February 17, 2019

BARRY CASSIDY undercuts Liberal scare campaign over boats. (ABC Insiders)

This time the Coalition has over reached

August 22, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Born to rule and oppose.

It is really hardly surprising that Bill Shorten is proving reluctant to co-operate with the new government he so nearly toppled.

After all, when the Liberals were in opposition from 2010 t0 2013, they had a policy of remorselessly opposing anything and everything that the government suggested.

Tony Abbott extravagantly sauced Julia Gillards goose, and now Shorten is applying a touch of relish to Malcolm Turnbulls gander; What goes around comes around.

April 9, 2019

JOHN TULLOH. Uncertainty on the Bosphorous as Erdoan deals with a humiliating setback.

These are interesting times for Turkey, particularly for its president, Recep Tayyap Erdoan. For a man accustomed to a Winx-like winning run in elections, the recent municipal polls gave him a rare poke in the eye. His AKP coalition won the majority of votes, but lost the two biggest cities, Ankara and Istanbul - the latter subject to a recount. This is not a loss which can be shrugged off. They and other major cities won by the opposition represent two-thirds of Turkeys GDP as well as reflecting popular sentiment about the state of the country under Erdoan.

October 3, 2014

Mike Steketee. Abbott faces the reality of multicultural Australia

While many conservatives continue to hold to the Howard line against multiculturalism, Tony Abbott is adjusting to the reality that Australia is a multicultural country, writes Mike Steketee.

“The Australian Government will be utterly unflinching towards anything that threatens our future as a free, fair and multicultural society; a beacon of hope and exemplar of unity-in-diversity.”

This is how Tony Abbott expressed his defence of Australian values before the United Nations Security Council this week.

November 11, 2019

PETER BAUME. Our current drug policy is insane.

There is, in front of me, a book entitled Not my family: never my child. The title of that book is so right. WE are on the front line. We are affected. It is OUR families and our children who take these drugs. It is OUR children that suffer and die and cause us grief.

March 23, 2018

ANDREW FARRAN. The ASEAN Summit - lots of hyperbole and some successes

While the ASEAN summit was a public relations success it demonstrated to all that the only common factor in the group is that they belong to the one region. If tensions with China were to increase it might not last long as a group. With unresolved ethno-nationalist issues at play we cannot expect much change in relation to human rights or principled stances on sensitive diplomatic questions.

December 10, 2017

MARGARET BEAVIS. Will the Nobel Peace Prize change Australias double speak?

On December 10th the 2017 Nobel Peace Prizewas awarded to ICAN the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons - which was founded here in Melbourne in 2006. The Nobel Committee made the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.

December 21, 2018

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND

A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media

November 30, 2017

BOB DOUGLAS. Changing the Economic Narrative. How Feasible and How Soon?

What will it take to develop a new economy in Australia that seriously addresses the problems of human inequality and environmental degradation? What is required to place radical economic reform properly on the Australian political agenda?

March 26, 2019

ABUL RIZVI: Migration confusion again (Part 2)

Judith Sloan writing in The Australian (Were the big losers in this immigration numbers game) has called on the Morrison Government to do much more to drive down immigration, not just the migration program which is measured in terms of permanent visas granted, but also net migration which measures long-term and permanent arrivals minus departures.

March 14, 2019

IAN DUNLOP. The Elephant in the Election Room. The Immediate Existential Threat of Climate Change.(SMH 14.2.2019)

Human-induced climate change is happening faster than officially acknowledged. Extreme events intensify, particularly in Australia, Asia and the Pacific. Victoria and Tasmania are ablaze again. Queensland needs a decade to recover from recent floods. Much of SE Australia has become a frying pan, curtailing human activity. The economic and social cost is massive, as Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Guy Debelle warned us this week, but our leaders refuse absolutely to acknowledge climate change as the cause.

January 7, 2019

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Scott Morrison says the bible is not a policy handbook.

There was none of that namby-pamby nonsense about taking a cup of kindness for the sake of auld lang syne, or anyone else for that matter.Scott Morrison went straight on the attack to welcome 2019. My job our governments job – is to prepare Australia for any opportunity and eventuality, he bellowed.

October 30, 2018

IAN TRESISE. A View on the Need for Systemic Change in Health & Wellbeing Education

There is a very strong need in our community for a refreshing whole-of-government approach to confronting the major health issues of our day. This starts with the recognition that many of our political institutions were developed for an Industrial Age era, where a silo approach to delivering policy, exacerbated by a federated service delivery model, is no longer capable of dealing with the most pressing health issues of our time. These include the unconstrained tragedy of preventable non-communicable disease proliferation; which, according to a PwC study commissioned by Australian Unity, will be unsustainable in Australia as early as 2025.

