Outsourcing of employment services has failed to make significant headway on better outcomes for the most disadvantaged clients.
John Menadue
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TRAVERS McLEOD. General Mattis, the new US Defence Secretary – the right choice for an ahistorical President
With General Petraeus, General Mattis changed the mindset of the US military. Let’s hope that if duty and ethics call, Mattis can change the President’s mind too.
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REG LITTLE. Understanding cultural differences between Australia and China.
Australia’s most urgent challenge today is overcoming two centuries of ‘false education’ about China. Western thought culture tends to be characterised by assumptions, abstractions, rationalities, theories and belief. In contrast, Chinese thought culture tends to be holistic, fluid, intuitive, reflective, strategic and practical. (more…)
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WALTER HAMILTON. When all else fails, try Pearl Harbor
Prime Minister Abe of Japan is running out of tricks, but there is no viable alternative.
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HAZEL MOIR. Evergreening of patents and the cost of pharmaceuticals.
A low standard for granting patents can mean lengthy delays generic medicine availability. In one case this is shown to have cost taxpayers almost $A3 billion extra in Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme outlays. A solution is to grant patents only for inventions that embody a significant increase in what is known. (more…)
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Aung San Suu Kyi’s government appears unable – or unwilling – to halt what some describe as ‘ethnic cleansing’.
The Rohingya in Myanmar are facing increasing attacks and harassment. Australia and the region must be prepared to respond. (more…)
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Castro’s legacy. Cuba’s achievements in health have been remarkable.
In the article from The Lancet, Arjun Suri points out that despite spending one tenth per capita of what the US spends on health, Cuba’s infant mortality rate is better than the US and that the two countries have equivalent life expectancy. (more…)
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Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration – the desperate situation of Rohingya in Myanmar.
Situation in Rakhine State in Myanmar of grave concern – the region must be on high alert. Mass displacement inevitable if violence continues to escalate. (more…)
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VINCENT MAHON. China ready to step up and lead on climate change.
Vincent Mahon contends that China is poised to promote global leadership on climate change should the US under Trump walk away from its Paris commitments. (more…)
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GARRY WOODARD. Trump and ANZUS. Quo vadis series.
Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.
Summary. Will Australia allow itself to be drawn into Sino-American tensions in the incorrect belief that it has no choice under ANZUS or ‘five eyes’. (more…)
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RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The Trump Presidency and Australia. Quo vadis series.
Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS
Summary. Our relationship with the US is of course very important and substantial. This does not mean that we should be seen as not responding quickly to the greatly changed world of 2016. (more…)
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Quo vadis – the future of the US-Australian alliance. Part 2.
Summary. Malcolm Fraser warned us that we no longer have an independent capacity to stay out of America’s wars. (more…)
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LAURENCE TROY. Sydney needs higher affordable housing targets.
The release this week by the Greater Sydney Commission of city-wide draft plansmandating some measure of affordable housing in new developments is a step in the right direction. However, the target of 5-10% on rezoned land is too low to make a serious impact on the city’s affordable housing shortage. It must be more ambitious.
Research highlights the central importance of affordable, stable housing to economic and social wellbeing. Yet, in Sydney, the lack of affordable housing has reached crisis point. Everyone from community housing providers to Commonwealth Treasury secretary John Fraser is pointing out that rising house prices are creating massive social and economic problems. (more…)
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ANDREW MARKUS. Australians more alarmed about state of politics than impact of migration and minorities.
There is no shortage of expert commentary on current shifts in public opinion, understood as a revolt against political elites.
Within Europe and the United States interpretations are supported by the British vote to leave the European Union, the increasing popularity of far-right parties campaigning on anti-immigration and nationalist platforms, and the success of Donald Trump in winning the US presidency.
In Australia, commentators point to instability in politics, elections that fail to return clear majorities, the loss of office of first-term governments in Queensland and Victoria, growing minor party representation in the Senate, and public unease at immigration policy and the Muslim presence. (more…)
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GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. The travesty of Britain’s greatest legacy – parliamentary government
To my generation which saw the almost bloodless collapse of the Soviet Union, Trump’s election is small beer in the scale of improbabilities. But the combination of Trump and Brexit, so improbable scarcely a year ago, raises a more astonishing proposition.
It is that so much of our hopes for stability and the success of Western liberalism should now centre so largely on Germany! The question can even be put in the terms Disraeli used in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war and Bismarck’s Proclamation of the German Empire in the Palace of Versailles: “Is it to be a European Germany or a German Europe?” (more…)
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CHRISTIAN DOWNIE. Why China and Europe should form the world’s most powerful ‘climate bloc’.
Filling the void created by Donald Trump!
It seems almost certain that US President-elect Donald Trump will walk away from the Paris climate agreement next year. In the absence of US leadership, the question is: who will step up?
