December 26, 2017

DUNCAN MACLAREN. Brexit beats pantomime for farce in the festive season.

The pantomime season is upon us in the fabled Kingdom. For farce, Cinderella has moved over to give room on the political, rather than theatrical, stage to the xenophobic pantomime par excellence of Brexit Taking Back Control, featuring your favourite panto characters. But to our tale

September 20, 2018

ABUL RIZVI. Morrisons U-Turn on Migrants for the Bush.

Scott Morrison has given another exclusive, this time to news.com, on his ideas to encourage more skilled migrants to settle in the regions and smaller cities and away from the major metropolitan centres. While its great to have a prime minister prepared to talk about immigration and population, he again failed to explain why usage of existing visas for the regions and smaller cities has steadily declined since he first became immigration minister under Tony Abbott and why Peter Dutton took steps to strangle the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme. Will Morrison now reverse Duttons changes?

March 1, 2018

Michael Thorn. Will a sugar tax drive you to drink?

Imposing a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages has become the go-to policy for health and medical advocates wanting an effective population-wide intervention to deal with the worlds growing problem of obesity and poor diet.

January 7, 2020

JOHN WOINARSKI. Fire and nature

The future has come and it is not good for Australias natural environments. Drought, heat waves and wildfire, all linked manifestations of climate change, have subverted (and continue to subvert) the viability of many of Australias species. Across vast areas, we are losing much of our nature.

December 23, 2013

A Christmas Message from Sister Joan Chittister.

Two years ago this Christmas message was published by Vision and Viewpoint, an e-newsletter. Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, is prioress of The Benedictine Sisters in Erie, PA.

Now and here bells everywhere are ringing again. The gift boxes are heaping up. Everybodys saying it: Christmas Blessings God bless you at Christmas time Christmas Peace to you and yours Merry Christmas. But is there any truth at all to any of this manufactured joy? Or is this, at best, nothing more than an exercise in auto-suggestion: Say it often enough and youll think its true, whatever the facts to the contrary.

August 2, 2018

ROBERT MICKENS. The Pope's long, hot summer. (La Croix 27/7/2018)

_Will Francis make the necessary and radical changes needed to save the Catholic Church from its ongoing meltdown?

November 10, 2019

DOUGLAS NEWTON. Night Thoughts on the 100th Anniversary of the First Remembrance Day

A hundred years ago the victors marked the first anniversary of Armistice Day. Our own memorialisation of the war, then and now, has been mostly in the spirit of Take a bow, Australia. But we need to lift our eyes from our own narrow horizons and question our ingrained instinct for self-congratulatory narratives.

June 27, 2019

ANDREW PODGER. Politics and Administration under the Second Morrison Government: Making the Partnership Work.

The relationship between politics and administration has been likened to the Chinese Yin and Yang: a dichotomy of almost opposites but simultaneously a complementary partnership in which neither can survive without the other. That is the challenge the new Morrison Government needs to understand as it sets out what it expects from the Australian Public Service.

November 6, 2018

Health professionals condemn Australian Government's contemptuous response to IPCC 1.5oC report .

In a letter to The Lancet twenty-two health professionals have condemned the Australian governments contemptuous responses to the report Global Warming of 1.5oC prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The letter includes a call for action covering the phase out of coal mining and burning, an increased CO2 emissions reduction target and an increased renewable energy target.

December 4, 2018

PAUL BUDDE. Facebook is set to fail (Paul Budde Consultancy).

With a tumbling share price and increased pressure from governments across the world Facebook will have to make major changes quickly if the company is to survive.

October 18, 2016

HAMISH McDONALD. What really happens at Pine Gap.

Hamish McDonald wrote this article in the Saturday Paper on October 1, 2016. The paper was also a tribute to Des Ball who died recently. He was the best informed and independent commentator on Pine Gap. The following is an introduction to Hamish McDonald’s article with a full link at the end to the Saturday Paper. John Menadue

Its one of two sacred sites to which you can drive from Alice Springs. The other is the red stone monolith of Uluru, said by the Pitjantjara to bring down a curse on anyone who removes a rock.

This one, though, is the huddle of gleaming white fibreglass domes known as Pine Gap which, if penetrated by the uninitiated, could threaten the security of the West.

May 21, 2020

DAVID SOLOMON. They should have said: No Minister

One of the worst aspects of the sports rorts affair is the way elements of the public service turned a deliberate blind eye to what was known, or assumed, to be a failure by the Minister to be bound by the requirements of the law governing the way the grants could be approved.

