John Menadue

  • Robert Douglas. Senate report on Australian inequality.

    Bridging our growing divide: Inequality in Australia is an important report tabled without fanfare in the Senate by its Community Affairs References Committee. The report is clearly argued and well-buttressed by data and references. The points it makes about an issue central to the kind of society we are developing in Australia deserve wide community discussion.

    The inquiry terms of reference called for a review of the extent of income inequality, the rate at which it is increasing and its impacts on access to health, housing, education and work.

    The senators were also asked to inquire into specific impacts on disadvantaged groups. These included the likely impact of government policies – especially 2014-15 budget measures – on rates of inequality, the principles that should underpin social security payments and practical measures that government could implement to address inequality.

    The six-month inquiry engaged 13 senators – five from the ALP, five from the Liberal Party, two Greens and one independent. The 273-page report, tabled in December 2014, drew on 64 written submissions and seven public hearings involving 59 witnesses from government and voluntary agencies around the nation.

    The report makes it clear the non-government representatives reached consensus on the key findings. The government members, led by Zed Seselja, were uncomfortable with the conclusions. They tabled a dissenting report.

    I was a co-author of a report by the Australia21/Australia Institute, Advance Australia Fair? What to do about growing inequality in Australia. This was released in mid-2014. I met the committee as a witness and spoke about the origins of the report in a roundtable of experts at Parliament House in January 2014.

    Arising from that rich discussion we proposed ten ways to move to a fairer Australia. These included promoting a national conversation about inequality, its effects and ways of dealing with it.

    The stark inequalities of Australian wealth feature on the cover of the Advance Australia Fair? report. Australia21/Australia Institute
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    What did the inquiry find?

    The committee’s majority report states that income inequality has increased in Australia since the mid-1980s. It asserts that the budget measures will be likely to exacerbate income inequality and poverty. The report emphasises that the Newstart payment is too low – for a single adult recipient it is more than A$100 per week below the poverty line.

    The report points to the important role of the minimum wage and the fact that lower incomes are associated with poorer health outcomes. In addition, low transfer payments or low incomes often compound the disadvantage felt by groups such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people with disability, people living with mental illness, single parents and new migrants.

    It also argues the need to consider how the income-support system can assist the large and growing group of people with insecure work. The report notes that regional variations in labour markets can seriously limit people’s employment opportunities.

    It goes on to underline the importance of Commonwealth rent assistance and of long waiting lists to enter public and social housing. According to the report, a decent wage is the best way to lift people out of household stress.

    Finally, the report discusses the importance of a one-on-one approach for reconnecting people with education, training and employment opportunities. It argues the need to invest in programs that connect with young people at risk of leaving school early, that develop tailored training for workers aged 50 and above and that provide long-term unemployed people with mentors.

    The report makes 13 recommendations to act on these key findings.

    The Senate report cites research that suggests the public differs from the government on the urgency of acting to reduce inequality. Australian National University, Australia Election Study 1987–2013, CC BY-NC-ND
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    What is the government position?

    The government senators’ dissenting report affirms that Australia is a prosperous egalitarian society, which provides security and opportunity for all. It argues that while Australia has some significant issues with poverty and much can be done to improve opportunity and circumstances for all Australians, the majority report adds little to the debate. It says history has shown that a strong economy that provides employment is the best way to build a prosperous society.

    The dissenting senators say arbitrary comparisons between relative income levels pale in significance compared to Australia’s capacity to grow wealth and lift people out of poverty through employment and education. The majority report fails to make the case that inequality is driving poor socioeconomic outcomes, they say, and does not meaningfully engage with budget policies to improve these outcomes.

    The five-page dissenting report has a single recommendation:

    That the Senate implements the government agenda to build a strong and prosperous economy for the benefit of all Australians.

    That this is the government members’ response to inequality in Australia shows why the public needs to join the debate.

    Robert Douglas is Emeritus Professor, National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at ANU. This article first appeared in The Conversation on 13 January 2015.

  • Ian Coller. Liberty, equality, fraternity: redefining ‘French’ values in the wake of Charlie Hebdo.

    Beyond the tourist fantasy of the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, France today is a fabulously colourful mixture of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists. This is the situation all over Europe. Yet many Europeans are deeply uneasy with this diversity.

    The names of Charlie Hebdo victims reveal the diversity hidden by the Je suis Charlie hashtag: cartoonists and writers Charb, Cabu, Wolinski; psychoanalyst Elsa Cayat; proofreader Mustapha Ourrad; policemen Franck Brinsolaro and Ahmed Merabet; two students killed in a kosher supermarket, Yoav Hattab and Yohan Cohen.

    Yet media and government often still refer to Muslims as “them”: tolerated foreigners, immigrants graciously accorded rights by the state. And Muslims often respond by considering themselves unwanted outsiders, even enemies.

    Until the Second World War, many believed that Jews could not be French. That lie was at the heart of the Dreyfus Affair that tore the country in two. Under the Nazi occupation, millions of Jews were arrested across Europe and sent to their deaths. Since the 1980s, France has come to terms with the ugly truth about its role in those deportations. When it comes to Islam, however, many Europeans still suffer from historical amnesia.

    Most French people forget that Algeria was part of France for 130 years. They are unaware that the current Republic was born out of the bitter struggle over Algerian independence. France’s colonial domination extended through Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, but its heart was in the Muslim lands. Algeria became an integral territory of France after the Revolution of 1848.

    In that year French men were the first to gain universal suffrage. Muslims, however, were excluded from voting for almost a century. Only after 1945 could Muslim men vote, along with French women. It took another 13 years for Muslim women to gain that basic right.

    The Fourth Republic collapsed in 1958, when settlers fighting to keep Algeria French carried out a wave of terrorist attacks across France, culminating in an attempted coup d’état. Wartime leader Charles de Gaulle was hurriedly recalled and given emergency powers.

    Against violent settler opposition, de Gaulle signed Algeria’s independence in 1962. A million European settlers, along with hundreds of thousands of Algerians, crossed the Mediterranean to France. French companies kept their lucrative interests in petroleum and mining. The two countries remained indissolubly linked.

    Yet after decolonisation, most French citizens simply erased the colonies like a bad dream. Algerians could not do the same. In the 1990s, things turned nasty after the secular, French-backed regime in Algiers annulled elections won by an Islamist party. A bloody civil war broke out, killing more than 100,000 people. For Algerians in France, this horror left trauma, distrust and anger.

    In 1995, the violence hit France when a bomb in the Paris subway left eight people dead. The atrocity ramped up French support for the authoritarian Algerian regime’s “war on terror”.

    At home, the Muslim headscarf was increasingly targeted as a dangerous symbol of defiance against French secularism. The authorities banned the hijab in public schools, and made face covering in public illegal. Women wearing facial veils could be arrested in the street, forced to undergo searches, or pay fines. Rather than promoting secular freedoms, these laws fanned extremism, and pushed Muslims further to the margins.

    A position once associated with the far-right, denouncing the loss of “French identity”, has now moved into the centre, where even elements of the former Left have joined it. The French values trumpeted by this republican fundamentalism are abstractions that have little connection to the reality of French society. Freedom of speech is one of these.

    Right-wingers and libertarians alike enthusiastically applauded Charlie Hebdo’s bravery for publishing cartoons offensive to Muslims. Yet it is not clear what they were actually meant to achieve. To insist on abstract principle over negotiation, respect and compromise is what we usually think of as fanaticism.

    Leaders of the fascist-leaning Front National (FN), eager to profit from the potential backlash, now mourn a magazine that consistently reviled them. Je suis Charlie, agreed former leader Jean-Marie Le Pen – adding that he meant Charles Martel, who expelled Muslims from France in the Middle Ages.

    The attackers, French citizens of Algerian descent, also saw things in black and white. Their Islamist beliefs were built on a violent rejection of difference, a refusal to tolerate disagreement, dissent and compromise. This virulent religious nationalism is a mirror of movements like FN that rely on fear of Islam to build their constituency.

    But all is not lost. Asked what he was thinking during the minute of silence for the victims, one man said he was staring at the words on the column before him. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

    These are not French values. They belong to everyone. They are not easy, nor are they unstained by violence. Heads on pikes, the guillotine, wars, revolutions: it took a century of struggle for French people to agree on these words. They were almost lost in the brutality of colonial oppression, in the dark years of the German occupation and the anti-Semitism that some French people – including, sadly, many Muslims—perpetuate even today.

