The Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration (ADFM) expanded its membership, deepened its policy contributions to the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime (Bali Process) and developed its connection to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at its meeting in Jakarta from 5-7 March 2017. (more…)
John Menadue
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BOB BIRRELL and DAVID McCLOSKEY. Sydney and Melbourne’s housing affordability crisis: no end in sight.
Our projections show that, on these demographic assumptions, new migrants will add about 64 per cent to the need for extra dwellings in Sydney over the decade 2012 to 2022 and 54 per cent in Melbourne. (more…)
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TOM BURTON. Data rights for all.
A proposed new legal right for consumers and businesses to control and access the data created about them is set to be one of the major reforms of this decade. Not everyone is supportive. (more…)
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TIM COLEBATCH. Old coal, no new gas: how to generate an electricity crisis.
We need to set a timetable to reduce emissions from electricity generation, which now contributes a third of Australia’s greenhouse gases – and, by and large, the third that will be easiest and cheapest to reduce. We need price mechanisms to drive it.
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JOHN MENADUE. Alexey Navalny has roused a democratic Russia. Turnbull and Bishop are too busy sleeping to care.
In Australia we conjure Russia through the basest of filters: take your pick of Pauline Hanson expressing her admiration for Russia’s autocrat Vladimir Putin, or of the sometime boxer-sometime- Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s vows to ‘shirtfront’ said autocrat. (more…)
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MICHAEL D. BREEN. Bullying Documentary on ABC Television March 14 & 21
Bullying is an epidemic. Bullying is a complex social matter. Systemic problems need systemic remedies. There is a wealth of international research available. Good will and enthusiasm are insufficient treatment qualifications; even if the presenter is a national good guy. Is it acceptable to test drive a dubious procedural treatment on T.V.? Would it be acceptable for an unproven surgical procedure?
If the ABC is to ask vulnerable individuals to be interviewed about personal and family sufferings, producers need to be able to justify that the repeated pain is worth it. Otherwise suffering is increased and informed viewers squirm. (more…)
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The Australian does it again, and again, and again.
Media Watch on 27 March 2017 described the unprofessional behaviour of the Australian and journalist Graham Lloyd over the reporting of the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. The Media Watch story follows. (more…)
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KELLIE TRANTER. Unreasonable silence
So what are we left with? The burial of truth. A closed bloc hunkered down in Canberra who conceal information and who fail to condemn the loss of life of innocents at the hands of either our country or our allies, and who are cut off from the consequences of their own cruelty, stupidity and collaboration. Defence personnel who no longer fight for a better future for Australians.
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PAT POWER. Nuclear disarmament.
I find it incredible that Australia is refusing to be part of the UN negotiations on a new treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons.
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PETER WHITEFORD. ‘Them’ and ‘us’: the enduring power of welfare myths.
Despite the evidence that deliberate fraud is a tiny fraction of social security spending, it remains a mainstay of much reporting of welfare in the Australian media. The Daily Telegraph is a repeat offender. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. The terrorism threat here is because our troops are over there.
Compared to other risks, we have little to fear from terrorism. In the last two decades only three people in Australia have died from terrorism. But there is a ‘vividness’ bias in terrorism because it stands out in our minds. Importantly, a lot of politicians, businesses, stand to gain from exaggerating the terrorist threat. It is also easy news for our failing and lazy media. This is a repost from 14 February 2017. (more…)
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JOHN DALEY and BRENDAN COATES. The latest ideas to use super to buy homes are still bad ideas.
Treasurer Scott Morrison wants to use the May budget to ease growing community anxiety about housing affordability. Lots of ideas are being thrown about: the test for the Treasurer is to sort the good from the bad. Reports that the government was again considering using superannuation to help first homebuyers won’t inspire confidence. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Pauline Hanson sides with the powerful while pretending to speak for the weak.
Pauline Hanson talks a great deal about battlers and people who are left behind and are fed up with the major parties . But she invariably sides with the wealthy and powerful. (more…)
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CAMERON MURRAY. Affordable housing reform.
While the decline of our economic diversity, has failed the average worker, it has been a boon for the landlord class. Those who already own land and housing benefit at the expense of those who want access to housing for their own household security. Those who own the banks benefit too. And we have seen the enormous lengths to which government will go to support the way things are. Every “affordable housing” policy, … is designed not to let housing prices fall, and housing become genuinely more affordable. (more…)
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DAVID JAMES. Penalty rate cuts are the result of thinking small
Australia is showing signs of contracting the American disease of rising inequality, which will ultimately spill over into low growth, especially when the effect of high household indebtedness has its inevitable dampening effect. In the last quarter of 2016 GDP growth was strong and corporate profits jumped 20.1 per cent. But wages and salaries actually went down 0.5 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis.
