The important agents of influence in Australia are organisations linked ‘hip to hip’ to the US and its military/industrial complex. One of these is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute which is an enthusiastic supporter of almost all things American including its hostility to China. It pretends it is an independent think tank. It pretends it has China expertise. (more…)
John Menadue
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ANDREW DEBLANCO. The long struggle for America’s soul.
Apparently, the selfevident truth that all people deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is far from settled.
This article was published by The New York Times on the 7th of November 2018. (more…)
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LINDY EDWARDS. Identity Politics is central to the current political crisis, but not for the reasons Paul Kelly argues.
Paul Kelly’s recent article ‘Could disruption be the ruin of western liberal democracy?’ was a thoughtful account of the challenges facing western democracy, and I would agree with some of what he described. But in the spirit of the constructive engagement he laments as missing in current debate, I offer up a different line of causality. (more…)
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DAVID HUTT. Timor-Leste developing closer ties with China.
Southeast Asia’s newest and poorest nation needs funds that Beijing is poised to provide to fuel what some see as Dili’s misguided oil and gas ambitions.
This article was published by Asia Times on the 2nd of November 2018. (more…)
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Refugees – Donald Trump’s help is accepted but Jacinda Arden’s offer is rejected
Refugees and asylum seekers are being kept on Manus and Nauru for one purpose only – to serve the government’s party political purposes.
We welcome US help but not offers of help from NZ.
Keeping vulnerable people in offshore detention is not deterring boat arrivals. It is the turnback policy that is stopping the boats. The vulnerable people in Nauru and Manus are being punished for no useful policy purpose. They should all be brought to Australia where we have well established settlement services.
In all this cruel mess, the ALP is silent. Where is its courage and its humanity? (more…)
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DEAN ASHENDEN. Don’t mention the war (Inside Story, 05.11.18)
The Australian War Memorial and its embarrassing director Brendan Nelson are getting some of what they deserve, but only some. The AWM’s (successful) bid for half a billion public dollars to house its tribute to those who have served and died in conflicts since the second world war has provoked hostile commentary, culminating in Jack Waterford’s splendid takedown of Nelson, the AWM and its outrageous raid on the public purse in the Canberra Times. But with some exceptions (here, here, and here) this commentary, including Waterford’s, has followed the AWM itself in missing the main point: the failure to recognise what are by any measure the most sustained, costly and disastrous of Australia’s wars, the so-called “frontier” wars, deadly conflicts between black and white that went on for well over a century. (more…)
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SOPHIE VORRATH. Surge in renewables delivering cheaper power, says TAI report.
As ScoMo sets off in his big blue autographed campaign bus to Drive Down Electricity Prices in Queensland, the good news is that most of the hard work looks to have been already done for him.
This article was published by Renew Economy on the 5th of November 2018. (more…)
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RICHARD ECKERSLEY. The ghosts of past political failures haunt environmental challenges.
We will not solve climate change and other pressing global threats until we admit, and learn from, the repeated failures of past proclamations and promises. (more…)
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BRENDAN COATES, JOHN DALEY, TONY CHEN. Abolish stamp duty. The ACT shows the rest of us how to tax property.
This week we’re exploring the state of nine different policy areas across Australia’s states, as detailed in Grattan Institute’s State Orange Book 2018. Read the other articles in the series here.
This article was published by The Conversation on the 1st of Novemeber 2018. (more…)
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MARYANNE DEMASI. Vindication : dietitians cut ties with the sugar lobby.
The Dietitians Association of Australia has pledged to cut financial ties with the sugar lobby following a series of investigations. The DAA initiative and the exoneration of surgeon and sugar critic Dr Gary Fettke are significant steps towards diet reform in Australia. (more…)
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NOAM CHOMSKY. Members of Migrant Caravan Are Fleeing from Misery & Horrors Created by the U.S.
As President Trump escalated his attacks and threats against the Central American migrant caravans making their way to the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump administration unveiled new sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba on Thursday. National security adviser John Bolton declared Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua to be part of a “troika of tyranny” and a “triangle of terror.” We speak with world-renowned professor, linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky about U.S. foreign policy in Central America. He joins us in Tucson, Arizona, where he now teaches at the University of Arizona. Chomsky is also institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for 50 years.
