John Menadue

  • JULIE P SMITH. Live sheep exports are not worth the moral cost.

    Growing up near Midland on the outskirts of Perth during the 1960s and 1970s, I endured the weekly stench from the local abattoir. It was the price we paid to get meat to population centres. My first job was in the local meat processing plant, working with people described as “salt of the earth, working class”, who had historically toiled in appalling conditions because they had no choice.

    Pressured by unions over postwar decades, Australian governments eventually stepped in to enforce decent standards for work and wages. Compelled by those who saw the immense cruelty involved, animal welfare laws were also imposed. Meat industry employers objected to red tape and higher labour costs, but community standards were enforced, most operators complied, and the worst operators eventually left the business. (more…)

  • RICHARD FLANAGAN. Freedom means Australia facing up to the truth of its past. (Part 2 of 2)

    We should, of course, question these things more. We could ask why – if we were actually genuine about remembering patriots who have died for this country – why would we not first spend $100m on a museum honouring the at least 65,000 estimated Indigenous dead who so tragically lost their lives defending their country here in Australia in the frontier wars of the 1800s? Why is there nowhere in Australia telling the stories of the massacres, the dispossession, and the courageous resistance of these patriots?  

    (Second Extract from a speech by Richard Flanagan to the National Press Club on 18 April 2018)   (more…)

  • JIM COOMBS. Crime and Punishment: Who do we do first, the Banks (and “financial advisers”) or “dole bludgers”?

    I was horrified today to hear that the coalition government this week wants to step up its pursuit of “welfare cheats”, a few millions of dollars chasing the poor, disabled and ignorant. Then Treasurer Scott Morrison is impelled to say, the government “might” gaol the execs who defrauded bank customers of what may well prove to be billions, not due to impoverishment (quite the reverse), disability (lets grab the loot) and we know it’s illegal (but that’s business, isn’t it ?) A further Memo to Kenneth Hayne: Proportionate punishment, enshrined in law, should mean that if a dole cheat manages a few thousand and gets two years, then a crook banker who engineers billions should get a life sentence. Has anyone even been charged ? Until “equality before the law” becomes a reality rather than a legal fiction, now we know that they knowingly engaged in systematic theft, the managers , if the principle holds, should have a severe criminal penalty imposed, and the bank should have its licence revoked, on the basis of clear breach of trust.  All those shareholders who thought banks were a licence to print money ( i.e., steal), should wear the risk they took in buying the shares. Isn’t that what capitalism is all about ? (more…)

  • RICHARD FLANAGAN. Australians in WWI didn’t die for Australia. They died for Britain. (Part 1 of 2)

    And so, the Monash Centre, for all its good intentions, for all the honour it does the dead, is at heart a centre for forgetting. It leads us to forget that the 62,000 young men who died in world war one died far from their country in service of one distant empire fighting other distant empires. It leads us to forget that not one of those deaths it commemorates was necessary. Not 62,000. Not even one.

    (The following are extracts from Richard Flanagan’s address to the National Press Club on 18 April 2018. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.)  (more…)

  • ERIC WALSH. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un.

    The highly- important upcoming meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and America’s Donald Trump  could hopefully  settle one of the world’s red-hot trouble spots. (more…)

  • ROBERT MANNE. How we came to be so cruel to asylum seekers.

    This is an edited extract of a talk delivered to the Integrity 20 Conference at Griffith University on October 25, 2016

    If you had been told 30 years ago that Australia would create the least asylum seeker friendly institutional arrangements in the world, you would not have been believed. (more…)

  • GARRY EVERETT. Importance of seeing the ‘big picture’.

    Failing to see or accept the big picture is a condition that is currently affecting many organisations in our world, says Garry Everett, and four particular organisations stand out as having significant problems in this regard. (more…)

  • EMMA CARMODY. Lack of transparency in irrigation efficiency programs

    An article by Kerry Brewster in the Guardian this week reports on a significant fraud investigation by Queensland’s Major and Organised Crime Squad (Rural) into subsidies granted to a landholder under the Healthy Headwaters Water Use Efficiency Program. (more…)

  • GREG HAMILTON. Not much ado about a helluva lot.

