Much has been made of the theatrical stand-off between North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump. But most signs show that the two could quickly reach a deal on how to move forward with DPRK denuclearisation and economic development. The real tension is between Trump, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on one side, and White House figures, department secretaries and the US Congress on the other. (more…)
John Menadue
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JANE PERLEZ. Pence’s China Speech Seen as Portent of a ‘New Cold War’ (New York Times, 05.10.18)
BEIJING — Vice President Mike Pence’s accusations in a stinging speech Thursday warning of a tougher approach toward Beijing may have been familiar to China’s leaders. But until now, such remarks were delivered in private, in fairly decorous terms, and rarely threatened direct action. In Australia,another important ally, the government has been saying many of the same things as Mr. Pence,though in more muted tones. In some ways,Australia has been viewed in Washington as a test case of what China could get away with in a country with a strong economy and Western values The American and Australian intelligence agencies have consulted on what they see as the China threat,
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WAYNE MCMILLAN. Insecure work by another name
The NSW Business Chamber and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO) are leading the charge on behalf of employer business interests. It’s obvious that both their main concerns are to create a new class of insecure workers that can be dismissed at the whim of employers under the guise of better pay. Flexibility without security will only create a new underclass of workers who will be disadvantaged. (more…)
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CHRISTOPHER BROWNING. The Suffocation of Democracy (New York Review of Books, 25.10.18)
As a historian specializing in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and Europe in the era of the world wars, I have been repeatedly asked about the degree to which the current situation in the United States resembles the interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe. I would note several troubling similarities and one important but equally troubling difference. (more…)
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SALVATORE BABONES. Australia -the world’s first immigration economy.
Australia’s economy is addicted to immigration, requiring ever-increasing infusions of new people to stave off an inevitable collapse. (more…)
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PETER RYAN. ‘Big four’ accounting firms should face banking royal commission to prove independence, former ASIC investigator says (ABC News)
A former forensic investigator at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has called for the major accounting firms hired to audit and approve sensitive company reports to be brought before the financial services royal commission to prove their independence. (more…)
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RON GARDINER. Brisbane City Council’s Metro Madness
To address busway-congestion problems in central Brisbane, City Council plans to introduce, in 2023, a new and ‘distinctive’ form of public transport. Priced at approximately $1 billion, the project has the inappropriate name Brisbane Metro (common definition: a railway system, usually underground). Three aspects of Brisbane Metro are cause for urgent concern – choice of vehicle, proposed river-crossing route, and pervasive use of deception in promoting the project. The first two stem directly from Council’s aborted 2016 light rail project. (more…)
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MICK PALMER. The drug trade has just kept getting bigger,more dangerous and more prosperous.
The facts are clear. For over half a century our governments have relied heavily on law enforcement to curb the drug trade and reduce drug use. However, despite huge funding, ever increasing levels of police effectiveness and genuine effort, and the imposition of very lengthy prison terms for serious drug offences, the drug trade has just kept getting bigger, more dangerous and more prosperous. The simple over-riding fact is that, with the best intentions in the world, as former Chief Commissioner Ken Lay said when head of then PM Tony Abbott’s Ice Task Force, we cannot arrest and imprison our way out of our present dilemma. We must be prepared to try new ideas and approaches. (more…)
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TIM COSTELLO. The Alan Jones-Opera House row proves Sydney is in thrall to the gambling industry (the Guardian, 07.10.18)
Is this the tipping point? Will we one day look back and thank Alan Jones for drawing attention to the disgrace that is Sydney’s capture by the gambling industry with his nasty hectoring of Opera House CEO Louise Herron? (more…)
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JONATHAN PAGE. How Buddhism helped this cancer doctor care for his dying patients (ABC Science interview)
Medical oncologist Jonathan Page says being more in the moment helps him to be a better doctor. His relationships with his patients were once characterised by “coldness…. and a lack of grieving”. But a mental health crisis that led him to Buddhist meditation helped change that.
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SAM BATEMAN. Understanding American Freedom of Navigation Operation(FONOP) in the South China Sea
The recent encounter between American and Chinese warships in the South China Sea could be the fore-runner of more serious incidents unless both parties show more restraint. (more…)
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GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. 80 years after Munich.
The 80th anniversary of the Munich Agreement passed without significant comment, although it was a pivotal event of the 20h Century. Perhaps it’s time for me to commit the ultimate political incorrectness and confess that I am a Municheer. I mean that if I had been there instead of a four year old in Brisbane, I would have cheered to the echo in the House of Commons as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that Hitler had invited him for the fateful meeting in Munich on 27-28 September 1938. When Chamberlain brought home the Munich Agreement which ceded the Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich, then it would continue, I would have joined the ecstatic Londoners as Chamberlain blathered on about ‘peace with honour’ and ‘peace in our time’. I would have approved President Roosevelt’s cable to Chamberlain: ‘Good man’. (more…)
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GRAHAM ALLISON. The Myth of the Liberal Order: From Historical Accident to Conventional Wisdom.
Among the debates that have swept the U.S. foreign policy community since the beginning of the Trump administration, alarm about the fate of the liberal international rules-based order has emerged as one of the few fixed points. From the international relations scholar G. John Ikenberry’s claim that “for seven decades the world has been dominated by a western liberal order” to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s call in the final days of the Obama administration to “act urgently to defend the liberal international order,” this banner waves atop most discussions of the United States’ role in the world.
