This Good Friday there will be two Passion ‘plays’ proclaimed throughout the world: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to John, and The Passion of Our Lauded Cricket Captain According to Us. (more…)
John Menadue
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SCOTT BURCHILL. On the Russian gas attack
Given the “sexing up” and outright distortions of dodgy intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s “WMD” in 2002-3 by both the UK government of Tony Blair and US administration of George W. Bush, one can only be astonished at the credulity of those in the Fourth Estate who don’t even feel the need to ask for evidence in the case of the Salisbury gas attack on double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
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FRANCIS SULLIVAN. CEO Truth Justice and Healing Council.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse’s comprehensive and confronting final report rightly focuses on the Catholic Church, with one of the 17 volumes dedicated solely to that institution. The litmus test for the Church leadership in the coming months and years will be the degree to which they act on the Royal Commission’s recommendations. (more…)
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MICHAEL LAMBERT. An Update on the National Electricity Market and the National Energy Guarantee.
The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Energy Council meets in the second half of April to consider a report from the Energy Security Board on the proposed initial design of the National Energy Guarantee which seeks to address both emissions reductions and improved reliability in the National Electricity Market. (more…)
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TOM SWITZER. Skripal: the West escalates, but where is the proof?
Australia, the US, and several EU nations joined forces with Britain this week to expel Russian diplomats from their nations. The decision is based on the widespread view that the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin is responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England earlier this month. (more…)
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MATTHEW FISHER. Malcolm Turnbull in denial on climate change: The Uses and Abuses of Complex Causation.
It is commonplace for political and corporate leaders to obfuscate public debate on issues they want to avoid by applying simplistic, linear concepts of cause and effect to events that have multiple causes. In the case of climate change, one wonders how long the media and the public are going to let leaders like Malcolm Turnbull and others get away with this blatant piece of cynical misdirection. (more…)
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TRISTAN EDIS. How renewables trumped brown coal and gas over Australia’s summer.
In reading some of the panic-stricken media commentary about the impending blackouts we were supposed to have this summer, you might have been led to believe that renewable energy doesn’t contribute much at all to ensuring the lights stayed on. (more…)
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DR WARWICK YONGE. Corporate medicine: Illness or cure?
Australia has a unique mix of private, public, for profit and NFP stakeholders in its health system. This structure derives significantly from Constitutional issues. Corporate medicine now occupies a significant part of the health landscape. Is this a cause for concern? (more…)
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ROB STEWART. Wage Rises in the Neoliberal New World Order- Bad policy and bad politics
Neoliberals are often wrong but never in doubt. In pursuing its corporate tax cut agenda the Government is attempting to shift the industrial relations paradigm – linking private sector wage rises to public sector funding cuts, despite the fact corporate coffers have rarely been in better shape. (more…)
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RANJANA SRIVASTAVA From a frontline clinician: here’s what’s wrong with private health insurance
My patients often pay thousands of dollars annually for their cover, but it’s not cost-effective in many cases (more…)
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GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …
A conservative commentator revolts against Fox News – Max Boot, Washington Post
The monstrous strategic mistake that took Australia to war in Iraq – Kevin Rudd, Canberra Times.
A plea to the Queen to disclose the palace letters for the sake of Australian democracy – the Guardian.
Suicide note shows Japanese official’s fear of being blamed for land sale scandal：the Asahi Shimbun
Cambridge Analytica facebook influenced US election – the Guardian.
On Saturday Extra the 24th of March, Geraldine Doogue speaks with SMH’s economics editor Peter Martin about the continuing tax discussion; William Davies from the University of London on what the Brexiters really want; Harvard professor of philosophy Michael Sandel talks about his visits to China and the thirst young Chinese have for moral discussions in a GDP driven society; emeritus professor of politics Robert Manne talks about finding his voice after throat cancer and the politics of today; and professor of history Grace Karskens discusses her quest to bring alive the history of the Hawkesbury-Nepean River. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/
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BRAD CHILCOTT. Do you expect a return on your compassion?
In 2014, two Vietnamese high school students were suddenly taken from my local community and put into a detention facility. They’d received a letter from the Department of Immigration stating that their presence in the community ‘was no longer in the public interest’. (more…)
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JAMES FERNYHOUGH. Half of Australians with private health insurance say it isn’t worth it
Half of Australians with private health insurance say it is no longer worth the expense, a new survey commissioned by comparison website iSelect has found. (more…)
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HAROLD LEVIEN. How to Solve our Housing Crisis.
