John Menadue

  • ANDREW MACK. ‘National security’ and the Ausgrid bid

     

    On 19th August Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison confirmed his earlier decision to block the NSW government’s planned lease of 50.4 per cent of the New South Wales Ausgrid electricity distribution network to two Chinese companies: the Chinese government-owned State Grid Corporation of China and Hong Kong listed Cheung Kong International (CKI). Morrison based his decision on the Foreign Investment Review Board’s advice that these companies represented a threat to the ‘ national interest…on the grounds of national security’. When asked at a press conference what specific security threat was posed by the Chinese bidders Morrison replied: The only person who’s security-cleared in this room to hear the answer to that question is me’.

    The Treasurer’s cryptic media release and public comments leave many crucial questions unanswered. In particular, was the security issue the most important factor or were there other important considerations at play? What was this ‘exhaustive process’ and the major parameters applied? (more…)

  • ‘Racists aren’t welcome here: how we kicked a racist passenger off the bus.

    A nice story from The Guardian ‘Our better angels’ .  See link below.  John Menadue

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/19/racists-arent-welcome-here-how-we-kicked-a-racist-passenger-off-the-bus?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

  • DEE JARRAK. Is there a middle path to addressing Australia’s asylum seeker dilemma?

    Perhaps we could try to combine humanitarian principles with political pragmatism to find an acceptable “solution” to Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.

    Offshore detention policies are falling apart, and a new documentary film, Chasing Asylum, is again arousing shame and anger at the appalling psychological and physical damage we inflict on people who have attempted to seek asylum in Australia.

    But then there’s a lot of righteous emotion on all sides of the asylum seeker debate. (more…)

  • EMMA CAMPBELL. Is South Korea still interested in unification?

    It is not easy being a young person in globalised South Korea. The intense competition that defines South Korea’s education system and the irregular employment market that awaits graduates has led to rising inequality, falling birth rates, insecure employment and high numbers of youth suicide.Beyond South Korea’s domestic wellbeing, globalisation and its accompanying economic insecurity also have implications for foreign affairs, particularly attitudes towards North Korea. (more…)

  • PETER GIBILISCO. Some key ideas for the next generation of disability activists.

     

    1.  Meritocracy

    Meritocracy is a belief that seems to me to still be alive and well in the senior management of disability support. It also seems to drive many aspects of public policy, particularly when appeals are made to “equal opportunity”.

    Advocates of a meritocratic approach to disability policy are still assuming that the base-line principle should be that people get out of the system what they put into it. That is why they seek to remove any barriers to people with disabilities’ “putting in”. It is a political vision – often articulated in terms of free market principles – that wants a future based on merit. Hence “meritocracy” (rule by those who gain merit) and is an alternative to aristocracy (the rule by those who inherit land), or more recently to a class-based “luck” of being born in the right place at the right time. But in 1998, Michael Young argued in an article titled Meritocracy Revisited, “meritocracy is even worse than aristocracy because it attempts to acquire plus points because it connotes power and privilege as merited rather than born with”. (more…)

  • JULIANNE SCHULTZ. You’ll miss it when it’s gone: why public broadcasting is worth saving.

    In an age of global media abundance, the notion that public broadcasting is a mechanism to address “market failure” is beguiling. It is also fundamentally wrong.

    Public broadcasters have a unique national responsibility to provide a public good to citizens, rather than the more narrowly defined and easily measured mission of commercial broadcasters, to engage consumers and maximise the return to shareholders.

    Public broadcasters provide a return that is more complex to measure, but with the increasing sophistication of “impact measurement”, not impossible. The exact nature of the outputs and outcomes varies from one country to another, but includes providing platforms for news, entertainment and education that foster a shared sense of national coherence. (more…)

  • Migration experts say it is unlikely closing camps on Manus and Nauru islands would re-start boats. We are beyond that point.

    See link below – article by Ben Doherty in The Guardian, 16 August 2016. It includes an interview with me, Peter Hughes and others, on the need to act quickly to process in Australia, the detainees presently held in Manus and Nauru.

     

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/16/after-the-nauru-files-how-can-australia-go-about-ending-offshore-detention

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG on Brexit. ‘They are not laughing now’.