    A stage play that wouldn’t make it into an Australian theatre today caused a helluva stink back in 1962 and said some wise and courageous (aka shocking) things about the ‘most sacred day’ in our national calendar. The reasons it wouldn’t make it today say something tragic about us as a society of people. (more…)

  • GREG HAMILTON. Dying for nothing, a-la-Australienne.

    According to the oldest surviving veteran of The Great War, Sgt Ted Smout, dead at 106, our war dead died in vain. In his words, ‘they died for nothing’. He must have known something most of us don’t know for him to make such a terrible claim. What could he possibly have known? (more…)

  • GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …

    Australia gets a mention in The Atlantic, but probably not the kind we wanted.  It’s a review of the work of Terry Hughes (of James Cook University) and others who have had a paper published in Nature on the effect of global warning on the Great Barrier Reef. Atlantic staff writer Robinson Meyer writes:  “The Great Barrier Reef will continue to collapse and die until humanity stabilizes the amount of greenhouse-gas pollution in the air. But fixing that problem will require remaking the energy system, moving away from oil and gas and to solar, wind, and other renewable sources.”

    Katie Acheson, Chair of the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition, writes in the Canberra Times about a war being waged in Canberra. It’s a war against young people, subjected to unaffordable housing, high unemployment, expensive education and inaction on environmental damage that will become manifest over their lifetimes.

    Foreign Affairs allows non-subscribers to access one free article per month. In an article “Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution: The Long Road to Democratic Decline” Ivan Krastev,  of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia analyses the decline of liberal democracy in Eastern Europe.  “A new illiberal consensus is emerging, marked by xenophobic nationalism and supported, somewhat unexpectedly, by young people who came of age after the demise of communism. If the liberals who dominated in the 1990s were preoccupied with the rights of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, this new consensus is about the rights of the majority.”

    On the ABC’s  Rear Vision Annabelle Quince has assembled an  impressive collection of gambling experts  in her program Australia: the world’s biggest gamblers.  It’s a history of gambling in Australia, leading to the post 1970s fiscal pressure on the states to raise funds through taxes on poker machines.  By now Australia has 76 per cent of high-intensity poker machines (200,000 machines) and we spend $23 billion a year on gambling ($3000 a household). (29 minutes)

    Whichever way you cut it, Turnbull’s climate policy is still a sham – Giles Parkinson, RenewEconomy

    Senator Rand Paul suggests the chemical weapons attacks in Syria  could have been false flag, unless Assad is the dumbest dictator on the planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=K4V3jQCi8-o

    And Admiral Lord West wonders the same thing in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIA_dNkscsw

    In Syria, the fog of war, Ross Burns

    Scandal pursues Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe – New York REview of Books.

    The President Is Not Above The Law. The constitutional order may soon be at stake in the investigation of Donald Trump – The New York Times editorial.

    Politics with Michelle Grattan: “Clive Hamilton and Richard Rigby on Chinese influence in Australia”

    Clement Atlee, the mouse that roared – New York Review of Books.

    On Saturday Extra this 21st April, Geraldine Doogue speaks with James Eyers from the AFR on this week’s Royal Commission into the banks and a discussion on the default life insurance built into our superannuation funds with minister for financial services, Kelly O’Dwyer as one of the guests.  The disturbing rape stories coming out of India but is this more about a growing division between Hindus and Muslims in that country and navigating freedom of the press in this era of fake news with foreign correspondents Peter Greste and Salil Tripathi. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/

     

  • MARILYN LAKE. ANZAC from a Turkish point of view.

    As Anzac Day comes round once more so we must prepare for the accompanying bombardment of nationalist myth-making. Our sense of national consciousness, so the story goes, was born on 25 April 1915. A nation was born on that day of death. The Anzacs fought for ‘freedom and democracy’. They died so that we might live. 

    Mythologies serve to comfort and console. They smooth contradictions and reduce historical complexity. They make meaning of events that might otherwise be senseless or unbearable.  (more…)

  • DAVID BLOWERS. Australia’s slow march towards a National Energy Guarantee is gathering pace.