    We must confront the past in its richness and its ugliness. France has never been the postcard fantasy of cheese and baguettes. There have always been Muslims, Jews and Christians in France. As one Muslim wrote during the French Revolution:

    No matter where I first drew breath, or the religion in which I was born, we are brothers.

    Many Muslims feel the same today.

    Of liberty, equality and fraternity, the last is the biggest challenge. It is not just an idea but a way of life with deep roots in the French tradition. It is equally familiar in Islam. Fraternity is more than solidarity. It asks us to engage in the difficult project of living together, not as “us” and “them”, not in black and white, but in celebration of the vibrant colour that is Europe today.

    Ian Coller is senior lecturer in History at Latrobe University. This article first appeared in The Conversation on 13 January 2015.

  • Chris Clohessy. Bad reading leads to destructive religion.

    The recent terror attacks in France have highlighted a number of issues, all needing further discussion. One is the reality that it took an attack on European soil to provoke such a reaction – 1.6 million people marching in Paris, led by forty or more world leaders. But militant groups, under Islamic guise, have been slaughtering people for an extended period of time – in Nigeria, in Pakistan, in Syria and Iraq – in the last few weeks Boko Haram terrorists have killed over two thousand in Nigeria. The world reaction, compared to its reaction to Paris, has been negligible, suggesting an inconsistency in the way we value human life.
    A second issue is whether free speech can legitimately include hate speech. The reason that I don’t walk down the street calling out racial or bigoted epithets at people of colour, or of a particular culture or religion, is because I am neither a racist nor prejudiced against people who are different, but also because such behaviour is profoundly wrong. In that sense, I quite rightly do not have complete freedom of speech: both the civil law and the moral law forbid speech that is hateful: leading one to ponder whether the now popular #jesuischarlie slogan believes that bigoted or hateful speech is a permissible part of free speech. Charlie Hebdo is an unpleasant publication: not satire, for satire is subtle and clever, but simply crude, bigoted and unfunny. Those who speak in its defence insist that religion is an idea, and that ideas can be attacked. But Muhammad, or Pope Benedict or Jesus of Nazareth are not ideas: they are people, and Charlie Hebdo attacks them brutally and regularly. In 1946 the judges at Nuremburg unanimously sentenced to death a Nazi named Julius Streicher. He had never killed anyone: but he did publish an appalling newspaper call Der Stürmer, which incited anti-Semitic feeling mostly by its cartoons caricaturing members of the Jewish faith. So, can free speech legitimately include hate speech? If not, then we don’t have freedom of speech: and who knows, maybe that’s not a bad thing after all.
    But no cartoon could ever be as offensive as the taking of a single human life: the slaughter of men, women and children, young and old, armed and unarmed, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Yazidis and so many others in the last few months by men and women claiming to act in the name of Islam, remains the most pressing issue. It is not because these are educated Muslims living Qur’anic principles that the massacres are happening, but because they are uneducated people, Islamic only in name or in the slogans they carry, who consistently fail to read their sacred texts correctly. A sacred text cannot be read and then acted out: there is a middle step, that of authentic interpretation which, if bypassed, leads to all sorts of fundamentalisms. The issue with the Qur’an is not whether it exhorts to violence – at times it does – but whether or not those exhortations were for their time only, or whether they have a universal and timeless validity. As long as a portion of people read their text incorrectly, we will continue to experience behaviour in the name of religion which is destructive and  life-threatening.
    *Fr Chris Clohessy is Parish Priest of Newlands/Claremont in the Archdiocese of Cape Town. He is South Africa’s leading Catholic Scholar in Islamic Studies and wrote this guest column for the Jesuit Institute.

  • Wendy Sharpe – Asylum seeker portraits and stories

    The Asylum Seekers Centre is presenting an art exhibition – ‘Seeking Humanity’ – by renowned Australian artist, Wendy Sharpe. It opens in Ultimo, Sydney, on 17 February, for four weeks, before moving to Canberra on 20 March, and then Penrith.

    It is not about politics, but puts a human face to those who have fled situations of great danger in their home country in search of safety and freedom in Australia. The video has been very successful, with over 500 people viewing it within the first 24 hours.

    A previous Archibald winner and 2014 finalist, Wendy has drawn portraits of 39 asylum seekers and refugees. Through her art, she shares their lives with us to show that underneath all the troubles and politics around the issue, we are all the same. That we all have the same hopes and dreams.

    More info – http://asylumseekerscentre.org.au/seeking-humanity

  • Building more roads is not 21st century thinking.

    In my blog of 3 January, I discussed our love affair with cars and how cars are crippling our cities.

    In the SMH on January 12 this year, Jacob Saulwick takes up the issue of our failure to face up to the futility and cost of building more roads. See link below to the article. John Menadue.

     

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/building-more-roads-is-not-21st-century-thinking-20150111-12lstx.html

  • Charlie Hebdo – Freedom of expression in an imperfect society.

    In this article, Paul McGeough in the SMH says ‘Yes, it is utterly inappropriate to go round shooting those who cause offence, but is it appropriate to go round causing offence?’ Paul McGeough also recalled that when Charlie Hebdo republished the controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2006, then French President Jacques Chirac issued a swift rebuke.  ‘Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided – freedom of expression should be exercised in a spirit of responsibility’. John Menadue

    http://www.smh.com.au/world/charlie-hebdo-total-freedom-of-expression-has-little-chance-of-survival-in-an-imperfect-society-20150112-12mgih.html

  • Charlie Hebdo and Algeria.

    Robert Fisk of The Independent traces the Charlie Hebdo massacre back to the French occupation and disaster in Algeria. See link to this article below.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/charlie-hebdo-paris-attack-brothers-campaign-of-terror-can-be-traced-back-to-algeria-in-1954-9969184.html

  • Walter Hamilton. Crunch Time for Abenomics

    Is it time to declare Abenomics, the recession-busting strategy of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a failure?  If so, was the recent Japanese election purely an exercise for Shinzo Abe to protect himself and the ruling coalition from a half-awake electorate before the deluge?

    Launched with much fanfare in 2012, Abenomics promised to cure deflation, revive economic growth, break down structural rigidities in the economy, unlock the talents of women in the workplace and salvage the nation’s deficit-drowned budget. In two years, it has achieved none of these objectives; nor, arguably, has it brought any of them within reach.

    Deflation:

    After briefly ticking up to around 2% per annum––the central bank’s target––Japan’s core inflation rate has declined again to 0.7%, with some major retailers reporting a further drop in turnover during the recent end-of-year sales. One of the paradoxes of the current situation is that, despite historically loose monetary policy, money in circulation is tight. Japanese households, once famous for their high savings ratio (20%+), are now forced to dip into their savings (i.e. the nation’s domestic savings ratio has turned negative) just to keep their heads above water.

    Growth:

    Recent GDP data revealed Japan had fallen back into recession. Domestic demand remained a drag, as was––more surprisingly––private investment. The economy has contracted in six of the past 11 quarters for which official data are available. Manufacturers have lowered their expectations, according to the latest Tankan survey, the most authoritative indicator of future trends. If the GDP figure comes in positive for the final quarter of 2014, as some predict, it will be because a weaker yen has helped to boost external demand. However, with European economies going backwards, Chinese growth abating and the U.S. recovery maturing, an export-led recovery hardly seems feasible.

    Structural Rigidities:

    Structural change is harder to achieve in any economy and must be considered a medium to long-term objective. The problem is that the Abe Government has not clearly articulated what Japan’s future economy should look like. Though it has declared a willingness to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership––the regulatory and investment treaty being promoted by the United States––negotiations between Tokyo and Washington have been painfully slow. Interest groups hostile to the TPP, from the medical to the agricultural sectors, are doing their best to hold up a deal. Free trade agreements with China and South Korea remain a long way off, partly because of soured political relations.

    Lately, Abe has put more emphasis on corporate tax reform. One of the ruling coalition’s first actions after being re-elected was to approve a cut in the corporate tax rate by 2.5 percentage points to 32.1%, effective from this April. Another cut to 31.3% is due to follow a year later. The government also delayed the next scheduled consumption tax increase and unveiled a slew of other tax changes and incentives, although nothing radically new was announced. Whether these measures can stimulate demand remains doubtful, given that less than a third of Japanese corporations, according to Reuters, are actually paying tax (the rest are either unprofitable or making use of credits from earlier losses).