     

    ‘They are not laughing now’. So the UKIP leader Nigel Farage gloated in the European Parliament in July 2016. It was not the first time these exact words have been uttered, in the same spirit of vengeful vindication in a European parliament. (more…)

  • GEOFF HISCOCK. Long-awaited tax change raises tantalising prospect for Indian economy

     

    The tantalising prospect of a 10% growth rate is on India’s economic horizon in the next few years, now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won legislative backing for the long-awaited goods and services tax.

    On August 3, India’s upper house approved a bill to bring in a nationwide GST, creating a much simpler tax regime that will help create a unified market of 1.3 billion consumers. In theory, interstate trade barriers will come down, enabling the faster and cheaper delivery of goods across the country.

    But – and it is a massive but – there are numerous obstacles to the introduction next year of what most economists agree is the most important Indian tax reform for decades. Modi still needs more than half the states to approve a constitutional amendment, parliament will need to pass at least one more bill and a special GST council needs to be set up. (more…)

  • JEFF WATERS. ABC journalists and business.

     

    Yeah, sure, let’s ’embed’ ABC journalists in businesses, but don’t forget the unions, or Nauru.

    The recent review of ABC business coverage may have come down in favour of the National Broadcaster, but, as has been suggested in the media, any move to “job swap” or “embed” ABC journalists within private corporations is nonsensical. (more…)

  • ARJA KESKI-NUMMI. Our Devil’s Island

     

    The Guardian recently ran a story regarding its Freedom Of Information request on boat turn backs, the subsequent denial of material, and its appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) to review the FOI decision. At some point during the AAT hearing the Guardian found itself locked out of part of the hearing on putative “national security grounds”. This week the Guardian reported on some 200 incident reports from the Nauru offshore processing centre, many regarding the 49 children and the abuse of them by those who are supposed to be their “protectors”. (more…)

  • MARIE SEGRAVE. Exploitation of foreign workers.

     

    On Tuesday night, SBS’ Insight program aired concerns about temporary migrant labour exploitation. These issues tend to come to national attention when a particular case is exposed, but mostly they are not seen as national priorities – and, as such, the response is generally reactive rather than proactive.

    The exploitation to have attracted attention most recently often involves student-visa holders, working-holiday-visa holders and 457-visa holders.

    Just a little under ten years ago, many of these situations would more immediately have been framed as issues of labour trafficking. But, since then, there has been a shift away from identifying and responding to these cases as potential slavery or trafficking offences, and instead focusing on labour exploitation as an issue for the Fair Work Ombudsman to review and/or redress. (more…)

  • JEFF KEHOE. Can capitalism be redeemed?

    In this article in the Harvard Business Review, Jeff Kehoe poses the future of capitalism. He says

    Although it may be necessary to treat inequality as an economic problem, it is not sufficient. The US as a country needs to ask and answer some basic questions. Who gets to set the rules? What value should they reflect? What’s fair? What do we owe to one another?

    See link for full article: https://hbr.org/2016/07/can-capitalism-be-redeemed

  • TONY KEVIN. Kevin Rudd and the UN

    An exceptionally difficult UN Secretary-General selection process is set to continue

    On 29 July, Malcolm Turnbull controversially announced that the Australian Government will not nominate Kevin Rudd for the UN Secretary-General position. Here in Australia, the focus of discussion on the Rudd candidacy has been on domestic political issues of precedent and loyalty to Team Australia.

    Only Carl Ungerer and Geoff Raby, both strong Rudd supporters (see Farmer and Ungerer references below), touch on more basic questions of what outcome might now be best for the UN system, in an increasingly multipolar world that is impatient to break out of old power structures and private deals among the UN Security Council (UNSC) Permanent Members. This note seeks to further inform that discussion. (more…)

  • CIA Briefing for Donald Trump

    In the New York Times of 4 August, 2016, Nicholas Kristof gives a make-believe account of a security briefing of Donald Trump by a CIA officer. It is quite funny – but at the same time, quite worrying.  John Menadue

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/opinion/donald-trump-and-a-cia-officer-walk-into-a-room.html?ref=international&_r=0

  • MERVYN KING. Which Europe Now?

     

    In this article ‘Which Europe now?’ in the New York Review of Books, Mervyn King says

    Our political class would do well to recall the words of Confucius:

    Three things are necessary for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler cannot hold on to all three, he should give up weapons first and food next. Trust should be guarded to the end: without trust we cannot stand.