The PwC report Practical innovation: closing the social infrastructure gap in health and ageing, paints a very sorry picture of the inadequacy of resources and political understanding and leadership as Australias population rapidly ages, calling for the need for a truly holistic approach to health and wellbeing, this should cover all aspects of government, not just be restricted to health.

October 9, 2019

SCOTT BURCHILL. Decoding Australian foreign policy

Some assistance is required for those trying to understand contemporary Australian foreignpolicy these days, especially those looking for consistency, principles and ethics which seemall too illusive. Below is a brief guide, one that generally holds regardless of whether theLNP or ALP is in power.

February 15, 2018

Admiral Harris : Ambassador or Viceroy?

The appointment of Admiral Harris as Ambassador to Australia raises serious concerns about the role he will play in the development of Australian strategic policy as we seek to maintain the sort of relationship with China and the US outlined in the White Paper.

November 7, 2016

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Paranoia about boat people and manufactured demagogic outrage.

There must surely be more to the governments latest assault on the boat people than simply crude wedge politics and gratuitous cruelty; but if there is, the Prime Minister is not saying at least not yet.

This, of course, is part of a long-standing tradition. When and where asylum seekers are concerned, nothing is to be revealed unless it is absolutely necessary, and not always then.

But Malcolm Turnbulls announcement last week that anyone seeking to arrive to Australia by boat after July 2013 is now to be banned from our fair shores always and forever seems more than usually puzzling. The boats stopped two years ago. So the new move is not only sadistic: the image of a jackboot trampling on the faces of the already defeated and helpless is hard to avoid. It is also, as Bill Shorten equivocally avers, ridiculous; and worse, it is almost certainly unworkable.

December 20, 2015

Michael Kelly SJ. As Holy Mother Church has always taught.

At times I have to pinch myself to be alert to whats going on right now in the Catholic Church and to fathom the depth of it.

Throughout history, we have seen change come abruptly. It happened in Europe and Japan after WWII.

And in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down when democracies emerged where only tyrannical regimes prevailed.

But in the Catholic Church change comes in a different way.

October 20, 2019

JOHN KERIN. We have no drought policy.

The current Coalition response to just another drought is pathetic,short term, divisive and dishonest. All it is doing is managing the drought politically.

November 14, 2019

GREG BAILEY. The New South Wales Fires, the National Party and Climate Change. PART 2

The intemperate language used by McCormack and Joyce points to the Nationals own desperation about their constituency. Equally it has given an opportunity to the prime minister to appear statesman-like and the ALP to remain silent. Both illustrate how politicians regard the attention span of the electorate in regard to worsening environmental conditions.

June 30, 2019

DAVID TIMBS. Australias bishops are presently visiting the Pope. . What are they telling him and will Aus tralias ordinary Catholics ever find out?

Australias bishops are currently in Rome for their regular ad limina visit to the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul . Their last visit was in 2011. While there they will meet Pope Francis, have meetings with many of the Vatican dicasteries (government departments), be briefed on Vatican policy, and in turn will background the Vatican bureaucrats on how they see the state of the Church in Australia. But what will they be telling the Pope and the bureaucrats? Will it accord with what Australias lay Catholics have been saying and thinking?

October 22, 2019

MICHAEL KEATING. The Increasing Divergence between Income and Wealth

Although economic growth, inflation and nominal incomes have all been sluggish for the last several years, asset prices have increased substantially. One consequence of this much faster rate of increase in asset prices than incomes is that wealth, rather than income has become the key driver of increasing inequality.

March 18, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The mob will always work you out.

It is not clear who said it first, but it quickly became a catchcry of the long-lived government of Bob Hawke: the mob will always work you out.

July 14, 2016

CAVAN HOGUE. NATO searches for role - with the help of Julie Bishop!

NATO was created to counter the Soviet Union but when the Soviet Union disappeared NATO did not follow suit so new enemies were required. Afghanistan was promoted by the USA because it harboured terrorists who attacked the USA. When the Taliban fought the Soviet Union the US provided weapons and support but the US now supported those opposed to the Taliban in a civil war. NATO plus Australia became involved in a country far from its heartland. Public rhetoric about moral factors clearly had nothing to do with it.