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NILE BOWIE. The world according to Mahathir.
Malaysian premier is re-emerging as a strident yet pacifist spokesman for the non-aligned interests of the developing world. (more…)
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JAMES FERNYHOUGH. Morrison’s willingness to tell brazen untruths proves he is just like Donald Trump (the New Daily, 03.09.18)
Australia’s new prime minister Scott Morrison showed this week he has mastered one of US President Donald Trump’s most amazing tricks: the ability to make claims he and every one else knows are complete nonsense – and to make them with total impunity. (more…)
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Overreaction in the South China Sea when US influence is waning and Chinese influence is rising
The present and recent Australian Governments seem to have become victims of their own China and Russia phobias.
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MARTIN WOLF. Donald Trump is wrong: China is not Mexico (Financial Times)
“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win.” This tweet of March 2 set out the aims and means of Donald Trump’s trade policy.
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Susan Reid reviews ‘Adani and the War Over Coal’ by Quentin Beresford and ‘The Coal Truth’ by David Ritter (Australian Book Review, October 2018
Who can forget the image of Scott Morrison, as federal treasurer, juggling a lump of lacquered coal in parliament on 9 February 2017? Appearing pretty chuffed with his own antics, Morrison urged people not to be afraid. Eighteen months later, the jester is now prime minister. His ascension results from one of the most undignified and ill-conceived political coups in Australia’s political memory. The Liberal Party clambers from the rubble of its bitter internal ruptures with the same foot soldiers of big coal even more prominent. (more…)
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NICK BRYANT. How right-wing Scott Morrison became Australia’s sixth prime minister in 11 years.
It’s a measure of how far Australian conservatism has turned towards the Trumpian that Morrison was considered the mainstream candidate.
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JAMES FERNYHOUGH Scott Morrison is either lying about carbon emissions, or just plain ignorant (the New Daily, 02.10.18)
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia is on track to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target “in a canter”. But it’s not, and Mr Morrison is either being blindly optimistic or he is an outright liar. More fake news from Scott Morrison. (more…)
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PETER WHITEFORD. Relax. The divide between the taxed and the ‘taxed-nots’ isn’t new and doesn’t buy elections.
Might government benefits, and government employment, be a self sustaining machine – one in which those who benefit from government payments deliver the votes needed to ensure they continue? (more…)
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STEPHEN LONG. Tesla battery proves a leading source of dispatchable power, AEMO says .
Scott Morrison said it would be about as useful for the electricity system as the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour or the Big Prawn at Ballina in NSW. He has a habit with fake news. (more…)
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CHARLES LIVINGSTONE. Keeping the mates at arm’s length in the gambling industry.
The Grattan Institute’s report on access and influence in Australian politics, ‘Who’s in the room?’, comes at a time when the reputation of politicians and the political system seems to be plumbing new depths. (more…)
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DAVID ISAACS. Pervasive refusal syndrome and Nauru
Fatima was a happy child who loved school and was a top student. She was 11 years old when she took to her bed, stopped eating and drinking, covered her head with the sheet, stopped washing and started wetting the bed. For months she would not or could not get out of bed and had to be carried to the toilet. She would not speak to her parents or friends. After over 5 years on Nauru, almost half her life, she had lost control of her destiny, had lost all hope and had lost the will to live. When she was transferred to Australia with her mother she needed tube-feeding for a week to maintain hydration and needed walking aid for two months to move around. She gradually began to eat, drink, wash and toilet herself and to socialise. She remained a hospital inpatient for two months and is expected to need several more months of outpatient treatment. (more…)
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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. (more…)
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GERALDINE DOOGUE, AMY DONALDSON. Bill Hayden explains why he decided to be baptised.
Apart from being Australia’s second longest-serving governor-general and introducing the first version of Medicare, Bill Hayden is probably best known for being a vocal and even hostile atheist. (more…)
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JOHN ELDER. Gas leak: Government tries to release its greenhouse news on the quiet.
The Morrison government stands accused of trying to sneak-release the latest greenhouse gas emission figures – they’ve gone up, again – by making them public on the eve of the footy grand finals. (more…)
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PAUL BONGIORNO. No Friend But The Mountains
When John Minns asked me to help launch No Friend But The Mountains in Canberra I was honoured, because I was aware of Behrouz Boochani’s journalistic work in The Saturday Paper. Now that I have read the book I am humiliated. (more…)
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JOHN GOSS. Health care is getting cheaper (unless you need a specialist, or a dentist) (the Conversation, 28.09.18)
Public and private health expenditure amounted to 10.3% of gross domestic product in 2016-17, almost exactly the same percentage as in 2015-16, according to figures released today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (more…)
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NICK BISLEY. The risks of a new Cold War between the US and China are real: here’s why (the Conversation, 26.08.18)
Donald Trump is making good on his trade war rhetoric with China, announcing tariffs on a further US$200 billion worth of goods from the PRC. As China promises retaliation, the warmth of the Mar-a-Lago summit of April 2017 is a thing of the past. When this is added to the wide-ranging tensions such as the disputes over barely habitable rocks in the East China Sea, tensions over the competing claims in the South China Sea, and the spectre of nuclear catastrophe on the Korean Peninsula, the sense of geopolitical risk is as palpable as it is frightening. (more…)