    Not just in Britain, but around the industrialized world, the divide between the political class and a large number of disillusioned and disaffected voters threatens trust. At times it seems that the governing class has lost faith in the people and that the people have lost faith in the government. And the two sides seem incapable of understanding each other, as we see today in the United States. But the continent on which the challenge is greatest is Europe. If any good comes out of the British referendum, it will be a renewed determination, not just in Britain but around Europe, to eliminate that divide.

    In several recent posts on democratic renewal, I have drawn attention to the breakdown of trust in institutions and leaders of those institutions.  John Menadue.

    Mervyn King is the former Governor of the Bank of England.

  • WALTER HAMILTON. Japan’s Diminishing Returns.

     

    Japan, in my nearly forty years of observing and reporting on that country, has never been so delicately and dangerously poised. Australians, who have long relied on it as an economic powerhouse and ‘common interest’ partner, need to be paying close attention. (more…)

  • WALTER HAMILTON. Corruption by Prediction

     

    It is a modern-day impatience: we want to eat dessert first. In election campaigns, therefore, we seek to ‘taste’ the result through opinion polls, vox pops, electoral maps (with winners already allocated), predictive analogies or psephological cephalopods. So it was during the recent Australian elections; so it is again as Americans wait (redundantly?) for the real polls to open in November. (more…)

  • WALTER HAMILTON. Tokyo’s First Female Governor, and the disturbing state of Japanese politics.

     

    The victory of 64-year-old Yuriko Koike in last weekend’s Tokyo gubernatorial election tells us a lot about the disturbing state of Japanese politics.

    Hailing from the right wing of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Koike holds views on constitutional change, school textbook revision and other contentious issues that line up with those of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. How, then, did she manage to present herself to the electorate as a maverick, non-mainstream candidate and, despite claiming to be ‘fighting alone’, run the slickest campaign of all?

    Seeking an answer, we need to recap events of recent years. (more…)

  • RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The South China Sea, China, Philippines, Australia and the US.

    I was surprised the Opposition did not differentiate itself from the Australian
    Coalition Government’s strong  support for the US and the Philippine position on the South China Sea issue.

    It can be argued that it was misleading to state in public that the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) judgment in favour of the Philippines was “binding”. This was a matter between the Philippines and China only. China had declared at the outset that the Court had no jurisdiction over the dispute, a position also taken by one of the other claimants, Taiwan, which argued that any such dispute should be settled peacefully through multilateral negotiations. (more…)

  • DALLY MESSENGER. A letter to Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten concerning refugees.

     

     

    There is some talk of cooperation so, living in hope, I am emboldened to write to both of you. Only by you both working together can this criminal behaviour cease. There are far better ways to stop people smuggling than imprisoning people in third world jails without charge or trial.  (more…)

  • PETER YOUNG. Speaking of Freedom: Human rights and mental health in detention.

    Peter Young is a member of Doctors for Refugees who have launched a High Court challenge against the Secrecy Provisions in the Border Force Act which states that an ‘entrusted person’ who discloses protected information can face up to two years in prison. I am reposting below an earlier article that Peter Young contributed to this blog. This article was based on a speech he gave at a public meeting organised by the Asylum Seekers Centre.  John Menadue

    In 2011, after many years working in public hospitals and community mental health services I came to work for the Commonwealth Government’s privately contracted immigration detention health provider.

    This was a time when there had been much public and professional criticism of immigration detention. The harms to mental health of prolonged arbitrary detention were already being documented through the Palmer Inquiry; in reviews by the Australian Human Rights Commission; the Commonwealth Ombudsman and; in Coronial Inquiries relating to a number of deaths in detention. (more…)

  • JIM COOMBS. “Circle” Incarceration

     

    After the revelations this week, it is trite to say that the criminal justice system is failing the Aboriginal people of Australia. One significant reason for this is the exclusion of the Aboriginal community from the process. One “reform” in the process over the last decade or so is “circle sentencing” which allows a small panel of community elders to assist magistrates in the process of sentencing, after the offender has pleaded guilty.

