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John Menadue

JON BLACKWELL and KERRY GOULSTON. Aspects of Australian healthcare reform (part 2 of 3) – Learning from Denmark

In the first of this 3 part series, we described some partially successful NSW government healthcare reforms in Greater Metropolitan Sydney, and identified shortcomings in their planning and implementation. In this second part, we look at radical reforms to the Danish healthcare system, commencing in 2007, and some of the outcomes of those changes.

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Jan 21, 2020
ROB PURDON. Insuring against future bushfires

This summer’s bushfires are a tragedy. There has been massive habitat loss, and we all want to help those who have lost their properties and businesses. But climate change means that we are facing a “new normal”. (more…)

Jan 21, 2020
GRAEME WORBOYS: “I’ve never seen anything like this before”

Catastrophic fires in Australia in 2019/2020 burnt millions of hectares, lives were lost and property burnt. Huge walls of fire, ember attacks and spot fires burnt through super dry bush and other lands. “I’ve never seen anything like this before” was a regular response. (more…)

Jan 21, 2020
JON BLACKWELL and KERRY GOULSTON. Aspects of Australian healthcare reform (part 1 of 3) – Some history

This is the first of three papers. It deals with the history of some healthcare reforms in NSW in 2001, their scope and outcomes. The second will comment on similar but in many ways different and more successful healthcare reforms in Denmark, which has a similar population to the Greater Metropolitan Sydney Area. The third will discuss the present difficulties in implementing meaningful healthcare reforms in Australia.

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Jan 20, 2020
JOHN KEANE. Australia.out of luck

Is the Lucky Country running out of luck? Natural disaster or political disaster? (more…)

Jan 20, 2020
PAUL WALDMAN. There are no heroes in the Trump Administration.(Washington Post 18.1.2020)

There will be hundreds of books written about this dreadful period in our history, and one of the questions we’ll have to grapple with is this: How should we judge those around President Trump? The ones who helped him, who enabled him, or even just failed to stand up to him?

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Jan 20, 2020
WENDY HAYHURST. Why adequate and affordable housing matters to productivity

A growing body of research is demonstrating the adverse productivity impacts of inadequate or unaffordable housing in Australia (and elsewhere). (more…)

Jan 20, 2020
CHRIS DENNIS. A burning country.

Our country hangs its head in shame. (more…)

Jan 17, 2020
KEVIN TOLHURST.- We have already had countless bushfire inquiries (The Conversation 16.1.2020)

As our country battles the most extensive fires of our lifetime, there are increasing calls for a royal commission into the states and territories’ preparedness and the federal government’s response to the disaster. (more…)

Jan 17, 2020
GHADA KARMI.- Palestinian Rights.(LRB 5.12.2019)

A Palestinian State-Constantly Dangled, Endlessly Receding

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Jan 17, 2020
DAVID BENTLEY HART. ‘The Enchantments of Mammon’ (A book review)

Capitalism is the coldest and most stupefying of idolatries: a faith that has forsaken the sacral understanding of creation as something charged with God’s grandeur, flowing from the inexhaustible wellsprings of God’s charity, in favor of an entirely opposed order of sacred attachments (more…)

Jan 17, 2020
PETER RODGERS: Human rights in Xinjiang and Gaza.(A Repost 22.10.2019)

US and Australian responses to China’s maltreatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and Israel’s blockade of Gaza reveal glaring double standards. But no worse perhaps than those of many Muslim states hungry for China’s largesse. (more…)

Jan 16, 2020
JOHN MENADUE. Our aggressive and violent ally is perpetually at war. An update from 9.8.2019

There is growing concern about Chinese ‘influence’. At the same time we seem unconcerned that we have ceded much of our defence and foreign policy autonomy to the United States. Chinese influence is minor compared with the control that we have ceded to the US and Donald Trump.That US control has led us to one disaster after another. (more…)

Jan 16, 2020
RODNEY TIFFEN. The Murdoch Press and the Bushfires

The disastrous summer of bushfires has not been easy for Scott Morrison, but the News Corp newspapers have also had trouble rising to the challenge. (more…)

Jan 15, 2020
MINXIN PEI. Bush’s disastrous Iraq war paved the way for China’s rise. Is Trump about to make the same mistake?(SCMP and Project Syndicate 10.1.2020)

China joined the WTO and grew into an economic giant in the time the US was fixated on fighting al-Qaeda. It’s a lesson Trump appears not to have learned (more…)

Jan 15, 2020
J.A. DICK. War wisdom

Is it just and moral to assassinate an Iranian General?

