Arguing that Australia should cut all support for US forces in Syria, and support the Syrian government and its allies in the fight against the terrorist insurgency. This starts with a recognition that the “White Helmets” are allies of Al Qaeda, supported by the US and UK. (more…)
John Menadue
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RICHARD TANTER. Bad, bad BADA (aka Bipartisan Australian Defence Agreement)
One explanation popular in some thinktank and corporate circles for incoherence in Australian defence policy and inefficiencies in defence procurement attributes these problems to the influence of politicians and elections. If only politics could be got out of the way, so the argument goes, we could have an effective policy process and an efficient defence procurement process. (more…)
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ANNE HURLEY. Questions should be asked about the Coalition Agreement and its potential impact on the NBN rollout in rural Australia?
Over the last few weeks we have been inundated with reports of the Barnaby Joyce saga. One aspect of the saga has involved a call for transparency in the provisions of the agreement between the Liberal Party and Nationals – the Coalition Agreement – pursuant to which they operate as the Government for all Australians. (more…)
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MARC HUDSON. The Nationals have changed their leader but kept the same climate story
After Barnaby Joyce’s demise as Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader, and his replacement by Michael McCormack, we might wonder what the junior Coalition partner’s leadership change means for Australia’s climate policy. (more…)
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GORDON DE BROUWER. Achieving balance in Australia’s strategic thinking
A lot has been said about the challenge that Australia and other countries in Asia and the Pacific face in balancing their security interests with the United States and economic interests with China. The need to deal systematically with this challenge is sharpening as Beijing and Washington shift their conventional approaches to international relations. China has been more assertive in its foreign policy, especially in the South China Sea and in cyberspace. Meanwhile, there is concern that the United States under President Trump is abandoning its support for a rules-based and market-oriented global order and is championing an order that prioritises protectionism, unilateralism and the pursuit above all else of American interests. (more…)
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RICHARD TANTER. Joined at the hip with Donald Trump and implications for Pine Gap and Australian sovereignty.
In the repost below from 18 December 2017, Richard Tanter pointed out
Apart from the multiple US–Soviet nuclear crises of 1983, there has probably never been a more important time for Australians to consider the immediate implications of hosting Pine Gap. In the event of war on the Korean peninsula, Pine Gap hardwires Australia into US military operations, whether Canberra likes it or not. … Pine Gap today is a US battlefield asset, and if President Trump’s threat to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea shifts from rhetoric to policy, Australia will automatically be involved in the second Korean War, unless the Turnbull government turns away from ‘joined at the hip’ rhetoric of alliance to join the German blanket rejection of its — and Canberra’s — ally’s belligerence. (more…)
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MATTHEW RICKETSON & RODNEY TIFFEN. The chronicler we deserve?
Michael Wolff’s book owes a large debt to the ethically grounded work of the journalists he professes to disdain. (more…)
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NICHOLAS GRUEN. Now is the time for complacency: Banking and Australian Policy Makers
To quote Bank of England Governor, Melvin King in 2010 “of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today.” The Bank of England continues as a thoughtful critic to this day. As we’ll see below, our own central bank – the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) – not so much.
The fatal flaw in banking is that, although money is a classic public good, like the air we breathe or the radio spectrum, it’s privately created. Commercial banks like NAB or Westpac create money whenever they advance a loan. This private licence to print money creates four huge problems. (more…)
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HYLDA ROLFE. Summer of our disconnect. (Part 1 of 2)
Some National Parks in New South Wales are taking a beating. On occasion, it’s difficult to distinguish the businesses that are officially sanctioned in them from the activities usually undertaken in normal commercial venues. Should they be there at all? It is time to sort things out. (more…)
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GARRY WOODARD. The role of strategic ambiguity in Australia’s China Policy
For half a century, strategic ambiguity about the application of ANZUS to Taiwan served Australia well. Is it time to apply this policy more broadly? (more…)
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DAVID NICHOLLS. We are the lobster
An increasing feeling of unreality is pervading the social environment. It has an almost dreamlike feel to it. Or perhaps one should say should say, “nightmare-like”. (more…)
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PATTY FAWKNER. Calls for change within the Church will be its salvation.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Post have something important to say about ‘the what’ and ‘the how’ of the Church’s mission. (more…)
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GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …
On Phillip Adams’ Late Night Live Tony Moore of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash explains the Centre’s “recovering the Australian working class” project. In arguing for a strong social wage he points out how means-tested benefits have contributed to “downward envy”. Australia’s working class is not necessarily poor, but it is disadvantaged in areas such as health and education.
