The National Party’s battles over climate policy are becoming ever louder, ever more ludicrous. The consequences of thirty years of climate denial and spruiking for mining may finally tear the party apart. (more…)
John Menadue
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DAVID SPRATT: Existential risk, Neoliberalism and UN Climate Policymaking Part 2
International climate policymaking has failed to avoid a path of catastrophic global warming. Two often-overlooked causes of this failure are how climate-science knowledge has been produced and utilised by the United Nation’s twin climate bodies and how those organisations function. Part 2 of 2.
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DAVID SPRATT: Existential risk, Neoliberalism and UN Climate Policymaking Part 1
International climate policymaking has failed to avoid a path of catastrophic global warming. Two often-overlooked causes of this failure are how climate-science knowledge has been produced and utilised by the United Nation’s twin climate bodies and how those organisations function. Part 1 of 2.
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GENEVIEVE LLOYD. Strong Borders and Bad Butchers
The appraisal of current political rhetoric on asylum seeker and refugee policies can be a challenging exercise. Think, for example, of the ideal of ‘strong borders’, which has come to act as a benchmark for the recognition of contemporary realities — so obvious that it seems unthinkable to call it into question; and so politically potent that the mere mention of ‘softness on border protection’ is enough to suggest unfitness to govern. Yet, in this context, it is by no means clear from what exactly our ‘strong borders’ are supposed to offer protection. Nor is it clear why the slightest change in current ‘policy settings’ would amount to a weakening of their presumptive strength.
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HAJO DUKEN. The Brexit crisis – devil’s work and people’s contribution – the people’s vote: democracy or arson?
Most people, both in Britain and the rest of the world, would by now agree that Brexit has proven to be the most important single issue Britain has faced since WWII with significant (if not life-changing) consequences for many generations to come. Many would also agree that it has been the management of Brexit (rather than the decision for Brexit itself) that has manoeuvred Britain into its biggest crisis since WWII. Surprisingly, however, the root causes of this mess are rarely discussed. (more…)
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PM, stop the cynical charade on asylum-seeker boats (The Age Editorial).
Are there no bounds to the Coalition government’s cynicism, mismanagement and disregard for fiscal responsibility and human dignity when it comes to refugees and people seeking asylum? (more…)
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MARILYN HATTON. Why I’m not leaving the Catholic Church – despite everything
I’m not leaving the Catholic Church, despite the shocking breaking of trust, the horror, the hurt and the un-Christ like behavior and the damage our decision-makers have done to our Church members and our practice of faith. I’m staying because I do not want our Church, with all its potential for good in the world to be reduced to a small exclusive celibate male sect. Christ’s gift of faith will be denied to millions unless we can find a way to radically change the status quo. The Church’s own data reflects its shrinking numbers.
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PETER RYAN. CEDA urges Morrison Government to back Labor tax changes (ABC News).
An independent economic think tank is urging the Morrison Government to do the politically unthinkable ahead of an expected May election and back Labor’s plans to end unsustainable tax breaks. (more…)
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FRANCIS SULLIVAN. Why stay?
Since the conviction of Cardinal Pell I have been asked why I remain a Catholic.It is an obvious question. The extent of criminal behaviour and the active cover up by bishops and religious leaders of perpetrators has been breath taking. Ordinary Catholics have been played as mugs by the Church leadership. Why stay?
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ALAN PEARS. Beyond the Climate Chaos
It seems our politicians live on a different planet from the rest of us.
The government’s climate position is untenable and morally irresponsible, while the opposition’s is still marginal. Humanity and the planet are in serious trouble. Strong action is economically sensible, practical and morally responsible.
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JOHN MENADUE. The facts on boat arrivals that the media won’t face
From September 2015, almost four years ago, Peter Hughes and I have pointed out repeatedly that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison triggered the surge in boat arrivals from September 2011 and did not stop the boats as they claim from December 2013 when Operation Sovereign Borders commenced. (more…)
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ERIKA FELLER. Bridging the divide on refugee policy
Australia’s refugee policies are rarely outside the political and public discourse. This is even more so now with a Federal election looming. Everyone has an opinion. The shades are many and the starting points for any discussion are wide apart.
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MAX COSTELLO. Christmas Island, an update.
MAX COSTELLO. At his recent, expensive, tropical island media conference, the Prime Minister gave two reasons for reopening the Christmas Island detention centre. One: all the mainland centres are “full”. Two: Christmas Island, a “hardened centre”, is needed to protect mainland Australians from 57 “adverse characters” offshore. Since the first reason is an outright lie and the second implied that mainland “hardened centres” are non-existent or insecure, all he really conveyed was shameless mendacity. Then there are the issues of massive cost, medical inadequacy, and executive government sabotage of the legislature’s law. It’s time to expose the real reasons for the reopening. (more…)
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JEFFREY SACHS. Green New Deal is feasible and affordable. (CNN online, 26.2.2019)
There are three main ideas of the Green New Deal Resolution introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey. (more…)
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MAX COSTELLO. The real reason Christmas Island is being reopened.