    Women:

    Abe says he wants more women to stay in the workforce (60% quit work when they have their first child) and be given opportunities to advance (female representation on company boards is just 1%). But he is up against a competing lobby among his conservative allies who want greater action to stem Japan’s falling birthrate. Some progress has been made­­––for instance, an expansion of childcare places––but there is a deep-seated cultural bias in the workplace against full female participation. Long hours of overtime remain the norm in companies, big and small. Studies have shown that the overtime ‘phenomenon’ has less to do with lifting productivity than with maintaining male-dominated corporate hierarchies. Anecdotally there is little evidence of change.

    Deficit:

    Government debt in Japan, equivalent to more than two years of gross domestic product, has continued to climb under the Abe administration. The fiscal 2015 budget is likely to add about 38 trillion yen (A$380 billion) to the debt. Few observers now believe the government can meet its target of balancing the primary budget (excluding debt serving commitments) by 2020. Fiscal hawks, however, are fighting a rear-guard action, and social security spending is being screwed down, further widening the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in society. With fiscal expansion apparently no longer an option, there is a growing tension within Abenomics between expansionary and contractionary policy settings.

    Upside:

    The most important, and unexpected, wind-shift in favour of Japan, in recent months, has been the collapse in the prices of oil and other natural resources. The depreciation of the yen, engineered by the central bank to help revive corporate profits and support employment, had led to a sharp increase in the prices of finished imported goods and in the input costs of businesses. Energy imports swelled Japan’s large trade deficit, especially after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, but significant relief can be expected in 2015.

    Wages:

    For some observers, the key to the success or failure of Abenomics is wages growth. Professor Hiroshi Yoshikawa of Tokyo University is one prominent economist who has argued that reversing falling wage-rates, and not monetary easing (the primary focus of Abenomics Mark I), is the way to break the deflationary spiral. Abe’s own economic advisers have derided Yoshikawa’s thesis, but it seems the more pragmatic Abe is starting to pay attention to the professor. At their annual end-of-year soiree, Japanese captains of industry were exhorted by the prime minister to use higher profits to pay higher wages this year. While pressure from the top will probably have some effect, big companies may hand out larger bonuses (which can be adjusted downwards again later) rather than increase base pay-rates.

    The year ahead:

    Having just returned from a fortnight in Japan, my impression is that conditions have not fundamentally improved. It is easy to gain a false impression, if you are a tourist who only visits the corridor between Tokyo’s Ginza and Shibuya districts, where glitzy retail outlets always seem to have well-heeled customers. But go to the outer suburbs of the capital or to provincial towns and you will find evidence of continuing economic stress: shuttered commercial streets, miserably low casual wage-rates, depopulation, and decaying infrastructure.

    Even in the trendier parts of Tokyo, businesses are struggling to attract customers. One anecdote will suffice. I took lunch at a new restaurant in Aobadai that, judging from the smart décor and linen service, could be expected to leave me $50-$75 out of pocket for my meal, if it were in Sydney or Melbourne. I selected a course that included soup, bread, salad, pasta, dessert and coffee. The food was beautifully prepared, delicious, and in generous proportions. It cost me $11. How the restaurant could pay its rent, wages and materials costs, and still make a profit, was a complete mystery.

    Japan seems to be surviving on a mysterious, mathematics-defying, leap of faith. Perhaps what we are witnessing will, in time, bear out the old adage ‘it is always darkest before the dawn’. Though I would never underestimate the capacity of the Japanese to reinvent themselves, it is hard to escape the conclusion that something just doesn’t add up.

    Journalist and author Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years for the ABC.

     

     

     

  • Corporate tax avoidance.

    The Parliamentary Library has prepared a report for the Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance.  The report provides background on this issue as well as a summary of what other countries are proposing to address corporate tax avoidance by multinational companies. See link to report below.  John Menadue

    http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2014/December/Senate_inquiry_into_corporate_tax_avoidance

  • A taxing tale of two peak bodies.

     

    In the SMH on 2 January, Michael West drew attention to the ways that two BCAs were treated differently. The Blind Citizens Australia (BCA) learned that it had been subject to federal government funding cuts. Another BCA, the Business Council of Australia, did much better. ‘Only a week earlier the government had backflipped on a proposed tax-avoidance reform entailing some $600 million in tax deductions that multinational companies could claim on interest on their debts in offshore subsidiaries.’ For the full story from Michael West see link below.  John Mendue

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/a-taxing-tale-of-two-peak-bodies-20150101-12gcty.html

  • Max Corden. Without revenue, Australia can only have half a budget debate.

    The missing element in this week’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, and more broadly, in current government policy, stares Australians in the face. Revenue needs to be increased. Increasing taxes, reducing tax concessions and eliminating loopholes are all options, which I and other commentators have argued for.

    For example, journalist Peter Martin has shown that if compulsory superannuation contributions were taxed as income, i.e. like wages (rather than being taxed at a concessional rate) there would be a net gain to the budget of approximately A$12 billion a year. But there are many other measures to consider, all designed to increase revenue. Prominent is the ending of negative gearing.

    Many of these possibilities, and more, were discussed in the Henry tax review, with many more expected to be discussed in the forthcoming white paper on tax reform. But this should have been the first order of business. This is where the solution to the “budget crisis” lies. There is, indeed, no reason why there should be a crisis.

    Corporations and households all borrow – and as a result go into debt. Why can’t governments do the same? At present Australia’s federal public debt is modest (relative to GDP) compared with the debt of most comparable countries. Why then create this air of panic or, at least, guilt?

    Click to enlarge

    There are two explanations.

    The first is that the Coalition has demonised deficits. In its view Labor produced deficits for several years but it – the Coalition – will produce surpluses by some specified time. It seems they believed in the demons they created, and as a result made unwise promises. Perhaps they genuinely believe that deficits are “bad””. Some of them even thought that the deficits of 2008-9, which were produced deliberately for Keynesian reasons to avoid excessive unemployment during the global financial crisis, were dangerous.

    There is a second, more rational, explanation for being concerned about budget deficits and setting the attainment of a surplus as a target. Too much debt leads to having to pay higher interest rates and, with the accumulation of debt, a bigger burden on the budget. All this is obvious. But there is the problem of political discipline. Less discipline on spending leads to more debt. Someone who has a tendency to alcoholism is wise to stay off alcohol altogether. This is the argument from prudence. But it can be carried to extremes, as it is at present.

    It is quite surprising that in the mid-year update there is a massive concern about a budget deficit and the objective of getting to surplus, relative to a concern about the state of the economy at a time when there is excessive unemployment. Is the government’s focus sensible?

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    The blame game

    Treasurer Joe Hockey blames (1) the sharp fall in the iron ore price, (2) the Senate and (3) the adverse inheritance from the previous government. With regard to commodity prices, one can never foresee world price changes precisely, but way back in the Howard years, when the iron ore price rose so much, there were plenty of people who saw the probability – not the certainty – of a later decline, and recommended caution (Ross Garnaut was one of them).

    With regard to the cross-bench Senators, they have reflected public opinion. They simply bear out the observation that the biases of the budget, as originally presented by the Treasurer, were not in tune with Australian historical attitudes and public opinion.

    Click to enlarge

    To what extent are the policy decisions of previous governments to blame for excessive spending commitments? The Gonski education reforms and the proposed establishment of a Disability Insurance Scheme under the Gillard government can take some of the blame. Perhaps there were other (possibly irresponsible) decisions as well. But what the budget statement seems to ignore is the severe harm done by the “Howard Gift”, namely the five personal income tax reductions and superannuation concessions of the Howard Coalition government.

    The elephant in the room

    Commentators like me are sometimes accused of being “economic rationalists”. Well, this is an area where more rational thinking is needed. The GST might be broadened and increased (though Hockey seems loathe to do so). Even the carbon tax might be reinstated, since it would both help to finance the budget substantially and bring about a desirable reduction in carbon emission. Both these widely-canvassed and very rational ideas, while economically sound, would encounter political and public opposition, particularly the broadening of the GST. Bipartisanship is needed here.

    Given the missing elephant of revenue, the mid-year update can be summarised as follows: Government spending can and will be cut, but the possibility of increasing revenue is not considered. The Australian government is required to live within its means, the means being defined as ruling out measures that generate extra revenues. The aim is to minimise the size of government irrespective of the purposes and efficiencies of the various governmental activities.

    The only hopeful sign is the admirable recent decision of the government to produce its tax white paper in 2015, which presumably includes the possibility of increasing revenue – the missing element in the budget update.

    Max Corden is Professorial Fellow in the department of Economics at University of Melbourne.

    This article first appeared in ‘The Conversation’ 19 December 2014.

  • Israel must be its own worst enemy.