Transparency International has released its Corruption Perception Index 2017. New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the Nordic countries retain their lead rankings. Australia, which held 8th place behind these countries in 2012, has slipped to 13th place. Even the United Kingdom now ranks ahead of Australia.
On Australia’s stagnating real wages Ross Gittins writes that “the union movement has done too little to counter the alarmists telling their members they’ve lost the power to ask for more”. Stagnating wages may be stoking workers’ disaffection with the Turnbull Government, to the Benefit of the Labor Party, but they’re doing nothing for people’s pay packets or the Australian economy.
Reports of journalism’s imminent demise are exaggerated, but politicians aren’t helping – the Guardian.
The IMF doesn’t share the Government’s heroic growth predictions – Greg Jericho in the Guardian..
Donald Trump is the worst of the worst – Michael Tomansky in New York Review of Books.
The real reason Americans don’t care about the cost of wars – The Nation.
Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now. He either believes Putin’s denials, or more likely, is afraid of what the Russians have on him – Thomas Friedman.
Turnbull’s US visit should prompt us to rethink our place in the world – The Guardian.
On Saturday Extra this 24th February, Geraldine Doogue brings you the February edition of A Foreign Affair. It was recorded at the ANU on Wednesday evening in front of an audience. Menna Rawlings, the British High Commissioner, Michael Wesley, Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the ANU and Bob Carr, former ALP Senator and Foreign Affairs minister are the guests. Former ALP minister Craig Emerson also joins Geraldine to discuss his life in politics. Rodger Shanahan, research fellow for the West Asia program at the Lowy Institute provides a where are we up to in the Middle East as the situation in Syria becomes worse and Andrew Rosser, professor of Southeast Asian Studies from Melbourne University discusses why the education system in Indonesia is being held back and what the implications are for Australian education providers. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/
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QUENTIN GRAFTON and JOHN WILLIAMS. States’ dummy-spit over the Murray-Darling Basin Plan clouds the real facts
Given the outraged reaction from some state water ministers to the disallowance of an amendment to the Murray Darling Basin Plan, you would be forgiven for thinking that a heinous crime had been committed against farmers in upstream states. (more…)
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GARY JOHNSTON. The Future Submarine: a technical problem
It is nearly two years since the government announced that the Shortfin Barracuda, to be designed and built by the French company, Naval Group, would be Australia’s future submarine (FSM). The proposed acquisition remains controversial. As an Australian citizen who has observed over many years the ongoing waste and incompetence exhibited in many Defence acquisitions, I have been concerned since the outset at the huge cost and immense risks around the FSM project. In this article, I describe what may be a major technical error on the part of the Defence department, with potentially far reaching consequences. (more…)
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SAUL ESLAKE. The quest for ‘security’ – is it rational, has it made us safer, and at what cost?
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:
- How significant a risk is the threat of terrorism in Australia, both in absolute terms and relative to some of the other risks and threats on our horizon?
- How effective in reducing that risk have the various measures enacted in the name of ‘security’ actually been? and
- How does whatever reduction in the risks posed by terrorism which has been obtained compare with the costs, broadly defined, of those measures?
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PAUL FRIJTERS. Our Countries Need Us
Humanity is at a high point. What our ancestors dreamed of is slowly becoming a reality: a world without hunger in which the vast majority of mankind live peaceful and long lives. We are not there yet, but in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and even in Africa (our cradle), mankind is emerging from dark times. People live longer, healthier, happier, and more educated lives. Paid for and organised by countries, helped by international flows of people and information.
And yet, our countries are under threat from a disconnect between the elites and the population of individual countries.
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JOAN STAPLES. Bill weak on stopping foreign donations, but strong on silencing NGOs.
