It is remarkable that mainstream media, without exception, continues to ignore the facts on asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat and air. Michael West has written on the subject today in his blog. See Michael’s article reprinted below. (more…)
Category: Politics
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CHRISTIAN SORACE. From the Outside Looking In: A Response to John Garnaut’s Primer on Ideology (Made in China, 7.2.2019)
An introduction by Mobo Gao, Chair of Chinese Studies, Department of Asian Studies, University of Adelaide.
The article below is a response by Christian Solace, an American academic, to a speech given at an internal Australian government seminar in August 2017 by the respected Australian journalist John Garnaut who was once an advisor to a former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
It has to be pointed out that Solace does not argue, in this response to the Garnaut speech, that we the “West” should not be critical of the CCP and the Chinese governance for their repressive policies and instances of abuses of human rights.
Instead, Solace wants to highlight several points that are important in relation to the discussion of China that increasingly sounds like a new Cold War: 1) ideology is not just a Chinese thing. The West and Garnaut himself are not free from their own ideology; 2) Mao was not Stalin, and Xi is not Mao. China was and is different from Russia and Xi is different from Mao; 3) China under Mao attempted an alternative to Western capitalism but failed and China now is actually not Communist but capitalist; and 4) China should be looked at historically and it has made progress towards liberty and human rights.
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SHEILA A. SMITH. US policy in Asia heads from bad to worse.
If the past year is any indication of the year ahead, US policy in Asia will be erratic and self-serving. The beginnings of an Indo-Pacific strategy notwithstanding, the Trump administration continues to work out its issues with countries in the region bilaterally and sporadically. (more…)
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KIM WINGEREI Political Bastardy and Silly Politics
The franking credits scare campaign by the LNP is working. Once again, sensible tax reforms is sacrificed on the altar of short-term politics and the absence of a holistic approach. Once again politics gets in the way of policy making. Once again, fear and obfuscation are winning.
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Imagining the real: Two minutes to mid-night on the Clock of the Atomic Scientists
On January 24, 2019, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists stated: “Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats—nuclear weapons and climate change—were exacerbated this past year (2018) by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.”
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PAUL BONGIORNO. Scott Morrison has formally hit the panic button. (The New Daily 12.2.2019)
Scott Morrison is desperately in need of a circuit breaker. Something dramatic to save his government and pull off an unlikely election win.
The opinion polls are stubbornly stuck in wipeout territory, the latest Newspoll just confirming the trend not only since August, but since the last federal election in 2016.
Nothing is working, not even the promise of a million new jobs. (more…)
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MUNGO MACCALLUM. Who could have predicted that Kenneth Hayne would turn out to be such an old softie?
For months the stern, uncompromising judicial figure has presided over his royal commission with imperial authority, a veritable Judge Dredd inspiring fear and trepidation among scores of witnesses ever wary that at any moment he could reach for the black cap. And when his verdict was delivered, it was appropriately full of fire and brimstone, excoriating the pit of depravity that is the banking system and all those associated with it. At least, those were the words, but the reality turned out to be something so reassuring that bank shares across the board leapt in relief. Kenneth Hayne was actually a pussy cat. (more…)
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GREG BAILEY. The Liberal National Party, the Baby-boomers and the quest for victory in the May Election.
If, as seems likely from the polls, the ALP wins the next federal election it will not be through the failure of the LNP to throw up a massive scare campaign. Conservative parties ranging from the medium to the far right adopt lowest common denominator strategies to foment an underlying sense of fear that seems constantly resident in so many voters. But now the generational change between the Baby Boomers and Generation X and Y is becoming more and more pronounced and creates problems for those conservative parties who seek to retain power through the retention of a fear based campaign. (more…)
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ROSS GITTINS. Never fear, Hayne is a new start – and not just for the banks. (SMH 5.2.2019)
But if you think that, once the dust has settled, we’ll find little has changed, you haven’t been paying attention.
I think we’ll look back on this week and see it as the start of the era of re-regulation of the economy. (more…)
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ANTHONY PUN. A relapse of China panic.
