“We will never forget that 100 years ago a young and brave nation on the other side of the world made history by writing our history. Lest we forget.”
So ended French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe’s tribute to the Anzacs in April this year at the opening of the Sir John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux. (more…)
Australia’s “father of PV,” UNSW Scientia Professor Martin Green, has been awarded the 2018 Global Energy Prize, beating out a shortlist that included Tesla’s Elon Musk, and becoming the first Australian to win the $820,000 gong. (more…)
In 2002 Australia, along with more than 80 other nations, acceded to the Rome statute by which the International Criminal Court was created. The court is the first permanent court ever established with jurisdiction to try war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of genocide regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators and regardless of the place where the offences occurred. (more…)
A casual glance at the news in recent months may have left you thinking the average Australian earns almost $85,000 a year.
If that sounded insanely high to you, then your instincts were bang on. An ordinary Australian earns way, way less than that.
But it doesn’t appear to have stopped Treasurer Scott Morrison using the figure to sell his income tax cuts. (more…)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is watching with deep concern as the pillars of the postwar international order collapse. But what is she doing about it? (more…)
A great Australian recently said: ‘we’re a helpless audience watching an awesome spectacle, powerless to act because we haven’t produced leadership with the courage to match the precipitous nature of the hour.’ The Rev. Ted Noffs got most things right. When his own church charged him with heresy, it proved the old axiom that a good deed never goes unpunished. Unfortunately, it’s the daily reality of our political system. (more…)
In the furore over Chinese political donations, the broader electoral reform agenda can easily be forgotten. Australia was once a pioneering democracy but it has fallen behind in protecting its reputation for electoral integrity and political equality. (more…)
In 2013, before travelling to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, Donald Trump asked plaintively on Twitter whether Vladimir Putin would be attending, and “if so, will he become my new best friend?” Putin never showed, and President Trump is apparently still pining for the Russian president’s approval. Meanwhile, there may never have been a president of the United States who is so unremittingly hostile to America’s closest allies.
It’s time to explain how the bloc, and the euro, could be run differently, democratically and sustainably. (more…)
Winston Churchill famously described the Soviet Union as “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Many commentators and politicians say Vladimir Putin’s Russia is every bit as mysterious and enigmatic as its predecessor. An astonishing recent declaration by the president, however, at the Russian equivalent of the Davos conclave, in St Petersburg, casts a whole new light on the country’s involvement in the Middle East, which in recent years has become more and more extensive. (more…)
Ten ways the new US-Russian Cold War is increasingly becoming more dangerous than the one we survived.
In 2009, Senator John Faulkner introduced legislation in the Senate which would have prohibited foreign political donations. The legislation was defeated by the Coalition in the Senate. A lot of ‘foreign interference’ in Australian political life could have been nipped in the bud if the Coalition had been serious about curbing political donations. Unfortunately, Anti-Chinese sentiment is now driving the debate on political donations. This could have been avoided.
See following, second reading speech in the Senate by Senator Faulkner.
In a pivotal move projecting a new set of national interests, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, barely a day before the Shangri La Dialogue began, announced that the US Pacific Command will now be called the US Indo-Pacific Command. The name change, seen by observers as a tactical move against Chinese military and economic hegemony in the region, is just symbolic for now, as it won’t immediately result in any major alterations to the command’s maritime boundaries or assets in the huge area spanning from East Africa to America’s Pacific coast. (more…)
Currently the Catholic Church in Australia, and in a number of overseas countries (e.g. Chile and Ireland), is experiencing a crisis in its culture. In Australia the Royal Commission into sexual abuse of minors has described this culture as toxic. The Commission also described the culture as excessively clerical in the sense that it is based on notions of priestly power, privilege and prestige, accompanied by lack of transparency and accountability, as well as failing to engage the lay people effectively. In Rome, Pope Francis has described the culture of the Catholic Church in Chile as “one of abuse and cover-up”. (more…)
Let’s clear up any confusion about the size of the Chinese economy. (more…)
MELBOURNE, Australia ― France will be deploying a detachment of combat aircraft to the Indo-Pacific region for a major air exercise in Australia and for additional interactions with Asian air forces, as France seeks to increase its presence in the region.
Panopticon: a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed (Jeremy Bentham).
Mr Turnbull has told Neil Mitchell security and police will be given extra power to conduct random checks at airports. Neil: “That’s a big step”. PM: “It is”. Neil: “Why do we need it?” PM: “Dangerous times, Neil” (Malcolm Turnbull, 3AW)
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding (US Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis). (more…)
In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer talks about the danger of war against Iran, the deterioration of trans-Atlantic relations under U.S. President Donald Trump and the serious need for Germany to invest massively in the European Union’s future. (more…)
In November last year, I gave an address to the Royal Society of Tasmania – the oldest such society ‘dedicated to the advancement of knowledge’ outside of the United Kingdom – at an event hosted by the Governor of Tasmania, Her Excellency Professor Kate Warner AC, at her official residence in Hobart. In this address I posed, and sought to answer, three questions:
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, journalist Peter Hitchens commented last month on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR): ‘Talking of war, and Syria, many of you may have noticed frequent references in the media to a body called the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”, often quoted as if it is an impartial source of information about that complicated conflict, in which the British government clearly takes sides. The “Observatory” says on its website that it is “not associated or linked to any political body”. To which I reply: Is Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office not a political body? Because the FO just confirmed to me that “the UK funded a project worth £194,769.60 to provide the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights with communications equipment and cameras”. That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? I love the precision of that 60p. Your taxes, impartially, at work.’ (more…)
Just as it has every three months for the past six decades, next week the Australian Bureau of Statistics will unleash a torrent of numbers that make up the national accounts. (more…)
India has a deepening bilateral security relationship with Myanmar, and is taking steps to help address the crisis in Rakhine State. But Chinese influence in Myanmar is growing – and meaningful cooperation between Beiijing and New Delhi remains unlikely. (more…)
India Inclusive event hears that attacks against minorities have increased since the BJP came to power (more…)
A radical rethink of the financial system was essential after a devastating crisis
There are many other ideas in this broad area that seem worth pursuing. One would be to allow every citizen to hold an account directly at the central bank. The technological reasons for branch banking are, after all, perishing quickly. Nicholas Gruen, an Australian economist, has argued that no private institution should have better access to the public’s central bank than the public itself does. Furthermore, he adds, the central bank could operate monetary policy by lending freely against safe mortgages. The central bank would not need to lend to banks per se at all. It would focus on assets.
Japan has been reeling ever since 8 March when US President Donald Trump met with South Korea’s national security adviser Chung Eui-yong and announced, to the world’s surprise, that he would accept the offer to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Until then, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was confident that he was ‘managing’ Trump well, starting with the meeting in Trump Tower on 17 November 2016 that made him the first foreign leader to meet with the then president-elect. This was followed by the meeting in Washington, DC on 10 February 2017 and golf and dinner in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, when North Korea’s missile launching forced an impromptu news conference pledging US–Japan solidarity against North Korea.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” The mantra of the managerialist “economic rationalists” has led to oversimplification and oversight (in the sense of ‘failing to see’) of what actually matters: the real values involved in the work. (more…)
In an unexpected concession in the early hours of Tuesday (June 5), the National Palace said Malaysia’s supreme ruler, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, had withdrawn its consent for incumbent Apandi Ali to continue as the nation’s top lawyer.
With concerns about Italy’s public debt growing, Italian populists have taken a page from US President Donald Trump’s playbook and threatened to blow up the eurozone if they don’t get their way. The European Union must resist the temptation to engage in a dangerous game of chicken.
(more…)