In attempting to predict how Scott Morrison will develop as a foreign policy Prime Minister, the obstacles in his way should first be noted. While his potential authority within the party room is considerable, he lacks the foreign policy experience of previous Prime Ministers such as Menzies, Whitlam, Hawke and Rudd. (more…)
Australians have suffered greatly because of the free-market fundamentalism that has been running riot across the political landscape for nearly half a century. Neoliberalism has at last run its destructive course. It’s time for a new era of public policy reconstruction for which a democratic socialist agenda has much to offer. (more…)
Deeply ingrained into Australia’s collective psyche is the naïve conviction that the United States is the country’s most important, entirely reliable, and utterly benevolent ally. This obsequious sentimentalism was embarrassingly expressed in the words of former Prime Minister John Howard: “The relationship we have with the United States is the most important we have with any single country. This is not only because of the strategic, economic, and diplomatic power of the United States. But of equal, if not more significance, are the values and aspirations we share.” (more…)
In his 2014 book Dangerous Allies, Malcolm Fraser issued Australians with a timely warning. He pointed out that the America with which Australia had signed the ANZUS treaty way back in 1951 is a very different country to the “great and powerful friend” we imagined it to be at the end of World War II. Its internal politics are riven with religious fundamentalisms, factionalised political parties, gun-toting madmen culturally and politically licensed by the NRA and elements in the Republican Party, narrowly-conceived identity politics, worsening economic divides, decaying cities, a class-based culture of populist resentment, and major cultural and political differences emerging among the states in the Union. (more…)
Like all mainstream, once-reforming parties in the liberal democracies, the ALP’s base has shrunk, mainly to inner-city dwellers with progressive views on issues like same-sex marriage and climate change. These people – many with university degrees and professional careers – incline to supercilious indifference, even hostility, when confronted by the resentful prejudices, religious fundamentalisms, and sense of exclusion of people struggling in industrial suburbs, on the fringes of cities, or in regional areas across the country. The relatively privileged “elites” have little compassion for, or understanding of, what motivates once rock-solid Labor voters to turn to the likes of Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer – or to the Coalition. (more…)
In the foreword to this harrowing narrative about asylum seekers incarcerated on Manus Island, Australian author Richard Flannagan writes: “Reading this book is difficult for any Australian. We pride ourselves on decency, kindness, generosity, and a fair go. None of these qualities are evident in Boochani’s account of hunger, squalor, beatings, suicide and murder.” Flanagan has put his finger on an ugly irony in Australia’s national self-imagining. Many Australians would be amazed that they might not be viewed as decent, kind, and generous folk with an acute sense of social justice. Aren’t they a people intuitively practising the virtues of mateship and egalitarianism? Don’t they thumb their noses at pretentious authority? Aren’t they a great sporting nation? Aren’t they universally acclaimed as the most successful multicultural country in the world? Aren’t they famous for their plain-speaking, robustly democratic life-style – they of the ‘lucky country’, the land of barbeques, beaches and long weekends? What’s not to love about them?
Acting on references from attorneys-general, the independent Australian Law Reform Commission and its state government equivalents review and recommend reforms to existing laws, and/or identify where new laws are necessary. When it comes to the Australian Constitution, the highest level of law in the country, the case for an independent constitutional reform commission along similar lines to law reform commissions has never been stronger.