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ALBERT MISPEL. 1938-2017
Pearls & Irritations advises the sad news that Albert Mispel, who was instrumental in getting this blog started (and indeed, suggested its name) has passed away. Albert had an exciting life during which he taught school in New Guinea, was a core member of the Glebe Society fighting expressways during the 1970s and, later in life, became a computer programmer/web designer. He was enthusiastic about all progressive causes. He provided the technical know-how to get this blog up and running five years ago, and supported it thereafter. He believed in the ‘cause’. The first blog password was ‘November 1975’. With many others, he would never forget the Whitlam dismissal. Albert’s death is mourned by his wife, Kathy, two daughters, Jo and Madeleine, and his grandchildren. He will be sadly missed. Vale Albert.
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JOHN MENADUE. How the gaming of land rezoning by vested interests keeps housing unaffordable.
After Easter, we will be posting a ten-part series on making housing more affordable for all. One of the problems in housing affordability is the political muscle of some developers in gaming rezoning and reaping substantial capital gains from property. The politics of property is a major issue. Property-owning interests have a particular interest in inflating property prices. In the repost below, Paul Frijters and Cameron Murray describe the corruption of land rezoning in Brisbane. When this report was first posted, Michael Pascoe in the SMH on 29 September 2015, said ‘This paper should have brought down state and local governments, sparked a royal commission and radically changed the Australian housing industry. Months later, the paper seems to be forgotten and Australia’s biggest racket rolls on unchallenged; gaming land rezoning for enormous profits.’ John Menadue (more…)
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JOHN NIEUWENHUYSEN. Dark Days for Immigration Policy. Nation building or border protection.
The concept of Australia’s Immigration Department being a minor part of a version of the United States department of homeland security is a frightening one. What will have happened to the “Welcome to Australia” banners of years past? (more…)
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TIM COLEBATCH. Why gas prices went sky-high, and what governments need to do about it
There is an overwhelming consensus that the centrepiece should be an emissions intensity scheme, as proposed by the draft Finkel report, by the government’s handpicked Climate Change Authority, and by electricity generators and big users alike. This would give the energy industry a clear, bipartisan timetable to reduce emissions, enabling it to plan and invest with confidence. (more…)
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PETER BROOKS and JOHN WILLOUGHBY. A call for doctors to take a stand on the Adani Carmichael coal mine
The comprehensive investigation, published as The Adani Files (adanifiles.com.au), provides a litany of stories of pollution, failed clean-ups of damaged environments, and allegations of corruption and of abuse of workers. (more…)
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HANS J OHFF. A Future Submarine bonanza for France
Seen through the eyes of an engineering contractor and shipbuilder I suggest that the French have hit the jackpot. They will be falling over themselves to sign the proposed Framework Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the French Republic concerning cooperation on the future Submarine Program. (more…)
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PHIL ROBERTSON. A new wave of atrocities is being committed against Muslims in Burma’s Rakhine state
The burned-out mosques in Sittwe, the capital of the Rakhine state in western Burma, loom as silent reminders of an atrocity, hiding behind overgrown bushes and cement walls amid the daily port city bustle. (more…)
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JONATHAN PAGE. Who Pays The Ferryman? Befriending Death.
The human experience is haunted by mortality. It is important to encourage deep discussion of the reality of our own individual death from an early age. The potential psycho-spiritual and behavioural benefits of this discussion are immense. (more…)
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FRANCIS SULLIVAN. Where to from here?
I don’t think anyone was prepared for the extent of the abuse and the appalling rate across male religious orders and within the priesthood.
The posturing and spin of years past has been seen for what is was – an avoidance of the truth and a failed attempt to divert the public from the scale of the abuse and the depths to which Church officials had sunk as they tried to keep it hidden. (more…)
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ALAN PEARS. The solution to Australia’s gas crisis is not more gas.
Eastern Australia has plenty of gas. The problem is that most of it is being exported at prices lower than some Australians are paying. And the price volatility resulting from the present shambles is making life difficult for some Australian industries. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Making miners pay their fair share.
The victorious Labor Party in Western Australia has got off on the wrong foot in its timidity towards the mining sector. Its leader, Mark McGowan, has said that a Labor Government will not support a mining royalty proposed by the WA Nationals because it would drive investment away from WA. This is a very hackneyed line about frightening foreign investment and sovereign risk. (more…)
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ALAN KOHLER. Hello, Elon? It’s Malcolm.
“Cannon-Brookes! That man’s an absolute nuisance. He’s been causing Arthur problems with our 457 visa plans, and now he’s trying to mess up the nice little wedge we’ve got going with Shorten and Weatherill over renewables and blackouts in Adelaide.” (more…)
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PETER PHIBBS. we must call governments out on this ‘Game of Homes’.
When politicians say supply will fix the problem, ask them why it hasn’t worked yet. And also send them a copy of the graph from Chapter 1 of any first-year economics text book showing that price is the result of the interaction of supply and demand. (more…)
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LESLEY HUGHES. Angry summers are the new normal. Our climate is on steroids.
The occurrence of the extreme summer experienced in NSW, for example, was at least 50 times more likely than would have been the case without climate change. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. A little bit of honesty would go a long way in energy policy.
We really do need some honesty from the media on energy policy. The fact is that Coalition policies have failed for at least eight years and are largely responsible for our pending crisis. Media cover-ups for failed Coalition policies will not change that fact.
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