Sadly this is not a new question, and history offers some important lessons. In 2001 the world faced a similar dilemma. After former vice-president Al Gore lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush, the newly inaugurated president walked away from the Kyoto Protocol, the previous global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (more…)
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GEOFFREY HARCOURT. The pluses and minuses of globalisation
Donald Trump’s victory in the American Presidential election has brought into prominence greatly divergent views concerning the merits or demerits of globalisation. Here we set out the criteria that need to be met before globalisation can be regarded as a world welfare improving institutional arrangement.
First, and absolutely fundamental and necessary, is the need for nation states engaged in trade and international borrowing and lending to implement domestic policies that establish sustained full employment of their work forces and normal capacity working of their existing stocks of capital goods and human capital. (more…)
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DAVID PEETZ. An industrial relations furphy.
The media excitement surrounding the theatrics of former Senator Bob Day and current Senator Rod Culleton seemed to obscure the real issues facing the federal government’s industrial relations legislation.
The government failed to put bills re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), and a new, government-appointed Registered Organisations Commission, onto the notice paper for discussion in the Senate when it was expected to. Most in the media took this to mean that Day and eccentric One Nation Senator Culleton are critical to passage of the bills. (more…)
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What so many people don’t get about the US working class.
In this article in the Harvard Business Review, Joan C Williams says:
“If you want to connect with white working class voters, place economics at the centre. … Trade deals are far more expensive than we have treated them because job development and training programs need to be counted as part of their cost. … At a deeper level, both parties need an economic program that can deliver middle class jobs. Republicans have one. Unleash American business. Democrats? They remain obsessed with cultural issues. … Back when the blue collar voters used to be solidly democratic, good jobs were at the core of the progressive agenda. … The biggest today for me and other Americans is continued class cluelessness. If we don’t take steps to bridge the class culture gap, when Trump proves unable to bring steel back to Youngstown, Ohio, the consequences could turn dangerous.”
Joan C Williams is a Distinguished Professor Law and Founding Director of the Center of WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
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Why Trump should work with China on a massive infrastructure partnership
This is an extract from an interview on CNN on the 10th November 2016 with Kishore Muhbubani, Dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
Trump will have to make some painful choices, especially in regard to policy in Asia. His instinct will be to take a hawkish stance against America’s No. 1 geopolitical competitor, China, and to look for opportunities to trip China up.For example, he could continue to call out China over the South China Sea issue. He told The New York Times in March that he finds China’s building and reclamation activities there “so brazen, and it’s so terrible that they would do that without any consultation.” On the economic side, he could double down on his plan to “instruct my treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator” and to “instruct the US trade representative to bring trade cases against China, both in this country and at the WTO.” He has also warned that China would “enter the TPP through the back door … if we don’t stop it.” (more…)
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Trump and American Decay.
In this article in Foreign Affairs, Francis Fukuyama says:
The decayed American political system can be fixed only by a strong external shock that will knock it off its current equilibrium and make possible real policy reform. Trump’s victory does indeed constitute such a shock but, unfortunately his only answer is the traditional populist-authorian one, trust me, the charismatic leader to take care of your problems. As in the case of the shock to the Italian political system administered by Silvio Berlusconi, the real tragedy will be the waste of an opportunity for actual reform.
Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist and author. Fukuyama is known for his book “The End of History and the Last Man” (1992).
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ANDREW PESCE. The Health Care Home: too important to fail
It has been a long road for peak medical organisations in Australia to publicly recognise and support the concept that Fee for Service payments (where medical services attract a Medicare rebate for attendances and/or procedures) may not always be the most appropriate remuneration methods in primary care. Now, both the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the AMA acknowledge that alternative payment systems have a place for patients with high healthcare needs because of special circumstances and/or chronic illness. This is a well-established concept, which has shown that primary health care services can establish viable business models based on a mixture of FFS for acute conditions (providing care for a sports injury in a young otherwise healthy person) and payments for annual cycles of care for people living with chronic medical conditions (eg diabetes requiring regular ongoing care from different providers). In New Zealand for example, a shift to up to 60-70% of practice income from blended payments, with the remainder from FFS has been well received from GPs there. (more…)
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ANDREW JAKUBOWICZ. A Bigots’ Frenzy: how race, class and gender still matter in the Australian politics of Section 18C.
Australia is a democratic pluralist society and there lies the rub. Democracies privilege freedom, while pluralism requires civility. In the increasing hyperbole surrounding the question of the impact of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act many are arguing that freedom of speech should trump freedom from hate, and others that the current “balance” is fine.
A sociology of the protagonists suggests that those who are proposing to diminish the protections offered to victims of racial vilification under 18C are predominantly well-off (Christian) Euro-Australian males, who are also the majority of those previously complained against under 18C. Those who are opposed to changes to 18C tend to be drawn from minority groups in terms of ethnicity, race and religion, and are more likely to be women. (more…)
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IAN MARSH. Trump’s Victory and Australian Politics
A new anti-globalisation surge.
Trump’s ascension no doubt creates new agenda challenges for Australia. But his campaign generated so many diverse and inconsistent statements that the policy landscape remains obscure. What is crystal clear is the gulf between elite worldviews and large swathes of public opinion. Remember those panegyrics to economic globalisation: The World is Flat and The Golden Straightjacket? What now of Thomas Friedman’s assured analysis?
Here is one potted reading of the past half century or so. Start with the mass party world. The parties drew their power and reach from class identity. Here is Ernest Bevin’s description of his (British) socialisation: ‘I had to work at ten years of age while my employer’s son went to the university until he was twenty. You have set out for me a different set of conditions. I was taught to bow to the squire and touch my hat to the parson; my employer’s son was not. All these things have produced within me an intense hatred, a hatred which has caused me to organise for my fellows and direct my mind to a policy to give to my class a power to control their own destiny and labour….At present employers and employed are too often separated by something akin to a barrier of “caste” …The operatives are frequently regarded by employers as being of a different and inferior order…So long as these views continue to exist they inevitably produce an intense class bitterness.’ (more…)
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ROBERT MANNE. It’s Time
The Turnbull government has recently introduced new asylum seeker legislation into parliament. It has two parts. The first part aims to prevent any asylum seeker who tried to reach Australia after July 19 2013, including those who have been found to be genuine refugees, from ever being allowed to settle in Australia. The second part aims at banning the adults in this cohort settled in another country from ever visiting Australia even on a tourist or a business visa.
The first part of this proposal writes into law what has previously been a bipartisan political agreement. Turning this consensus into legislation has however three implications. (more…)
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TONY KEVIN. Trumpageddon? Not quite …. not yet.
Trump’s victory speech said all the right things. No talk now of putting Hillary in jail. On the contrary: gracious tribute for her hard-fought campaign. And promises to heal wounds, to be a president for all Americans.
And new jobs. And infrastructure. And looking after all citizens, including significantly the veterans (of America’s endless wars of choice). And making America truly great again. A lot of warm fuzzy emotion from an exhausted victorious leader.
The relative decline of a great power (relative to other contenders) does not always happen smoothly. There are discontinuities, surprises, sharp inflection points. Tonight was a major such moment in the United States’ relative decline. (more…)
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SAM HURLEY, TRAVERS McLEOD, JOHN WISEMAN. Company directors can be held legally liable for ignoring the risks from climate change.
Company directors who don’t properly consider climate related risks could be liable for breaching their duty of due care and diligence, a new legal opinion has found.
Although the alarm for business leaders has been sounding for some time, the release of the opinion by senior barristers and leading solicitors confirms the potential liability for Australian company directors.
Australian companies are particularly exposed to the physical, transition and liability risks posed by climate change. The Paris Climate Agreement, which comes into force today, brings the transition risks (and opportunities) forward, given the policy and business changes necessitated by the agreement’s commitment to a sustainable economy. (more…)
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TONY KEVIN. Is Hillary the Russia-hater a safer American choice?
The final days of the US presidential campaign – a disgraceful saga at best – have been marked by a frantic race to the bottom by both sides.
On the Trump side: an anonymous but skilfully made video is doing the social media rounds, alleging improper links between Hillary Clinton’s long-standing personal assistant and friend Huma Abedin, through her kinship connections to her powerful Saudi Arabian family, to Wahhabi Islamist extremism which supports Al Qaeda, ISIS and so on. The snide innuendo here is that the people who organised the World Trade Centre attacks have planted Abedin at the heart of Hillary’s political career. The video is thoroughly nasty. It is not clear who commissioned it.
More overtly, Julian Assange features on a Russian news video today (by www.rt.com). He alleges that because the Clinton Foundation has accepted much Saudi and Qatari government money, and because Hillary Clinton knows both governments fund ISIS, this must mean that Hillary Clinton knowingly connives with ISIS.
On the other side, the Clinton camp alleges that the Kremlin hacked into Democratic National Congress emails and gave the product to Assange’s Wikileaks to distribute; that seventeen US intelligence agencies have confirmed that Putin is behind this; that Trump is a puppet of Putin; that Putin is manipulating the US election to try to get Trump elected, because he knows Trump will not stand up to him as Hillary would. (more…)
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Blowback for American sins in the Philippines – The Boston Globe.
In this article in the Boston Globe on October 15, 2016, Stephen Kinzer points out that President Duterte’s grievance ‘is rooted in history’. President Duterte asserted that the US had unjustly seized the Philippines in 1899 and waged a horrific military campaign to suppress native resistance.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, USA. See link to article below.
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PETER CHRISTOFF. The Paris climate deal has come into force – what next for Australia?
The Paris climate agreement comes into legal force today, just 11 months after it was concluded and 30 days after it met its ratification threshold of 55 parties accounting for at least 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
By contrast, the Kyoto Protocol, which this treaty now replaces, took more than 8 years to come into force, slowed by the United States’ persistent and erosive opposition.
At the time of writing, the Agreement has been ratified by 94 parties, including the world’s four largest emitters: China, the United States, the European Union and India. As Climate Analytics reports, these nations account for 66% of greenhouse emissions. Even if the United States were to withdraw its support under a Trump presidency, the Paris Agreement will remain in force. (more…)