According to the World Health Organization, there are 3.3 million deaths attributable to alcohol use worldwide each year. Alcohol marketing, promotion and sponsorship are widespread in most of the world today and marketers are moving increasingly to digital and social media, where efforts at regulation have fallen far behind industry innovations in producing audience engagement and brand ambassadorship. (more…)
John Menadue
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WALTER HAMILTON. Rush for the exits
When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier this month stood alongside Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull near The Gap––once Sydney’s favourite suicide spot––they presented themselves as brothers-in-arms for multilateral free trade. How quickly things can change. (more…)
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John Menadue. What does it mean to be an Australian? Are we still the land of the second chance?
The Macquarie legacy is still with us. It underpins our best instincts to give all residents in this country, whether Australian born, migrants or refugees an equal opportunity in life, a second chance. That ethos of redemption is a core part of our history. (more…)
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John Menadue. Should we re-think Australia Day?
The Australia of today is vastly different to the Australia of my childhood with its widespread racism and sectarianism. It was socially suffocating. For those changes I am very grateful. There is a lot that we can be proud of. No country has integrated newcomers as well as we have. But there have been failures and remedial action yet to be taken. We are yet to be reconciled to our indigenous brothers and sisters who watched the European boat arrivals in 1788. We are yet to take our share of responsibility for the displaced and persecuted people of the world. (more…)
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John Menadue. Australia Day – the Queen and the Asian Century
This is a repost from 26/1/2013
A major barrier to our future in the region is our dependence on foreign institutions and powers. First it was the British and now the Americans. We cling to others. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Gladys Berejiklian and NSW Ports
As a former Minister for Transport, Gladys Berejiklian leaves a very dubious record in port privatization. The Chair of ACCC, Rod Sims has said ‘Privatisation (of NSW ports) is costing consumers and damaging economic reform’. (more…)
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Karl Rove’s Prophecy.
The neocons stayed put in the State Department and other positions closely linked to the Obama White House, where they became allies with the liberal hawks in continuing ‘spreading democracy’ by overthrowing regimes. America’s mainstream news and opinion purveyors, without demurring, accommodated the architects of reality production overseen by Dick Cheney. This did not end when Obama became president, but in fact with seemingly ever greater eagerness they gradually made the CIA/neocon-neoliberal created reality appear unshakably substantial in the minds of most newspaper readers and among TV audiences in the Atlantic basin. (more…)
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BERNARD KEANE. Good riddance to the trade deal from hell.
The bigger problem with the TPP was that it simply had virtually no benefits for Australia. (more…)
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John Menadue. Democratic Renewal; Vested interests and the subversion of the public interest?
This is a repost from May 13, 2015.
There are many key public issues that we must address such as climate change, growing inequality, tax avoidance, budget repair, an ageing population, lifting our productivity and our treatment of asylum seekers.
But our capacity to address these and other important issues is becoming very difficult because of the power of vested interests with their lobbying power to influence governments in a quite disproportionate way. (more…)
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RONALD MACKINNON. Do we as doctors always put our patients first?
After his retirement, Dr Chris McCaffrey requested that his gravestone be inscribed:
‘I was always on the side of the patient‘.
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AHMAD RIZKY M. UMAR. ASEAN countries should find a solution to end the persecution of Rohingya.
ASEAN’s non-intervention is aggravating the plight of ethnic Rohingya Muslims suffering widespread abuse by the Burmese military in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. The Rohingya are one of the world’s most persecuted ethnic minorities. (more…)
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PHILIP CLARKE & PETER SIVEY. Why don’t we know how many people die in our hospitals?
Unfortunately no one yet has been able to overcome the federal/state divide in order to combine Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme data held in Canberra with hospital and mortality data from each state. Making this type of data available would facilitate research to improve the quality and safety, as well as the efficiency of our health system. Better health data and statistics should be a priority of politicians across Australia. (more…)
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JIM CHALMERS. We can’t let go of the fair go.
New unreported data shows Australia’s proud tradition of inclusive economic growth is at risk, writes Shadow Finance Minister Jim Chalmers. (more…)
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STEVE GEORGAKIS. How professional sport handicaps youth sporting culture.
The recent spate of incidents and reports of doping, match-fixing and wall-to-wall TV coverage of betting, alcohol and junk food advertisements has stimulated considerable debate about the impact of commercialised sport on Australian youth. (more…)
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MICHAEL GARCIA BOCHENEK. EU cannot copy Australia’s offshore asylum model
Casting about for ways to manage refugee flows, some European policymakers speak of emulating Australia’s use of offshore processing centres. But Australia’s approach to asylum seekers is fiscally irresponsible, morally bankrupt, and increasingly unsustainable politically. It’s no model for Europe.
