Allan Patience

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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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…)

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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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…)

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…)

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…)

Australia has been leaderless since the federal election last May. (more…)

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. (more…)

Maybe Australians took to Scott Morrison during the election campaign for two main reasons: (1) He was not Bill Shorten; (2) He cunningly presented himself as an authentic bloke, a “daggy dad”, Mr Mainstream. There were no airs and graces. He was happy to be photographed goofily playing amateur soccer or wearing a baseball cap not so subtly in the style of Donald Trump. He made sure never to appear superior to ordinary “Mums and Dads”. He cleverly claimed to be the champion of the “quiet Australians” getting on with their lives outside the “Canberra bubble.” The remarkable fact is that all of this is shonky. Scott Morrison is not what he seems. (more…)

The Morrison government is cleaving ever more closely to the USA, asserting that the two countries have shared values and aligned interests. Meanwhile it has taken to lecturing China about human rights abuses and emphasising how the values of the Chinese Communist Party are anathema to Australia’s cultural values and democratic politics. (more…)

The Guardian’s political editor, Katherine Murphy, recently observed that Scott Morrison and his band of merry ministers were recklessly ignoring the most pressing policy issues while making a pretence of being in opposition. Labor, the Morrisettes insist, is responsible for all the country’s woes, giving the impression that somehow Labor is still in power. (more…)

Recently a report commissioned by Education Minister, Dan Tehan, recommended a tightening of the criteria by which any tertiary education institution can call itself a university. (more…)

The election loss in May devastated the ALP. The loss was made worse as the party realised that those voters who were heartily fed up with the shenanigans of the Liberal-National Coalition had nonetheless avoided turning to Labor. Since then, Labor MPs and the administrative machine of the party have been licking their wounds while trying to work out what went so horribly wrong. (more…)

So, QANTAS CEO Alan Joyce’s annual salary is now some $24 million dollars. This is over three hundred times the average Australian salary. Other CEOs are also being paid well into the tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile the wages of the vast majority of Australian workers are flat-lining as the cost of living relentlessly heads upwards. (more…)

During his recent visit to Australia, the American International Relations scholar, Professor John Mearsheimer, warned his Australian hosts that the United States superpower would not tolerate any serious deviation by Canberra away from the ANZUS alliance – for example, by aligning with China against the USA. He was echoing George W. Bush’s warning that “you’re either with us [the USA], or against us.” Mearsheimer’s message was brutally clear: Australia has no choice other than to remain a loyal ally of the USA, come what may, even in the Trump era. His policy prescriptions were absurdly simplistic and morally repugnant.   (more…)

There has been talk of late about Australia’s values which are said to parallel the values of related countries, especially America and Britain. Implied in this talk is a view that these values characterise civilised – even superior – nations, in contrast to certain countries in our region, especially China. However, precisely what constitutes Australia’s values is not coherently addressed by their advocates, many of whom appear unconcerned that their values narrative contains echoes of the old white Australia policy, with all its insular, racist and xenophobic connotations. (more…)