John Menadue

  • JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN. Collapse of the Anglo-American Order – Implications for ASEAN and EU

    The two architects of the post-World War 2 order were British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and America President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They met (for the first time) aboard the heavy cruiser USS Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland (Canada) and from there on 14 August 1941, two years after the outbreak of war, issued what came to be known as The Atlantic Charter. (more…)

  • KAI HE. How to save the Shangri La Dialogue

    It was a sign of the Shangri-La Dialogue’s declining relevance when China sent a low-level delegation and India no delegation at all to this year’s talkfest. To ensure its future standing, this important meeting needs to shift its focus to achieving concrete security cooperation outcomes. (more…)

  • MICHAEL P. HUGHES. What went wrong with the F-35, Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter?

    The F-35 was billed as a fighter jet that could do almost everything the U.S. military desired, serving the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy – and even Britain’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy – all in one aircraft design. It’s supposed to replace and improve upon several current – and aging – aircraft types with widely different missions. It’s marketed as a cost-effective, powerful multi-role fighter airplane significantly better than anything potential adversaries could build in the next two decades. But it’s turned out to be none of those things. (more…)

  • GREGORY CLARK. Canberra’s new identity problem.

    With its new citizenship rules requiring applicants to show proof of attachment to Australian culture and values, Canberra has triggered a national identity debate.  It is accused of showing xenophobic tendencies. But national identity could be much more complex than the critics realise. Ever wondered, for example,  why we get annoyed when people in a crowded train carriage begin speaking into their cellphones? But we do not mind so much when they talk loudly among themselves? (more…)

  • Submission on foreign policy white paper – filling the void.

    The election of Donald Trump has unsettled the global order. He will be the first US president to have no experience of governmental or military leadership. In his campaign statements he challenged the Western consensus on international issues, ranging from US alliances, national security, and nuclear weapons to trade, immigration, and climate change. In whatever ways he implements or moderates these policies, uncertainty and volatility will prevail from January 2017 onwards.   (more…)

  • JUSUF WANANDI. Tribute to ambassador Richard Woolcott

    Jusuf Wanandi pays tribute to Dick Woolcott, former Ambassador to Indonesia and Secretary of the Department of FOreign Affairs and Trade, on his 90th birthday.   Throughout his long career Woolcott has been a friend to Indonesia. (more…)

  • MICHAEL WALKER. Three strategies unions are considering for their survival

    There are three strategies unions, in danger of lsing their relevance,  can consider for their survival:  Teaming up with other community groups, aligning with particular professions and finding members online.

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  • JOHN CARMODY. May day was in June

    The only word to describe Theresa May’s unnecessary recent decision to call an early election in Britain is “hubris” and that hubris has now led to irremediable humiliation. “Strong and stable” could have described her political position before the election, but as a campaign slogan, delivered with numbingly motoric repetition, it became risible as “Jobson Growth” had been in Australia last year.  

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  • JOHN QUIGGIN. The OECD joins the backlash against unfettered globalisation

    The OECD, in a recent report, has recognised that globalisation has many dimensions. Its enthusiasm for globalisation is undiminished, but it does acknowledge that the costs of globalisation “have been larger, more localised and more durable than previously thought, and that this is one source of disaffection with globalisation”. In a challenge to conventional wisdom it suggests that governments should seek to restore progressivity to their tax and welfare systems. (more…)

  • David Ben-Tovim, Some private hospitals are safer than others, but we don’t know which

    Our research has shown that some private hospitals are safer than others, but from the data we analysed we couldn’t tell which. Governments should balance commercial interests against the public’s right to know which hospital is providing safe, high-quality care. (more…)

  • PETER RODGERS. Trump’s sugar hit in Israel mugged by reality

    Arriving in Israel on 22 May, Donald Trump told the Israeli President that he’d ‘just got back from the Middle East’. Not the most geographically informed start to the visit but from then on it was all schmooze, to the obvious delight of Trump’s hosts. Remarkably, Trump gave his twitter fingers a well-deserved rest and stayed on script. This might have been welcome except for the script itself. It appeared to include nothing of consequence – so even Trump’s critics acknowledged that as he had nothing to say he said it well. As Trump settled back into the White House, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – both important to US strategic interests in the Middle East – resumed their spiteful relationship.
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  • PETER OLSZEWSKI. Still banging away – Michael Kelly as a media mogul.

    Bangkok-based Father Michael Kelly – Mick to his mates – is a journalist who became a Jesuit priest who became a savvy publisher and who now runs a complex global religious media empire.   (more…)

  • BERNARD KEANE. Low emissions target: a win for both Turnbull and climate denialists, a loss for everyone.

    The beauty of a  Low Emissions Target as a climate action policy is that, as a kind of lowest common denominator, it means everyone wins — and for that matter loses. (more…)

  • CHRISTIAN DOWNIE. Time for China and Europe to lead, as Trump dumps the Paris climate deal

    President Donald Trump’s announcement overnight that he will withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement comes as no surprise.   (more…)

  • IAN BERSTEN. Tax policy and reducing financial barriers for small business in Australia.

    There is much discussion about the benefits of reducing tax so that Australia can be competitive with other countries in the world. This is only of consequence to multinational companies considering where to establish their headquarters. All small companies and medium-sized companies in Australia want more sales. From larger sales they get more profits and often lower cost of unit production. The emphasis in Australia should be to increase sales and the biggest problem is the structure of the market dominance by large companies.   (more…)

  • BASTIAN SEIDEL. Patients want health not necessarily treatment.

    Achieving recognition of general practitioners as medical specialists in our own right has been an uphill battle  for decades. We only achieved vocational recognition as specialists in the 1990s. For many years we were seen as #JustaGP, a term that symbolises the academic and professional discrimination our members are still subjected to today.   (more…)

  • RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Australian security and trade policy for 2017 and beyond.

    The key issue is not what President Trump says on behalf of the United States but, what the United States actually does.   (more…)

  • JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN. Phasing out the US (dis)order in the Asia Pacific

    It is widely held that there is qualitative distinction between the benign, liberal US global order prevailing in the Asia Pacific, and a potentially threatening and malign Chinese imperialist order. This perspective is quite hallucinatory.  (more…)

  • PETER RODGERS. Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia and the Hypocrisy Olympics

    The breathless hypocrisy of Donald Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia should leave us all reeling. The fact that the new president could make his first overseas journey to the very country he previously castigated, rightly, as the mother lode of 9/11 is bad enough. But the sycophancy he displayed to his hosts, especially King Salman, demonstrated just what a dangerous chameleon Trump is.   (more…)

  • CHRISTIAN DOWNIE. If the US can’t make coal clean, what hope is there for Australia?

    The Prime Minister’s recent decision to back coal rests on the assumption that it can somehow be made “clean”, or more precisely, that carbon, capture and storage (CCS) technologies can be made to work for coal plants. The problem is that they can’t and the US experience shows why.   (more…)

  • LYNDSAY CONNORS. Schools Funding: unearthing the facts

    The objections raised by Catholic leaders to the Turnbull Government’s Gonski 2.0 funding model raise as many questions about the governance and operation of the Catholic school system as about Gonski 2.0. One of these questions is: who pays for the teachers in Catholic schools?  (more…)

  • EMILY FISCHER et al. Playing God: The Immigration Minister’s Unrestrained Power .

    The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection holds numerous discretionary powers that allow him or her to make substantial and lifelong decisions about the lives of vulnerable people. These powers lack transparency, accountability and are not amenable to review by the courts.  (more…)

  • JEAN-PIERRE LEHMANN. As China and US get closer, Japan is left in not so splendid isolation in Asia Pacific

    Tokyo needs to make peace with its neighbours, especially those that were its former victim.

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  • LYNDSAY CONNORS. The  Tangled  Education Web. Part 2 of 2: The Catholic Story

    ‘Sector-blind’ does not mean turning a blind eye to the shortcomings of any sector in distributing public funding received from government.  (more…)

  • MARK GREGORY.  A new broadband levy in another NBN bungle

    The Turnbull government is set to introduce a new levy on telecommunications companies that offer 25 Mbps or faster internet connections to contribute towards regional and remote broadband.  (more…)

  •  JIM COOMBS. Public Goods

    Before the advent of the “free enterprise market economy” model’s dominance of economic thinking, there was a distinction made between private and public goods.  The idea was that some things had to be provided for a healthy, well-ordered society: such basics to our notion of civilization as universal water reticulation and sewerage (the most significant public health measure ever), electricity and gas services, public transport, education and telecommunications. These were to be provided generally and largely (as possible) equally to all, and NOT at the direction of “market forces”, which would discriminate in favour of the rich.  For most of the last century these were provided by government monopolies, to guarantee fair and equal access. Seems quite sensible. 