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WALTER HAMILTON. Thank you, Mr. Trump
Friend or foe, ally or rival, it no longer seems to matter: hey, world, make way for the guy who pushes in at the checkout, double parks at the school gate, dumps his garbage in the park, talks through the movie, and calls in sick every Monday. The idea of American Exceptionalism was bad enough, but now comes ‘American Entitlement’. (more…)
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FRANCIS MARKHAM & MARTIN YOUNG. When it comes to election campaigns, is the gambling lobby all bark and no bite?
The gambling lobby’s influence in overriding popular opinion and the public interest in Australia is well-known. But is its electoral power exaggerated? A look at this year’s ACT election suggests that perhaps the gambling industry is less influential than it appears to be. (more…)
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PETER DAY. Kyrgios: the anti-hero
Like the rest of us, Nick needs time: time to mature; time to know himself; and time to sort out the wheat from the chaff – as regards the latter, I think he’s already worked out that the media is mostly full of chaff… and don’t the media hate it, love it, know it, resent it, milk it. (more…)
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MARIAN SAWER. What can be done about political trust? The 2016 federal election inquiry
The major political parties largely control the process of electoral reform and judge any proposal by its possible partisan effects. Considerations of partisan advantage almost always take precedence over the restoration of public trust in the political system. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Private Health Insurance vs dental care.
Australian health would be much improved if the $11 billion subsidy for private health insurance was abolished and part of those funds allocated to universal dental care within Medicare.
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GETHIN DAVISON & EDGAR LIU. Neighbours’ fears about affordable housing are worse than any impacts.
Housing affordability is a hot topic in Australia. Governments are increasingly recognising that more needs to be done to provide a greater range of affordable housing options, especially in the major cities. It is well documented, however, that proposals for affordable housing development often encounter opposition from host community members. (more…)
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ALAN MORRIS. Why secure and affordable housing is an increasing worry for age pensioners.
There is no doubt that an increasing proportion of older Australians on the age pension will be dependent on the private rental sector in coming decades. This is because of the housing affordability crisis and increasing divorce in later life, combined with the virtual stagnation of the social housing sector. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. The new squatters on public land.
The new squatters on public land are being given a leg-up as they were in the 19th Century to seize and occupy public land. (more…)
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DAVID JAMES.Wage inequality is a bigger threat to workers than robots
he issue of jobs cannot be seen as separate from wealth distribution. The problem is — as Henry Ford understood when he paid his workers well so they could buy his cars — that too much social inequality means insufficient demand for products and low economic growth. The issue is not whether or not there will be jobs — it is most likely that there will be — but how fair the wages system will be. (more…)
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BRUCE ARNOLD. The Hanson Card is unworkable rather than just very nasty
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has reportedly proposed that every Australian be required to carry a national identity card. The rationale? The card will supposedly significantly reduce fraud by non-citizens who are resident in Australia. The proposal may be good politics – a timely diversion from Hanson’s very public tendency to lose candidates – but it is unviable. (more…)
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TONY KEVIN. Obama’s years of promise and frustration.
For eight years I have delighted in Barack Obama’s words – even richer and more inspiring to see and hear in his ringing tones , than to read in cold print. . Those days are, sadly, about to depart. The Chicago valedictory address was his last, magnificent, gift to us.
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WALTER HAMILTON. Rex Tillerson and Australia’s national interest
President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks are being cross-examined in public for the first time. Here begins the real business of assessing how a Trump administration might behave––in more than 140 characters. The indications so far suggest the need for an early reappraisal. (more…)
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TONY KEVIN. The Rex Tillerson confirmation hearings, and wider issues
Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State and Trump’s best Cabinet choice so far, will probably survive his gruelling full day of confirmation hearings by the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee last Wednesday 11 January (Washington time). (more…)
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The strange career of American exceptionalism.
In this article in The Nation, George Grandin of New York University comments
Obama’s recomposition of American exceptionalism was tactically successful, at least as measured by his 2012 reelection, which expanded the multiracial and cross-class coalition that had given him the White House four years earlier. (more…)
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CHARLES LIVINGSTONE. Gambling industry finds plenty of political guns for hire to defend the status quo.
“Responsible gambling”, like “responsible drinking”, is a clever-sounding way of deflecting attention away from the product. (more…)