Humanity survived the cold war because no one pushed the button. On climate change, the button has been pushed again and again. (more…)
John Menadue
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JOHN MENADUE. Best we forget – the Frontier and Maori Wars. An update
The Frontier Wars were the most destructive and decisive in our history. The first war we fought alongside ‘New Zealanders’ was not at Gallipoli in 1915 but in the Maori Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet both wars are ignored by the Australian War Memorial. The AWM promotes myths about the wars it chooses to remember, the imperial wars.
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ANDREW FROST. Alternative Histories, the ANZAC legend re-imagined on canvas
The assumption of ANZAC as the foundation of conservative Australia has been used to mobilise popular sentiment into dubious alliances in wars of questionable purpose. In this context, Rodney Pople’s latest exhibition, Shell Shocked, has urgency. His paintings are a vehicle for questioning more than a century of myth-making. (more…)
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DIRK DE BRUYN. Re-visiting Gallipoli
I am talking with Turkish filmmaker Köken Ergun at the Rotterdam International Film Festival about a documentary that all Australian and New Zealand audiences should see. Heroes is about the mythologizing of trauma, of the First World War campaign on the Gallipoli Peninsula (or Çanakkale). Ergun includes interviews at the monuments with the April 25 pilgrims and tourists that reveal shared moments and differences. (more…)
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EVA COX. The trust deficit – a seriously neglected election issue
At the forthcoming election the Coalition will be asking Who do you trust, Scott Morrison or Bill Shorten? Morrison repeated it yesterday many times. This seems odd for a leader who most reminds me of another salesman, Donald Trump. But that aside, the issue of trust in our politicians and our political institutions is a major national concern. (John Menadue,’ We need a national summit to promote trust in politics‘.)
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JAMES O’NEILL: When Better than at an Election to Have a Serious and Overdue Debate About Defence and Foreign Policy Objectives?
The current election cycle presents a golden opportunity to have a serious discussion about Australia’s defence and foreign policies. These have been notably lacking from both major parties. (more…)
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SCOTT BURCHILL: There are leaks and then there are leaks
The arrest of Julian Assange in London for his activities as head of WikiLeaks has renewed the public’s focus on the role of whistleblowers, and the prosecution of journalists who embarrass governments by exposing their lies, corruption and crimes. (more…)
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DAMIEN WILLIAMS. We need to keep temperature to a 1.5 degree increase… a letter to the Hon. Mark Dreyfus MP
Labor’s attempt to find the middle ground in its climate policy pays lip service to the warnings that credible scientists are making on the need for drastic cuts to fossil fuel emissions by 2030. The party’s position, outlined by the federal member for Isaacs, Mark Dreyfus, in a letter to his constituents , misses the opportunity to make a case for a 1.5 degree target as a reasonable and urgent policy goal. (more…)
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MARRYANNE SLATTERY AND ROD CAMPBELL. Debugging the Watergate complex (The Australian Institute, April 2019)
Interpreting the responses to #Watergate by the Prime Minister and the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Easter and the banality of evil. An edited repost
Our policies towards asylum seekers that are cruel,evil and immoral,depend on our first dehumanising and then demonising them. Ministers,even the Prime Minister have recently reminded us that some of them are rapists and murderers.They infer that they are not like us and do not deserve empathy and protection. It is an attempt to chloroform our consciences. (more…)
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TIM BEAL. The clash of diasporas.
On 11 April New Zealand’s ‘spy chiefs’, as the media labelled them, gave evidence to the Justice Select Committee of Parliament. Rebecca Kitteridge, director-general of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), and Andrew Hampton, director-general of the Government Security Communications Bureau (GCSB), gave dark warnings to MPs about foreign interference in NZ politics. China was not mentioned in the public session though that was clearly the thrust and no doubt they were more explicit when the session was closed to the public and media. It was a scene which is frequently, and increasingly, being played out in a similar fashion elsewhere, especially in Anglophone countries with large Chinese diasporic communities such as the United States, Britain and Australia. There are many ways of looking at what is happening but for New Zealand, and in slightly different ways for Australia, it is useful to see it as a clash between diasporas. (more…)
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PATTY FAWKNER SGS. Vague wanting. Our lives, yours and mine, are too precious to fritter away on lukewarm commitments and half-hearted vows.
Do you want God?”
The retreat director’s question to me, a young nun preparing to renew her vows as a Good Samaritan Sister, was uncharacteristically blunt. The much-revered Benedictine priest must have picked up something in my attitude during our daily one-on-one encounters. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Appealing to our Better Angels. A repost from 30 June 2011
In an appeal to Secessionists in his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln appealed to ‘the better angels of our nature’. Today we lack the bi-partisan leadership on refugees that would appeal to our better angels. I have yet to hear Julia Gillard make an informed case for generosity towards refugees who are amongst the most vulnerable people in the world. She competes with Tony Abbott to show how tough she can be. Tony Abbott in his opportunism appeals to our darker angels. The Holy Family was indeed lucky when it fled as refugees to Egypt that the Pharaoh did not have a policy to ‘stop the donkeys’. (more…)
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BEVAN RAMSDEN. Do the US Marines in Darwin pose a risk to our peace and security?
A recent US war exercise involving US Marines landing, capturing and securing an island off the coast of Okinawa is touted as a new US military strategy to use in its challenge to China in the South China Sea. Is the imbedding of US marines in war exercises on HMAS Adelaide, which has been fitted with amphibious landing gear, part of US strategy to involve Australia in future hostile actions in the South China Sea ? (more…)
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GREG JERICHO. The Coalition boasts about economic management. Where’s the evidence? (The Guardian 16.4.2019)
This is the only government since Fraser’s that hasn’t presided over an improved standard of living. (more…)
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EMILE NAKHLEH. Washington hawks clamouring to attack Iran
Those pushing for regime change in Iran are overestimating the Iranian people’s dislike of their theocratic regime and are mistaking that dislike for a willingness to embrace a foreign invader. Like the Bush Administration with Iraq, the Trump Administration appears to have given little or no strategic thought to the future of Iran beyond any possible removal of the clerical regime. If attacked, Iran has the capability to retaliate against its neighbours, in a war that could easily spread across the region. The security challenges that Iran continues to pose will be best addressed by policy that is formulated using reasoned, expert-based strategic analysis.
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ANDREW CHUBB. China’s assertive maritime policy is older than Xi (East Asia Forum)
The toughening of China’s policies in the South and East China Seas is widely regarded as a defining characteristic of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy. But while it is true that the PRC has become more assertive in its maritime disputes under Xi, China had already been on such a trajectory since 2006. Many changes in China’s maritime dispute behaviour under Xi may be better understood as continuities. (more…)
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H.K. COLEBATCH. What’s wrong with the APS?
The Thodey review has stimulated a wide variety of diagnoses of what’s wrong with the APS, but one has been missed. Could it be that its problem is hubris? (more…)
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GARRY EVERETT. “Worse things than dying.”
In Eric Bogle’s haunting song : “And the band played Waltzing Matilda”, there is the heart-wrenching line sung by the young soldier who has just had both legs blown off by a Turkish bomb. He sings:”And when I saw what it had done, well I wished I was dead. Never knew there were worse things than dying”.
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GRAEME WORBOYS. Celebrating Kosciuszko’s 75th anniversary.
The 75th anniversary of the establishment of Kosciuszko State Park falls on Good Friday, 19 April 2019. The Park was famously established by Premier William McKell to protect the nationally important mountain water catchments, to restore soil erosion caused by burning off and over-grazing by stock and to provide opportunities for visitor use and enjoyment. Kosciuszko is one of the Australia’s greatest national parks; it is a National Heritage Property protecting priceless Australian heritage and receives more than 1 million visits a year. The Park enjoyed 74 years of bipartisan support for conservation until regressive 2018 legislation was passed to retain thousands of feral horses within the Park. (more…)
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HAL PAWSON and BILL RANDOLPH. On housing, there’s clear blue water between the main parties (The Conversation, 12 April 2019)
Labor’s bold stance on housing tax reform and investment makes this one of the likely policy flashpoints in the coming election campaign. How does the Coalition government’s housing record stand up to scrutiny? What would be in prospect in a third Liberal-National term? And exactly what is Labor’s alternative pitch? (more…)
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MEGHAN SULLIVAN. Envisioning the Afterlife. The problem with Lazarus.
During Lent, Christians are asked to think much more concretely about our short, precarious lives. We swear off chocolate, alcohol, or, in my case, swearing itself. (more…)
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Energy Minister Angus Taylor said greenhouse gas emissions have turned around by 1.1 billion tonnes under the Coalition. Is he correct? (ABC News)
The Morrison Government has for months argued Australia is on track to meet its international greenhouse gas emissions abatement targets “in a canter”. (more…)
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JOSHUA J. McELWEE. In new letter, Benedict blames clergy abuse on sexual revolution, Vatican II theology.
Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published a new letter blaming the continuing Catholic clergy abuse crisis on the sexual revolution, developments in theology following the Second Vatican Council, and modern society’s aversion to speaking about God. (more…)
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DAVID MACILWAIN. Two Australians in trouble abroad.
The law to censor violent content rushed through Parliament last week connected dots between two Australians abroad, when Julian Assange was “extradited” from Ecuadorian territory, in London. I examine the linkages. (more…)
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RICHARD FLANAGAN. Have we, Australia, become a country that breeds mass murderers with our words? (The Guardian 14.4.2019)
We are better than our politicians’ dark fears. We are not their hate. We are optimistic about a country built on openness. (more…)
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TIM LINDSEY. Indonesia goes to the polls: rematch or replay? (University of Melbourne, 15 April 2019)
Indonesia goes to the polls on 17 April, with the same presidential candidates as five years ago: the incumbent, Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi), a self-made former furniture exporter and former governor of Jakarta, and Prabowo Subianto, a former general who was once a son-in-law of Soeharto, the authoritarian former president who ruled for three decades until 1998. (more…)
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GIDEON LEVY. Israel’s new wretched republic.
On Tuesday, the Second Republic of Israel was born. It will be different from its predecessor. The First Republic chalked up impressive achievements, accompanied by lies and deceptions. The Second Republic will dispense with any pretense. (more…)
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GEOFF HARCOURT. Sluggish Wages Growth
Recent comments on sluggish wages growth in Australia trace their origins back to the Accord introduced in the early 1980s. It is also argued that the Accord was a precursor to the introduction of the neo-liberal era in Australia. I was one of the academic pioneers of the Accord. A group of us were led by the late Eric Russell; we were backing up Ralph Willis’s “voice crying in the wilderness” arguments in political circles. Joe Isaac took a similar stance. (more…)