Federal Government policies are primarily responsible for the housing crisis facing Sydney and Melbourne first-home buyers and renters. Yet this Government virtually ignores fist-home buyers. Indeed it pursues policies which drive very many out of the housing market into exorbitant rentals. One policy, annual tax concessions to housing investors, cost $12 billion last year. (more…)
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PAT POWER. Quo Vadis? The Plenary Council of the Catholic Church in Australia
The Plenary Council planned for 2020-21 gives rise to great hopes and some anxiety as the Catholic Church in Australia and indeed worldwide faces the greatest challenge of the modern era. As a church “always in need of reform” we are continually confronted by the need to “read the signs of the times” and to respond in the light of the Gospel. (more…)
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JIM COOMBS. MEMO to Kenneth Hayne: the ‘four pillars’ of the system you are reviewing are NOT set in stone. As they crumble it is worth looking at what went before.
The present four pillars of the banking system are not a necessary evil or inevitable. History tells us why. (more…)
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ANNE HURLEY. Former Internet Australia directors support NSW Business Council call for a National Broadband Service Guarantee
Last year the NSW Business Chamber conducted a statewide survey of members. It has since called for changes it believes will help save business an average $9000 per year resulting from problems related to the NBN rollout. Four former directors of Internet Australia, the NFP peak body representing Internet users, have come out in support of the call for a National Broadband Service Guarantee. (more…)
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PETER BROOKS and IAN KERRIDGE The Royal Australasian College Of Physicians Examination Debacle Leaves Serious Unanswered Questions.
The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), comprising more than 16,000 medical specialists, advises governments on matters of health and medical care, and has a respected voice in the community. However, its raison d’être is to train specialist physicians. 8,000 aspiring physicians are now in training. Assessing their road-worthiness includes a high-stakes, high-stress, ‘barrier’ examination.
This year’s exam, offered at 20 centres in Australia and New Zealand, was computer-based.It was a debacle. (more…)
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DUNCAN MACLENNAN ET AL. Housing: New Reapolitik Needs a New Real Economics
Managing the pressured housing markets of cities such as Sydney and Melbourne poses a major challenge to governments at both state and Federal levels. As has become increasingly clear, such trajectories are wreaking serious damage for younger aspiring homebuyers and for broad swathes of the lower income population. As yet less well-recognised, however, is the wider hit to urban productivity that results from poorly functioning housing systems. Smarter policymaking is eminently possible in this area but will require that Ministers and their advisers resist the lure of simplistic ‘blame the planners’ analyses and adopt cleverer and better-informed approaches to the problem. (more…)
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CAROL NIKAKIS and REBECCA BUNN. The impact of failed drug policies on our criminal justice system cannot be ignored
There is now indisputable evidence that the criminalisation of drug use causes significant harm to people who use drugs, their families and the wider community. Even the United Nations has conceded that the ‘War on Drugs’ has failed to curb drug use, increased the spread of blood-borne viruses including Hepatitis C, and seen a burgeoning criminal drug market flourish. (more…)
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CHANDRA ROULSTON. Before most of us had made our morning coffee, they were gone.
I come from a country town in central Queensland called Biloela. A town where you can leave work to pick up the kids from school and it takes five minutes because we have one traffic light. A place where the “Buy Swap Sell” pages in the local newspaper are equal parts items for sale and posts asking: “Anyone know who owns this?” My favourite so far being a runaway bull on the golf course. And then Border Protection took our neighbours.
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MICK PALMER. Drugs policy – there has to be a better way.
Australia 21, a respected, independent, public policy, research and ‘think tank’ focused, organisation is hosting its fourth roundtable forum on the issue of Australia’s illicit drugs policy, on 21 March 2018 at Victoria’s Parliament House. (more…)
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ERIC SIDOTI. What if anything Corbyn can teach the ALP?
Populism is rapidly evolving as the catch-all explanation for the maelstrom engulfing national and international politics. It is said to be driving the rise of the authoritarian right in Europe and to be evident in the re-emergence of ‘strong man’ politics associated with Putin’s Russia, Xi Jinping’s China and Duterte’s Philippines. While Trump appears to be riding a populist wave all his own, it is also proferred as the key to understanding Bernie Sanders’ and Jeremy Corbyn’s surprising successes. The recourse to populism as the answer risks blinding us to the complex realities. It risks obscuring the more meaningful lessons that would better serve the sort of reform-minded social democratic movement that we might like to think the Australian Labor Party could be. (more…)
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STEVAN WONG,TRI NUKE PUDJIASTUTI, SRIPRAPHA PETCHARAMESREE and TRAVERS McLEOD Dialogue on Forced Migration ;Co-Chairs call for ongoing, coordinated action on Bangladesh and Myanmar.
The Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration (ADFM) concluded its sixth meeting in Sydney, Australia, this week ahead of the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit. The meeting focused on the humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh and Myanmar; efforts to address human trafficking, forced labour and modern slavery; and principles for sustainable and protection-sensitive repatriation and reintegration pathways. (more…)
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GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …
Remember Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Pentagon Papers? Peter Hannan, Environment Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald has written a review of his new book The DoomsDay Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Ellsberg recounts the occasions during the Cold War when the world came close to a catastrophic all-out nuclear war, triggered not by politicians but by technical errors and misinterpreted signals. Attention has been focussed on North Korea, but there are at least seven other states with nuclear weapon capability – France, India, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Writing in the New Yorker, John Cassidy compares Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium with the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act, a misguided protectionist policy that contributed to rounds of retaliatory actions by other nations, aggravating the damage of Depression, and in turn contributing to the tensions that led to the 1937-1945 War.
“The term ‘sovereign risk’ is the kind of econobabble bullshit that is destroying public debate” writes Richard Denniss in the Fairfax media. In trying to stymie economic reform, powerful interest groups put up the bogey of ‘sovereign risk’ as an argument to preserve their privilege.
Trump’s new Secretary of State has received most money from Koch Industries – RenewEconomy
Trump and Abe: Golf and Gold – New York Review of Books.
Mismanagement and corruption have left the Darling River dry – the Age.
How Barnaby Joyce came undone – the ABC. He’s been described by colleagues as a loner, a genius, authentic, and a narcissist. Here’s the story of how the former Nationals leader ended up on the backbench.
The guns crisis in the United States – New York Review of Books
Saturday Extra, March 17th Geraldine Doogue is looking at how the issue of human rights can be discussed diplomatically in international dialogues such as this weekend’s ASEAN meeting with Elaine Pearson from Human Rights Watch; Rajesh Walton, AUSTRAC’s Director of Innovation discusses the challenges facing the region in combatting cyber-attacks, terrorism financing and money laundering; Vladimir Putin and his foreign policies and interactions and how will he handle this area in his new term with Ivan Nechepurenko, a Moscow based writer and journalist and Leonid Petrov from the ANU; R& D in Australia, budgets and attitudes with Bill Ferris, Chair of Innovation and Science Australia and Alan Finkel, Australia’s chief scientist and continuing with our March series, historian Billy Griffiths on his book about this ancient land or ours, Deep Time Dreaming. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/
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TIM LINDSEY and DAVE MCCRAE. Australian-Indonesia: strangers next door
At the weekend, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will meet with President of Indonesia Joko Widodo (Jokowi) on the margins of the Australia-ASEAN Special Summit. Although Turnbull seems to have built the positive personal relationship with Jokowi that eluded Tony Abbott, managing the bilateral relationship won’t be any easier for Turnbull than his predecessor. (more…)
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NANDINI PANDEY. Rome’s “Empire Without End” and the “Endless” U.S. War on Terror (Replaying the Roman Civil Wars in Reverse Since 9/11)
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. (more…)
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NICOLE GURRAN, BILL RANDOLPH, PETER PHIBBS, RACHEL ONG, STEVEN ROWLEY. Affordable Housing Policy Failure Still Being Fuelled By Flawed Analysis.
Australia has a housing affordability problem. There’s no doubt about that. Unfortunately, one of the reasons the problem has become so entrenched is that the policy conversation appears increasingly confused. It’s time to debunk some policy clichés that keep re-emerging. (more…)
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TOYO KEIZAI. The Peace Train Leaves The Station.
Tokyo — In a flurry of developments that left experts stunned, the long-stalled Korean peace train has suddenly left the station. Sitting in the locomotive is the engineer of these events, North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jong Un. The conductor of the peace train, welcoming the passengers aboard, is South Korea’s President Moon Jae In. At the front of the passenger car, we find a jumpy U.S. President Donald J. Trump. A few rows back, wearing a quiet smile, sits Chinese President Xi Jinping. And in the last row of the car, a clearly unhappy Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo tightly clutches the armrest of his seat. (more…)