This article was published by Democracy Now! on the 2nd of November 2018. (more…)
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JOHN DALEY, BRENDAN COATES, TONY CHEN. To make housing more affordable this is what state governments need to do.
This week we’re exploring the state of nine different policy areas across Australia’s states, as detailed in Grattan Institute’s State Orange Book 2018. Read the other articles in the series here.
This article was published by The Conversation on the 31st of October 2018. (more…)
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SIMON SCHAMA. On the battle for America (Financial Times 2.11.2018)
Ten days before the midterm elections in America, murder came to the Tree of Life. Shouting “all Jews need to die”, a neo-Nazi gunman with an animus against the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society slaughtered 11 Jews gathered at their synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. Two days earlier, pipe bombs had been sent to 14 critics of Donald Trump by a man who had turned his van into a rust-bucket shrine to MAGA and its great apostle. One day previously, Gregory Bush, thwarted in his attempt to enter a black church in Louisville, Kentucky, had shot and killed two African-Americans at a local supermarket. Before he was arrested, he shouted “whites don’t kill whites”. All three perpetrators believed they were engaged in saving white America. (more…)
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JESSICA IRVINE. Labor’s housing tax changes will help cure our property addiction (SMH 1.11.2018)
It seems a requirement of modern political scare campaigns that they be not only breathless, but logically inconsistent. And so it is with the mounting fear campaign being waged against Labor’s policy to, if elected, reform the tax treatment of investment properties.Labor’s changes would, we hear, both accelerate price falls under way in Sydney and Melbourne AND also choke the supply of new homes. Come on, guys.
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JOHN MENADUE. Detention on Manus and Nauru serves no useful policy purpose.
On 13 August 2016 Robert Manne, Frank Brennan, Tim Costello and I wrote the following article for The Melbourne Age. It was also posted on this blog. Since that time, we have consistently argued on many occasions , first, that all detainees on Manus and Nauru should be brought to Australia for processing and possible settlement, and second, that the policy of turnback of boats should be continued and if necessary strengthened to ensure that there were no more boat arrivals. I repost below that article from August 2016. We think the basic arguments that we made over two years ago are still valid. . It is turn backs that deter boat arrivals and not cruel detention on Manus and Nauru. John Menadue (more…)
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MICHAEL MCGIRR. Christianity tells stories; Islam finds designs (Eureka Street, 30.10.18)
My year ten class studies Islam, one of the most formative influences in the world that my students will inhabit and hopefully improve. I have a profound respect for Islam. Westerners, and especially western Christians, often fail to acknowledge the debt they owe to Islam, a tradition that had a huge role in bringing Europe through the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. (more…)
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TIMOTHY SNYDER. Donald Trump borrows from the old tricks of fascism (The Guardian, 30.10.18)
The governing principle of the Trump administration is total irresponsibility, a claim of innocence from a position of power, something which happens to be an old fascist trick. As we see in the president’s reactions to American rightwing terrorism, he will always claim victimhood for himself and shift blame to the actual victims. As we see in the motivations of the terrorists themselves, and in the long history of fascism, this maneuver can lead to murder. (more…)
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AARON PATRICK. Tweet victory: How Libs lost Wentworth. (AFR 1.11.2018)
Five days before the Wentworth byelection, when Liberal candidate Dave Sharma was starting to claw back support in the seat Prime Minister Scott Morrison was desperate to save, Facebook and Twitter lit up with a warning: if local doctor Kerryn Phelps doesn’t come second, the Liberals win. (more…)
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PAUL KRUGMAN. Hate is on the ballot next week (New York Times 31 October 2018)
In America 2018, whataboutism is the last refuge of scoundrels, and bothsidesism is the last refuge of cowards. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a wave of hate crimes. (more…)
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JOE ROACH. Inequality-A case of wood and trees.
Economists love data. For some it is a case of the more the merrier….or, at the least, the more data the more articles than can be published. Whether this contributes much to the overall good is doubtful. When it misleads it needs to be called out.