October 31, 2018

MICHAEL SAINSBURY. Rohingya refugee crisis hits Myanmar's economy (UCANews, 30.10.18))

While the Rohingya crisisand the escalating problems in Kachin and northern ShanState are grabbing headlines, Myanmar’s sagging economy and the withdrawal of investment by Western nations threaten to hit the largely impoverished nation the hardest.

April 22, 2018

ERIC WALSH. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un.

The highly- important upcoming meeting between North Koreas Kim Jong-Un and Americas Donald Trump could hopefully settle one of the worlds red-hot trouble spots.

February 18, 2016

Robert Manne. Why we have failed to address climate change.

In this article, published in the December The Monthly Essays, Robert Manne describes the major obstacles to addressing climate change. He refers to the unique nature of climate change and the difficulties that it has presented for scientists to persuade the world community about the problem and the need to take action. Robert

Manne also refers to the difficulty that just at the time when concerted government action is necessary, the public debate from Liberal economists pointed to the need to scale back government. The post WWII consensus associated with Keynes and Bretton Woods was under challenge.

September 20, 2018

STEPHANIE DOWRICK: Free the suffering children on Nauru now.

Most readers of Pearls and Irritations will be at least somewhat sympathetic to the plight (what an inadequate word) of the refugee families on Nauru. You wont need me to remind you that those families sought asylum because they were fleeing violence, war, death. You wont either need me to remind you that they have now been held in detention for more than five years. There is much talk that refugees on Nauru are now free on the island. This is nonsense. The truth is they have been systematically deprived of community, purpose, future and hope of anything resembling a normal life. And it is not just the adults who are suffering from extreme stress and despair, it is also inevitably the children. This is not just child abuse in our name and on our watch, it is torment of the worst and most unnecessary kind.

December 4, 2019

CHRIS BONNOR. PISA the never-ending story

Its PISA time again and Australias student achievement levels continue to be miserable. The finger-pointing is in full swingagain. Someone should re-shoot Groundhog Day around the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), with a cast of education ministers, their shadows, a teacher unionist, journalists, the odd academic and crowd shots of everyone else with an opinion. It would be an easy script to learn - it has remained unchanged for well over a decade.

April 29, 2019

IOLA MATTHEWS. Bridging the gender pay gap, one case at a time (Sydney Morning Herald 26 April 2019)

The path to more equal pay for women is one issue that could be significantly affected by the result of the forthcoming federal election.

May 6, 2019

GARY MCLAREN : Turnbull's 5G Sputnik Moment

Malcolm Turnbull, the most recent of many Australian former Prime Ministers, has called for the US and its Five Eyes allies to take urgent steps to create a home-grown 5G network builder.

November 5, 2017

SUSAN RYAN. Skills retraining still more miss than hit.

Like car manufacturers who, despite decades of notice, still left many workers stranded, NABs more sudden announcement underlines the fact that massive redundancies are not only a feature of old industries.

May 8, 2019

WILLIAM BRIGGS Julian Assange and the Australian Election the issue that must not speak its name

Julian Assange was arrested and taken from the Ecuadorean embassy just one day after the Federal election was called. Coincidences, or accidents of chance can, just occasionally, present political opportunities. This particular coincidence offered a chance for the arrest, and the whole saga of his years in the Ecuadorean embassy to figure, if only in a minor capacity, in the election process, but on the contrary the players in the election, quickly drew a line under the entire affair.

February 18, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The marketeer in the Lodge.

In the world of marketing, there are no such things as losses only opportunities; and Scott Morrison, if he is nothing else, is a dedicated marketeer.

August 12, 2018

KIM WINGEREI. The ABC needs relevance, not lifestyle!

When Socceroo defender Aziz Behich put the ball in his own net during the recent World Cup, handing France the win, Australia groaned in collective disappointment. He didn’t mean to, and he is already forgiven. But when CEO Michelle Guthrie launched ABC’s new lifestyle section, it was an own goal for which it is hard to give absolution.

February 11, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Who could have predicted that Kenneth Hayne would turn out to be such an old softie?

For months the stern, uncompromising judicial figure has presided over his royal commission with imperial authority, a veritable Judge Dredd inspiring fear and trepidation among scores of witnesses ever wary that at any moment he could reach for the black cap. And when his verdict was delivered, it was appropriately full of fire and brimstone, excoriating the pit of depravity that is the banking system and all those associated with it. At least, those were the words, but the reality turned out to be something so reassuring that bank shares across the board leapt in relief. Kenneth Hayne was actually a pussy cat.

