For those Australians hoping for structural separation of the banks, an overhaul of the regulators or heads on sticks, royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s verdict would have been disappointing. (more…)
John Menadue
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KAREN COX. Now Hayne has reported, the lobbyists will get to work (SMH 5.2.2019)
After a year of front pages filled with the evidence of scandalous wrong doing, rip-offs and greed in our banking and financial services institutions, we finally have a roadmap from Commissioner Kenneth Hayne on how to solve the finance sector’s ills. His report is bold, full of commonsense and clear solutions. (more…)
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ANDREW LINDEN, WARREN STAPLES. Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure. (The Conversation 5.2.2019)
Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure means that in a decade or so another treasurer will have to call another royal commission. Every 10 to 15 years it’s the same.
Ever since financial deregulation in the 1980s we’ve had a finance industry scandal followed by an inquiry, a quick fix, and a declaration that it shouldn’t happen again. (more…)
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STEPHEN LONG. This letter from the big banks helped shape the royal commission. ABC News 5 February 2019
It is a revelation that underscores the close relationship between the major banks and the Government. (more…)
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JAMES MASSOLA. The Australian priest helping trapped refugees the world ignores. (SMH 3/2/2019)
Mick Kelly remembers the phone call from his friend in Pakistan as if it was yesterday.
“He asked me to help out this one guy who was fleeing Pakistan, and on his way to Bangkok. That was more than five years ago,” Kelly recalls.
That friend – like Mick, a Jesuit priest – was asking for the Sydney-born Kelly to give a Pakistani Christian and would-be refugee help when he arrived in Thailand’s sprawling, unfamiliar capital.
“It all started by accident and has grown from there.”
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ELENA COLLINSON. What A Labor Victory Might Mean For Australian Foreign Policy (Council on Foreign Relations).
A federal election is due this year in Australia. While the Liberal-National Coalition government has yet to formally announce a polling day, the stage has effectively been set for a May election. According to Australian law, May 18 is the latest possible date a federal election could be called. The opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) is favored to win, having consistently polled ahead of the Coalition over the last year, at least, and having extended their lead in polls in the aftermath of Malcolm Turnbull’s ouster from the Coalition prime ministership in an internal Liberal Party leadership contest last year. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Conservatives like Scott Morrison set the gold standard in scare campaigns.
With the Coalition policy cupboard bare and broken we should not be surprised about the attacks on Bill Shorten and a scare campaign in the electorate. Last week Scott Morrison told us that he is ‘cashed up and ready to go negative’. We are being warned about the coming disaster if many well off people are denied the benefits of negative gearing,capital gains concessions or denial of tax credits even for people who don’t pay any tax at all. But that was just the beginning. Rhodes scholar winner and Minister for Energy threatened that ‘Labor’s energy policies would shut down Gladstone and Mackay’. At least that other Rhodes Scholar, Tony Abbott warned that only one town, Whyalla, would be shut down as a result of Labor’s energy policies. (more…)
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DANIELLE WOOD, CARMELA CHIVERS AND KATE GRIFFITHS. Tasmania’s gambling election shows Australia needs tougher rules on money in politics.
Today’s Commonwealth donations data release is a stark reminder of the deep flaws in our political donations system. Contributions to political parties are revealed up to 19 months after the event, and sometimes not at all. With most states now operating far more transparent regimes, the only conceivable explanation for the current Commonwealth system is that our political leaders don’t want us to see where the money is coming from. And the information contained in today’s data dump gives clues as to why that might be. (more…)
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CLAIRE GIANGRAVE. UN panel probes Italy’s role in Church’s child abuse scandals
A United Nations Committee for the protection of minors questioned the Italian government last week about clerical sexual abuse in the country, expressing concern over laws that protect predator priests from criminal charges.