Three media reports in the Sydney Morning Herald could be seen as a “Relapse of the China Panic” since it went into remission last December. It came in a period where Chinese Australians celebrate the Lunar New Year and indeed some would say what a “bloody new year” present (a pun – Red packets are gifts during the festive period). The Chinese Australian community reacted to these publications and the SMH was kind enough to publish them. On political donations, Australians will have the final say whether to accept all donations with conditions or ban them all together. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS : Chinese view of Second Trump:Kim Summit
Given the key role which President Xi has played in the negotiating process between President Trump and Chairman Kim a recent analysis in the Global Times (published by the People’s Daily) provides some valuable Chinese insights into the prospects for the Second Summit. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Peter Dutton says doctors can’t e trusted.
Kerryn Phelps is not just a doctor: according to Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and their Murdoch mouthpieces, she is a shaker of worlds.
Her bill – or rather her amendments to the government’s own bill — to allow doctors rather than bureaucrats to assess sick asylum seekers for treatment in Australia will not only simply dismantle the entire apparatus of border security. (more…)
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MARTIN KETTLE. A special place in hell? Donald Tusk didn’t go far enough.
Not only were the Brexiters clueless: they didn’t give a stuff about Ireland. But this will come back to haunt the Tories (more…)
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PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday’s environmental round up, 10 February 2019
Articles from around the world this week: electrical power sources in Australia, oil and gas drilling expansion in the USA, effects of shrinking glaciers on communities in Central Asia, and the Presidency of the next COP meeting in Chile.
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SATURDAY’s GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND
A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media (more…)
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JEFFREY D. SACHS. Trump’s Syria withdrawal is a chance for peace.
From Donald Trump’s point of view, a US-installed Syrian puppet regime that would push out Russia and Iran is neither central to US national security nor practicable. And, here, Trump is right for a change. (more…)
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RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Cognitive Dissonance in Canberra
At the annual conferences of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2017 and 2018, at least two retired senior public servants strongly asserted their faith in the United States as guarantor of Australia’s security. They did so with varying degrees of asperity in response to questions from the floor suggesting that American power was slipping, and with it Washington’s inclination, even its ability, to defend Australia in the event of an attack. (more…)
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EVAN JONES. The gaping hole in the Royal Commission’s final report.
The Banking Royal Commission’s Final Report has generated much froth and bubble in the media. Hayne has chosen to emphasise the sins of the finance sector in the ‘wealth management’ arena (financial advice, insurance, super – the last superficially). Media coverage has implicitly accepted Hayne’s priorities (nowhere defended); indeed, the media has itself set the scene over preceding years for these priorities.
Marginalised, in particular, are the domains of small business and family farmer lending. These two command a mere 10 of 580 pages! Upon reading the pages on small business lending I experienced revulsion and disbelief. And I am an outsider. A small business victim reading these pages, life destroyed, would be reacting with fury. (more…)
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TED EGAN. Matthew Flinders: Conditor Australis.
Two items are prominent in the news at the moment: Matthew Flinders’ remains have been unearthed at Euston Station, London; and there is heated debate in Australia about the most appropriate day to recognise as ‘Australia Day’. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. How and why corporate regulators have failed us. And not just bank regulators.
The surge yesterday in bank shares was no surprise. Investors at least concluded that Kenneth Hayne ‘s slap on the wrist would not really disturb the bank’s business model. His report did not go to the heart of the abuse, the vertical integration of financial product and financial advice. The conflict of interest will remain.
I did not expect much from the Hayne Royal Commission. I was not disappointed. But it was good theatre. For me the most important revelation was the way people behave when incentives are all there to get rich quick starting with greedy bank CEOs
What the Royal Commission showed us was that we need to embark on a re regulation of our economy to curb the spivs operating at senior levels in our major companies. Our politicians must address this need for re regulation to protect the public interest. Under the guise of ‘cutting red tape’ regulations to protect the public interest have been whittled away..