When Scott Morrison announced that the Sydney Opera House was the “biggest bill board in the country” he displayed a crass mindset straight from the commercialized anti-culture of the neoliberal era. Plastering a racing industry advertisement across the sails of the Opera House meant nothing more to him other than a great marketing opportunity. It didn’t occur to him that it amounted to the vandalising of a culturally sacred place. (more…)
Good teachers are equal to good parents in any civilized society. They are infinitely more important than politicians, civil servants, professionals, business people, media commentators, celebrities and sports stars all put together. (Good nurses come a very close second.) Yet they remain among the least valued, respected and rewarded for the amazingly vital work they perform. While concern about the quality of students enrolling in teacher education programs in our universities is warranted, it’s time to address the low status accorded the teaching profession. It also means asking some searching questions about how up-and-coming teachers are being taught in universities. (more…)
Time is running out for the Liberal Party and the Coalition as the 2019 federal election looms. The change of Prime Minister from Malcolm Turnbull to Scott Morrison was a classic example of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Opinion polls have consistently shown that the Coalition is running significantly behind Labor. Can anything be done to save at least some of the furniture? Not much. But some face-saving possibilities hover in the background. (more…)
The archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher OP is the nominal head of the Australian Catholic Church – despite the fact that Melbourne is the largest and arguably the most intellectually lively diocese in the country. Fisher is seen by many as an authoritative spokesperson for his brother bishops, priests and religious. So, his 2018 Christmas message offered him a golden opportunity to reach out inclusively, positively and generously to his fellow Catholics and to all people of good will across the wide brown land. In the event, he managed to disappoint, even anger, just about everybody except for the small reactionary clique gathered around him and around like-minded cronies in the hierarchy. (more…)
It will require a Herculean effort to clean out the greed, corruption, sense of entitlement, selfishness and ideological blindness at the “commanding heights” of Australia’s government, economy and society. The banking royal commission has exposed merely the tip of this ugly reality. In business, in the professions, in the media and in politics, many of those at the top are the custodians and reproducers of a culture that is morally fetid. They remain obsessed with themselves, their cronies, their salaries and bonuses, their perks of office. (more…)
Can Scott Morrison inspire the nation to reach for a better future for our children and grandchildren? Does he have a vision for the country? Or is he floundering as he tries to ride two tigers simultaneously – his right foot on the back of the alt-right tiger with Tony Abbott’s rictal grimace spread across its face; his left foot on the back of a tiger of panicking moderates? If the tigers head off in opposite directions, Morrison will fall flat on his face. (more…)
If the 2007/08 Global Financial Crisis wasn’t sufficient evidence that something is deeply pathological within the contemporary capitalist system, then Ken Henry’s at times truculent, at times ruminative responses to questioning before the Financial Services Royal Commission should provide food for thought. He pinpointed some serious defects that have grown like virulent cancers across the finance industry in this country. The economic blinkers blinding our big bank officials are being stripped away and they don’t like what they are at last being forced to acknowledge. The Royal Commission’s work has revealed in lurid detail, that contemporary capitalism in Australia has run amok. (more…)
The results of the Victorian State election are devastating for right-wing politics right across Australia. It is now blindingly obvious that the policies that they have been spruiking are irrelevant to mainstream voters. It is as if the Coalition parties presently exist in a parallel political universe, hermetically sealed off from the everyday opinions and needs of contemporary Australian voters. It’s time for the Liberal Party leadership to understand that the party is no longer a “broad church” embracing liberals and so-called conservatives.
The increasingly phalangist tendencies of the alt-right rump in the party (along with their mates in the National party and News Ltd) have to be jettisoned once and for all. Moreover, it’s time for the political right in Australia to understand that their obsessively bullying minions in the Murdoch media are frankly impotent. Australian voters have well and truly moved on from the pugnacious pontificating that stains the reporting and analysis in most of the Murdoch outlets. (more…)
Australia’s conservative leaders are proving to be increasingly unattractive to voters because in its ranks are those who have no other way of making an honest living other than to live off politics (for example, Pauline Hanson), those who are all about settling old and irrelevant scores (for example, Tony Abbott), and those whose monstrous political cynicism will never change (for example, Peter Dutton). Coalition members are waking up to the fact that electoral oblivion may now be staring them in the face. (more…)
In his famous essay “Politics as a Vocation” the great German scholar Max Weber explained that the kinds of people who tend to become politicians lie along a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are those who “live off politics.” They are there to boost their own egos and serve their own interests and the narrow interests of those who subsidize them. They see politics as a profession – a means for accruing status, power and material rewards entirely for themselves and their cronies. At the other end of the spectrum are those who ”live for politics.” They are dedicated to serving the community – to defend justice, fairness, and the wellbeing of all. The people in this latter group see politics as a vocation – a sacred calling. (more…)