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  • Book Launch: “Of Labour and Liberty”

    Of Labour and Liberty Book Launch

    Event Information

    Join us as Bishop Vincent Long, Fourth Bishop of Parramatta launches Race Mathew‘s new book, Of Labour and Liberty at the Whitlam Institute, in partnership with Monash University Publishing.

    Of Labour and Liberty: Distributism in Victoria 1891-1966 arises from the author’s half a century and more of political and public policy involvement. It’s a response to evidence of a precipitous decline in active citizenship, resulting from a loss of confidence in politics, politicians, parties and parliamentary democracy; the rise of ‘lying for hire’ lobbyism; increasing concentration of capital in the hands of a wealthy few; and corporate wrong-doing and criminality. It questions whether political democracy can survive indefinitely in the absence of economic democracy – of labour hiring capital rather than capital labour. It highlights the potential of the social teachings of the Catholic Church and the now largely forgotten Distributist political philosophy and program that originated from them as a means of bringing about a more equal, just and genuinely democratic social order. It describes and evaluates Australian attempts to give effect to Distributism, with special reference to Victoria. It documents as grounds for hope the support and advocacy of Pope Francis, and ownership by some 83,000 workers of the Mondragon co-operatives in Spain.

    About the speakers

    Race Mathews is a former Chief of Staff to Gough Whitlam, Federal MP, Victorian MP and Minister, Local Government Councillor, academic, speech therapist and primary teacher. He has held numerous positions in the Australian Labor Party and the co-operative and credit union movements and has written and spoken widely about their history, attributes, and activities. A major focus of his research has been the great complex of worker-owned co-operatives at Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain and its origins in the social teachings of the Catholic Church. He is married to writer Iola Mathews, and lives in Melbourne.

    The Most Reverend Vincent Long Van Nguyen OFM Conv DD, Fourth Bishop of Parramatta, was born in 1961 in Dong Nai in Vietnam. Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, his family has been dispersed: his mother, a brother and a sister are in Melbourne, three brothers are in Holland, a sister remains in Vietnam, and Bishop Vincent is now in Parramatta. Bishop Vincent is the first Vietnamese born bishop to lead a diocese outside of Vietnam and the first Vietnamese born bishop in Australia. He was Episcopal Vicar for Justice and Peace and for Social Services and was Chair of the Catholic Education Commission (Victoria). Nationally, he serves as the Bishops Delegate for Migrants and Refugees, Chair of Australian Catholic Social Justice Council and member of the Permanent Committee. In 2016, he was appointed the 4th Bishop of Parramatta in succession to Bishop Anthony Fisher OP following his appointment as Archbishop of Sydney in 2014.

    Date and time

    Fri. 16 June 2017

    10:30 am – 12:00 pm AEST

    Location

    Whitlam Institute, Female Orphan School

    Conference Room 1, Building EZ, Western Sydney University

    Cnr James Ruse Drive and Victoria Road, Rydalmere, NSW 2116

    Free event, refreshments provided, but please register at:

    https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/of-labour-and-liberty-book-launch-tickets-34309234845

    The Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University exists not simply to preserve the legacy of the Hon Gough Whitlam AC QC through the Prime Ministerial Collection, but to ensure that his legacy lives through our commitment to bold public policy and social reform and through our efforts to nurture an interest in and understanding of our democracy.

    Click here to read more details about “Of Labour and Liberty“

    Click here to view map and directions

     

  • LYNDSAY CONNORS. The Tangled  Education Web  Part 1 of 2

    Gonski 2.0 appeared to be a gift horse but over the space of little more than two week it is looking more like a Trojan horse.  
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  • SAUL ESLAKE. Housing affordability and the 2017-18 Budget: a missed opportunity

    Housing affordability was to be a key focus of the Government in this year’s federal budget, according to the ‘nods and winks’ that traditionally precede the Treasurer’s budget speech. A journalist who has often been privy to the thinking of those at the highest levels of the Abbott and Turnbull Governments wrote that the budget would represent “the most comprehensive intervention by a federal government into the life cycle of home ownership”, involving “every aspect” of the housing market. (more…)

  • TIM LINDSEY. Conviction Politics: The Jailing of Jakarta’s Governor Ahok

    The conviction for blasphemy last Tuesday of the outgoing governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (known as ‘Ahok’) was not a surprise. It followed a common pattern for blasphemy cases in Indonesia. (more…)