John Menadue

  • DAVID PEETZ. The penalty rates time-bomb is ticking.

    A looming decision on weekend penalty rates presents problems for both major parties in the lead-up to Australia’s federal election. The Fair Work Commission seems likely to hand down its decision in the controversial case soon after the federal election.

    Nobody knows what the commission’s decision on penalty rates in the retail and hospitality industries will be. There seem to be more tea-leaf readers predicting it will cut Sunday penalty rates to match Saturday rates than who think it will make no changes.

    If so, employer organisations would be happy, but many retail employees will be worse off. Pressure would grow for cuts to penalty rates elsewhere.

    The commission president’s request for submissions on whether some employees should be given a right to refuse to work on Sundays, perhaps as a trade-off, has added to the confidence of the former group of tea-leaf readers. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Best we forget. We commemorate Australians who died in foreign wars in foreign lands, but not Australian aborigines who died in defence of their own country.

    Yesterday, in a moving ceremony, the remains of 33 Australians who were buried in military cemeteries in Malaysia and Singapore were returned to Australia. Our Governor General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, and Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, were at Richmond airbase to witness the repatriation of 33 Australians who had died in foreign lands.

    What a contrast this is to our refusal to acknowledge the 30,000 aborigines who died, not in wars in foreign lands but in defending their homelands where they had lived for hundreds of generations. (more…)

  • FAZAL RIZVI. The benefits to Australia of our Asian diasporas which now constitute over 17% of our population.

    That Asian-Australians are making a substantial contribution to the Australian economy is a fact that can no longer be contested. This contribution is of enormous significance, especially as Australia seeks to become integrated into the regional economy. (more…)

  • KAITLIN WALSH. The conundrum of engagement and ending the blame game. Any takers?

     

    Political “outsider” Kaitlin Walsh, self-proclaimed “ordinary person”, rakes over the pallid entrails of our body politic. And considers what might shut Mathias Cormann up. (more…)

  • JACQUELINE PEEL. Are the Coalition and Labor on the same page for emissions trading?

    Climate change policy has been a noticeable absentee from political debate in the current Australian federal election campaign. Recent news reports, however, suggest this silence masks secret bipartisanship on the need for an emissions trading scheme – or ETS – to help bring down Australian’s emissions of greenhouse gases. Labor’s commitment to introduce an ETS if elected in July is well-known: the party has in fact pledged to establish two such schemes – a specific ETS for the electricity sector and a wider economy ETS with emissions caps set in line with Australia’s international climate change commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and recent Paris Agreement. But the Coalition has steadfastly opposed any kind of ‘carbon price’. It repealed the Gillard government’s Clean Energy legislation for a carbon tax and ETS, and replaced it with the Direct Action policy which channels government funding to emissions-reducing projects. Environment Minister Hunt has also repeatedly rejected the idea that the Coalition government plans to introduce an ETS. So why are some in the media claiming that the Turnbull government is introducing an ETS by stealth? (more…)

  • TIM SOUTPHOMMASANE. Bamboo ceiling and race relations.

    Many of us have good reason for thinking that the state of our race relations is under challenge. We frequently see stories about people being racially vilified on public transport, and our recent public debates are punctuated by controversies about race.

    We know racism is a reality in contemporary Australian society. About 20 per cent of Australians say they have experienced racial or religious discrimination of some kind.  About 11 per cent say they have been excluded from social activities or the workplace because of their race.  About 5 per cent say they’ve been physically assaulted because of their racial background. (more…)

  • EVAN WILLIAMS. Chasing Asylum. Film Review.