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DAVID JAMES. Venezuela beset by American dirty tricks (Eureka Street, 30 January 2019)
For those wishing to peer into the heart of darkness, the nexus between big oil and big money is a good place to start. Those who control the energy market and the financial markets control the world. (more…)
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RICHARD KINGSFORD. The successive government failures behind the fish kills. (SMH 31.1.2018)
With the NSW election looming, it’s time to make sure the next state government has environmental policy front and centre at the big table of decision making. On nearly every major measure for the environment – numbers of threatened species, pollution, state of ecosystems and burgeoning threats – we’re going backwards. (more…)
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MARTIN WOLF. China’s challenge of one world, two systems. (AFR 31.1.2018)
The accelerating breakdown in relations between China and the US is the most significant current event. How is this to be managed, given today’s global interdependence? (more…) -
JOSH GORDON. Will Labor’s dividend imputation policy overwhelmingly affect the low paid? (ABC News)
For months the Morrison Government has argued Labor’s controversial plan to raise more than $5 billion a year by scrapping refundable franking credits on dividends from shares is “not fair”. (more…)
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CJ Polychroniou. Noam Chomsky: Ocasio-Cortez and Other Newcomers Are Rousing the Multitudes (Truthout, 30 January 2019)
A quick glance around the world today reveals that politics almost everywhere — from the federal government shutdown in the US to the power struggle in Venezuela and from Macron’s crisis in France and UK’s Brexit nightmare to the Israeli-Iranian rivalry – are engulfed in a state of uncertainty and turmoil. Meanwhile, oligarchy is replacing democracy as the widening social and economic gap between rich and poor continues unabated. So, who rules the world now? The US is in a state of relative decline, but neither Russia nor China has the capacity to control global developments. How do the super-rich and corporations factor into this equation? In this exclusive interview, world-renowned linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky provides penetrating insights into some of the most critical developments going on in the world today. (more…)
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ISHAAN THAROOR. The lesson of Davos: – China has arrived (Washington Post 25 January 2019).
“Can we live in a world where America is still a strong power but doesn’t have the kind of primacy it had in the past?” asked Mahbubani. That’s a reality an “America First” administration is staunchly trying to resist. In Davos, though, it is a fait accompli. (more…)
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IAN ROBINSON. The Myth of the Mandate.
If they win the next election, “Labor will have a mandate to push through tax changes,” claims Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen (The Age 23/01 p. 1). (more…)
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MARK PROOST. Millions of Americans flood into Mexico for health care – the human caravan you haven’t heard about. (Truthout 23.1.2019)
It’s true that Latin and Central Americans are coming to the US fleeing violence and poverty, much of it caused by destructive US trade policy over the course of decades. But there’s another massive “border crossing” phenomenon afoot — and Trump has not said a word about it. We’re talking about thousands of US citizens crossing the border each day in search of affordable health care. (more…)
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JACKSON LEARS. Imperial Exceptionalism -(The New York Review of Books February 7, 2019).
It is hard to give up something you claim you never had. That is the difficulty Americans face with respect to their country’s empire. (more…)
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IAN ROBINSON. What has Captain Cook ever done for us?
The Prime Minister is intent on making a big fuss about James Cook. He is even promoting, at great expense, a circumnavigation of the continent by a replica of Cook’s ship Endeavour. This is an insult to Matthew Flinders who actually did circumnavigate the continent, who made a much greater contribution to our nation than Cook, and who, moreover, gave us our name. Forget Cook. Let’s give Flinders his due. (more…)
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KISHORE MAHBUBANI. What China Threat? How the United States and China can avoid war. Harper Magazine 22 January 2019
Within about fifteen years, China’s economy will surpass America’s and become the largest in the world. As this moment approaches, meanwhile, a consensus has formed in Washington that China poses a significant threat to American interests and well-being. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), has said that “China probably poses the greatest threat to our nation by about 2025.” The summary of America’s 2018 National Defense Strategy claims that China and Russia are “revisionist powers” seeking to “shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model—gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” Christopher Wray, the FBI director, has said, “One of the things we’re trying to do is view the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat . . . and I think it’s going to take a whole-of-society response by us.” So widespread is this notion that when Donald Trump launched his trade war against China, in January 2018, he received support even from moderate figures such as Democratic senator Chuck Schumer. (more…)
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MATTHEW O’NEILL. How the media’s fixation with Trump was exported. (The Interpreter 23.1.2019)
The Trump administration has hurtled into its third year and the media circus that’s trailed the 45th president continues apace. Australians who didn’t tune out of the news over the summer holidays were fed a diet of chaos and controversy out of Washington, with the ongoing partial government shutdown featured prominently in bulletins nationwide. (more…)
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CRISPIN HULL. Solution to ABC budget cuts. (Canberra Times 19.1.2019)
Here is an idea for how the ABC might deal with the inevitable round of cuts next Budget.