March 28, 2019

MARTIN WOLF. The Brexit delusion of taking back control (Financial Times 27.3.2019)

_From Beijing, where I now am, the UK looks small. It also looks as if it has fallen into the hands of lunatics engaged in an astonishing act of national self-harm.

October 1, 2018

REG LITTLE. Rethinking Australian Strategic Thinking on China.

Disarray and confusion amongst the values, ideals, narratives and mythologies of the English-speaking peoples will increasingly press Australia to choose between a familiar past tending to decline and disarray and a challenging and daunting China-focused future.

March 17, 2019

JOHN MENADUE. The crazed Brendan Tarrant did not operate in a vacuum. (See Postscript)

We now see the dreadful consequences in Christchurch of Islamophobia. There has been widespread hate speech against Muslims promoted not just by white extremist groups but also by politicians and the media.

February 19, 2016

Murdoch takes Abbott as his guest to President's banquet in US.

According to a report on Media Watch on 8 February, Rupert Murdoch brought Tony Abbott as his guest at a banquet in Washington which President Obama attended.

Several of the Murdoch papers in Australia suggested that this was a personal meeting between Tony Abbott and President Obama. It was nothing of the sort. It was a cocktail party and lunch attended by 100 guests and presumably President Obama shook Tony Abbott’s hand, but it seems it was nothing more than that.

July 26, 2019

Saturday's Good Reading and Listening for the weekend

A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media

October 14, 2019

The establishment strikes back at the deplorables. Part 4: Partisanship on steroids

The timing of the impeachment inquiry shows frustration. With uncharacteristic honesty, Democratic Representative Al Green confessed in May: Im concerned that if we dont impeach this president, he will get reelected. A speeded-up removal of Trump could well prove cathartic for the still-traumatised Democrats. In the Quinnipiac survey, respondents split 56-36 on whether the impeachment advocates are motivated mainly by partisan politics or are reacting to facts. The perception of partisanship by Republicans and independents will ensure the Senate doesnt bend to their whim and the country is left even more polarised and bitter.

March 7, 2019

JEFFREY SACHS. Green New Deal is feasible and affordable. (CNN online, 26.2.2019)

_There are three main ideas of theGreen New Deal Resolution introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey.

August 10, 2020

How big government and big companies erect communications barriers

We cant communicate with the entity except on terms dictated to us, and those terms are often weighted against us. This trend is so universal it must be deliberate. It surely increases disillusionment and even anger.

January 30, 2019

CHRIS BONNOR. Separating scholars in Australia's schools

The beginning of the school year is a time of excitement and expectation for students and their families: a new year, new friends, and often a new school. It is also exciting for teachers and school principals as they welcome returning and new students. Principals are always keen to know how many students they will have; higher enrolments mean more resources. But they are interested in much more

October 19, 2018

ERIC HODGENS. The Fifties Werribees Greatest Years.

Werribee’s fiftieth year as a scene of priestly training will also be its last. Nostalgia prompts deeper reflection. Our thesis is that the fifties were Werribee’s greatest years.

This article was published by Catholic View in October 2018.

June 5, 2018

LAURIE PATTON. Community tv - needed now more than ever.

Last week the Government announced a further two year extension on its deadline for community television stations to vacate their free-to-air spectrum. The death knell first rang back in September 2014 when then communications minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that all CTV licences would end in December 2015. Since then the sector has limped on courtesy of a series of last minute reprieves.

March 3, 2019

RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Ambiguity in Hanoi

The Trump-Kim summit began and ended in Hanoi on 28 February with Donald Trump peremptorily terminating his discussions with Kim Jong-un. According to media reports, Trump claims Kim demanded the lifting of all US-imposed sanctions in exchange for closing the nuclear complex at Yongpyon. Kim claims he only asked for a partial lifting of sanctions in exchange for closing Yongpyon. Speculation about all this is running hot among informed commentators.

September 19, 2018

JOE ASTON AND MYRIAM ROBIN. Clean hands? How five Scott Morrison supporters voted to get rid of Turnbull. (AFR 17.9.2018)

Make no mistake, this new PM stood by the last one just like he stood by the one before. Like Brutus stood by Caesar.

January 9, 2020

MICHAEL WEST.-Who Pays: should ordinary taxpayers foot the bill for bushfires or the fossil fuel giants who pay no tax?