But in emphasising the need for regulators to lift their game Kenneth Hayne reveals his naivety. These are just the people who have failed us.
The banks will keep there heads down for a month or two, while rolling out lobbyists and PR people to minimise any change. (more…)
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CAVAN HOGUE. Brazil – somebody down there loves Donald.
The newly elected Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, is a right wing, socially conservative former army officer who is a fan of Donald Trump and is following many of his foreign policy adventures like pulling out of the Paris Climate accords and moving his embassy to Jerusalem. John Bolton is anxious to forge close military ties with Brazil. Bolsonaro has taken measures to replace indigenous rights by commercial agriculture and mining in the Amazon basin which poses a threat to both the people and the environment. It’s nice to have friends in high places. (more…)
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HARI KUNZRU. Fool Britannia (The New York Review of Books).
From the ill-conceived Brexit referendum onward, Britain’s governing class has embarrassed itself. The Remain campaign was complacent, the Leave campaign brazenly mendacious, and as soon as the result was known, most of the loudest advocates for severing ties with the European Union ran away like naughty schoolboys whose cricket ball had smashed a greenhouse window. Negotiations have revealed the pitiful intellectual limitations of a succession of blustering cabinet ministers, the leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition doesn’t appear to want to oppose, and the prime minister has engineered her own humiliation by starting the countdown to Brexit without a plan that could command wide support, resulting in the heaviest parliamentary defeat in history. Despite breaches of campaign finance limits and lingering questions over the source of the Leave campaign’s financing, not to mention growing evidence tying it to the same web of influence operations that promoted Trump’s candidacy, there is no equivalent to the Mueller inquiry to bolster public confidence that the organs of state are capable of warding off corruption. (more…)
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HUGH MACKAY. A Culture of Compassion (Edited extract of Australia Day Address)
We humans are, by nature, social beings who need each other. We need the sense of belonging to communities that sustain, nurture, support and protect us and even give us our sense of personal identity – you can’t make sense of who you are without a social context. (more…)
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MARJORIE COHN. The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela (Truthout).
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RICHARD FLANAGAN. Tasmania is burning. The climate disaster future has arrived while those in power laugh at us. (The Guardian 4.2.2019)
Scott Morrison is trying to scare people about economic policy but seems blithely unaware people are already scared – about climate change.
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MICHAEL PASCOE. And the winner is … the big banks (New Daily)
Who would have guessed? The banks have emerged as relative winners from the royal commission’s final report. (more…)
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ADELE FERGUSON. The regulators failed bank customers but they are now being trusted to fix this mess. (SMH 5.2.2019)
For those Australians hoping for structural separation of the banks, an overhaul of the regulators or heads on sticks, royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s verdict would have been disappointing. (more…)
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KAREN COX. Now Hayne has reported, the lobbyists will get to work (SMH 5.2.2019)
After a year of front pages filled with the evidence of scandalous wrong doing, rip-offs and greed in our banking and financial services institutions, we finally have a roadmap from Commissioner Kenneth Hayne on how to solve the finance sector’s ills. His report is bold, full of commonsense and clear solutions. (more…)
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ANDREW LINDEN, WARREN STAPLES. Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure. (The Conversation 5.2.2019)
Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure means that in a decade or so another treasurer will have to call another royal commission. Every 10 to 15 years it’s the same.
Ever since financial deregulation in the 1980s we’ve had a finance industry scandal followed by an inquiry, a quick fix, and a declaration that it shouldn’t happen again. (more…)
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ELENA COLLINSON. What A Labor Victory Might Mean For Australian Foreign Policy (Council on Foreign Relations).
A federal election is due this year in Australia. While the Liberal-National Coalition government has yet to formally announce a polling day, the stage has effectively been set for a May election. According to Australian law, May 18 is the latest possible date a federal election could be called. The opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) is favored to win, having consistently polled ahead of the Coalition over the last year, at least, and having extended their lead in polls in the aftermath of Malcolm Turnbull’s ouster from the Coalition prime ministership in an internal Liberal Party leadership contest last year. (more…)