Although Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Attorney-General Christian Porter have said why Christmas Island’s immigration detention centre will be reopened, the PM’s words were uninformative, and A-G Porter’s ‘explanation’ was untrue. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Some Coalition legacies that a new government must confront
There are several major issues that dominate public life today and require resolution. Those issues are –the growing existential threat of climate change, the dire consequences following the Iraq invasion, tax cuts during the mining boom that result in continuing budget deficits and debt increases, the NBN debacle, hostility to refugees and asylum seekers, and problems with foreign influence and political donations . (more…)
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PETER RODGERS: Alive in Israel – the ghost of Richard Nixon?
Are we watching the end of the Netanyahu era? The Prime Minister opted for an early election but then had serious charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust levelled at him by Israel’s Attorney General. Netanyahu’s response was straight out of Trump’s playbook, he’d rather trash the place than admit fault. That all lies with the ‘Bolshevik’ media and its fellow travellers.
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MICK PALMER. A summit on drug decriminalisation.
In describing in her findings arising from a wide ranging inquest into six fatal opioid overdose events, current illicit drug policy as “futile” and likely to exacerbate drug related harm, the NSW Deputy State Coroner, Harriet Grahame, urged the NSW Government to have the courage to commit to conducting a summit on drug decriminalisation. (more…)
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RICHARD BARCHAM. National Party bets on feral horses in NSW elections
Kosciuszko National Park has become collateral damage in the New South Wales National Party battle for re-election. The natural values of the park, in Deputy Premier John Barilaro’s marginal seat of Monaro, face imminent destruction by feral horses.
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LEANNE WELLS. Modest step in response to egregious specialist fees.
The announcement of Federal Government plans to establish a website listing medical specialist fees may seem a modest response to a problem that causes financial distress to many patients already struggling with their physical pain.
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PETER BROOKS. Will teenagers’ involvement in the climate change debate be a ‘game changer’?
March 15 has been flagged as a coordinated day of school strikes by teenagers around the world. Let us hope that they will start a new movement to bring home the urgency for real action around the world, but particularly in Australia, to ensure that our children, grandchildren and all future generations do actually have a planet to live on! So, let us all support them – they surely deserve it.
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EMANUEL PASTREICH. Fractured governance fractures the Hanoi summit (Korean Times, 3 March 2019)
The sudden cancellation of the joint statement on February 28 at the end of the Trump-Kim Summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, was one of the most complex and contradictory historical events in my memory. Of course the adlib briefing by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo immediately after was not complex at all. It was a banal show for the media that avoided talking about much of anything other than process. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. As PM, Bill Shorten could help offer cheaper cars without any cost to the budget
The Australian Motor Industry Federation and the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries have successfully lobbied the Australian government to continue restrictions on the imports of second-hand vehicles. We are paying a large price for protecting an industry that no longer exists,our auto manufacturing sector (more…)
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LORENA ALLAM AND NICK EVERSHED. The Killing Times: the massacres of Aboriginal people Australia must confront.
The truth of Australia’s history has long been hiding in plain sight. The stories of “the killing times” are the ones we have heard in secret, or told in hushed tones. They are not the stories that appear in our history books yet they refuse to go away. (more…)
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ROBERT MANNE. The myth of the great wave (The Saturday Paper, 2 March 2019)
This article originally appeared in The Saturday Paper.”
It is as certain as anything in politics can be that during the next three months, as the federal election looms, the Morrison government will claim time and again that if Australians want to prevent a new wave of asylum seekers on boats they have no choice but to vote for the Coalition. (more…)
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GARRY EVERETT. Sex Only??
The recent Hollywood movie, On the basis of sex, tells the story of the first successful court case argued by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 9th Circuit Court. The subject matter was discrimination by the Federal Tax Laws, against a man who was denied a tax concession as his mother’s carer, on the grounds that only women were regarded as carers. It was the early 1960s, and one wonders how such an antiquated view could have still prevailed in the USA legal system.
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JOHN MENADUE. Drownings at sea and ‘the more boats that come the better’
To divert attention from the politicking and cruel treatment of asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru, Scott Morrison tells us that Coalition policy is designed to stop drownings at sea. That is rank hypocrisy. It is nothing of the sort. Its ‘boats policy’ is crass and cruel party politics. (more…)
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ROBERTO SAVIANO. The migrant caravan: made in USA.
The migrant caravan that left Honduras and headed north toward the US last October is the largest flight from drug trafficking in history. Though the phenomenon of Central American caravans isn’t new, never before have thousands of people decided to flee from criminal organizations in such numbers. It is, in a sense, the biggest anti-mafia march the world has ever seen. (more…)
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PETER O’HARA. My Lunch with French Secret Service Agents Who Sank Rainbow Warrior.
Dateline: 1986 in the remote South Pacific. For thirty years French ‘atomic bombs’ were exploded in atoll islands of the Tuamotus archipelago in French Polynesia. I was Qantas area manager based in the capital Papeete. A dream job some would say, and interesting times in that hub of political agitation. Lunch with French secret service agents following the infamous Rainbow Warrior debacle was certainly not in my job description. (more…)
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MARTIN WOLF. The US debate on climate change is heating up (Financial Times 21.2.2019)
Might the US move from being a laggard to a leader in tackling global climate change? Two recent announcements — the “economists’ statement on carbon dividends” and the Green New Deal — suggest that it might. Intellectually, these proposals are from different planets. But they could be a basis for something reasonable. More important, influential people at least agree that for the US to stand pat is unconscionable.