March 1, 2018

STEPHEN FITZGERALD AND LINDA JAKOBSON. Engaging with China does not mean being an agent of China

[A letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27 February 2018]

Clive Hamilton conveys a message which must be challenged, namely the insinuation that any person who engages with the Communist Party of China (CPC) should be viewed with suspicion or as belonging to a CPC fifth column (“Powerful relations raises a red flag”, February 24-25). It is wrong and indeed damaging to Australia’s interests if people (Hamilton refers to unnamed powerful corporate figures) who have dealings with the CPC are to be looked upon as untrustworthy.

May 14, 2018

QUENTIN DEMPSTER. Now only 4 cents a day: ABC Board planning public campaign

A meeting of the ABC board in Sydney on Thursday is expected to plan a roadshow campaign to take its case for triennial funding to the public.

November 30, 2017

JERRY ROBERTS Parliamentary reform needs external drive

Privatisation and corporatisation of government services such as Australia Post have reduced the power and influence of the Parliament and made it less relevant to our daily lives. Parliamentary reform is important but needs to be seen as part of a bigger picture much bigger.

October 28, 2019

DAVID MORE. Has Health Minister Hunt Been A Bit Too Clever By Half On The #myHealthRecord?

Health Minister Hunt was probably hoping that loosing the recent election would allow him to escape having to work out what to do with the problem child of the MyHealthRecord. He and his party won and now he has to work out what to do next!

October 8, 2019

AMY GOODMAN and PATRICK COCKBURN. On the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish area in Syria. (Truthout 7.10.2109)

AMYGOODMAN: Lets start with the surprise announcement, after the phone conversation between Erdogan and Trump, that the U.S. is pulling back its troops for Turkey to attack in northern Syria. Explain what you understand is happening and the significance of this.

July 24, 2019

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL. Where have all the fighters gone?

The future of George Pell is in doubt but his shadow will remain for many years across the Australian Catholic Church. Through a rigged system he was able to effectively decide who became bishops in the Church. This was critical in appointments to the two most senior archdiocese in Australia, Sydney and Melbourne. Both Archbishop Fisher of Sydney and Archbishop Comensoli of Melbourne owe their appointments to George Pell. They are his proteges,his proxies. Anthony Fisher aged 59 has 15 years remaining as Archbishop in Sydney . Peter Comensoli aged 55 has another 20 years to run as the supremo in Melbourne .They are both very much part of the problem in the Catholic Church rather than part of any solution. But both Archbishops are likely to cling to the trappings of office that George Pell secured for them.

See below an address by George Pell eight years ago on the type of church that he was trying to build in Australia. It casts a long and dark shadow.

He gave this address on Authentic Catholicism vs Cafeteria Catholicism at the Catholic Voice Annual Dinner in Cork, Ireland on 29th July 2011. The following is the text of the address (slightly edited) from the current issue of the Catholic Voice newspaper.

John Menadue

January 23, 2018

ALLAN PATIENCE. Australia Day and all that.

The moral basis of contemporary Australian society is being squeezed dry by political opportunism and contempt for civic virtue among our political leaders. The ignorance those leaders demonstrate about the insult Australia Day has become for many Indigenous people is evidence that Australia has become a morally backward society.

July 9, 2019

CHRIS MCDONNEL. A cry from the depths

It is often said that the darkest night comes in the hour before dawn. Recently the Church has passed, and is still passing through, a night time experience. We await the dawn hour.

December 4, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS. Australian banks and the global financial system.

As we consider trivial matters such as which political party will form the government of Oz can we find time to look at the serious side of life? What is important? Banking and the world financial system for starters.

August 10, 2018

JERRY ROBERTS. Termites and other animals.

When West Australian Opposition Leader Mike Nahan appeared on the news under fire for dual citizenship I hope everybody else shared my reaction. Not again, I moaned. Surely, we had enough of this nonsense in the federal Parliament. Do we have to go through it in the States?

November 6, 2018

Systemically corrupt capitalism

Capitalism has been analysed to death in academia and elsewhere. Thus we know that capitalism is structurally conducive to exploitation, to the production and reproduction of class-based inequality, to the degradation of nature, and so on. Such analysis is of capitalism at its purist.Marginalised is the plunder. Widely acknowledged is the historical plunder that generated capital for the take-off. But when booty from brutal early colonialism, the slave trade and from enclosure of the commons feeds into capitalist mining, manufacture and agriculture, the naked plunder doesnt cease.

July 21, 2020

Are we but twiddling thumbs while waiting for a vaccine?

Spare a thought for Scott Morrison during these still early days of the struggle to rescue Australia, and Australians, from the effects ofCoronavirus.

January 6, 2020

IAN DUNLOP.-The real implications of climate emergency action

The drought and bushfires ravaging large parts of Australia are a foretaste of the climate emergency which, after three decades of inaction by our political and corporate leaders, is locked-in for years to come.

