Jack Waterford

The onion juice sometimes obscures the inconvenient, or unspeakable truths (more…)

The courts, DPP and justice officials agree to deny FOI access to trial transcripts. Criticism of their roles can thus be called ill-informed. (more…)

Britain’s ‘war’ on organised crime is failing, and it’s probably the same here

Some fresh and depressing evidence for those who, like me, fear that federal law enforcement is a good deal less effective and efficient than it could be, because of the way its resources are configured, led, and under the close and very unaccountable supervision of ministers and bureaucrats. (more…)

Australian politicians given to complaining that unelected judges are usurping the functions of ministers and of parliament would do very well to study this week’s British Supreme Court ruling holding the prorogation of the British Parliament by the Queen at the prime minister’s request to be null and void. (more…)

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I wouldn’t hang a dog on the evidence so far assembled in support of the proposition that Gladys Liu, Liberal MP for Chisholm, is an active agent of the Chinese government, engaged in nefarious and illegal activities against Australia. On the other hand, one cannot help cynically feeling that were Ms Liu to be accused, in China with similar evidence to that presented here of being an agent for Australia, she would probably be summarily convicted and shot. (more…)

50 years of public disclosure has never harmed the national security interest

Brian Toohey is a great Australian journalist who, over 50 years, has mostly rated the public’s right to know as being more important than what politicians and public servants have thought the national security interests of the state. He has often embarrassed governments with disclosure about what is being secretly said and done on their behalf. (more…)

NSW Labor’s little embarrassment in front of its Independent Commission Against Corruption has a bad look, temporarily takes attention away from problems festering the Berejiklian government and had led to the fall of yet another NSW Labor General Secretary in murky circumstances. AS is usual in NSW, whichever party is involved, brown paper bags come into it. Still, all in all, it is almost the scandal one has to have if one is going to have a scandal, because it is very unlikely that the NSW Liberal Party will be very interested in making political capital of it. (more…)

We’ve lost influence over China and the US, and over Hong Kong and Kashmir and the world may be slipping into recession.

It is beginning to look as if we are drifting, more or less without a pilot, into the interesting times of the old Chinese curse. As one might expect, given our luck, the damnable thing is that there is almost no way that Australia can now much influence or affect a host of events with the capacity to completely change our fortunes. (more…)

Ministers and bureaucrats seem only able to manage spot fires, not policy review beyond three-word-slogans.

Ken Hayne, the former High Court judge who conducted the banking royal commission is quite right in suggesting that the political and bureaucratic system is broken, and in need of fundamental reconstruction. But some of those wisely nodding their heads, or shaking them, according to their immediate partisan advantage, are missing a part of the point: it’s the car that’s broken; it’s not the driving he is criticising. (more…)

Where were the former politicians and apparatchiks who became Packer lobbyists when the spotlight focused on Crown? (more…)

How the new AFP chief juggled his role during an investigation that compromised his own superior

Reece Kershaw, the new Australian Federal Police Commissioner deserved to get the appointment via an open and independent appeal process. He might well have won it, and, assuming that he did, would be walking into the job in a few months confident that he was not facing the jealousies, innuendo and sabotage from colleagues who believe their merits were not considered, or that the selection was contaminated by “politics.” (more…)

The ‘old-fashioned cop’ type Dutton is said to want are mostly known for preferring their prejudices to the facts.  (more…)

Australia must have an independent defence policy as American power in Asia and the Pacific wanes. But there’s no reason to think us friendless.

Hugh White is travelling the nation’s highways and byways trying to scare Australians out of their complacency about the nation’s security  — not least by raising again the prospect of Australia’s being naked and abandoned, particularly by our once great and once powerful friend, our bones being picked over by China, or perhaps Indonesia. (more…)

Australia yet again at the bottom of the democracies for standards of public conduct, and the will to enforce them.   (more…)

Right now Labor is preoccupied with its defeat and is not the major obstacle to coalition survival.  (more…)

Climate change is no longer a matter of dry debate: it’s already a bigger threat to our national security than war and trade tension in our region. (more…)

As usual with a leak inquiry, it’s not clear that the AFP means to solve the crime. It could be too embarrassing. 

(This article was posted two weeks ago in the Canberra Times but it is still very relevant. JM) (more…)

Bob Hawke’s lasting monument is the Australian society of today. A modern open economy, which he skippered out of sheltered waters, for good or ill, mostly good, into the open sea. Reformed national institutions, some now, sadly, in poor shape again. (more…)

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It was hard to avoid the feeling this week that Terry Moran has a much better take on the problems of modern government and public administration than the review of the public service commissioned by Malcolm Turnbull last year.  And Pearls and Irritations is “ Australia’s best website focused on policy issues’ ! (more…)

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