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Jan 15, 2020
DAILAN PUGH. The Demise of a Koala Population

Last year the North East Forest Alliance found an unusually dense Koala colony, part of a regionally significant population in a forest proposed for logging. As we geared up for a blockade, the Busbys Flat fire changed direction on the night of the 8 October last year and burnt out most of our proposed 7,000 ha Sandy Creek Koala Park. Some 90% of the Koalas were lost from the burnt forests, along with vital source colonies. (more…)

Jan 14, 2020
DANIELLE CELERMAJER.-Opinion Omnicide:Who is responsible for the gravest of all crimes?(ABC Religion and Ethics 7.1.2020)

As the full extent of the devastation of the Holocaust became apparent, a Polish Jew whose entire family had been killed, Raphael Lemkin, came to realise that there was no word for the distinctive crime that had been committed: the murder of a people. (more…)

Jan 14, 2020
JOHN MENADUE. A Repost: Drug policy reform series

Attached is a collection of articles on drug policy reform, which were published as a series on Pearls and Irritations between 6 and 11 August 2018. This series is designed to draw attention to this important issue, and to the failure of our current policies. (more…)

Jan 10, 2020
NICHOLAS KEARNS.- Bushfires. If this is the future we have no future.

Dr Strangelove warned us of a “Doomsday Machine” that would destroy the entire planet. (more…)

Jan 9, 2020
AMANDA MEADE.-The Australian newspaper downplays bushfires in favour of picnic races.( The Guardian 4.1.2020)

And the Herald Sun relegates bushfires to page 4 while the Courier Mail brings good news via’Onion Oricle’

Read how the Murdoch papers deny climate change and largely ignore the fires.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/04/the-australian-murdoch-owned-newspaper-accused-of-downplaying-bushfires-in-favour-of-picnic-races?CMP=share_btn_link

Jan 9, 2020
CHAS SAVAGE.-Global warming and action in good faith.

Meaningful action to prevent global warming requires joint action through time. In this sense, we require a focus on outcomes—the goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius—and what must be done to realise this. Justice, of course, requires a sharing of the burden, because only a sharing of the burden will prompt and sustain action. (more…)

Jan 9, 2020
JOHN WOINARSKI. Fire and nature

The future has come – and it is not good for Australia’s natural environments. Drought, heat waves and wildfire, all linked manifestations of climate change, have subverted (and continue to subvert) the viability of many of Australia’s species. Across vast areas, we are losing much of our nature. (more…)

Jan 8, 2020
ALAN PEARS. My Climate Action Conundrum – beyond weak targets and Kyoto carryovers

I’m all for being a team player. I pay taxes to help run our economy and society. I do volunteer work to support a caring society. But when a key player in the team lets us down, I feel torn. Do I keep contributing, because most people are still working together? Do I call the laggard out and pursue alternatives that are not undermined by the failure of one player? Or a bit of both? My carbon accounting conundrum is simple: if I save energy, invest in solar or take other emission-reducing actions, my personal emissions go down. But Australia’s, and global emissions don’t. (more…)

Jan 8, 2020
ROD MITCHELL.-Carbon pricing to the rescue – for climate and government.

Tragically, we now have a disaster serious enough to wake up almost all of us to the catastrophe that is unfolding in large parts of Australia and advertising itself to the rest of the world. (more…)

Jan 8, 2020
KEVIN CLARKE. The U.S. killing of Soleimani could have devastating consequences for Iraq’s Christians

Following the news reports last night that eventually confirmed that a U.S. drone strike on Jan. 2 had killed Qasem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, and associates including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, I found myself hoping that someone in the Trump administration was remembering the perilous status of the Christian remnant in northern Iraq.

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Jan 8, 2020
MICHAEL EBURN AND STEPHEN DOVERS: What sort of inquiry should come after these fires?

Disasters are always followed by inquiries. Since 2009, there have been over 140 such inquiries across Australia, of varied types and processes of operating. (more…)

Jan 7, 2020
TONY BROE. Privatising Aged Care Assessment Teams

The Federal Government, which has long funded Australia-wide Aged Care Assessment Teams, commonly and often affectionately known as ACATs, has made a ‘surprise’ decision that it will privatise them from April 2021, with a tender to be held this year (30 December 2019).

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Jan 7, 2020
DAVID MORE. The ADHA Is Pulling A Large And Costly Confidence Trick On The Australian Medical Profession.

The Australian Digital Health Agency is expecting the medical profession to make a huge effective financial contribution in time and effort to make a flawed My Health Record System even a very partial success. The profession won’t wear it I believe. (more…)

Jan 6, 2020
JOHN MENADUE. The facts on boat arrivals that the media won’t face(A repost)

From September 2015, almost four years ago, Peter Hughes and I have pointed out repeatedly that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison triggered the surge in boat arrivals from September 2011 and did not stop the boats as they claim from December 2013 when Operation Sovereign Borders commenced. (more…)

Jan 6, 2020

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