Andrew Wilkie MP has asked the AFP to investigate the improper disclosure of ‘protected information’ disclosed by News Corp. journalist Niki Savva on the ABC Insiders program on 1 July 2018. She said that Attorney General Christian Porter had been given ‘a very strong recommendation to prosecute’ Bernard Collaery and Witness K.
How Savva knew this and who told her is the subject of an AFP investigation requested by Andrew Wilkie. On the basis of previous AFP form this will go nowhere. (more…)
In a penultimate spate of inter-personal hostility between the current Race Discrimination Commissioner and his opponents in government and the media, the future of a Commissioner (RDC) and the enabling Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) have been flagged by Attorney General Porter as being high on his “to do” list. (more…)
Scott Morrison has inched forward to another interminable episode of tweaking the tax. This time it’s the scales of the returns the states get from the commonwealth’s GST, but, as always, do not hold your breath. (more…)
The developed world’s economists have been racking their brains for explanations of the rich countries’ protracted period of weak improvement in the productivity of labour. I’ve thought of one that hasn’t had much attention. (more…)
My unfulfilled ambition was to put a new word into the English vocabulary. May I make a last attempt with an ugly word for an ugly thing? It is ‘neo-victimism’. It defines the dominant element into today’s great power relations. (more…)
It was emotional, noisy, sweaty, energetic and organised chaos, as 1000 public broadcasting enthusiasts scrambled and fought their way into the 400 seat NSW Teachers Federation auditorium in Surry Hills.
Last week in Sydney we saw the tragic death of two teenagers as a result of domestic violence. We know that over 12 months on average one woman is killed every week in Australia by a current or former partner.
Yet national effort and resources are directed overwhelmingly to counter terrorism where in the last decade only three people in Australia have been killed. (more…)
I have never personally met Sarah Hanson-Young, and I know absolutely nothing about her sex life. And the same applies to David Leyonhjelm, in spades. But I do have some acquaintances with Libertarians, and have not always liked what I have seen. (more…)
Everyone knows the gap between high and low incomes has grown. But much of what we think we know about why it’s happened, and what the government has been doing about it, is probably wrong.
British PM Theresa May is presently holding the strategic high ground on Brexit after the day-long meeting with her whole Cabinet at Chequers last Friday. To her formerly disputing colleagues she could announce that evening: “Collective responsibility is now fully restored”. (more…)
A regular connection of links to writings and broadcasts covered in other media. (more…)
On 18 January, admirals from Australia, India, Japan and the US sat together on stage at the high-profile Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi. Their presence reflected the shared strategic assessment that China has become a disruptive force in the Indo-Pacific. Taking time out to deliver a lecture at India’s National Defence College, Australian Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne echoed remarks by Indian PM Narendra Modi to the Australian Parliament in 2014, affirming that India had shifted from the periphery to the centre of Canberra’s strategic frame. (more…)
(On Tuesday, June 26, 2018, Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd delivered an address to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore for The Significance of China’s 2018 Central Foreign Policy Work Conference. Below is the transcript of the speech. )
On 22-23 June 2018, the Chinese Communist Party concluded its Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, the second since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission in November 2012. The last one was held in November 2014. These are not everyday affairs in the party’s deliberations on the great questions of China’s unfolding global engagement. (more…)
We have a Law Reform Commission that’s impotent, as well as a Commission for Human Rights that has no impact on the lack of rights of Australians. Is that accidental—or intended? Is there a chance for any sort of reform in this country before it slips up its own shirt-tails into eternal darkness and intestinal rumblings? (more…)
While the pace of media reports about the Korean Peninsular has slowed a little since the Singapore Summit there has been much going on – in public and under wraps. Skepticism about the North’s commitment to the core issue of denuclearisation has grown but it is still clearly too early to form definite conclusions about where it may all end . The central negotiations remain between the United States and the DPRK but with the ROK closely connected there is a flourishing set of side talks between other key players and some without any direct US involvement. Foremost among the latter have been the intra-Korean talks in which both sides seem to be working quickly to take advantage of the present situation to speed up cooperative endeavours across a wide range of areas. China and Russia have also been encouraging the DPRK to follow the course by moving jointly to pressure the US to dilute the UN based sanctions – all of which will be on the agenda for Trump when he meets Putin soon and talks with Xi as he seems frequently to do. (more…)