Clever bureaucrats when faced with funding cuts go for the jugular. They attack some popular vote-sensitive function and announce it will be cut. The backlash often results in a funding rethink.
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JOHN MENADUE. Australia Day reminds us that we can overcome the fear of foreigners and ‘boats’.
The Australia of today is vastly different to the Australia of my childhood with its widespread racism and sectarianism. It was socially suffocating. For those changes I am very grateful. There is a lot that we can be proud of. No country has integrated newcomers as well as we have.
But there have been failures and remedial action must be taken. We are yet to be reconciled to our indigenous brothers and sisters who watched the European boat arrivals in 1788. We are yet to take our share of responsibility for the displaced and persecuted people of the world particularly for those displaced by our involvement in futile and disastrous wars in the Middle East which triggered the enormous refugee outflows. (more…)
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JOHN FALZON. We need to redefine exclusion (Eureka Street).
Inequality is not an aberration that comes with neoliberalism. It is the foundation of neoliberalism, along with its partners in social crime: patriarchy and colonisation. As Sharan Burrow, the Australian General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), puts it so poignantly: ‘We live in a fragmented world.’ The excluded form the majority across the globe. (more…)
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TIM LINDSEY. Ba’asyir’s bizarre on/off release disrupts Jokowi’s campaign.
Indonesia’s announcement that it would release 80-year old Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the spiritual leader of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), after serving two-thirds of his 15-year sentence for supporting a terrorist training camp in Aceh, took many by surprise. Australians were shocked that Indonesia showed so little concern for Australian feelings about JI’s 2002 bomb attack in Bali that claimed 202 lives, including 88 Australians.
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MARILYN LAKE. Change the date to 1 January
I’m with Jeff Kennett. I never thought I could say that, but I agree with him that Australia Day should be moved to 1 January – to commemorate the beginning of the Commonwealth of Australia, a new progressive nation, whose very name signified the ideals of collective commitment and communal wealth and a repudiation of old world aristocracies and inequalities. We didn’t thereby become a republic, but the name, voted on by constitutional delegates in the 1890s had a distinctively ‘republican ring’ as a number of disgruntled conservative constitutional delegates noted. (more…)
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JOHN CARMODY. Rethinking the basis for the Australia Day holiday.
January 26 continues to be a nettlesome date for the official celebration of the Australian nation and as a commemoration of our colonial foundation. Apart from the significant nuisance that it falls so close to the end of the holiday season, when our minds and emotions are trying to deal with seemingly more pressing obligations, its continued existence really asks a serious philosophical and moral question about not just about the date but also whether it should be celebrated at all. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. A Repost: What does it mean to be an Australian? Are we still the land of the second chance?
The Macquarie legacy is still with us. It underpins our best instincts to give all residents in this country, whether Australian born, migrants or refugees an equal opportunity in life, a second chance. That ethos of redemption is a core part of our history. (more…)
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IAN AND TIM ROBINSON. A Sad Excuse for a National Day
A National Day should be the anniversary of a central event in the life of the nation, a day when we all come together and celebrate our nation’s shared values – a celebration of the start of our nation’s journey, usually the attainment of independence, or some other significant national milestone.
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JOHN MENADUE. Corporate failure in Australia. They just don’t get it.
There is a growing and unfortunate litany of corporate failures in Australia – and not just the banks and energy suppliers. There is wage theft on a large scale. Instead of addressing their own obvious failures the BCA accuses its critics of business bashing and waging class war.
As Warren Buffett put it ‘there is class war all right, but it is my class, the rich class,that is making war and we are winning it.’
Senior business people will just not ‘stick to their knitting’ and properly and competently run their businesses.Instead they attack their critics and the unions. They fiddle while capitalism burns.
They seem unable to understand that capitalism is under serious challenge because of the growing divide in society. They show no sign that the unfairness and inequality that capitalism has spawned must be urgently tackled. They just don’t get it.
One continuing failure has been an unwillingness by our corporate sector to equip itself for the Asian Century. Many of our large corporations and their senior executives have scant knowledge and interest in our rapidly growing region. (more…)