    The finer policy details of the of the proposed National Energy Guarantee (NEG) have begun to leak onto newspaper front pages and websites, ahead of Friday’s crucial meeting of federal and state energy ministers.

    The good news is that the leaked information suggests solid progress has been made over the past couple of months on both the emissions and reliability components of the policy. (more…)

  • SCOTT BURCHILL. What The West Really Thinks About Chemical Weapons Attacks.

    How genuine is the West’s concern about the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria last week? Did they constitute a “line in the sand”, a crime so egregious that military strikes by Washington, London and Paris were necessary and morally justified? The historical record would suggest exactly the opposite. (more…)

  • ROBERT FISK. The search for truth in the rubble of Douma – and one doctor’s doubts over the chemical attack

    This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks – and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week. There’s even a friendly doctor in a green coat who, when I track him down in the very same clinic, cheerfully tells me that the “gas” videotape which horrified the world – despite all the doubters – is perfectly genuine. (more…)

  • SAMUEL LIEVEN. Why Syria’s patriarchs back Assad

    Three patriarchs — two of them Orthodox and the other Catholic — have co-signed a statement strongly condemning the Western air strikes against Syrian government positions while reasserting their support for the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies. (more…)

  • MICHAEL LAMBERT. We know about the Grants Commission but what is this thing called HFE?

    You may have noticed recent press reports of some angry Premiers or Treasurers bemoaning the loss of revenue in the triannual carve up of the GST pie among the States and Territories while the winners kept their pleasure to themselves. Welcome to the wonderful world of HFE, horizontal fiscal equalisation as practised in Australia.  (more…)

  • JAMES FERNYHOUGH. Cheap mortgages for everyone! Greens’ call for ‘People’s Bank’ unpicked

    The Greens have unveiled a radical plan to give Australians access to much cheaper home loans than are currently on offer, in an unabashed attack on the big four banks’ stranglehold on the mortgage market. (more…)

  • ROSS BURNS. In Syria, the fog of war

    Chemical weapons have been a feature of the Syrian conflict since 2011. Are we any closer to a strategy to deal with their use — and with the forces fuelling the wider conflict? (more…)

  • MORTON HALPERIN, PETER HAYES, LEON SIGAL. Options for denuclearising the Korean peninsular

    A critically important part of assembling the Korean peninsula-wide denuclearization jigsaw puzzle is the institutional and legal form of North Korean commitments on the one hand, and the nuclear negative security assurances by the NPT-Nuclear Weapons States (NWSs), especially the United States, on the other.  

    In Nautilus  Institute there is a special report ‘A Korean nuclear weapons-free zone treaty and nuclear extended deterrence:  options for denuclearising the Korean Peninsula’. (Nautilus Institute Report).  A summary of this special report follows.   (more…)

  • DAN MCGARRY. Want to lead in the Pacific? Try listening first

    The average Australian’s conception of Pacific island nations is so limited it makes some of us wonder if they even want to understand. Our voices—and our reality—have been pointedly and repeatedly ignored in the media, and in the corridors of power. (more…)

  • PETER MARTIN. It’s time for sweetest tax of them all.

    Never before has a tax been such an instant success. I am talking about what happened in Britain last Friday. That’s when new so-called sugar tax sprung into life, with much of its work already done.

    The whole idea was to cut the consumption of sugar, something we have just as much need to do here, given that our rates of obesity are on a par with those in Britain – an outrage that will prevent many of us living long lives. (more…)

  • SCOTT BURCHILL. The attack on Syria

    There are seven points to consider after the US, UK and French attacks on Syria last week. (more…)

  • PETER RODGERS. Israel and Gaza: another bout of what?

