A cowardly coup from within the administration threatens to enflame the president’s paranoia and further endanger American security.
Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis.
Ending world hunger is a central aspiration of modern society. To address this challenge – along with expanding agricultural land and intensifying crop yields – we rely on global agricultural trade to meet the nutritional demands of a growing world population. (more…)
“Here I am back again in the Treasury . . . but with one great difference. In 1918 most people’s only idea was to get back to pre-1914. No one today feels like that about 1939. That will make an enormous difference when we get down to it.” The financial crisis was a devastating failure of the free market followed by a period of rising inequality within many countries. (more…)
As someone who is dependent on Mother Nature for a living, climate is very much a “front and centre” issue for all farmers. I graze livestock on semi-arid, native rangeland pastures in western NSW; the numbers we graze is dependent on the amount of pasture we grow, which of course relies on sufficient rainfall. Here’s what I think about the drought. (more…)
Checks and Balances Eroded Long Before Trump. (more…)
As the 10th anniversary of the start of the global financial crisis approaches, a wave of retrospective reviews is bearing down on us. Many of them will try to answer the Big Question: Has the financial system been fundamentally reformed, so that we can be confident of preventing a repeat of the dismal and destructive events of 2008-2009, or has the crisis been allowed to go to waste? (more…)
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here. (more…)
Following the sensational demand from Archbishop Vigano for the resignation of Pope Francis, Michael Sean Winters wrote a commentary in National Catholic Reporter wondering if the right wing in the Church was about to launch a schism. The following commentary by the editor of catholica, Brian Coyne, was written suggesting all of society is heading for division and schism at the moment and our Australian mate Rupert Murdoch has to take much of the blame. (more…)
President Trump’s incoherence grows to keep pace with his desperation. These days, he makes less sense than ever — a sign that this malignant presidency has entered a new, more dangerous phase. (more…)
The first time I voted in a federal election was in December 1972. I had just graduated from university. In three undergraduate years, as a member of the turbulent Monash Association of Students, I had learned that there was deep artificiality in a political view that reduces debate to two sides. I cast my inaugural vote knowing that if the McMahon Liberal-Country Coalition were returned, I would have a National Service obligation to deal with. But then they lost to Gough Whitlam’s Labor and conscription was scrapped. (more…)
Dear Pope Francis,
Greetings from Australia. I am a priest who worked for many years in parishes in poor barrios of Lima, Peru. I am now retired in Melbourne, Australia. (more…)
If you were going to reduce a 150-page Productivity Commission examination of trends in Australian inequality to a few words, it would be nice if they weren’t “ALP inequality claims sunk”, or “Progressive article of faith blown up” or “Labor inequality myths busted by commission”. (more…)
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s desperate attempts to draw a line under the leadership coup that brought him to power are doomed to failure. (more…)
Fractious domestic politics have made it all but impossible for the country to formulate coherent policy on critical regional and global issues.