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RICHARD HOLDEN. The best way to boost the economy is to improve the lives of deprived students. (The Conversation 25.10.2018)
What if we had an opportunity to double the size of the tourism industry, or to quadruple the size of the beef industry, or to boost the economy by more than any of the presently proposed tax switches? What if we could do it while permanently improving the lives of disadvantaged young people? We surely wouldn’t let it slip away. Yet we do every day while we fail to address the gap in school achievement between between rural, regional and remote children and their city counterparts. (more…)
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NICK DEANE. Armistice Day
On ‘Remembrance Day’ we should not forget that the majority of war’s casualties are actually non-combatant civilians. We should also remember that the original day was a day of great joy, as warring came to an end. Peace is the ‘default position’; war an aberration. However, current commemorations still focus on the ‘warrior hero’.
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JAMES O’NEILL. Australia and its Israel Embassy: What are they thinking?
According to recent media reports, the Liberal candidate in the Wentworth (Sydney) by-election, former diplomat David Sharma said he “was open” to the idea that Australia’s embassy in Israel could be shifted from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In a separate tweet he went further and said Australia “should consider recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The ostensible reason is that it would be following the lead of the United States. (more…)
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CARMEN LAWRENCE. Waste in the Commonwealth/State divide in education
In the seemingly never ending debate about the best way to fund our schools, relatively little consideration is given to the effects of the declining influence of state governments and the increasing exercise of power by the Commonwealth. However, in our discussions in the panel which reviewed school funding in Australia – the so-called Gonski review – state-commonwealth relations were, inevitably and necessarily, pivotal to our deliberations. It may come as no surprise that the recommendations that flowed from that analysis have been largely overlooked and relegated to the “too hard” basket. (more…)
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MOHAMAD BAZZI. How Saudi Arabia wins friends (New York Times, 29.10.18)
After the Khashoggi murder, the kingdom has fallen back on the tactic of wielding its oil wealth to buy loyalty. (more…)
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IAN TRESISE. A View on the Need for Systemic Change in Health & Wellbeing Education
There is a very strong need in our community for a refreshing whole-of-government approach to confronting the major health issues of our day. This starts with the recognition that many of our political institutions were developed for an Industrial Age era, where a silo approach to delivering policy, exacerbated by a federated service delivery model, is no longer capable of dealing with the most pressing health issues of our time. These include the unconstrained tragedy of preventable non-communicable disease proliferation; which, according to a PwC study commissioned by Australian Unity, will be unsustainable in Australia as early as 2025.
The PwC report Practical innovation: closing the social infrastructure gap in health and ageing, paints a very sorry picture of the inadequacy of resources and political understanding and leadership as Australia’s population rapidly ages, calling for the need for a “truly holistic approach to health and wellbeing, this should cover all aspects of government, not just be restricted to health”. (more…)
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VICTOR MERRICK. Anwar Ibrahim — is he for real?
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AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS. Turnbull warns Morrison over Israel embassy move after Indonesia meeting (the Guardian 30 October 2018)
The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned his successor against moving the Australian embassy in Israel to Jerusalem after meeting with the Indonesian president on Monday. (more…)
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BERNIE FRASER- Neoliberal failure, putting the economy ahead of society -A repost
At The Australian Institute’s Revenue Summit in Canberra on 17 October 2018 Bernie Fraser raised an important question as to why with Australia’s 27 years of successive economic growth there is so mush social disquiet and sense of unfairness in the community.
Bernie Fraser was formerly Secretary of Treasury and Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
He asked …’How do we explain (the) disconnect between Australia’s impressive economic growth story and its failure on so many markers to show progress towards a better,fairer society? In my view a large part of the answer lies in the influence of the political ideology of neoliberalism on policy making in Australia over much of the last few decades. In varying degrees similar influences and outcomes are evident in several other developed western countries.
At its highest level neoliberalism encourages policy makers to focus on their economies,rather than their societies,with an apparent assumption that what is good for the economy will be good for society,with limited need for government interventions.’
See link below for full notes