Five of Australia’s top coal companies - Peabody, Yancoal Sumitomo, Citic and Whitehaven - racked up $54 billion in total income over the past five years and paid zero income tax in Australia, according to Tax Office corporate tax data. Fossil fuel companies should foot the bill for the fires, not ordinary taxpayers.

December 23, 2018

ERIC HODGENS. The True Christmas Spirit Embraces the New.

Christmas celebrates new life and a new world order. It is news of joy for all the people. Nervous or not, we are called to embrace the new and add it to our treasure.

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not see it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19)

March 24, 2019

MUNGO MACCALLUM. The Right get back to dog-whistling.

It didnt take long for the cultural warriors of the right to revert to form.

October 16, 2019

JOHN MENADUE. A Repost: Drug policy reform series

See link below to a collection of articles on drug policy reform, which were published as a series in Pearls and Irritations between 6 and 11 August 2018. This series was designed to draw attention to this important issue, and to the failure of our current policies.

The NSW Premier has told us again and again that she is not interested in drug reform. She wants to appear tough as more and more people die as a result of her policy failures.

October 7, 2018

WILLIAM BRIGGS The anti-China syndrome at work in far away Tasmania.

A little over a century ago, the world plunged into war. The call to nationalism, national identity and symbolism was carefully promoted. The conditions that created that war still echo. We see, today, an integrated global capitalism in contradiction to a powerful nation-state system. We see fears, animosities and distrust between peoples and states rise as those 1914 echoes reverberate. Once more, the seemingly benign Tasmanian landscape and population offers itself as a case-study in microcosm of global political and economic upheavals and controversies.

December 15, 2017

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND ...

In case you missed Geraldine Doogue last week on Saturday Extra, she conducted three thought-provoking interviews. First was Professor Julian Le Grand of the London School of Economics, on the possibilities of employee-led mutuals contracting to the public sector. Then Sarah Barker and Karl Mallon talked about how firms are incorporating climate risk into their financial analysis. And former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten warned about the politics of identity a political movement that savages democracy. He described how in Northern Ireland he developed practical methods to move beyond identity politics.

May 19, 2020

HENRY REYNOLDS. Between America and China?

In his Lowy lecture delivered in Sydney last October Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that Australia does not have to choose between the United States and China.

December 5, 2019

BRIAN TOOHEY. Reports of China spies and takeover plots are fanciful (SMH 5.12.2019)

Wildly exaggerated intelligence warnings about communist influence are not new in Australia. A US naval intelligence officer who was posted as an attache to the American embassy in the late 1940s, Stephen Jurika, reported back to Washington that communism was “rife in the highest governing circles” in Australia.

October 16, 2019

ALEX WODAK. What can be done to improve the safety of young people taking illegal drugs at youth music events?

Leaked recommendations from a NSW Coronial inquiry into the deaths of six young people after taking illegal drugs at youth music events highlights the resistance of Australian governments to harm reduction and their entrenched reliance on restricting the supply of drugs despite repeated failures of this approach.

May 20, 2020

MICHAEL KEATING. When should the budget deficit be unwound?

Australias present budget deficit is unprecedented, but it represents an appropriate response to the recession. The resulting debt does not present a future problem, and the deficit should only be unwound as private demand recovers.

October 4, 2014

Robert Mickens. Letter from Rome.

As I was saying last time, before I was interrupted, Pope Francis is facing resistance to the fresh air and change of ethos hes trying to bring about inside the Church. And those with eyes to see can detect this opposition especially among the current crop of seminarians and younger priests, as well as a number of bishops.

The resistance is coming from those that dont want to change, says Professor Andrea Riccardi, founder of the SantEgidio Community here in Rome. In an interview some months ago, he pointed out that many regular folks all over the world were still enjoying a honeymoon with Papa Francesco. And he predicted that it would not wane quickly because its much more substantial than a mere media phenomenon.

November 26, 2019

Is India still committed to its no-first-use nuclear policy? (The Strategist 11-11-19)

On 16 August, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh hinted that India might abandon its no-first-use policy: Till today, our nuclear policy is no first use. What happens in future depends on the circumstances.

May 30, 2018

ANDREW PESCE. Another School Shooting.

Our understanding that the Mayans and other civilizations once used human sacrifice in their ritual observances sits and contrasts uncomfortably with our sense of civilization. Apart from written history, we have access to more visceral experience of the horror: Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” depicts both the individual impact, and the larger scale trauma of the practice. Who, having seen it, can forget the scene of the terrified hero of the movie stumbling across a valley of literally heartless corpses, sacrificed to appease the angry gods?

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal