine (FSM) program but an abiding concern with the waste of taxpayers’ money in failed defence acquisition projects.

November 8, 2018

LINDY EDWARDS. Identity Politics is central to the current political crisis, but not for the reasons Paul Kelly argues.

Paul Kelly’s recent article ‘Could disruption be the ruin of western liberal democracy?’ was a thoughtful account of the challenges facing western democracy, and I would agree with some of what he described. But in the spirit of the constructive engagement he laments as missing in current debate, I offer up a different line of causality.

April 18, 2019

STUART REES, Julian Assange, Establishment Interests and the US Culture of Revenge

Julian Assange faces extradition to the United States to face a grand jury’s secretly concocted charge of ‘computer intrusion’ to obtain and reveal classified information. Reaction to Assange’ arrest shows powerful people protecting establishment interests, which, over centuries, have involved lying, deceit, corruption, wars and other forms of violence.

December 21, 2018

ALISON BROINOWSKI. Most favoured notions just take time.

There are said to be no votes in defence or foreign affairs in Australia. Years of bipartisanship on both, and an Alliance that is unquestionable, have disempowered debate. The time for change may be in 2019.

March 28, 2018

ABUL RIZVI. Is Bob Birrell Right on Australia’s Skilled Migration Program?

Australia has tentatively begun a debate about immigration – both the size of the annual intake and whether the country is choosing the right migrants. It’s a vital debate, but one that is open to misunderstanding, to producing more heat than light. With such a sensitive topic, the facts are critical.

August 6, 2019

CONCERNED CATHOLICS CANBERRA GOULBURN. ‘Break open the word’ on Plenary Council, bishops urged

The credibility and success of the most important event in the Australian Catholic Church in many decades, the 2020 Plenary Council, depends on an open and frank airing of the grave issues crippling the Church.

Concerned Catholics of Canberra Goulburn calls on Australia’s bishops to publish all of the 17,457 submissions made from around Australia in preparation for the plenary.

The chairman of Concerned Catholics, Emeritus Professor John Warhurst, said the lack of debate about and exposure of the submissions to the Plenary was unfortunate given the profound questions facing the Church, the steady decline in church attendances and continuing reports of clerical crimes around the world.

He said that while it was welcome that a comprehensive report on all the voices of the participants in last year’s plenary “listening and dialogue” process was released on July 28, it was vital for the transparency and credibility of the Plenary that all submissions were put up on Plenary website.

“An open and transparent airing of what people are seeking would be appropriate in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the compelling road map for reform recommended by the Commission,” Professor Warhurst said.

“The Church through its bishops needs to lay bare what its people are saying they want and hope for their Church so we can have a vigorous and informed debate.

"The Catholic National Centre for Pastoral Research has produced it final report on the submissions, including details of the number of submissions by country of birth, gender, age of individual submitters and the totals from each diocese. Canberra -Goulburn archdiocese, for instance, produced a total of 360 submissions, 269 of those from individuals and 91 from groups.

“This report, while welcome, should only be the beginning, and should be accompanied by the public release of all submissions, except where privacy has been requested. There were 17,457 submissions involving more than 222,000 participants. These numbers alone should prompt the church leadership to ensure there is a process of open and transparent revelation of all the issues.

“A year after the Plenary preparations began we have yet to have any nationally concerted and focused attention on dealing with crunch issues for the future of the Church in Australia.

“In its submission for the Plenary Council, Concerned Catholics sets out a plan for Church reform marked by transparency, accountability, non-clericalism, inclusiveness and humility.

“We would like to see other submissions to enable preparation for a productive and informed debate at the Plenary.

“The days of a ‘secret bishops’ business’ approach to the conduct of Church affairs must end if we are to have a vibrant and effective Church,” Professor Warhurst said.

Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn is a group in the Canberra-Goulburn Archdiocese concerned about a number of governance, cultural and structural issues arising from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. We seek an effective voice for lay people in the administration and direction of our church.

Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn Submission to the Plenary Council is available here.

Contact Mark Metherell 0417 603 697

May 11, 2018

HENRY SHERRELL. A snapshot of temporary migrants in Australia

A budding public conversation is underway about Australia’s population. Perhaps to help inform this conversation, the Department of Home Affairs has released a new data product documenting the number of migrants in Australia who hold a temporary visa.

September 12, 2018

BOB DOUGLAS. Homelessness, a sign of increasing Australian Inequality that we must now address.

_The growing number of people sleeping rough on the streets of our cities has alerted many Australians to the fact that Australia is no longer the egalitarian society we once were, and that, as in other western democracies, inequality is on the rise.

July 23, 2018

LAURIE PATTON. Public servants, political appointments and good government.

Earlier this week what was widely perceived as two highly _political appointments_ to plum roles in the federal public service highlighted a need to re-examine government administration in the 21st Century. Not because these appointments were necessarily inappropriate, but because they exposed a basic disconnect. We still like to pretend we have an olde-worlde apolitical public service consisting entirely of career bureaucrats who have no political leanings or are never influenced by them. If this was ever the case, it is no longer.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal