It is time for Australia to accept the reality of the rise of China and a resurgence of Russia. (more…)
‘Given the chance at a new life, we have grabbed it with both hands,’ Abbas Nazari says.
Australia has been warned it risks ‘drifting into the future’ if it fails to respond to challenges in a fast-changing world (more…)
By attempting to “get tough” with China, US President Donald Trump’s administration is highlighting the extent to which America’s star has fallen this century. If the US ever wants to reclaim the standing it once had in the world, it must become the country it would have been if Al Gore had won the 2000 presidential election. (more…)
Following the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) federal election defeat on May 18 2019, Bill Shorten stepped down as leader of the party. Anthony Albanese, a long-term ALP frontbencher, became the ALP’s leader-elect on May 27 after an uncontested leadership ballot, and was formally endorsed as Opposition Leader on May 30. (more…)
The United States has joined Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran in a rogue’s gallery of countries perceived as likely to use their influence for bad. All five countries are also seen as less likely to use their influence for good than they were 10 years ago. (more…)
The crackpot president of the United States of America has so snarled up the gangplank to truth these past 29 months that no matter how much “evidence” he and his crew produce to prove that the Iranians have been trying to blow up oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman – or not quite blow them up – the pictures have a kind of mesmeric quality about them. (more…)
The Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population is ageing at a much faster rate than the non-Indigenous population.
Aboriginal Australians record high mid-life rates of multiple chronic diseases including heart disease and stroke, lung disease, and type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, for example, is more than twice as common in the Indigenous population than the non-Indigenous population. (more…)
To be able to compete effectively with rising powers like China and resurgent nations like Russia; to be able to do so with the confident optimism our country has always embodied, we must fix not only our diplomacy but the domestic policies and practices that now divide and weaken us. We have a constitutional democracy that history has shown can facilitate orderly change. To bring the immense talents and energies of the American people to bear on the unprecedented challenges our country now faces, we must adapt to new domestic as well as foreign realities. We Americans have done this before. And we can do it again.
After the horrors of World War II, the United States led in adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, recognizing the “inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights” of all people to life and liberty. For three-quarters of a century it has stood for the protection of human rights by the rule of law.
Now, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is establishing a Commission on Unalienable Rights to “provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights,” according to a notice in the Federal Register… (more…)
Transport should not be a hostage to politics and ideology, but in Australia it has been since before the rival colonies of NSW and Victoria decided to have different railway gauges in the 19 th century and it is likely to continue and get worse with the re-election of the Coalition Government.
Dr Brendan Nelson’s pitch for the Australian War Memorial’s half-a-billion-dollar expansion is that the institution helps to heal traumatised war veterans. But is healing veterans even the Memorial’s responsibility? To answer that question we need to read the Memorial’s Act.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo weighed in on British politics during a closed-door meeting with Jewish leaders, saying he would not wait for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister of Britain to “push back” against him or any future actions he might take against Britain’s Jews. (more…)
On 29 May, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe met with his Singaporean counterpart, Ng Eng Hen, and announced the revision of the Agreement on Defence Exchanges and Security Co-operation (ADESC), which was first signed in 2008. The revision is designed to deepen military ties between the two countries. The two ministers met in Singapore ahead of the upcoming Shangri-La Dialogue defence summit. It will be the first time since 2011 that such a high-ranking Chinese government official has attended the annual event. There are several implications for the region arising from this agreement, as well as for other interested parties, such as the United States and Australia. While those implications may not be great, it is important that they be considered. (more…)
Probably everyone who followed Donald Trump’s visit to Britain has a favorite scene of diplomatic debacle. But the moment that probably did the most to poison relations with our oldest ally — and undermine whatever chance there was for the “phenomenal” trade deal Trump claimed to be offering — was Trump’s apparent suggestion that such a deal would involve opening up Britain’s National Health Service to U.S. private companies.
Back in the 1980s, Japan was portrayed as the greatest economic threat to the United States, and allegations of intellectual property theft were only part of Americans’ vilification. Thirty years later, Americans have made China the villain, when, just like three decades ago, they should be looking squarely in the mirror. (more…)
Australia has a China problem. It’s not in Beijing. It’s not on the streets of Hong Kong. It’s in Canberra. China policy is in flux, under stress and confused. Australia’s meek response to the pro-democracy mass demonstrations in Hong Kong contrasts with attitudes in its own security establishment that are redolent of a Cold War era. (more…)
Millions of students, blue collar workers and professionals poured into the streets of Hong Kong in protest over proposed legislation that would allow people to be extradited for trial in China. (more…)
With Westpac joining the growing list of corporations that are questioning the climate policy stance of the Business Council of Australia (BCA), it seems that major companies that take climate change seriously have sussed out the strategy of one of Australia’s most toxic denialist lobby groups. (more…)
When it comes to road transport, Australia is at risk of becoming a climate villain as we lag behind international best practice on fuel efficiency. (more…)
Before entering any alliance, it’s better to be certain you have worked out what you hope to gain from it.
Our new government is making the elimination of youth suicide a focus of health policy under Minister Greg Hunt. However, billions of dollars of investment over the years has failed to reduce the numbers of those taking their own lives. Business as usual is not an option and radical ideas are required for treating suicidality in both in-patient and out-patient settings.
There is no doubt the AFP raids are an affront to our democracy. One in which the hand of a secretive and ruthless Government can be felt, if not seen or heard. (more…)
A huge transformation of global energy production and consumption
is underway but sorely needs international governance. (more…)
Corporations’ unbridled pursuit of self interest (aka ‘shareholder interest’) has plunged the planet into an existential crisis. It is no longer a radical proposition to suggest that the community should expect its corporations to pursue stakeholder interest on an equal footing with shareholder interest.
“The law locks up the man or woman
who steals the goose from off the common
but lets the greater villain loose
who steals the common off the goose”. Anon
If Rugby Australia had existed in the first century of the Christian era, and Paul had had enough talent to be a contracted player, the sport’s national governing body presumably would have ripped up his contract once his first letter to the Corinthians, with its injunction against homosexuality, became public. Just ask star fullback and born-again Christian Israel Folau. (more…)
Donald Trump ran a campaign — and won the 2016 presidential election — based on unorthodox tactics, whereby he used irrational provocation to defy traditional political norms and make a mockery of established beliefs on both domestic and international issues confronting the United States. Amazingly enough, Trump has continued his instinctual political posturing even as president, dividing the nation and causing severe friction with the traditional allies of the U.S. Yet, his unorthodox tactics and irrational leadership style appear to remain a winning formula as current polls indicate that, unless something dramatic happens, Trump may very well be re-elected in 2020 by an even bigger margin. (more…)
With the Federal election verdict widely attributed to ‘quiet Australians’ favouring the economy over the environment, one key point has been missed in the wash-up analysis. Rather than supposedly avoiding a gaping economic hole required to fix the environment through the public purse, the modelling incorrectly assessed the impacts, costs and benefits of the environment. Current economic modelling predominantly relies on a confined definition of economy: one focused so narrowly that it fails to measure long-term environmental benefits or costs.
Summary
A successful refugee policy not only manages national borders but also protects people who need safety, and demonstrates leadership in meeting the global challenge of displacement. That’s why the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law has set out an independent, nonpartisan, evidence-based refugee policy agenda, challenging policymakers and the public to reimagine Australia’s current approach – so that both refugees and the nation can prosper amid today’s real challenges.
Do we arrive at geopolitical judgements from only cool, hard-headed, rational analysis? If emotions influence our judgements, are these conscious emotions or do they operate at the level of our subterranean subconscious? Any honest answer to these questions would admit that non-rational factors always play a role. This is why it was wrong for Western media to vilify Kiron Skinner, the director of policy planning at the US State Department, for naming racial discomfort as a factor at play in the emerging geopolitical contest between the United States and China. (more…)