    Given that the incarceration of Aboriginals is 23 times the rate for white offenders (compared with 5-7 times for African-Americans in the USA), it is clear that we have failed quite badly. (more…)

  • DEAN ASHENDEN. State aide, the ALP and the ‘needs policy’.

    When Labor decided to support public funding of non-government schools fifty years ago, it created a legacy that is still misunderstood. (more…)

  • ANN TULLOH. Terrorism in France and a sense of hopelessness by many young people.

    I was brought up on the ABC news coming from the sitting room loud enough to cover the house as Dad got himself going every morning. This was in the 50s and any terrible overseas news was so far away that I didn’t feel concerned. (I much preferred a programme around 8am when songs were played at our request and Charles Trenet’s “La Mer” was sometimes heard. A nearby town, Salon, has a cultural centre named after him. A coincidence or part of a master plan?!) (more…)

  • LESLEY BARCLAY. Diagnosing rural health gaps in the election.

    The Coalition represents most rural electorates in Australia. But we seldom hear of much concern about their constituents who have poor health and poor health services. this is a repost of an earlier article by Lesley Barclay about the problems of rural health. John Menadue.

    It is timely as the federal election approaches to consider whether all Australians are getting the healthcare they need. Approximately 30 per cent of Australians live in rural and remote areas.

    Arguably they do not get a ‘fair go’ in relation to their healthcare compared to the rest of us.

    Rural and remote Australians are disadvantaged by social circumstances that influence their health status and ripen them for avoidable chronic disease when compared to counterparts in Australia’s major cities. (more…)

  • PETER DAY. The Lord’s Prayer: beyond lip service

    Diego’s phone rang, said the voice in Spanish ‘I am Pope Francis’. 

    “Our Father in heaven; hallowed be your name …”

    How well we know these words – perhaps too well as they slip off our tongues like a perfunctory “How are you going?” (more…)

  • GREG WOOD. “Only a fool…” Australia, Iraq, and other such wars.

     

    The Chilcot report in the UK has renewed calls for an examination of Australia’s intelligence system in the lead up to the Iraq war. Far less subject to scrutiny, but arguably more important still than the accuracy of the intelligence, was the nature of the advice provided to the Howard government by policy departments on the implications and long term consequences of military action. Even if weapons of mass destruction had been there, it’s not an ipso facto case justifying invasion. However, without question, Iraq was in Paul Kelly’s word, “a leadership driven war”. It’s the statements, judgements and actions of Australia’s leaders, and those of the other countries who chose to be in (or out) of the “coalition of the willing”, that warrant serious analysis, even now. (more…)

  • CHRISTINE DUFFIELD & MARY CHIARELLA. The predicted nursing shortage: strategies and solutions

     

    The nursing workforce

    • The nursing workforce comprises 3 regulated groups: Nurse Practitioners (NPs), Registered Nurses (RNs) and Enrolled Nurses (ENs). Nurses recognise that other unregulated groups of healthcare workers (for example Assistants in Nursing (AINs)) perform nursing care, and the research is clear that they require support from registered nurses (Duffield et al, 2014). Other regulated health professions, including general practitioners (GPs) have also regularly performed various aspects of nursing care. In General Practice over the past twenty years, practice nurses have been increasingly employed to perform those nursing aspects of care (Merrick et al, 2011).
    • The scope of practice for nurses is not defined by the tasks nurses perform, but by the acuity of the people they are caring for and the concomitant range of skills that they will require for their practice. For example, assisting a person who is acutely ill and haemodynamically unstable with their personal hygiene may well require the assessment and clinical management skills of an RN, but the same personal hygiene skills may be performed by an AIN if the person is convalescent.
    • Nurses will perform their skills across a continuum from novice to expert (Benner, 1984) at different stages of their career development and according to the different levels of registration: NPs perform all of their skill-sets at a highly complex level (NMBA, 2014), whereas ENs may perform only some of their skill sets and to a less complex level (NMBA, 2016).

    (more…)

  • MICHAEL WESLEY. The dangerous politics of national security. (Repost from Policy Series)

    In January 2013, as she launched her government’s National Security Strategy, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard proclaimed that Australia’s decade of terrorism was over. Her argument was that al Qaeda had failed to regenerate after being degraded in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and that there were other more conventional security issues, such as the rise of new Asian great powers, that would dominate the forward security agenda.  (more…)