    The Palestinians have requested that they join the International Criminal Court. It could be a double-edged sword if both Palestinian and Israelis were brought before the International Court. But most people would believe that joining the International Court would be an important way to demonstrate that the Palestinians wanted to join the international community and be subject to its norms.

    But both Israel and the US opposed the request. Robert Fisk in The Independent on 6 January this year underscores the futility of policies in the Middle East.  See link below. John Menadue.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/robert-fisk-the-real-reason-why-israel-and-the-us-dont-want-palestine-to-join-the-international-criminal-court-9956751.html?utm_source=indynewsletter&utm_medium=email05012015

  • The Chinese are coming.

    After WWII the financial hegemony of the US and Europe in the IMF and International Bank was established. Later, the Japanese came to dominate the Asian Development Bank. That is now being challenged by China. See article below by William Pesek in ‘Bloomberg View’, subject ‘China steps in as world’s new bank’.  John Menadue.

    http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-25/china-steps-in-as-worlds-new-bank

  • Mary Chiarella. Co-payments, general practice and workforce reform.

    If there’s a problem in primary health care then nurses are (and always have been) the solution. 

    Susan Sontag wrote in 1978 “Illness is the night side of life: a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick”. I was working in palliative care nursing when I first read this and it struck me that, continuing the metaphor, nurses were therefore like tour guides for those negotiating these health care kingdoms of both the well and the sick. We provide the translator services (“what did they say nurse?”), the coordination of meetings and events (“I need an appointment to see…”); the advice on what to do and how to do it (“I don’t know how to work this spacer thing”), and always, always, always the assistance to do whatever needs to be done when people lack “the necessary strength, will or knowledge” (Henderson, 1966) to do it themselves.

    If we look to primary health care (PHC) there is clearly a need for “tour guides” in this space, whether it be to help them stay in the kingdom of the well or to assist them to travel in the kingdom of the sick. John Menadue has suggested the key is to rethink funding for general practice. I would go further. The key is to rethink who provides the bulk of PHC and then think about how to fund it.

    In 2009 I compiled a compendium of nurse-led PHC models in 38 countries for the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2009).The elements of PHC identified for reporting purposes in the template were that each service, programme or project should:

    • provide essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology;
    • be universally accessible to individuals and families;
    • involve full participation of the community;
    • have a cost that the community and country can afford to maintain;
    • foster self-reliance and self-determination;
    • be an integral part of the country’s health system and overall development; and
    • have an entry level for patients located close to the heart of the community.

    The main needs of the populations served were those of the chronically ill and the elderly, basic social and infrastructure needs, psychological and mental health needs, maternal and child health needs and acute care needs (particularly in war zones).

    To provide a local example of what is possible, the work of an Aboriginal renal nurse practitioner in Australia with both indigenous and non-indigenous groups suffering from end-stage renal disease brought about significant health gains. The need for this role was identified as a result of the rising number of people needing acute dialysis 24 hours a day. A retrospective study of the causes of this rise suggested that 80% of the patients had risk factors that, if addressed early enough, would have prevented admission to the tertiary referral hospital for acute intervention. These risk factors were further examined and the diagnostic, clinical and referral skills required to address them were evaluated, and it was found that the scope of practice of a nurse practitioner met the requirements. The community nephrology nurse practitioner was able to develop and implement nursing models that integrated evidence-based clinical management with nursing advocacy for quality of life.

    Two key areas, considered central to the success of the case studies, presented challenges for a number of contributors. These were the issues of reliable and adequate funding and resources, and challenges to narrow thinking about the capacity of staff to take on new roles. The issue of sustainable funding; access to other resources such as medication, equipment, textbooks and staff created significant challenges. Some projects were completely or predominantly funded through the charitable sector (for example Chile, Haiti, United States). For example, a US project working with a poor community in Chicago sought its primary funding from a charity, and supplemented it with grants from no less than 16 funding sources and a further 13 in-kind donation sources. The time required to undertake the fundraising, administration and reporting on so many donations takes the nurses away from much-needed care delivery.

    In addition, there were a number of reports of medical and some nursing staff having difficulty in letting go of conventional and stereotypical thinking about who ought to perform which tasks. This issue has been much studied and discussed (Chiarella 2002) and has been described in relation to affirmative action as the ‘myth of the meritocracy’ – the possibility of work being taken on by another group, unless similarly qualified, is unthinkable because they are seen as incapable of meeting the challenge (Hall 1997). Yet there is ample evidence and experience to show that different personnel and community members are capable of equal, high quality participation in health care decision-making and delivery. Strong claims to maintain the status quo are often made on the grounds of safety and quality, but the evidence about the outcomes demonstrates this resistance to change is based only on protecting professional power and privilege.

    There is such potential to harness the skills of nurses to provide first class primary health care in this country, yet currently we seem to move further and further away from this potential and back to outdated models of health care provision that service only those who can afford to pay.

    Mary Chiarella is Professor of Nursing, Sydney Nursing School, University of Sydney.

  • Maggie Callingham. Top schools ‘top’ because someone has to be bottom.

    Across Australia Year 12 students are collectively holding their breaths to see what results they’ve achieved and, consequently, what their futures hold.

    Only hours after their release, many secondary schools proudly display their best results on billboards for passers-by to see. Newspapers select high-achieving students to profile. As schools promote these glowing results, it’s worth highlighting that many have had the invisible slave of the disadvantaged schools working for them.

    That is, the high-profile academic success of some schools has occurred as a result of social stratification – the increasing gap between students into schools of low socio-educational advantage and schools of high socio-educational advantage – as well as differential funding arrangements. Around Australia, some condone these arrangements in the name of “school choice” while others condemn them in the name of “school equity”.

    School choice

    Australian states and territories each have their own version of one or more senior secondary certificates that promote pathways for their students – usually into some form of further education or the workforce. Victoria, for example, has the academic, university-oriented Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), as well as the practical, vocationally-oriented Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL). However, the relatively high public profile of VCE results can incline schools seeking an academic reputation to offer only VCE – and in some cases, the even more prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB).

    Schools that promote their academic orientation and excellence usually do so to attract predominantly upper or middle-class families, or those aspiring to such classes. In addition to using expensive advertising to recruit their students, many academic schools provide scholarships to entice high-achieving students away from their neighbourhood schools. The pressure on these schools to maintain reputations for strong academic scores can motivate them to focus more on grooming their star academic learners and less on affirming their applied learners, or on catering for students from disadvantaged backgrounds requiring additional support.

    In pursuing such a strategy, academic schools privilege a select group: conforming, middle-class, elite-performance students. As a result, students and families that do not fit into the compliant, middle-class, academic profile of the school may find they are overtly or covertly encouraged to seek another school. The actual wording of this encouragement may be couched in language that indicates the student needs to find a new school “to suit his or her needs”, but the subtext is clear: the school is safeguarding its academic reputation and status. The outcome for these schools is an increasingly homogenised and advantaged school community.

    School equity

    In contrast, Victorian schools that offer both VCE and VCAL pathways meet an equity principle under which VCAL was introduced in 2002, to ensure that all students are able to access a senior secondary program of study. Schools prepared to take all-comers may find themselves catering not only for bright local students who haven’t been tempted elsewhere, but also non-academic students other schools have chosen to ignore or reject.

    As a result, these schools can be perceived as less successful than their high-achieving counterparts because their outcomes are likely to be skewed toward non-university pathways such as apprenticeships, traineeships, vocational courses or employment.

    These are each valid pathways, but as the Australian government acknowledged when it looked into youth transitions in 2009, much work is required to promote vocational pathways so they are seen as equal first-choice options. Unfortunately, five years on, little has changed in Australia regarding this public perception.

    One reason disadvantaged students are more likely to choose a less academic pathway such as VCAL can be found in Australia’s national and international testing results. Both NAPLAN and PISA results reveal that the lower the social class of an Australian student, the lower his or her test scores.

    It seems reasonable, therefore, that students who have been disadvantaged from an early age, the time when they learn foundation skills such as reading and writing, will be less inclined to pursue the reading and writing-oriented VCE. It is also not surprising that VCAL might better appeal to young people from economically disadvantaged families who then seek job-related pathways as a means to gain crucial financial independence or contribute financially to their families.

    School funding

    It’s no secret that schools don’t operate under similar funding conditions. Recent researchreveals funding increases from 2010 to 2013 across the three main school sectors are inversely proportionate to the socio-educational advantage of their student populations.

    Click to enlarge

    This growing social stratification and inequitable funding between advantaged and disadvantaged schools represent a critical equity issue for Australian schooling. While recommendations from the 2011 Gonski review of school funding attempted to address this inequity, it clearly continues.

    At a time of year when many advantaged schools celebrate their students’ high scores, it’s important to point out the contribution that disadvantaged schools have played in their success. It’s also timely to highlight the growing number of flexible learning programs in Australia that teach diverse student populations, including those with complex needs related to their disadvantage.

    These schools and programs too have valid stories to tell of their students’ successful academic and vocational results obtained under far less advantageous conditions. Unfortunately, these achievements are unlikely to appear on billboards or in newspaper articles.

    Maggie Callingham is a PhD candidate at the Victoria Institute for Education, Diversity and Lifelong Learning at Victoria University.

    This article first appeared in ‘The Conversation’ on 15 December 2014.

  • Malcolm Fraser. Australia’s dangerous ally.

    The National Interest, in its January/February 2015 edition has just published an article by Malcolm Fraser, ‘Australia’s dangerous ally’. The National Interest is not sold on news stands in Australia, but it is available online.

    Malcolm Fraser concludes his article by suggesting several steps that Australia should take to address problems in our relationship with the US.  First, the removal of US task force out of Darwin. Second, closure of facility at Pine Gap. Third, expanded diplomatic facilities and relationships in our region. Fourth, a boost to Australia’s defence force spending to about 3% of GDP.

    This article is based on submissions that Malcolm Fraser made to the 2015 Defence White Paper.

    The link to the article is below.

    http://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-australias-dangerous-ally-11858

  • What a disgrace! Australia at the UN on Palestine.

    Concluding our two year term on the Security Council, Australia voted against the proposal in the Council demanding Israel and the occupation of Palestinian territories end within two years. For the resolution to pass, nine votes were needed. Eight countries voted in favour of the resolution, including China, Russia, Luxembourg, France and Jordan. Five countries abstained, including the UK and South Korea. Only two countries voted against the resolution, the US and Australia.

    Over the years there have been a number of UN resolutions. Australia’s voting on these important resolutions can be found in the table in a blog from the Parliament of Australia ‘Diplomatic terrorism’: Palestinian statehood, the United Nations, and Australia’s voting record.  See link below.  John Menadue

     

    http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2014/December/Palestine_at_the_UN

  • Glencore buying Rio Tinto could burn hole in Hockey’s pocket.

    In the SMH on December 20, 2014, Michael West draws attention to Glencore’s checkered history on paying tax and the consequences for Joe Hockey’s budget if Glencore acquired Rio Tinto.

    Michael West said that ‘billions of dollars in tax payments are on the line, not to mention job losses and the spectre of this country seeding control over a large chunk of its natural resources to a secretive group of commodity traders ultimately run out of Switzerland.’

    Glencore has a colourful history. According to an Australian public radio report the company was founded by Marc Rich and Company in 1974 by billionaire commodity trader Marc Rich who was charged with tax evasion and illegal business dealings with Iran in the US, but pardoned by President Clinton in 2001.

    For link to Michael West’s article, see below.

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/glencore-buying-rio-tinto-could-burn-hole-in-hockeys-pocket-20141219-12ao4a.html

  • Rodney Tiffen. Murdoch – The tabloid tweeter tangles the truth.

    With two glaring exceptions, Australian public figures and media outlets generally rose to the challenge during the long siege at Martin Place this week. Mike Baird and Tony Abbott spoke with calmness and compassion, careful not to inflame the situation or do anything to encourage bigoted and unjustified reactions. The media – especially theABC, Nine, Seven and Sky News – reported the long hours of uncertainty, when very little was happening, with restraint, generally resisting the temptation to speculate in the absence of verified facts. While some false reports and rumours were broadcast, a sense of professional responsibility prevailed.

    In a sensitive, ongoing situation like this one, when TV can be viewed by hostage-takers, it is important that broadcasts avoid detailing planned police operations or inflaming relations between perpetrators and captives. They must also do all they can to preserve the dignity and anonymity of the hostages. The TV channels, and radio presenter Ray Hadley (who was in phone contact with hostages), acceded to police requests not to broadcast statements made under duress by hostages, or to report all they knew about what was going on inside the cafe.

    The first exception to this restrained coverage was the Daily Telegraph, whose special afternoon wraparound was headlined “Death cult CBD attack: IS takes 13 hostages in city cafe siege.” Desperate for sales and attention, the ailing tabloid seems to take the view that all publicity is good publicity. In this case, though, in addition to its manifest inaccuracies, the paper’s misplaced sensationalism jarred with the anxious and sombre public mood.

    The other jarring intervention was a tweet the following morning from the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch. “AUST gets wake-call with Sydney terror,” announced the American mogul. “Only Daily Telegraph caught the bloody outcome at 2.00 am. Congrats.”

    Murdoch saw a terrorist rather than a deranged individual, and on the basis of that hasty appraisal believed that Australia needed to wake up. What’s more, apparently oblivious to all the TV footage of the climax and the live online newspaper coverage (including that of his own paper, the Australian), he thought only his Sydney tabloid had caught the key action.

    If a political figure had made these comments – inaccurate, insensitive, alarmist – they would have attracted immediate and sustained criticism, but Murdoch has somehow attained a unique status in Australian public life. His frequently outrageous comments are certainly criticised in social media and on internet news services, but not, of course, by the two-thirds of daily newspapers he controls. The Fairfax papers and the ABC tend to either ignore his comments or treat them with undue respect. And, despite everything we’ve learned in recent years about the behaviour of his companies, it is almost certain that no one from the two major political parties will comment adversely.

    American journalism scholar Jay Rosen has criticised what he calls “he said, she said” journalism, a device used by news media to achieve “balance” at the expense of any serious search for the truth. When Rupert Murdoch appears in the Australian media, however, it is more a case of “he said, and he also said.” Perhaps this has been most evident this year, with Murdoch’s high-profile July visit to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Australian.

    This was Murdoch in an expansive mood, most notably in an interview on Sky News. He gave his views on climate change, which he thought was overplayed as a problem. “Climate change has been going on as long as the planet is here,” he told viewers. The “most alarmist” scenario was that there would be a 3ºC rise in a hundred years. “At the very most, one of those [degrees] will come from man-made [sources].” If the sea level rises six inches, it would be a “big deal, the Maldives might disappear, but we can’t mitigate that… we just have to stop building vast houses on seashores.”

    These fanciful propositions seem to come entirely from within his own head. They were picked apart on internet news sites and in social media, but within the metropolitan papers and on ABC TV they were simply reported at face value.

    The most striking aspect of Murdoch’s current political views is their extremist content. The billionaire is now a proponent of a US Tea Party–style ideology – especially the view that government is the problem rather than part of the solution – although thankfully he hasn’t adopted that movement’s pro-gun views.

    Even when he expresses less extreme views, his grasp of facts can be shaky. Weighing into the debate about Australia’s 457 working visa last year, for example, he advised Australia to follow the United States in welcoming new arrivals. “I’m a big one for encouraging migration,” he told Sky News. “Just look at America.” No media reporting these words pointed out that nearly 28 per cent of Australians were born overseas, but just 13 per cent of Americans.

    But the greater impact comes from the way Murdoch expresses these views. Apart from the large number of inaccuracies in his public interviews and tweets, their key characteristic is dogmatism and intolerance. So, during his July visit, he described the NBN as “a ridiculous idea” and deplored investment in “windmills and all that rubbish.” He has been equally scathing of renewable energy investments in Britain, which have, he says, ruined the English countryside with “uneconomic bird killing windmills. Mad.” “Mad” was also his considered verdict on British efforts to contribute to the resolution of the crisis in the eurozone.

    His tendency to stereotype and malign those he disagrees with has often caused him trouble, perhaps most notably when he asked, via Twitter, “Why is Jewish-owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” You’ve got to give Murdoch credit, said American political commentator Peter Beinart. “He’s packed a remarkable amount of idiocy and nastiness into 140 characters.”

    Under Labor, Murdoch thought Australia was a “weird place mucking up great future,” and that “Gillard once good education minister, now prisoner of minority greenies. Rudd still delusional, who nobody could work with. Nobody else?” His most constant hostility is towards the Greens: “whatever you do, don’t let the bloody Greens mess it up.”

    This style pervades his newspapers. “Kick this mob out,” the Daily Telegraph’s front-page headline on the first day of its 2013 election coverage, embodied not only the proprietor’s view, but also his style. And yet, at the same time as his media organisations are a force debasing the level of public debate, his utterances fail to attract the scrutiny received by those of other public figures. •

    Rodney Tiffen recently published ‘Rupert Murdoch: A Reassessment ‘.