August 25, 2019

SR PATTY FAWKNER SGS. The Church to include or not to include?

Bostons gain has been Australias loss. Richard Lennan, a priest of the Maitland Diocese taught Theology at the Catholic Institute of Sydney for fifteen years before transferring to Boston College in 2008 where he now serves as Professor of Systematic Theology and Chair of the Ecclesiastical Faculty.

January 7, 2020

ALAN PEARS. My Climate Action Conundrum - beyond weak targets and Kyoto carryovers

Im all for being a team player. I pay taxes to help run our economy and society. I do volunteer work to support a caring society. But when a key player in the team lets us down, I feel torn. Do I keep contributing, because most people are still working together? Do I call the laggard out and pursue alternatives that are not undermined by the failure of one player? Or a bit of both? My carbon accounting conundrum is simple: if I save energy, invest in solar or take other emission-reducing actions, my personal emissions go down. But Australias, and global emissions dont.

September 20, 2018

MELISSA SWEET. Please support this crowdfunding campaign, so we can cover the 4th Peoples Health Assembly #PHA4.

Please consider supporting this crowdfunding campaign to enable Dr Lesley Russell to report for Croakey from a landmark global health meeting in Bangladesh from November 15-19 the 4th Peoples Health Assembly or #PHA4.

July 11, 2019

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE. US Foreign Policy Is A War On Disobedience (Medium, 7 July 2019)

In an excellent new essay titled Were Not the Good Guys Why Is American Aggression Missing in Action?, Tom Engelhardt criticizes the way western media outlets consistently describe the behavior of disobedient nations like Iran as aggressions, but never use that label for the (generally antecedent and far more egregious) aggressions of the United States.

October 31, 2018

RICHARD HOLDEN. The best way to boost the economy is to improve the lives of deprived students. (The Conversation 25.10.2018)

_What if we had an opportunity to double the size of the tourism industry, or to quadruple the size of the beef industry, or to boost the economy by more than any of the presently proposed tax switches?__What if we could do it while permanently improving the lives of disadvantaged young people?__We surely wouldnt let it slip away.__Yet we do every day while we fail to address the gap in school achievement between between rural, regional and remote children and their city counterparts.

May 15, 2018

HENRY REYNOLDS. The Fighting Retreat of the Anglo-Australians.

Australian budgets rarely make news in Britain. But the Sunday Times was moved to feature the Governments decision to commit just under $50 million to mark the 250th anniversary of Cooks arrival at Botany Bay in 1770. Two points were made. A new $26 million memorial was a token of Turnbulls defiance of this years protests about Australia Day and the graffiti daubed on the Cook statue in a Sydney park. Of more substance was the observation that the fulsome commemoration of Cooks voyage would re-affirm Britains importance to Australia.

January 15, 2018

GEORGE RENNIE. Australias lobbying laws are inadequate, but other countries are getting it right- A REPOST from June 23 2017

Lobbying is a necessary component of representative democracy, yet poses one of its greatest threats.

August 15, 2020

Sunday environmental round up, 16 August 2020

CO2, CO2, and CO2: an oil pipeline in the USA reopens, coal mines and CSG wells in NSW look for approval, Feds give green light to more emissions, gas flaring increases, while Texas mothballs its carbon capture and storage poster-child and blows the other states away with wind energy. French scientists use AI recognise individual Zebra Finches.

December 1, 2019

MICHAEL KEATING. Retirement Incomes Review: Part 1

The Mercer Global Pension Index rates the Australian retirement income system as number three in the world. Nevertheless, the Government has commissioned an independent Review, and this article and another tomorrow discuss whether and how our retirement income system might be improved.

July 23, 2018

VINCENT CHEOK. Understanding China and the Chinese - An Australian Perspective - Part 2.

America First is not necessarily Australia First. That is, leaving aside the biological or human tendencies to be tribal or sectarian etc, in my opinion, the Australian perspective, mindset and psyche as to how China and the Chinese are viewed must obviously be different from the Americans. It is and must in fact be based on our Australian historical experience and relationship and our close geographical and time zone proximity with China and the Chinese.

December 10, 2017

MICHAEL WEST. ATO data dump: naming and shaming the nations biggest tax cheats

The usual culprits are at play. Zero tax on $2.9 billion in revenue from Rupert Murdochs News Australia Holdings, not a zack from Wall Streets cuff-linked freebooters Goldman Sachs for the third year on the trot, same deal for brewing giant SAB Miller and a slew of other foreign multinationals.They are the really powerful foreign agents of influence.

October 24, 2019

DAVID ROWE. Truth goes to the knackery. (AFR 23.10.2019)

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal