Northern Australia is popularly defined as consisting of all Australian land north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The north has long struggled to secure the investment and development which the south-east of Australia has taken for granted, because it is far away from the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra parliamentary triangle and its key policy-makers and politicians. The north’s economic and social development has thus been incremental rather than spectacular. But every now and then, a political saviour will emerge who will insist that their political party truly understands the north’s national significance and will transform it if elected to power. But northern development is a dream best viewed in Opposition: once a northern advocate achieves government powers, the political dreams of Northern Australia often lose their allure. The rich history of the politics of northern development is explored in my new book: Northern Dreams: The Politics of Northern Development in Australia (published by Australian Scholarly Publishing). (more…)
John Menadue
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WILLIAM GRIMM. Japanese fans’ shocking behavior at World Cup games.
Fans cleaning the stadium after matches they attend is an example of how one must be conscious of the convenience of those around. (more…)
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Australian laws should avoid hurting China.(Global Times China)
Australia has benefitted greatly from its relations with China, but has since begun to censor almost all the factors that have contributed to the benefits, and has interpreted its relations with China in the most negative way.
Such actions by Australia are beyond the Chinese public’s imagination of a country they once respected, and will bitterly disappoint them.
Now that the laws have been approved, Australia should reduce their negative impact on the Chinese diaspora and on relations with China. (more…) -
DOUG TAYLOR. Kicking goals in the fight against drugs
The heroics of Cristiano Ronaldo at the World Cup puts Portugal on the world stage. But behind the bright lights of the soccer World Cup, Portugal is leading the world in another arena: its efforts to curb drug abuse. (more…)
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IAN CRAWFORD. Korea: the forgotten war and Australians still missing
Understandably, the agreement of the Singapore Summit on the recovery of the bodies of US military from sites in North Korea has attracted less public interest than the denuclearisation issue. Ian Crawford, National President of National Korea Veterans Association, points to the significant losses Australia suffered in the harsh conditions of the Korean War and particularly attention to the 44 Australians killed in the war in its various phases whose bodies have still to be located. Some could well be discovered in the process of implementing the Singapore agreement. Ian has been actively engaged in the long running working groups between Australia and the relevant US authorities on this issue. (more…)
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BEPPE SEVERGNINI. In Italy, Immigrants Evoke Fear, Not Racism.
CREMA, Italy — As I was walking home, a man in his 70s, wearing a youthful shirt and sporting fiercely dark hair, stopped me in the main square, under the spire of the ancient Duomo. He introduced himself, then said he’d had a tough life, working as a cow milker on a farm since he was a child. He didn’t understand why I was so soft on migrants, in my writing and on television. (more…)
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GARY YOUNGE. Donald Trump’s enforcers have lost the right to civil courtesy.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ ejection from the Red Hen restaurant might ordinarily be dubious. But these are no ordinary times. (more…)
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ROGER COHEN. Of course, it could not happen (New York Times 30 June 2018)
We are all frogs in President Trump’s slow-boiling pot. (more…)
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GRAEME WORBOYS. Kosciuszko. The destruction of a national heritage icon?
NSW Deputy Premier and State National Party Leader John Barilaro’s 2018 Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Legislation is the single greatest political and ideological undermining of the conservation and protection status of Kosciuszko National Park in its 75 year history. It has elevated a pest animal to be more important than Australian native animals and has established a legislative precedent that threatens the concept of all Australian protected areas and National Heritage listed properties. (more…)
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GREG HAMILTON. The Class War – Part 2: The Bludging Class.
We’re paralysed by a state of cultural anarchy that marks the decline of the Enlightenment Age and its class war that will see one percent of the world’s population owning over two thirds of all wealth by 2030. Do we want to save ourselves from that? And if so, how do we go about it? (more…)
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GREG JERICHO. Australia’s middle class is being given a new look, and it’s not pretty.
The real low and middle-income earners are being erased from the debate in an unhealthy and one-sided class war. (more…)
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ANDREW WILKIE – The bugging of East Timor cabinet rooms (Hansard extract, 28 June 2018)
Australia bugged East Timor’s cabinet rooms during the 2004 bilateral negotiations over the Timor Sea Treaty. The operation was illegal, unscrupulous and remains unresolved. The perpetrator was the Howard government, although the Rudd, Gillard and Abbott governments are co-conspirators after the fact. I can explain today that the scandal has just gotten a whole lot worse, because the Turnbull government has now moved to prosecute the intelligence officer who blew the whistle on the secret operation, along with his legal counsel, Bernard Collaery. (more…)
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ANTHONY PUN. The Chinese Australian community’s reaction to the passing of Australia’s new package of national security laws.
Letter from Dr Anthony Pun, OAM, National President, Chinese Community Council of Australia and Chairman of the Multicultural Communities Council of New South Wales. (more…)
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GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND
A regular connection of links to writings and broadcasts covered in other media. (more…)
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GREG HAMILTON. The New Class War – Part 1: Foundations.
Humanity had a chance to avoid the class war now raging. It might have come from The Harvard War that was fought and lost in the early 1930s. Hardly noticed at the time, it gets no mention today, yet it had the most profound impact on our civilization of any since the ructions in Judea of yon. (more…)
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MARGARET SCOTT. The Truth about the Killing Fields in Indonesia (NYRB 28/6/2018)
On a baking hot afternoon in 2010, Jess Melvin, a young scholar from Australia, walked out of a government archive in Banda Aceh carrying a cardboard box. It was brimming with three thousand photocopied documents from the Indonesian army, and Melvin could barely believe her luck. These documents prove what has always been officially denied: the Indonesian army deliberately planned the 1965–1966 massacre in which up to a million suspected Communists died, one of the worst but least-known mass killings of the twentieth century.
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TIM BUCKLEY. India is bringing the coal era to an end.
On Tuesday last week, Tony Abbott, Australia’s ex-prime minister, was photographed in parliament clutching a document entitled, the “Coal era is not over.” (more…)
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JONATHAN FREEDLAND. Inspired by Trump, the world could be heading back to the 1930s.
The US president tears children from parents, and in Europe his imitators dehumanise migrants. We know where such hatred leads. (more…)
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Federal Court grants protective costs order to Professor Jenny Hocking in ‘Palace Letters’ case (Media Release)
Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking last week secured an important decision on costs from the Federal Court of Australia in her case against the National Archives of Australia seeking the release of the ‘Palace letters’ about the dismissal of the Whitlam government. (more…)
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Exclusive: Facing U.S. blowback, Beijing softens ‘Made in China 2025’ message (Business News)
BEIJING (Reuters) – Beijing has begun downplaying Made in China 2025, the state-backed industrial policy that has provoked alarm in the West and is core to Washington’s complaints about the country’s technological ambitions, diplomatic and Chinese state media sources said. (more…)
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TONY KEVIN. Turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse? Maybe. Australia’s new package of national security laws
The Australian parliament is about to pass a complex package of national security laws aimed at strengthening Australia’s protections against espionage, sabotage, (covert) foreign interference and (overt) harmful foreign influence on Australian political life. The real target is China, but Russia makes a convenient public scapegoat drawing on current US/UK precedents. The draft laws which now appear to have bipartisan support are significantly improved from the first government drafts released for public comment in December 2017. Nevertheless they take Australia in an illiberal direction. (more…)
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ALAN BOYD. Asia’s millionaires leaving for safe havens, lower taxes.
Report says thousands of wealthy citizens are leaving Asia and the Middle East, mostly heading for new lives in Australasia, North America and Europe. (more…)
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PETER RODGERS: Postcard from Doha: blockaders, bovines and billions
A year on, the Saudi-led boycott of Qatar appears stymied by the latter’s capacity to buy its way out of trouble. Qatar’s extravagant spending on the 2022 FIFA World Cup would make many a national treasurer weep. (more…)
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JIM COOMBS: “Class Warfare” – Bring it On !
CEDA survey “Community Pulse 2018 – Economic Disconnect” perhaps tells us what we already know: The vast majority feel that they have got less than a fair share of our years of growth, and our working conditions have worsened, and they are right. (more…)
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PATTY FAWKNER. Silence is golden – and it also kills.
Will we be loyal to the silence or will we interrupt the silence that has left many Catholics feeling disenfranchised within their own Church. (more…)
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STEVE LOHR China extends its lead as the top producer of supercomputers (New York Times 26 June 2018)
U.S. has world’s fastest, but rival surges ahead as the most prolific producer (more…)
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DAVID P GOLDMAN. A tragedy in the making as the US confronts China (Asia Times)
The trade war is quickly moving to the next level of confrontation with suggestions that Trump has ‘betrayed China’ (more…)
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STEVE CANNANE. Banking royal commission: ‘Big four’ accountancy firms ‘heavily conflicted, should be under inquiry spotlight’ (ABC 25/6/2018)
Australia’s “big four” accountancy firms should be put under the spotlight of the banking royal commission, according to a British investigative journalist who has written an expose on their activities overseas. (more…)
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JOSHUA GILBERT. All the farms a stage …
As the ever closing climate change frontier looms upon Australian Shores, with signs already evident in most parts of the country, the question remains- when will our politicians act? After the failure and promises of Governments of the past, impending reforms that never come and budgets that get built and then pulled out under the feet of hopeful scientists and activists, many cling to catastrophic weather events and foreign influence to encourage change. Yet as the drought sets in over most of the country, not even political tours and tourism hopes are enough to bring the rain where we need it the most. Perhaps, those that pray for rain in hope, can be the ones that encourage Government as it is needed. (more…)
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GARRY EVERETT. Archbishop Coleridge and the culture of confusion.
It was disappointing to read the latest comments of Archbishop Coleridge of Brisbane on the topics of sexual abuse and the culture of the Church. The comments convey a certain confusion, which could imperil any attempts the Church might make to re-establish trust among its members, and between the members and society at large. (more…)