The Murdoch media and its political minions in the Coalition have declared that Bill Shorten is conducting a class war against hardworking Australian “aspirationalists”. The pseudo-conservatives in the media and the parliament equate Labor’s opposition to their taxation policies with seriously undermining the Australian economy while destabilizing Australian society. (more…)
CEDA (the Committee for Economic Development of Australia) has recently published a report (Community Pulse 2018: The Economic Disconnect) that shows that “there is a disconnect between Australia’s strong economic record and the community’s sense of having shared in the growth” (p. 5). The report adds to others that show that today a majority of Australians is deeply distrustful of politicians and political parties; that there is disillusionment (particularly among young people) with the ideals of democracy; and that socio-inequality is increasing in Australia today. It is bizarre that the political class seems oblivious to the very serious problems inherent in these findings. (more…)
Grimly ideological neoliberals in the ranks of the young fogies at the Liberal Party’s recent federal council sponsored a motion to privatise the ABC. In an astonishing display of shooting themselves in the foot, the old fogies present (including Ministers Mitch Fifield and Julie Bishop) glumly and dumbly let the motion pass, thereby handing the Turnbull government a hefty political migraine for the by-elections on 28 July and the coming general election. (more…)
There is a crisis in Papua New Guinea’s university system. Universities are devastatingly under-resourced and under-performing. The bizarre persecution of PNG University of Technology’s Vice-Chancellor, Dr Albert Schram, also points to a disastrous governance breakdown at university council level. Can the Australian university sector do anything to help? Yes it can. (more…)
The Italian election has shown, very clearly, that ordinary voters are deeply angry with mainstream politicians and political parties. What is true of Italy is also true of Australia. The political class sneeringly dismisses voter anger as “populism”, blindly believe it will evaporate once voters come to their senses. They’re wrong. Anger is mounting exponentially across the country. Voters are looking for alternatives – any alternative – than to vote for the narcissists currently governing us. This poses a serious danger to the political system – but it also offers a golden opportunity for Labor. (more…)
A rising chorus can be heard in Australia voicing fears about China’s alleged intrusions into our domestic affairs. There are disturbing echoes in all this of a narrative about a dangerous China lurking in the interstices of Australia’s society and economy. These echoes need top be addressed before we can have an intelligent debate about how to respond to China’s re-emergence as a great power and how our foreign policy can be revised to prevent Australia being drawn into great power rivalries in the Asia Pacific. (more…)
Malcolm Fraser’s lucid case for Australia to strike out independently from the USA in its foreign and defence policies (Dangerous Enemies, MUP 2014) pointed to a vitally important fact. The America we signed the ANZUS treaty with in 1951 is absolutely no longer the America with which Malcolm Turnbull would have us joined at the hip today. It is time to face the fact that the contemporary USA is a major threat to Australia’s security and prosperity. It’s time to replace ANZUS with a more mature agreement that will not constrain Australia’s independence. (more…)
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. (more…)
How do we explain the phenomenon of a Bernie Sanders, who almost certainly would have won the US presidency if he’d been the Democrat candidate running against Trump? How do we account for the astounding failure of, first, David Cameron and now Theresa May, to maintain the Conservative Party’s dominance of contemporary British politics? How is it that a political maverick like Jeremy Corbyn can drag a recalcitrant British Labour Party kicking and screaming to the brink of government in the UK? These questions point to the failure of old politics and the urgent need to imagine a new politics for progressing the West into the twenty-first century. (more…)
Three political heavy weights loom threateningly over 2018: Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. All three lead dangerous nuclear-armed states. All three have elephantine egos squashing their intellects. As ultimate narcissists, each believes that his nation is embodied in himself (“L’état c’est moi!”). In this respect they are political dinosaurs because the problems that imperil their countries today – and the entire globe – require of today’s leaders a truly global vision. Their political extinction is much to be desired, but is depressingly unlikely. Whom among this ugly triumvirate can Australia trust as the New Year unfolds? (more…)
That there are groups of disaffected and anti-social youths of Sudanese (and other) origin in Melbourne is not in dispute. What is at issue is the way it is being handled by the yellow press and by right wing politicians. (more…)
The neoliberal war on western economies is finally collapsing under its own contradictions. In Australia its attacks on public wellbeing have been devastating. Politicians in thrall to the neoliberal ideology have vandalized manufacturing industries. Productivity and wage levels remain static. Inequality has ballooned while CEOs have plundered profits to enrich themselves while depressing workers’ wages and returns to shareholders. Neoliberalism was the midwife of the Global Financial Crisis and is the ugly sister of alt-right extremism, populism and racism in all the advanced economies – witness Trump in the USA and Brexit in the UK. The good news is that its end is nigh. What, then, is the way forward? (more…)
Founded in 1992 by former Cocoa-Cola Amatil executive and later Australian consul-general in New York, Phil Scanlon, the Australia America Leadership Dialogue (AALD), in its own words, “brings together Australian and American leaders from government, enterprise, media, education and the community to help review and refine the parameters of the Australian-American bilateral relationship.” The motivations of those attending these no doubt convivial gathers appear to be taken for granted. Should they? (more…)