There are few who think as clearly, who are as articulate, and who are prepared to speak out in the face of incredible stupidity in Australian politics as Paul Keating. And, as he made clear in his address to the press club this week, AUKUS is nothing if not an exercise in security policy stupidity.
Allan Patience
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Paul Keating excoriates AUKUS as exercise in security policy stupidity
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Unbalanced and unwise: Labor and the politics of warmongering
Where does Albanese stand when it comes to the latest attempts by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald to manufacture a new wave of anti-China hysteria in Australia? Is he amenable to the beating of the drums of war? Or does he have the intelligence to resist this dangerous nonsense? The omens are not good. (more…)
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It’s time to clean up the mess that is Australia’s higher education system
In recent Pearls and Irritations posts, James Guthrie, Adam Lucas and Alessandro Pelizzon have signalled the need for a Royal Commission into higher education in Australia. Their advocacy could not be timelier. (more…)
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Can Australia become a confident, independent country?
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy’s arrival as America’s ambassador in Canberra has thrilled Australians who think of her as American royalty. However, her appointment is small comfort for those Australians concerned about the future of the country’s alliance with the USA. (more…)
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The Turnbull and Morrison governments and the breakdown in Australia’s relations with China
The breakdown in relations between Canberra and Beijing during the years of the Turnbull and Morrison governments illustrates the emptiness of Australia’s claims to be a middle power in regional and global affairs. (more…)
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History repeats: Billy Hughes on Japan and now Scott Morrison on China
Our leaders are uneducated on history. They’re repeating mistakes that had catastrophic consequences for Australia in the Pacific in the 20th century. (more…)
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School curriculum overhaul needed for Australia to find its place in Asia
The failure to properly resource Asian studies in Australian schools and universities is a problem for Australia’s long-term security.
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It’s time for good independents to come to the aid of the country
It’s beginning to dawn on the Coalition that it’s perilously close to losing government. Labor MPs are also terrified by the thought of failing to win government.
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AUKUS confirms Australia as a forever colony
Since World War II, almost all independent states in South-East Asia have been shaped by successful anti-colonialist movements. Australia stands alone in the region, marked by a dominant political culture fixated in a colonial mind-set.
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Is Australia’s grand experiment in multiculturalism failing us all?
One of the greatest public policy innovations in Australia’s political history has been the large scale immigration programs commenced in 1947 under the Chifley government. The Menzies government grudgingly inherited the policy on the understanding that all immigrants would be assimilated into the community as “New Australians.” (Meanwhile, Prime Minister Menzies preferred to think of himself as “British to the bootstraps.”)
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Allan Patience: Is the Australian federation in danger of balkanisation?
The Morrison government’s dishonesty about obtaining sufficient anti-COVID vaccines and its reluctance to provide the nation with dedicated quarantine facilities threaten the cohesion of the Australian federal system. Is the historical shift of power to the federal government reversing as state premiers do their own thing in response to the immense public health crisis now confronting the nation?
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Now is the time for all good women to come to the aid of the country.
About their forthcoming book, Enough is Enough, Kate Thwaites and Jenny Macklin state: “… the underlying problem of men’s attitudes towards women, of men believing it is their right to assault or harass women, remains. For this to change, men will have to give up some of the harmful ways in which they use power – in the parliament and in our community.” They are right! In the federal parliament this means more women in more powerful positions arguing for major reforms that are now needed as never before. (more…)
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From multicultural Australia to cosmopolitan Australia?
One of John Howard’s more petty acts was to belime the idea of multiculturalism. Subsequent political leaders have been less cynical about the term. Malcolm Turnbull even boasted that Australia is the most successful multicultural society in the world. However, Howard did succeed in relegating multiculturalism to being a lower order issue on the country’s public policy agenda.
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Is the end nigh for the Australian public university?
The Morrison government has declared war on Australia’s public universities. They are accused of being hotbeds of post-modern rabble rousing and an unbearable burden on taxpayers. Government ministers and employers complain that graduates are not “work-ready”. The remarkable thing is the supine response to date from the universities themselves to these baseless and gratuitous insults.
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Scott Morrison. Politics and Pentecostalism 101
Scott Morrison’s personal religion is entirely his own business. However, given recent public statements about his beliefs, by himself and in the media, it is legitimate to ask about Pentecostalism in Australia and its relationship, if any, to politics and politicians. (more…)
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PNG: the colony Australia tries to forget
Australia’s ham-handed history of colonialism, in what today is the independent state of Papua New Guinea, began in 1883 when Queensland pre-emptively annexed the southeastern corner (Papua) of the great island of New Guinea in the name of the British Crown. (The British were not amused). (more…)
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On the death of PNG’s first PM, Sir Michael Somare
The death of Sir Michael Somare, first Prime Minister of PNG, has occasioned an outpouring of national grief and heartfelt obituaries for “the Father of the Nation”, “the Chief”. That he was, and remains, widely respected, even loved, across the country is beyond dispute. However, it is disturbing that the posthumous record presently being confected in the media and various halls of power has some of the hallmarks of a personality cult. A balanced account of Somare’s time in PNG’s politics is overdue.
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America is a foreign county for Australians
Scott Morrison: “The great thing about the United States, it is a great democracy and it does have great institutions and we have a deep and wide relationship with the United States which is incredibly important to Australia. We are both like-minded and [a]like in so many ways – our values, our partnerships, economics, security …” This is a myth. (more…)
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Charlie Hebdo: free speech or provocation?
Terrible events in France – a teacher beheaded, stabbings of innocent bystanders, and the shooting of a Greek orthodox priest – are recent examples of a clash of cultural identity systems that remain stubbornly alien to each other. It appears that hopes for a cosmopolitan world in which cultures converse amicably and learn from each other are fast fading as angry populists and fundamentalists take centre stage.
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Charlie Hebdo: free speech or provocation?
Terrible events in France – a teacher beheaded, stabbings of innocent bystanders, and the shooting of a Greek orthodox priest – are recent examples of a clash of cultural identity systems that remain stubbornly alien to each other. (more…)
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The hyper-masculinised culture of the Australian economy
With eminent justification, feminists have long criticised the patriarchal structuring of the Australian economy. Yet women continue to hold only a tiny fraction of CEO positions, board memberships and senior management appointments across the country.
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Your ABC is turning into their ABC
The combined savagery of the Murdoch media, the jejune fogies in the Young Liberals, their fogy elders on the extreme right, as well as their urgers in reactionary organisations like the Institute of Public Affairs, is culminating in an unhappy deterioration in the ABC’s programming and in the quality of its presenters.
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COVID-19’s lessons for Australia’s post-pandemic governance
The notion that government is the problem not the solution for the political failures of the late twentieth century was the most devious and destructive attack on representative government, ever. It’s time to bring government back to centre stage. (more…)
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The politics of the coming generation.
ANU’s 2019 Australian Electoral Survey showed that among young people in Australia today there is “evidence of a growing divide between the voting behaviour of younger and older generations”. (more…)
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Frydenberg, the hollow man: Thatcher and Reagan’s political grandson.
It has never been clear what ethical principles guide Josh Frydenberg’s politics. He appears to be a hollow man, especially with his recent declaration that he will look to the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan for inspiration to shape Australia’s economic future. (more…)
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Australia’s American dreaming is turning into a nightmare.
Since the signing of the ANZUS treaty in 1951, Australians have been living a dream that America shares their country’s cultural values, language and democratic institutions. They dream that they are safely cacooned in Tony Abbott’s beloved “anglosphere”, with the USA in the lead. As with all dreams, this fantasy has always had the flimsiest basis in reality. And today the dream is turning into a nightmare. (more…)
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Dan Tehan, BA (Hons): Biting the educational hand that fed him
Someone recently observed that Education Minister Dan Tehan is “as dumb as Peter Dutton”. Tehan’s latest foray into higher education policy certainly puts him in the same class as Dutton as a hoary wielder of a sledgehammer when it comes to making public policy. (more…)
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It’s time to reform Australia’s higher education system.
The drying up of international student numbers because of the coronavirus border closures, plus the Coalition government’s indifference (indeed, hostility) to universities, is undermining morale right across the country’s higher education sector. (more…)
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Dealing with China.
Scott Morrison and Marise Payne’s call for an international “independent” inquiry into the Coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the ham fistedness of the Morrison government’s approach to diplomacy. (more…)
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The Future is global.
The closing of borders because of the coronavirus pandemic has inflamed opinion around the world that the era of globalisation is coming to an end. Governments are raising the sovereignty flag, hunkering down behind their borders. (more…)