    I rate it among the best Australian documentaries ever made

    If you want to see Chasing Asylum, Eva Orner’s brilliant new Australian documentary, my advice is to hurry along. At last count it was showing on just two screens in Sydney, and when I went along to the Dendy in Newtown on a recent Sunday afternoon – usually a good time for ticket sales – I was directed upstairs to a little cinema at the end of a long corridor to find the place half full. The ads are promoting it as “The film the Australian Government doesn’t want you to see” – and that I can believe. But does anyone want us to see it? Not the distributors – there’s barely a mention in the ads. Not, apparently, the ABC or SBS, who should be seizing it with both hands for prime-time screening during the election campaign. Perhaps that’s the problem – the film is politically explosive, and everyone seems to be running scared, including, of course, our political masters. (more…)

  • JOHN O’DONOGUE: On Compassion – even for people who are ‘different’

    Compassion distinguishes human presence from all other presence on the earth. The human mind is one of the most gracious gifts of creation. The human mind is the place where nature gathers at its most intense and at its most intimate. The human being is an in-between presence, belonging neither fully to the earth from which she has come, nor to the heavens toward which her mind and spirit aim. In a sense, the human being is the loneliest creature in creation. Paradoxically, the human being also has the greatest possibility for intimacy. I link compassion immediately with intimacy. Compassion is the ability to vitally imagine what it is like to be an other, the force that makes a bridge from the island of one individuality to the island of the other. It is an ability to step outside your own perspective, limitations and ego, and become attentive in a vulnerable, encouraging, critical, and creative way with the hidden world of another person. (more…)

  • CHRISTIAN DOWNIE, HOWARD BAMSEY. Election 2016: do we need to re-establish a department of climate change?

    With a federal election looming, Australia’s top mandarins will once again be turning their minds to the incoming government briefs, the so-called blue book if the Coalition is returned and the red book if Labor is elected.

    High on the agenda will be the organisation of the bureaucracy and it won’t get any trickier than climate change.

    A question for an incoming government will be whether to re-establish a Department of Climate Change?

    And if not, what should be done? (more…)

  • EVAN WILLIAMS: Who cares what the papers say?

    In the first week of Malcolm Turnbull’s interminable election campaign, the Murdoch press surprised its readers by advocating support for Labor. How’s that again? Had Rupert had a change of heart? Well, not exactly. But it certainly looked that way when his Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, under the headline “Save Our Albo”, urged voters in Anthony Albanese’s suburban Sydney seat to keep Albo in the job. It turned out that the Greens – an even greater threat to civilisation than the ALP – were threatening to unseat Albo in a preference deal with the Liberals. Luckily this dire plot was exposed in time. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Is the Coalition better able to manage our borders?

    For many years senior journalists have been telling us, or at least accepting the spin, that conservatives are better economic managers. I don’t think there is evidence to back that claim as several writers have pointed out in this blog.

    The other area where many senior journalists have been even more gullible is the acceptance of the claim that conservatives are better able to manage our borders. Again I don’t think this view can be sustained.

    Journalists are now under-resourced to do their job properly, but on an issue so much debated as border protection, they should examine the facts. There are three key issues which senior journalists should reflect upon. (more…)

  • Did the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki end the war?

    Today, President Obama is visiting Hiroshima. He will be the first US President to do so since the bombing in 1945. He said that he will not be apologising for the dropping of the bomb and will not try and second-guess President Harry Truman’s decision.

    The widely accepted moral justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that they brought a quick end to the war which if continued would result in more widespread deaths and destruction.

    There is an argument that what the Japanese military feared most of all was not the bombing of civilians but the threat of Soviet occupation and perhaps partition of Japan. (more…)

  • PETER BROOKS. Mind the gap in doctors’ fees – it is all around us

    John Thompson reminds us of the total lack of transparency in fees charged by doctors in Australia. Surgeon’s report shows the ineffectiveness of private health insurers to control health costs Posted on 07/05/2016 by John Menadue

    So can we dissect this further. What is in a medical fee – well may you ask. When you go to your doctor you may see a fees schedule on the reception desk – or you may have received a letter from the receptionist / practice manager indicating that you will be responsible for certain fees over and above what you will get back from Medicare and ( possibily ) your Private Health Scheme . It is not unusual to be asked to pay something in advance before an appointment ( usually for a procedure – endoscopy ) is even made . Even lawyers don’t make you do that- do they . So there are at least three fees- what the Government pays the doctor – the Medicare fee , then there is the AMA rate – why this is different does not seem to be based on any scientific evidence , and then there is what the doctor actually charges you . Again not based on anything but what the doctor feels the market will support – and it usually does because effectively you have no choice .Do you ask for a second opinion ? do you have a discussion about the fee and why it is so much higher than the Medicare rebate or the AMA fee- when this person is going to put a new hip into you next week or open up your belly – I don’t think so . (more…)

  • BILL AND BARBARA CLEMENTS: Refugees and round-ups.

    The Paris Metro station of Bir Hakeim, not far from the Eiffel Tower, serves both the Australian Embassy and a monument that was erected in 1994 to commemorate the mass round-up of Jews, brought to the Velodrome d’hiver (an indoor cycle track known as the Vel d’hiv) which formerly occupied the site. The Australian Embassy in Paris is built on railway yards across from that Vel d’Hiv site. (more…)

  • MARK GREGORY: Leaks from NBN were in the public interest. The response was designed to hide the NBN mess.

    The National Broadband Network (NBN) was meant to be a nation building project that positioned Australia as a leader in the global digital economy, but it has become a political football and as every day passes, Australia’s future prospects in the global digital economy are diminishing. (more…)

  • ANN GILROY RSJ: A Response to Pope Francis’s Commission on Women Deacons

    Women Religious welcome any development in Church that responds to women’s repeated call to have an equal share in the decision-making. Pope Francis’s proposal to set up a Commission to study the possibility of having women deacons, while not yet a decision to change a structure, is offering Catholic women a frisson of promise. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Attacks on refugees tell us more about Malcolm Turnbull than Peter Dutton.

    Power doesn’t always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true of power, is that power always reveals.’ Robert Caro.

    Peter Dutton has ‘form’, so his comments about refugees although disgraceful are not that surprising.

    The big disappointment has been Malcolm Turnbull who described Peter Dutton as ‘an outstanding immigration minister’. Instead of a firm rebuke from our Prime Minister, Dutton got praise and with his winsome way with words Malcolm Turnbull even suggested that Peter Dutton was being ‘demonised’.

    (more…)

  • JOHN KEANE. Money, Capitalism and the Slow Death of Social Democracy.

    In this article, John Keane speaks of the slow death of social democracy but suggests that there may be possibilities that social democracy could embrace Green movements, intellectuals and parties that have common interests. See extracts from article below and link to the full article in The Conversation. (more…)

  • MICHELE KOSASIH. Seven years on and still itching for change on the negative impacts of alcohol.

    2016 marks seven years for the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education’s (FARE) Annual Alcohol Poll (conducted by Galaxy Research), and we continue to see Australia’s concern about the negative impacts alcohol has on the community. (more…)

  • EVAN WILLIAMS. ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’. Film Review 4.5 stars.

    Here is that rarest of cinematic pleasures – a fine story, beautifully told, acted to perfection by a first-rate cast, with a screenplay consisting mainly of intelligent conversation between adults of mature years, and with no recourse to car chases, explosions or gratuitous four-letter words. And with all of coming in at a little over an hour-and-a-half, it isn’t a moment too long. I can recommend The Man Who Knew Infinity, a British film written and directed by Matthew Brown, to cinemagoers of all ages as a necessary antidote to the likes of X-Men: Apocalypse and Captain America: Civil War (in 3D). (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Our White Man’s Media. It is so derivative and relies heavily on news and entertainment sources in New York and London.

    Mark Scott the outgoing Managing Director on the ABC regretted his failure to ensure that the ABC reflected the ethnic diversity of Australia. He should also have added that the ABC has failed to help us equip ourselves for our future in Asia.

    It is therefore welcome that the new MD Michelle Guthrie has said she is going to change this. The problem is so obvious with the ABC’s main TV Channels across Australia dominated by ‘Anglos’. Less than 12% of ABC employees are from non English speaking backgrounds and the story is getting worse each year. I am also not aware that the ABC Board has any members who have worked in Asia, have any interest in Asia, let alone having any Asian ancestry. (more…)

  • BOB KINNAIRD. Like earlier Free Trade Agreements, the new FTA with Singapore continues to waive labour market testing which has been designed to protect Australian workers and students.

    Prime Minister Turnbull announced the Australia-Singapore ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’ (CSP) on 6 May last, just a few days before he called the 2 July election.

    Cynics will suspect the timing and also see the Singapore announcement as something of a consolation prize. The much bigger FTA fish for the Turnbull government was the elusive agreement with India. This was originally promised by the end of 2015 but Special Trade Envoy Mr Robb this week said only that a deal is now possible around mid-2016. (more…)

  • WAYNE McMILLAN. Is there any difference between Labor or Liberal coalition governments when it comes to economic management?

    There is much political rhetoric spouted by both sides of Australian politics when it comes to economic management and the truth generally lies somewhere in between the myths and the half-truths. To make matters even worse, so-called economic experts from the financial and business sectors, shock jocks and news media outlets tend to centre discussion narrowly on surpluses, deficits and government debt taken out of any meaningful, economic context. The language or terms used in the news and in political debate, often gives an inaccurate or incorrect picture of what is really happening. The political pundits and the commentariat tend to give the impression that the process of preparing budgets and guiding an economy to prosperity is a simple, straightforward process and only requires a good measure of common sense. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Bamboo ceiling and the old boys club. Our business sector is not equiping itself for our future in Asia.

    For three decade James Ruse High School in NSW and similar high schools around Australia have been dominating Higher School Certificate results. And according to the NSW Education Department 80% of these top students come from a background other than English with most coming from Asian Backgrounds

    But despite this remarkable record few of these students make it to the top in business, political or academic life. They may be regarded as intelligent and hardworking but what is holding them back in mainstream organizations in Australia? (more…)

  • GEOFF HISCOCK. Asia’s easy opportunities overshadow Indian business ties. Australian businesses lack enthusiasm for Indian opportunities.

    At the Australia India Business Council forum in Sydney earlier this week, Indian diplomats wondered why Australian businesses lacked enthusiasm about engaging with an economy that is destined to become the world’s third largest within the next two decades. (more…)

  • CARMEN LAWRENCE. When in doubt, rewind to the politics of fear.

    Peter Dutton now makes no distinction between asylum seekers and refugees who come through regular or irregular channels. He now demonises all refugees. John Menadue.

    It has been an article of faith for the Coalition that “real” refugees from UNHCR camps dotted around the globe deserve our compassionate support while the “illegal” asylum seekers who try to arrive by boat are little more than cashed up opportunists who deserve to be exiled in remote camps; object lessons to other would-be intruders. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Never underestimate a survivor, but Peter Dutton obviously under estimates refugees. They may be ‘takers’ in the early years, but they become great contributors.

    The following are extracts from a blog I posted on 27 June 2013.  John Menadue

    As responsible members of the human family, we have a strong moral case to provide protection for refugees who are the victims of persecution and violence.

    There is also a strong case in our own self-interest Refugees are almost by definition risk-takers and entrepreneurial. It can be argued that refugees are amongst the most highly motivated and determined in the Australian community. (more…)

  • ARJA KESKI-NUMMI. Peter Dutton should know better – rather than demonise refugees we should stand tall and proud of what we have achieved over the past 70 years.

    The problem with refugees and asylum seekers is that they are not us – so it is OK to demonise them. Dutton is not dog whistling when he puts people into boxes describing them as “these people”, asserts that they are barely literate or numerate in their own languages, can’t speak English and at the same time says they would take Australian jobs and at the same time assert that they will languish on the dole and Medicare! You can’t have it both ways Mr. Dutton. (more…)

  • CAROLINE RYAN. Women deacons or women cardinals?

    While I welcome anything authentic that promotes the capacity of women to be truly influential in the church, I am not really keen on the diaconate idea of female deacons. Essentially this is because I think it is unnecessary. That is to say, if the theology of the laity was allowed to mature, the diaconal ministry could be effectively offered by lay people – men and women. (more…)

  • Brexit and possible consequences.

    In the London Review of Books, Ferdinand Mount, describes the gaggle of opponents of the EU and the possible consequences if the UK votes to brexit (exit from the EU).

    He highlights some of the risks:  a risk of recession or at worst a slump; capital flight; impact on employment; a rumpus in Scotland and knock-on effect on the morale of the rump EU.

    For full article, see link:

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n10/ferdinand-mount/nigels-against-the-world