Last week the Attorney-General, Christian Porter, announced that he had approved the prosecution of Witness K, a former ASIS operative and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, a former Attorney-General of the ACT. They are to be prosecuted for a breach of s.39 of the Intelligence Services Act 2001 (Cth). The prosecution arises out of the involvement of Witness K and Collaery in legal disputation between the governments of Australia and Timor-Leste concerning their respective entitlements to revenues from oil and gas fields located in the Timor Sea. (more…)
Public discussion of issues relating to North Korea and détente with the United States is largely deprived of any sense of history — unstudied or seen through prisms by the lawyers, commerce graduates and high priests of strategic analysis who command discussion with airy speculation and terror talk…with an adversarial sense of our justness and wisdom, the enemy’s wickedness and folly. (more…)
The housing affordability crisis in Sydney and Melbourne is close to the worst in the developed world. As of 2017, the ratio of median house prices to median household income in Sydney was 12.9 and in Melbourne 9.9. Only Vancouver and Hong Kong were as bad or worse on this metric. (more…)
Many Australians no doubt winced last week when the Turnbull government claimed to represent ‘aspirational’ voters. In case anyone didn’t recognise the ghost of former Labor leader Mark Latham, this week Treasurer Scott Morrison recalled his signature image: ‘the ladder of opportunity’. (more…)
There has been a torrent of whining about the Trump–Kim summit. Critics are calling it little more than a photo opportunity for a dictator, and claim that nothing was agreed while North Korea’s horrific human rights abuses were overlooked. Sceptics claim that the agreement is the same as previous agreements between the United States and North Korea, that Kim will never change and North Korea will never denuclearise, and that stopping US–ROK war games will reduce US military readiness in the event of conflict. (more…)
‘This Parliament will not allow interference in our elections or in our democratic processes,’ Senator Penny Wong declared recently. ‘We will not allow these to be subject to foreign interference, and we will not allow the covert subversion of our politics by foreign interests.’ It sounds like a perfectly reasonable aspiration, but not if you happen to be East Timor.
Over this last week, two remarkably contradictory things happened in Canberra. The Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter shepherded through Parliament some of the most significant changes to foreign interference laws in recent times (the subject of Senator Wong’s speech). It was also reported that he signed off on charges laid against Witness K, a former officer of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, and his lawyer, former ACT Attorney General Bernard Collaery. (more…)
In the ‘debate’ over tax and the attacks on Bill Shorten, not one member of the Canberra Press Gallery could be bothered to explain to us that with dividend imputation the difference between a 25% and a 27% tax rate for a small company is infinitesimal. (more…)
NBN Co claims their ‘focus remains strongly on improving customer experience on the network including a smooth connection to the network.’ In fact the experience is a fiasco. (more…)
Fans cleaning the stadium after matches they attend is an example of how one must be conscious of the convenience of those around. (more…)
Australia has benefitted greatly from its relations with China, but has since begun to censor almost all the factors that have contributed to the benefits, and has interpreted its relations with China in the most negative way.
Such actions by Australia are beyond the Chinese public’s imagination of a country they once respected, and will bitterly disappoint them.
Now that the laws have been approved, Australia should reduce their negative impact on the Chinese diaspora and on relations with China. (more…)
Here are some starters for the Sydney Metro inquiry.
In his famous essay “Politics as a Vocation” the great German scholar Max Weber explained that the kinds of people who tend to become politicians lie along a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are those who “live off politics.” They are there to boost their own egos and serve their own interests and the narrow interests of those who subsidize them. They see politics as a profession – a means for accruing status, power and material rewards entirely for themselves and their cronies. At the other end of the spectrum are those who ”live for politics.” They are dedicated to serving the community – to defend justice, fairness, and the wellbeing of all. The people in this latter group see politics as a vocation – a sacred calling. (more…)
A recent article published on The Conversation “found attitudes of elitism among public servants, which effectively led them to resist public input…” and that “A clear democratic conduit between citizen and policymaker is largely absent.” But is this the best way to understand the present status of the Public service and public servants’ attitudes? (more…)
Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ ejection from the Red Hen restaurant might ordinarily be dubious. But these are no ordinary times. (more…)