    Given Gaza’s appalling living conditions, the outburst of violence on the Israeli-Gaza border should come as no surprise. The question is whether its signals a shift in Palestinian tactics, aimed at using Israel’s disproportionate violence to revive jaded regional and international interest in the Palestinian cause.   (more…)

  • VIC ROWLANDS. Reclaiming democracy

    Democracy across the world is under siege and facing its biggest challenge. Despite different interpretations of democracy in terms of process, – voting age, optional or compulsory, the new world is creating fundamental strains which threaten at least its current status, if not viability. (more…)

  • Pope Francis admits mistakes in Chile

    Pope Francis has apologized for underestimating the seriousness of the sexual abuse crisis in Chile, acknowledging that he has made “serious mistakes” in handling the issue. (more…)

  • GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …

    Josh Frydenberg and Malcolm Turnbull would like us to believe that if only recalcitrant states could sign on to the Commonwealth’s “National Energy Guarantee”, energy policy will be set on a stable path.  A more realistic view is provided by the World Economic Forum, which, in a short and hard-hitting “while paper”, warns that “tsunamic forces could swiftly upend businesses and also profoundly alter the outlook for how energy systems affect emissions and sustainable development” in all countries.

    “Never let good policy or consistency get in the way of a donor’s dollar or some leadership undermining” writes Crispin Hull on the misnamed Monash Forum. He compares the demise of coal-fired electricity with the demise of the film camera.

    What’s keeping the lid on wages growth in Australia?  Writing in the Fairfax press Jessica Irvine has a short article on the confounding situation of low unemployment and low wages. A decline in union membership stands out as a compelling explanation.

    In the New York Times Michelle Goldberg has a short review of Madeleine Albright’s book Fascism: A Warning.  Goldberg supports her review with reference to surveys by Freedom House, which “reported that 71 countries suffered declines in political rights and civil liberties last year, while only 35 saw improvements. Rather than standing against this trend, America under Trump has become part of it.”

    James Comey has a story to tell and it is very persuasive – New York Times

    Donald Trump has spent his whole career in the company of grifters, cons and crooks. Now that he’s president, that strategy isn’t working — for him or for the country – New York Times editorial.

    US taking the world to the brink – Rick Sterling, Consortiumnews.

    Winning slowly(on climate change) is the same as losing – Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone.

    Malcolm Turnbull didn’t walk away from his believes because he never had any – Peter Lewis, the Guardian.

    Frydenberg takes the low road: It’s a weak NEG or nothing – Giles Parkinson, RenewEconomy

    Anne Aly and Jacqui Lambie tell compelling stories about life before politics – Brett Evans, Inside.

    Murray-Darling – when the river runs dry – the Guardian.

    Beating the khaki drum: how Australian identity was militarised – Paul Daley, the Guardian.

    How Alinta turned into Australia’s most aggressive energy business- the Canberra Times.

    The Tesla big battery is changing the way people think about the grid – RenewEconomy

    On Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue this April 14th,  marine heatwaves and what they mean to our ecosystem; a MSF doctor returns from Yemen where even before the war the healthcare system was lacking; what can leaders learn from Dwight Eisenhower with Louis Galambos, Professor of History at John Hopkins University; what does the Trump and Bezos stoush tell us about progressive liberals in the US with Thomas Frank , US political analyst and how the 1918 Spanish Flu changed the world with science journalist Laura Spinney. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/

     

     

     

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  • MICHAEL O’KEEFE. Response to rumours of a Chinese military base in Vanuatu speak volumes about Australian foreign policy

    Rumour has it that Vanuatu has agreed to a Chinese request to establish a military base. The substance of this rumour is highly speculative at the least and disingenuous at most. Regardless of the truth, the fact that it raises alarm about the threat of Chinese military expansionism speaks volumes about Australian foreign policy, particularly toward the Pacific.It  looks like another beat up in the anti China phobia (more…)

  • TIM SOUTPHOMMASANE. Australian business and other organisations persistently fall short on cultural diversity.

    Australia is widely celebrated as a multicultural triumph, but any such success remains incomplete. There remains significant under-representation of cultural diversity in the senior leadership of Australian organisations. Our society does not yet appear to be making the most of its diverse talents. (more…)

  • LEANNE WELLS. Private health care in Australia: health policy’s wicked problem.

    The anguish expressed by many of the 1,200 respondents to the Consumers Health Forum’s Out of Pocket Pain survey highlights the widening gulf between the cost of modern medical care and the struggle of many Australians to pay for that care. (more…)