For 13 billion years, since the Big Bang until now, death has been part of life. We know that, and as Christians we believe that death is the prelude to new life. We call it the Paschal Mystery. But what do these words, Paschal Mystery, mean, asks Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner? (more…)
John Menadue
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NICK BISLEY. Learning to live with a nuclear North Korea?
North Korea perceives it is isolated in a world that is hostile to its existence. However loathsome the regime may be and however badly it misallocates resources to bolster the ruling elite, the reason for acquiring nuclear weapons is entirely rational: they are a vital means for North Korea to protect itself. (more…)
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ANNETTE BROWNLIE. Keeping Australia out of US wars
It is time we, the people, asserted our sovereignty, took control of our foreign policies and reviewed the presence of U.S. bases and troops in Australia. It is time we started promoting genuine peace and security, human rights, a sustainable environment and our independence. (more…)
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WAYNE McMILLAN. David versus Goliath: reform and reinvention (Part 2 of 2)
What Sally McManus’s is saying is correct, I agree with her conclusions about what has happened to workers over the last 30 years and what is becoming intolerable now in 2017. Across Australia in 2017, little or no wage growth, increased working hours, increases in casual jobs, a decrease in full time meaningful work, rising increases in household debt and rising inequalities in income and wealth is the bleak future facing Australian workers and their families. In the public sector, outsourcing and privatisation have meant an erosion of working conditions and rates of pay for workers. What can be done to rectify this alarming trend? (more…)
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WAYNE McMILLAN. David and Goliath: One step forward, two steps back. (Part 1 of 2)
Malcom Turnbull’s recent comment that he couldn’t work with Sally McManus the recently elected Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is just another excuse against strong union representation for ordinary waged workers. (more…)
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DAVID PEETZ. How tax minimisation affects CEO pay
Firms whose executives behave ‘unethically’, as proxied by not paying any company tax, are also likely to pay their CEOs an average of around a fifth more than firms of similar size and circumstances who do pay company tax. (more…)
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EDITORS, EAST ASIA FORUM. The consequences of the Trump-Xi meeting in Florida.
ANU East Asia Forum has posted a new item, ‘The consequences of the Trump–Xi meeting in Florida‘
All eyes will be on Florida this week, where US President Donald Trump will ANU host an inaugural summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. (more…)
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Building a regional refugee framework.
The Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration (ADFM) expanded its membership, deepened its policy contributions to the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime (Bali Process) and developed its connection to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at its meeting in Jakarta from 5-7 March 2017. (more…)
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BOB BIRRELL and DAVID McCLOSKEY. Sydney and Melbourne’s housing affordability crisis: no end in sight.
Our projections show that, on these demographic assumptions, new migrants will add about 64 per cent to the need for extra dwellings in Sydney over the decade 2012 to 2022 and 54 per cent in Melbourne. (more…)
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TOM BURTON. Data rights for all.
A proposed new legal right for consumers and businesses to control and access the data created about them is set to be one of the major reforms of this decade. Not everyone is supportive. (more…)
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TIM COLEBATCH. Old coal, no new gas: how to generate an electricity crisis.
We need to set a timetable to reduce emissions from electricity generation, which now contributes a third of Australia’s greenhouse gases – and, by and large, the third that will be easiest and cheapest to reduce. We need price mechanisms to drive it.
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MICHAEL D. BREEN. Bullying Documentary on ABC Television March 14 & 21
Bullying is an epidemic. Bullying is a complex social matter. Systemic problems need systemic remedies. There is a wealth of international research available. Good will and enthusiasm are insufficient treatment qualifications; even if the presenter is a national good guy. Is it acceptable to test drive a dubious procedural treatment on T.V.? Would it be acceptable for an unproven surgical procedure?
If the ABC is to ask vulnerable individuals to be interviewed about personal and family sufferings, producers need to be able to justify that the repeated pain is worth it. Otherwise suffering is increased and informed viewers squirm. (more…)
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The Australian does it again, and again, and again.
Media Watch on 27 March 2017 described the unprofessional behaviour of the Australian and journalist Graham Lloyd over the reporting of the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. The Media Watch story follows. (more…)
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KELLIE TRANTER. Unreasonable silence
So what are we left with? The burial of truth. A closed bloc hunkered down in Canberra who conceal information and who fail to condemn the loss of life of innocents at the hands of either our country or our allies, and who are cut off from the consequences of their own cruelty, stupidity and collaboration. Defence personnel who no longer fight for a better future for Australians.
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PAT POWER. Nuclear disarmament.
I find it incredible that Australia is refusing to be part of the UN negotiations on a new treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons.
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PETER WHITEFORD. ‘Them’ and ‘us’: the enduring power of welfare myths.
Despite the evidence that deliberate fraud is a tiny fraction of social security spending, it remains a mainstay of much reporting of welfare in the Australian media. The Daily Telegraph is a repeat offender. (more…)
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JOHN DALEY and BRENDAN COATES. The latest ideas to use super to buy homes are still bad ideas.
Treasurer Scott Morrison wants to use the May budget to ease growing community anxiety about housing affordability. Lots of ideas are being thrown about: the test for the Treasurer is to sort the good from the bad. Reports that the government was again considering using superannuation to help first homebuyers won’t inspire confidence. (more…)
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CAMERON MURRAY. Affordable housing reform.
While the decline of our economic diversity, has failed the average worker, it has been a boon for the landlord class. Those who already own land and housing benefit at the expense of those who want access to housing for their own household security. Those who own the banks benefit too. And we have seen the enormous lengths to which government will go to support the way things are. Every “affordable housing” policy, … is designed not to let housing prices fall, and housing become genuinely more affordable. (more…)
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DAVID JAMES. Penalty rate cuts are the result of thinking small
Australia is showing signs of contracting the American disease of rising inequality, which will ultimately spill over into low growth, especially when the effect of high household indebtedness has its inevitable dampening effect. In the last quarter of 2016 GDP growth was strong and corporate profits jumped 20.1 per cent. But wages and salaries actually went down 0.5 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis.
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ALBERT MISPEL. 1938-2017
Pearls & Irritations advises the sad news that Albert Mispel, who was instrumental in getting this blog started (and indeed, suggested its name) has passed away. Albert had an exciting life during which he taught school in New Guinea, was a core member of the Glebe Society fighting expressways during the 1970s and, later in life, became a computer programmer/web designer. He was enthusiastic about all progressive causes. He provided the technical know-how to get this blog up and running five years ago, and supported it thereafter. He believed in the ‘cause’. The first blog password was ‘November 1975’. With many others, he would never forget the Whitlam dismissal. Albert’s death is mourned by his wife, Kathy, two daughters, Jo and Madeleine, and his grandchildren. He will be sadly missed. Vale Albert.
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JOHN NIEUWENHUYSEN. Dark Days for Immigration Policy. Nation building or border protection.
The concept of Australia’s Immigration Department being a minor part of a version of the United States department of homeland security is a frightening one. What will have happened to the “Welcome to Australia” banners of years past? (more…)
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TIM COLEBATCH. Why gas prices went sky-high, and what governments need to do about it
There is an overwhelming consensus that the centrepiece should be an emissions intensity scheme, as proposed by the draft Finkel report, by the government’s handpicked Climate Change Authority, and by electricity generators and big users alike. This would give the energy industry a clear, bipartisan timetable to reduce emissions, enabling it to plan and invest with confidence. (more…)
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PETER BROOKS and JOHN WILLOUGHBY. A call for doctors to take a stand on the Adani Carmichael coal mine
The comprehensive investigation, published as The Adani Files (adanifiles.com.au), provides a litany of stories of pollution, failed clean-ups of damaged environments, and allegations of corruption and of abuse of workers. (more…)
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HANS J OHFF. A Future Submarine bonanza for France
Seen through the eyes of an engineering contractor and shipbuilder I suggest that the French have hit the jackpot. They will be falling over themselves to sign the proposed Framework Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the French Republic concerning cooperation on the future Submarine Program. (more…)
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PHIL ROBERTSON. A new wave of atrocities is being committed against Muslims in Burma’s Rakhine state
The burned-out mosques in Sittwe, the capital of the Rakhine state in western Burma, loom as silent reminders of an atrocity, hiding behind overgrown bushes and cement walls amid the daily port city bustle. (more…)
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JONATHAN PAGE. Who Pays The Ferryman? Befriending Death.
The human experience is haunted by mortality. It is important to encourage deep discussion of the reality of our own individual death from an early age. The potential psycho-spiritual and behavioural benefits of this discussion are immense. (more…)
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FRANCIS SULLIVAN. Where to from here?
I don’t think anyone was prepared for the extent of the abuse and the appalling rate across male religious orders and within the priesthood.
The posturing and spin of years past has been seen for what is was – an avoidance of the truth and a failed attempt to divert the public from the scale of the abuse and the depths to which Church officials had sunk as they tried to keep it hidden. (more…)
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ALAN PEARS. The solution to Australia’s gas crisis is not more gas.
Eastern Australia has plenty of gas. The problem is that most of it is being exported at prices lower than some Australians are paying. And the price volatility resulting from the present shambles is making life difficult for some Australian industries. (more…)
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ALAN KOHLER. Hello, Elon? It’s Malcolm.
“Cannon-Brookes! That man’s an absolute nuisance. He’s been causing Arthur problems with our 457 visa plans, and now he’s trying to mess up the nice little wedge we’ve got going with Shorten and Weatherill over renewables and blackouts in Adelaide.” (more…)
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PETER PHIBBS. we must call governments out on this ‘Game of Homes’.
When politicians say supply will fix the problem, ask them why it hasn’t worked yet. And also send them a copy of the graph from Chapter 1 of any first-year economics text book showing that price is the result of the interaction of supply and demand. (more…)