The current Bill before parliament to reform electoral donations is the most comprehensive attempt I have seen at silencing public advocacy in 30 years. It does not succeed in its supposed aim to restrict foreign donations – an aim that is supported by NGOs. Instead, it is a convoluted, excruciatingly complicated maze that will undoubtedly silence a wide range of charities, NGOs and public interest institutions. (more…)
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ELIZABETH EVATT. Democracy under challenge.
In their recent book, How Democracies Die, discussed this week on Late Night Live, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, outlined how democracies can be undermined and ultimately destroyed without the violent coup of Pinochet, but by abuse of the system itself. They address the problems of the United States. But we have to be on guard because some of the symptoms are starting to infect our own democracy in Australia. (more…)
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GREGORY MCCARTHY. Australia’s iron(ic) curtain hurting China ties
2017 was earmarked to celebrate 45 years of Australian–Chinese diplomatic relations. Instead, Australia alleged that China interfered in its national affairs and the China Daily reported that an on-line poll had voted Australia as the ‘least friendly nation to China in 2017’. Likewise, a Global Times editorial accused Australia of McCarthyism and said that Australia had gone insane regarding the issue of China. (more…)
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RANALD MACDONALD. Stop the presses.
Well, they have almost stopped running around this country with so few papers being sold nowadays, but let us stop them anyway. (more…)
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COLIN STEELE. Who Owns Australian Research?
Who owns the results of Australian research? Certainly, not Australian researchers, as they, and their institutions, continue to give away publicly funded research to multinational publishers. As a result, Australian research is largely locked up behind expensive multinational publishing firewalls, constituting a form of information feudalism. (more…)
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BERNARD KEANE. Amid denialism on company tax cuts, the ABC lets us down.
The ABC’s censorship of Emma Alberici in response to pressure from Malcolm Turnbull comes at a time when the national broadcaster’s mainstream media competitors are also increasingly failing to properly inform Australians. (more…)
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MICHAEL PEMBROKE. North Korea: Why negotiations can’t wait for denuclearisation
Few people know the true story of the Korean War; few understand the reasons for North Korean bitterness toward the United States; most are unaware of the extent to which Washington shares responsibility for the creation and perpetuation of the mutual hostility that has persisted for almost 70 years. (more…)
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JOHN WATKINS. An ode to nurses: hospital stay highlights immense compassion and skill
In hospital this week after surgery, I learnt some things I already half knew. That I don’t cope well with pain, that time slows down in the middle of the night, (I swear I saw the hands of the clock in ICU move backwards sometime after 3am) and that nurses are a most precious resource, more valuable to our nation than iron ore and more deserving of recognition and celebration than our Test cricket team. Then I read the Herald’s warnings about a long-term recruitment crisis in nursing and was disturbed by the news that nurses were virtually priced out of certain areas of Sydney due to house prices. We ignore these warnings at our peril. (more…)
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MARC HUDSON. It’s 20 years since privatisation lit the spark under South Australia’s livewire energy politics
February 17, 2018, marks the 20th anniversary of a momentous day in South Australian energy politics. The then premier, John Olsen, announced that, despite repeated promises during the previous year’s state election campaign, his Liberal government would be putting the Electricity Trust of South Australia (ETSA) up for sale. (more…)
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LINDA JAKOBSON ET AL. China and Australia Relations-Submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security
I am grateful to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) for this opportunity to comment on the Bill. Please note that this submission is a duplicate of my submission to the PJCIS regarding the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill 2017. (more…)
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NICK SEDDON. Democracy in danger. Or, how to get GetUp.
Proposed amendments to the Electoral Act if enacted will profoundly constrain or shut down political advocacy that is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. (more…)
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KEN HILLMAN. Patient safety, a new perspective.
Patient safety in acute hospitals is often described in limited terms such as infection rates and pressure areas without considering that many people gain little or no benefit from being admitted there in the first place. We also ignore the impact on patient safety when management make decisions such as closing hospital wards, prolonging waiting lists and reducing front line health care delivery. (more…)
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JIM COOMBS. Trickle Down – My Hat !
The orthodoxy of the Neoliberal Economics (Let’s call it Nasty prehistoric Unfair capitalism, NPUC for short) asserts in the face of universal contradictory evidence, that giving capitalism free reign benefits the poor and the weak. Pull the other one! (more…)