In the work of the recent Royal Commissions of Inquiry in Australia, into the sexual abuse of minors, and the banking and financial institutions, two glaring similar findings presented themselves. The institutions involved were neither transparent nor accountable for their actions. It remains to be seen whether, following the excoriating assessments by the Commissions, the institutions have learned any lessons, and whether we the public have been duped by the decisions of those who imposed penalties. (more…)
Professor Jenny Hocking has lodged an appeal against the decision of the Federal Court last month in ‘Jennifer Hocking v. Director-General, National Archives of Australia’. The Court ruled that the ‘Palace letters’, between the Governor – General, Sir John Kerr, and the Queen relating to Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam government, are ‘personal’ not Commonwealth records, continuing the Queen’s embargo of them. (more…)
Malaysia’s new Pakatan Harapan government rode to power on a pledge to clean up Malaysia’s foul politics. It was wise to focus on the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional’s transgressions: Pakatan’s appeal lay less in its own glowing imagery and manifesto than in the electorate’s widespread contempt for the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which leads the now opposition Barisan Nasional coalition. (more…)
In 1988, with the Hawke government successfully carrying through a program of profound economic reform while avoiding the social divisiveness that characterised Margaret Thatcher’s not dissimilar policies in Britain, and with John Howard’s toe in the water on a return to White Australia decisively rejected by his own party and the community at large, it was possible to envisage a future for Australia as a tolerant, socially inclusive, ‘good international citizen’. (more…)
If the world continues on a “business-as-usual” trajectory on climate change, global ecosystems including Australia’s will undergo a “major transformation” over the next century. (more…)
The tipping point’s been reached: renewable energy is now a cheaper source of power for Australia’s future electricity needs than coal. (more…)
In the somewhat exotic Jewish home in Iowa where I grew up, it was axiomatic that there was an intimate link between Judaism and universal human rights. Like nearly all Eastern European Jewish families in America, my parents and grandparents were Roosevelt Democrats, to the point of fanaticism. They thought that the Jews had invented the very idea, and also the practice, of social justice; that having started our history as slaves in Egypt, we were always on the side of the underdog and the oppressed; that the core of Judaism as a religious culture was precisely this commitment to human rights, and that all the rest—the 613 commandments, the rituals, the theological assertions—was no more than a superstructure built upon a strong ethical foundation. For me, this comfortable illusion was shattered only when I moved to Israel at the age of eighteen. (more…)
Five years ago, on a boiling hot day, Australian immigration minister Scott Morrison entered Manus Prison. A number of refugees who represented various groups were invited to meet with him. In that meeting, the refugee representatives found themselves being threatened – Morrison pointed his finger at them and yelled: “You have no chance of coming to Australia and you must return to your countries.” I depict this exact scene and its aftermath in my book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison. (more…)
Fiona Simson says people have been tiptoeing around the subject for too long and it is time for a national strategy.
A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts covered in other media. (more…)
The grand jury report of Catholic priests’ predations in Pennsylvania is enough to make one vomit. The terrifying fact that hundreds of priests were preying upon over a thousand victims in that state alone makes one shudder at the thought of how many hundreds and thousands of abusers there are elsewhere in the nation, elsewhere in the world. It is time to stop waiting for more reports to accumulate, hoping that something will finally be done about this. Done by whom? By “the church”? If “the church” is taken to mean the pope and bishops, nothing will come of nothing. They are as a body incapable of making sense of anything sexual. (more…)
Few challenges are a greater threat to the health of Australians than obesity. Weight gain has now become the norm—the biological and social path of least resistance. Within a decade and without significant government intervention, more Australians are expected to be obese than normal weight. Opportunities to stem the tide of obesity do exist – we have the evidence and largely we know what to do. Here is an evidence-based five-point policy plan, a lifeSPANS approach, that focuses on our kids to move the health agenda forward. (more…)
Why farmers who are at the forefront of the impact from climate change, continue to support the National Party, a party of climate sceptics?
After a week of unfathomable machinations in Canberra, a decade of climate wars and the “death” of five Prime Ministers we are no nearer to a policy on climate or energy than we were 10 years ago.
As a 77 year old farmer, who has lived amongst Country and then National Party and Liberal supporters all my life, I will try and shed some light on this complex and intriguing issue. (more…)
Australia has replaced yet another Prime Minister mid-term via a leadership coup. (more…)
“As a discretionary and humanitarian act to an individual with ongoing needs, it is in the interests of Australia as a humane and generous society to grant this person a tourist visa.”
That’s Peter Dutton, then immigration minister, in the official document by which he intervened to allow an au pair to enter the country.
And what an incredible sentence it is! A humanitarian act. An individual with ongoing needs. A humane and generous society. So … a tourist visa? What humanitarian situation serious enough to require intervention from the immigration minister himself can be relieved by a spot of tourism? (more…)
Accused of inflaming racism, Scott Morrison insists people have the wrong idea about him. Jane Cadzow meets the Liberals’ immigration spokesman. This article was published in the Sun Herald on 3 November 2012 .
In his maiden speech in 2008 Scott Morrison said ‘From my faith, I derive the values of loving kindness, justice and righteousness’ (more…)