    This article was first published in Inside Story on 18 December 2014.

  • Brian Johnstone. Terrorism and torture – the Catholic tradition.

    In Australia today, we accept that a person who has expressed ideas that justify terrorism may be restrained from acting out those ideas.  But we would not justify torturing a person suspected of harbouring such notions to force him to reveal them or to reject such ideas.   However, surveys in the Western world find that torture to obtain information is sometimes justified. The Prime Minister’s acceptance of torture in the context of the Sri Lankan civil war was as follows: “Obviously the Australian Government deplores any use of torture. We deplore that, wherever it might take place, we deplore that. But we accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen.”  (http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3893068.htm, retrieved 15 Jan 2014).

    The Catholic tradition does not have a good record on torture. Pope Nicholas I in 866 condemned both the practice and the judicial institution of torture.  However, later torture came to be accepted by Church authorities and theologians.  Under the influence of Roman law, torture was first permitted legally by Pope Innocent IV in 1253. This pope allowed the infliction of torture on heretics by the civil authorities and torture had a recognized role in the courts of the Inquisition. Torture was also adopted by secular courts.  Pope John Paul II in 1993 condemned physical and mental torture as intrinsically evil. This is a striking example of the development of doctrine; how can we explain it?   The failure of the tradition to consistently reject torture can be attributed, apart from human sin, to three factors: Roman Law; a theory of order in the world and the lack of an adequate notion of dignity.

    Ancient Roman law accepted torture.  When the “barbarians” invaded Europe and the Roman Empire fell, the practice of torture was abandoned.  Trial by ordeal was instituted in its place.  To prove his innocence an accused had to submit to an ordeal, for example he had to walk a set distance over red-hot ploughshares. If he survived and recovered this was taken as a sign from God that he was innocent. In the eleventh century, with the revival of Roman law, the practice of ordeal was abandoned and torture was reinstated.  Judges were instructed to obtain a confession from the accused and to obtain this they could use torture.

    Behind this we can discern a complex legal, philosophical and theological theory.  God’s judgment on the matter was now no longer sought by examining the results of an ordeal. Instead, ecclesiastical and legal officials sought to examine the contents of the mind of the accused.  They no longer looked for blisters on the accused’s feet as indicative of guilt, but for “blisters” or heresies in his mind.

    Drawing on Greek thinking, philosophers and theologians held that there was an order in the world.  This order expresses the wisdom of God. Human beings could participate in this order by knowledge and free will.  This order was called an “ontological” order. An ontological order expresses the way things are.  The order was also considered to be a moral order; that is, it expressed the way things ought to be.  A rational person could thus recognize the truth of things and also discern what ought to be done.  This order was considered to be a template for the social and political order of society.

    Deviant ideas and practices were like a virus attacking the order in the world; moreover, they threatened to corrode the social and political order.  Both the Church and the secular power had a vital interest in preserving this order.  Secular courts and the Church Inquisition sought to discover the deviant ideas or “heresies.”  If individuals who were accused of heresy refused to confess, it was considered legitimate to torture them to obtain a confession.  It was known of course that people will make false confessions to avoid pain.  But those who justified torture were terrified at the prospect of their world falling apart as a consequence of people’s wrong ideas. They ignored the problem of false confessions and continued to practice torture.  When the Inquisition found that persons had deviant ideas and would not change, the Church turned such persons over to the state.  The state would then execute them.

    What was missing in this theory was an adequate idea of the dignity of the person.  In the thinking of the period an individual had dignity on the basis of his being in the right place in the order in the world.   In the case of a person who held heretical thoughts, his intelligence was out of order and by accepting such ideas his free will was out of order. He was not in the right place and so did not have dignity.  Being in the appropriate place in the world was also equated with being in a set place in the social order. An egregious manifestation of this way of thinking was that it could justify the torture of slaves and the lower classes, but not of the nobility or the clergy.

    This confusion was corrected by the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council, especially in the document on religious liberty (1965).  Every person has dignity because every person is created in the image of God. To be created in the image of God means to have received the gifts of intelligence and free will.  Intelligence and free will are received as gifts and we employ these capacities in communicating with other persons who have received the same gifts.

    The notion of order in the world that fits with these notions is not that of a fixed “ontological” order. It is an order that is brought into being through free communication between persons; fundamentally between God and human persons, then between human persons. The most basic form of this communication is the exchange of gifts.  Dignity comes about through the mutual gift of the recognition of dignity.  A primary gift to another is the recognition of the other’s dignity.  It is in recognizing the dignity of another that a person acquires his own dignity.

    It does not follow that only persons with intelligence and freedom are to be recognized as endowed with dignity. Disabled persons, even the severely disabled, may not be denied dignity. One who refuses to recognize the dignity of the disabled fails to acknowledge what is required by his own dignity and so loses that dignity.  A person who tortures another denies the dignity of the other and so denies his own dignity. To allow torture as an exception in “the hard case” is to concede that society, in the final analysis, is founded not on free communication, but on violence.

    Brian Johnstone. is a Catholic Priest who taught moral theology in Rome for nearly 20 years. Currently he teaches at the Catholic University in Washington. 

  • Why Rupert Murdoch is forever in Twitter trouble.

    In the ‘New Daily’ of December 17, 2014, Bruce Guthrie, a former editor-in-chief of  ‘The Age’ and Murdoch’s ‘Herald Sun’ tells us what he thinks about Murdoch’s twittering ‘But here he was seemingly gloating over the outcome of the appalling Martin Place events as if the only thing that mattered was its news value and the profits that might bring. No wonder he was dubbed a “gleeful ghoul” for the tweet. 24 hours later, despite dozens of entreaties, he still hasn’t apologised for it.’

    See below for full article.   John Menadue

     

    http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2014/12/17/murdochs-twitter-trouble/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The+New+Daily+Thursday+181214&utm_content=The+New+Daily+Thursday+181214+CID_e0b29d13c4b7895f43354a244523cc86&utm_source=#.VJJJpU5bKqg.gmail

  • What will Israel become?

    In the International New York Times of December 20, Roger Cohen focuses on the future of Israel. He says ‘Every day … another European Government or parliament expresses support for recognition of a Palestinian state … In the space of a few weeks something has shifted. The Leader of the Labor Party, Isaac Herzog has been ushered from unelectable nerd to plausible patriot. Polls show him neck and neck with the incumbent [Benjamin Netanyahu].  For link to this article see below.  John Menadue

     

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/roger-cohen-what-will-israel-become.html?emc=edit_th_20141221&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=69612024&_r=0

  • Jesus and the modern man.

    James Carroll has been writing about religion for over 40 years. In this beautiful piece in the International New York Times of November 7 this year,  he describes how he still keeps going to Mass despite his many doubts. See link below.  John Menadue.

  • Pope Francis sharply criticises Vatican bureaucracy.

    In his pre-Christmas address to Cardinals, Pope Francis referred to a Curia that is outdated, sclerotic or indifferent to others. He said that the Curia, the administrative pinnacle of the Roman Catholic Church was suffering from fifteen ailments which he wanted cured in the new year. See link below for Pope Francis’ comments to the Curia.  John Menadue.

    http://www.news.va/en/news/francis-a-curia-that-is-outdated-sclerotic-or-indi

  • Caroline Coggins, Pausing in Advent.

    I was on retreat recently in Hong Kong and there was a very small pool with eight turtles in it.  It took me some days to notice; you have to slow down to see them. Their water was muddy, there was certainly no vista here, just the close company they kept with each other, and the bonus of the big shell that they could pull their heads in and out of. I liked the turtles, I watched them lean on each other to get up, rest on top of each other, they had that shell, but mostly their heads were out, steady and still, looking at me, as I looked at them, curiously.  They seemed absorbed and present in their small world, except when I jumped up quickly one day, full of some internal noise, and they too fled from their rock, plopping back into the water.  I had disturbed their universe, and they disappeared for cover.  Having our known world disturbed is never easy.

    A retreat is a particular time, seems simple enough, go away from the normal routines, from the usual sense of place and keep the silence to find the inner quiet.  Then let surface what will.  But the bed is too short for my frame, and I am restless, I want to roam the Island. The thought of being cooped up like the turtles is not attractive, although I admire their quality of mind.

    Hong Kong is familiar, as a young woman I lived here in transit, restless and aching for another life.  Now it is many years later and the advent wreath is here with its candle lit, and I come to wait on God, to be like one of those turtles, still. Nice idea, thinking I may have some control in this relationship, thinking these pains may have gone.

    This year when I read the Annunciation what I notice are Mary’s pauses, her response to the angels’ avowal that she is favoured by God. But what she utters is that she is deeply perplexed. Imagine Mary, a young woman, now, suddenly, in God’s presence told she is favoured.   She pauses, perhaps for a moment, perhaps longer, as she goes inside like these turtles, to what she knows, her own world.

    Then she is told she will conceive, she will carry the Christ, the saviour. Again the pause, how can this be? There is no longer Mary and her desire for God, there is Mary and God and their relationship. She pauses, the world must feel very strange to her now, unimaginable, and then in the midst, God’s fingers reach out to her, to touch a ‘yes’ between both of them.

    In these moments when we have no protection, no status or wealth, nothing except what emerges out of us in this pause, we can get a real and sharp feel of ourselves, and it is different to what comes out of us when we feel the world is our domain. Now made vulnerable, at last vulnerable to God, our pretences empty, a hand reaches out to us, unexpectedly, and it is almost too much, scoured as we are, surviving on scraps, a hand that knows us and an unbearable, but so needed warmth, envelopes us.

    We are totally unprepared for this no matter how versed we are. And often in such situations and facing such challenges we can behave like the turtles, scatter and hide.

    These challenges of living on the edge are not ones we usually leap toward: to be aged, disdained, ill, poor and perhaps not even Mary’s experience of being chosen.  Yet this is where we are met, our wounds bathed.  Control is a fear soaked antidote to friendship and love.

    The pauses reveal us, ordinary and wounded, afraid, afraid of love, of being known, of being not much.

    I fear and know that the only way home to my creator is through my story, my life of yes’s and no’s, the hurts that have left me afraid, and the no’s that have made me inflexible.  It is in relationship where the wounds lie, and it is when we wait that we come to know how we have been waited for. The pains and fears that tear me are also where the balm lies.  I am not forced only made ready. Joy is an outcome, but this indwelling love, happens by becoming all that shames and mortifies me and all that I secrete from myself is where God’s hand touches.

    This is God’s time, and the most difficult thing to accept is that God is waiting on me even more than I am waiting on God.  God waits on Mary, waits on us, whatever we are up to, whatever stories and pains we carry, whatever the state of lapse, or homelessness.  That’s what I think Advent is really about.

    What we receive is a pathway to those who suffer, not as benefactors but as the same.  Learning how to love ourselves, others, as we are loved by Him.

    And the turtles, they only have each other in their little pond, and shells to crawl into when they need to turn their heads away, but then they will lean into each other again, help each other to climb to the rock in the sun, and sit there and look, just as they are.

    Christ is born to us all, surprising us in the midst our littleness, pausing, we find the “Yes!” between us.

     

     

  • Is religion the cause of war and violence in the Middle East and elsewhere?

    We are consistently seeing the ghastly side of Islam with public beheadings but we also need to keep in mind the ghastly side of Christianity which was so evidence during the Crusades.

    Many conclude that religion, now and in the past, is the cause of so much violence. Karen  Armstrong has just written ‘Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence’. This book has been reviewed by David Shariatmadari in The Guardian.  He says ‘We know that the slaughter of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, the Opium Wars, the First World War, the Armenian Genocide, Stalin’s Great Purge, the Second World War and the Holocaust, had little to do with religion. Indeed, much of us was explicitly anti-religious. So how on earth have we ended up with the idea – still in evidence in, for example, the comments readers leave on news websites – that religion above all is to blame for human violence.’

    See link to this review below:

    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/08/fields-of-blood-religion-history-violence-karen-armstrong-review

  • Brian Johnstone. How to Respond to Terrorism? 

    How can we make sense of the contemporary situation of increasing violence?   Some groups engage in terrorism against other groups and these engage in torture as a means of defeating the terrorism of the others?  In liberal states torture is condemned as immoral; some seek to prohibit it by law, others defend it as a necessary and effective means to defend freedom.  Historical experience suggests that torture will continue.

    Paul W. Kahn, in Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror and Sovereignty, (Ann Arbor, 2011) argues that secular, liberal philosophy and the theories of rights that it has developed, cannot deal with these issues.  The key is a religious notion that he calls “sovereignty.”  By this Kahn means a notion of ultimate reality.  Both sides of the contemporary war on terrorism appeal to an ultimate reality.  For the jihardist this may take the form of a distorted notion of “god.”  But western, liberal states have their own conceptions of a sacred reality.  We may call this “our freedom.”  To defend this, these states send their young women and men to kill terrorists and to be ready to sacrifice their own lives in the service of the sacred reality.  Once we begin to speak of “sacrifice” we move into the realm of religious experience and religious discourse.

    We can relate Kahn’s analysis to our Australian situation.  If we have any doubts about the importance of the religious dimension in Australian political imagination we need only think of the veneration attached to the sacrifices of Anzac.  In the conflict between the two sides, terrorists and their opponents, as interpreted by Kahn, each side seeks to “degrade” the other and ultimately to prove the other’s “god” is false.  This degradation is what is going on in the macabre beheadings carried out by ISIS; in the logic of such groups it is not enough to kill members of the other group. The killing must be done in such a way as to mock and debase the basic values of the other group.  The same dynamism drives the exhortations to kill as many “unbelievers” as possible.

    It is a requirement of justice to repel the violence of such groups.  But the response of the “West” has gone beyond this.  As example we can cite the degrading practices of torture as revealed in the recent U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s Torture Report.  The twisted arguments invoked to justify these practices are not examples of good reason; they are the utterances of distorted, self-justification, more akin to pseudo-religion. Other nations have been no better.  For example, in 2013 the British government finally agreed to compensate 5,228 Kenyans who were tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s.  Other cases of torture for the protection of the British Empire are coming to light.

    Torture is not the only issue.   According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 416-959 civilians, including 168-204 children and injured 1,133 – 1796.  It is reported that the CIA has now recognized that such “targeted killings” can strengthen extremist groups and be counter-productive.  Killing by drones, it is now recognized, may actually increase support for the insurgents, “. . . if these strikes enhance the insurgent leaders’ lore, if non-combatants are killed in the attacks, if legitimate or semi-legitimate politicians aligned with the insurgents are targeted, or if the government is already seen as overly repressive or violent.”(The Age, December 19th. 2014) We may note the logic of these reservations; they are not based on considerations of morality and virtue. Drone strikes are questioned because they have been found to be a counter-productive use of power.

    It is facile to present the current conflict as between unmitigated evil on one side, and absolute good on the other.   We are told by politicians that, “They hate us for what we are,” as if “they” hated the virtue that “we” represent.  In an interview in Le Monde, 26 November 2001, René Girard explained the social and cultural mechanisms that are involved.  The terrorist groups do not hate the virtue that “we” represent: they envy the power that we have and desire intensely to acquire similar power.

    The contemporary terrorist is in fact caught up in a relationship of mimesis or competitive imitation with the “Great Satan,” as he calls the U.S.A. and its allies. The terrorist desires to have what the opponent has, namely great, overwhelming power.   The more violently “the great Satan” exercises that power the more attractive that becomes to the terrorist and the more violence the terrorist will use in an endeavor to acquire that power. The more “productive” the power of the terrorist, the more he is convinced that his “god” is true.

    We cannot counter terrorism and defend our values by the use of violent power that is contrary to those values.  Torture and targeted killing are not only counter-productive they are a denial of what we claim to stand for.  They are irreconcilable with faith in the ultimate reality or God that we hold to be true.

     

    Brian Johnstone, is a Catholic Priest who taught moral theology in Rome for nearly 20 years. Currently he teaches at the Catholic University in Washington.

     

  • Kerry Murphy. Intra-religious conflict.

    Most violent deaths of Muslims in the world are due to others claiming to be Muslims.  The conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are all predominantly conflicts within the Islamic community.  This is strongly felt within the communities but not usually reported in the mainstream media.

    This week in Peshawar in north western Pakistan, more than 140 mainly Muslim children are killed by men who claim to follow a version of Islam that requires them to chant ‘God is Great’ whilst they execute unarmed school children.  They claim this is because the military in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has attacked yet another group of people where other civilians are killed.  “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani.  “We want them to feel our pain.”

    Attacks on school children are only too common in Pakistan.  Only a short time before, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and she continues her campaign to support the education of children.  She has her own experience of violence against women seeking education. Her response was not to give up, but to continue her work and support for education to build a better Pakistan.

    Our own Christmas preparations are confronted in Sydney by an angry, disturbed man with a gun.  He has a history of violence, possibly also mental health issues, but he has a gun.   He was claiming a link to a murderous sect committing war crimes in Syria and Iraq and takes hostages in a Sydney café the week before Christmas.  He has been rejected by his own community for abandoning Shia Islam for the extremist Sunni Salafists of ISIS. Three people are killed; two families will have a very sad Christmas.  Christmas is normally a time when gifts are given, families congregate and a birth is celebrated, not usually a time for reflecting on death.

    How do we respond to this violence and death, confronting us in the week before Christmas?  Do we respond with violence and vengeance, as is likely in Pakistan?  Or is there a lesson in the outpouring of support and reflection that can be seen in Martin Place, Sydney.  Possibly thousands have walked along to offer condolences to people they never knew, and leave flowers which are now filling up parts of the usually busy mall.  Australians and visitors from many diverse backgrounds can be seen looking and reflecting on the violent outburst in our busy commercial centre.

    It lead me to reflect more on how we respond to death, and how different communities commemorate their families and friends. Recently my wife and I, not being Muslims, were invited to attend the memorial ceremony for the death of a respected elder in the Hazara community in Sydney.  Hazaras are ethnically and religiously distinctive in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  We did not see anyone in the large group who was not Hazara, and there were many people there.  We attended the Shia Mosque in Sydney and were welcomed by the Hazara community as we paid our respects during the recitation of the Fatihe – the initial verses of the Quran, commonly recited when someone dies.

    Outside, we met up with many Hazara friends, who we first met in detention and are now Australians with their families helping to contribute to our multicultural society.  I saw a man who was my first Hazara client, back in 1998.  We met in Port Hedland detention centre and have maintained irregular contact since then.  We reflected on the recent changes for new Hazara refugees coming to Australia and how their community is at risk in both Afghanistan and Pakistan by those claiming adherence to the Taliban and their Wahhabist supporters simply because they are Shia. Reports of attacks on Hazaras are all too common.

    We can feel the pain of others, even those we never met, but unlike the Taliban or ISIS, we do not need to respond by inflicting more pain in revenge or retaliation.  Destroying is easy. Building up takes a long time and maybe reflecting on creating, not destroying will be a more uplifting mindset for the Christmas and New Year period.  Is it too much to hope that in 2015 more people will work towards building and creating rather than destroying?  We can but hope for without hope what do we have?

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who specialises in refugee law.

     

  • Luigi Palombi. It’s time to fix the free trade bungle on the cost of medicines.

    Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series, we review Australian trade policy over the years and where we stand today on the brink of a number of significant new trade deals.

    Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership present an opportunity to correct a mistake made a decade in the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, which led to Australia paying higher prices for pharmaceuticals.

    In July 2004, Tony Abbott, then health minister in the Howard government, issued this statement:

    The price of pharmaceuticals will not rise as a result of the AUSFTA…

    Contrast this to what the Abbott government’s first budget, in May this year, told Australians:

    Over the past decade the cost of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule (PBS) has increased by 80%.

    To be sure, the “price of pharmaceuticals” is not the same thing as “the cost of the PBS”. But since the PBS is responsible for providing medicines to the vast majority of Australians, it is reasonable to infer that a contributing factor has been a rise in the price of pharmaceuticals. It is also reasonable to infer that the AUSFTA is partially to blame for that rise.

    The legislative instrument through which the AUSFTA was implemented is the US Free Trade Agreement Act 2004. The Therapeutics Goods Act 1984 was also amended to require companies seeking marketing approval for a pharmaceutical to provide a patent certificate as part of the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) regulatory assessment process.

    The patent certificate must say if the sponsored medicine will “infringe a valid claim of a patent that has been granted in relation to the therapeutic good (being the patented medicine)” in question. It must also notify the patent holder.

    Otherwise known as “patent linkage”, the application for regulatory approval creates a link between a patented medicine and a possible generic substitute.

    The patented medicines are categorised as F1 formulary medicines, which means there is no approved substitute.

    When a generic medicine comes onto the market, these drugs are contained in the F2 formulary. Generic medicines contain the same active ingredient or have the method of production to the patented drug, or they may be similar in terms of its administration, dosage, method of treatment or indication.

    How does ‘patent linkage’ play out in Australia?

    “Patent linkage” provides advance warning to a patent owner, usually the manufacturer of a patented medicine, that a generic medicines’ manufacturer is about to enter the market with a competing and cheaper substitute medicine.

    With the knowledge that a generic medicine will trigger an automatic 16% price drop for the patented medicine – and result in its transfer from the F1 formulary to the F2 formulary – the patent owner applies to the Federal Court of Australia for a preliminary injunction.

    The injunction is normally granted and as a result, the marketing of the generic medicine is delayed by an average of three years.

    This means that the patented medicine stays in the F1 formulary. This affects the pricing of that medicine not only because the price is higher, but also because medicines in the F2 formulary are subject to mandatory price disclosure. This tends to exert downward price pressure on all medicines within the F2 formulary.

    For a generic manufacturer to defeat the injunction, it must mount a challenge to the validity of the allegedly infringed patent. The average cost of patent litigation is about A$5 million and requires a team of specialist patent lawyers, patent attorneys and highly skilled experts.

    In addition to the legal cost, the generic manufacturer is, by effect of the injunction, denied sales revenue for the duration of the injunction – not to mention the opportunity cost it incurs as its workforce diverts attention to the patent litigation.

    Patent linkage refers to the link that regulatory approval creates between a patented medicine and a possible generic substitute.Sarahbean/Shutterstock

    In Australia, legal costs follow the event, meaning that should the generic manufacturer lose, it will also be required to pay a significant percentage of the legal costs incurred by the patent owner in defending its patent.

    So, it is critical that a generic company carefully assess any patent that puts at risk a proposed generic medicine launch. This assessment costs money. And unfortunately, because of differences in patent law around the world, it is impossible for a generic manufacturer to extrapolate the results of a patent challenge in one country to that in another.

    How does it affect medicine prices?

    The longer a medicine remains in the F1 formulary, the higher the cost of that medicine to the PBS. This, combined with the consequences on price once that medicine moves into the F2 formulary, creates a significant incentive for patent owners to stop generic competition.

    Patent owners encircle a valuable patented medicine with a series of “evergreening” patents. These usually apply after the patent (for the active ingredient) has or is about to expire. This can extend patent protection beyond the normal 20 to 25 year period to a period closer to 40 to 50 years.

    Unfortunately, the profit margin for generic manufacturers has fallen significantly due to the price disclosure mechanism, while the cost of patent litigation has risen significantly. Consequently, the capacity of generic manufacturers to assume the risks involved in risky and expensive patent litigation has fallen dramatically.

    In the absence of any serious intervention by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, it is likely that fewer “evergreening” patents will be challenged in the future. This means that more medicines will remain in the F1 formulary and for a longer period and the costs of medicines will rise.

    A consequence of price rises, particularly at a time of economic austerity, is that newer medicines are not being listing on the PBS. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, which decides which drugs will be subsidised through the PBS, for instance, recently rejected the costly drug Sovaldi, despite effectively treating hepatitis C virus infection.

    If the Abbott government wishes to limit the annual cost increase of the PBS to 4%, it is critical that only medicines that are truly innovative and deserving of patent protection remain in the F1 formulary. If room in the PBS is to be made for medicines such as Solvadi, then it is essential for more of the older F1 medicines be moved into the F2 formulary more quickly.

    The cost of the PBS has risen by 80% in the past ten years. It’s likely that without the AUSFTA, the cost of the PBS, and by inference the cost of medicines, would have risen by much less.

    This article draws on research prepared for the 2014 Workshop “Ten Years since the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement: Where to for Australia’s Trade Policy?”, sponsored by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW Australia.

    Luigi Palombi is Adjunct Professor at Murdoch University. This article was first published in ‘The Conversation’ on 21 October 2014.

  • Truth, Justice and Healing Council’s challenge of celibacy falls on deaf ears.

    In an article on December 16 in the SMH online, former NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally said that the report of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council offered Catholics a wake-up call. She said that many in the Vatican are still asleep. She added ‘I can’t decide whether to scream or cry when I hear a bishop or cardinal deny that the Catholic Church has a particular and serious problem with child sexual abuse by pointing out that such abuse happens outside the church as well.’

    For the text of Kristina Keneally’s article, see link below.  John Menadue

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/truth-justice-and-healing-councils-challenge-of-celibacy-falls-on-deaf-ears-20141215-1276nv.html