A casual glance at the news in recent months may have left you thinking the average Australian earns almost $85,000 a year.
If that sounded insanely high to you, then your instincts were bang on. An ordinary Australian earns way, way less than that.
But it doesn’t appear to have stopped Treasurer Scott Morrison using the figure to sell his income tax cuts. (more…)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is watching with deep concern as the pillars of the postwar international order collapse. But what is she doing about it? (more…)
A great Australian recently said: ‘we’re a helpless audience watching an awesome spectacle, powerless to act because we haven’t produced leadership with the courage to match the precipitous nature of the hour.’ The Rev. Ted Noffs got most things right. When his own church charged him with heresy, it proved the old axiom that a good deed never goes unpunished. Unfortunately, it’s the daily reality of our political system. (more…)
It may be sheer fantasy, wishful thinking. But in the last week the torpor of politics appeared to lift a little; there were signs that progress might not be stalled forever in the coalition party room in Canberra. Not that anything much has changed within the gaffe-prone cabinet of Malcolm Turnbull – at least not yet. But perhaps the exit of the reactionary influence of Barnaby Joyce as deputy prime minister is providing a glimmer of hope for the handful of rational optimists who have been frustrated for so long by Turnbull’s capitulation to Joyce and his rightist rump. (more…)
In the furore over Chinese political donations, the broader electoral reform agenda can easily be forgotten. Australia was once a pioneering democracy but it has fallen behind in protecting its reputation for electoral integrity and political equality. (more…)
Two prominent members of the IPA have just edited a book calling for the privatization of the ABC. This has long been a desire of this group, but with Minister Mitch Fifield, an IPA member, now taking the role of the LNP government’s attack dog against the ABC, is privatization a possibility? (more…)
In 2013, before travelling to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, Donald Trump asked plaintively on Twitter whether Vladimir Putin would be attending, and “if so, will he become my new best friend?” Putin never showed, and President Trump is apparently still pining for the Russian president’s approval. Meanwhile, there may never have been a president of the United States who is so unremittingly hostile to America’s closest allies.
It’s time to explain how the bloc, and the euro, could be run differently, democratically and sustainably. (more…)
Short term thinking has taken hold of our society at all levels – our political leaders rarely see beyond the next poll or the next election, and in many ways they are responding to a populace that is equally sucked into the demands of the moment – resulting in ‘the longevity vacuum’ – putting us all at the mercy of an unplanned future. (more…)
Winston Churchill famously described the Soviet Union as “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Many commentators and politicians say Vladimir Putin’s Russia is every bit as mysterious and enigmatic as its predecessor. An astonishing recent declaration by the president, however, at the Russian equivalent of the Davos conclave, in St Petersburg, casts a whole new light on the country’s involvement in the Middle East, which in recent years has become more and more extensive. (more…)
Ten ways the new US-Russian Cold War is increasingly becoming more dangerous than the one we survived.
It was, declared The Australian’s resident theologian Greg Sheridan, a pivotal moment in modern Australian history.
Well, modern Australian history begins with white settlement. So was Pope Greg referring to the arrival of the first fleet, perhaps? The end of transportation? The celebration of federation? The landing at Gallipoli? The victory in the Coral Sea?
No, none of the above – something far more important: the ANU’s rejection of the proposed Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. According to Sheridan, the university’s decision means that Western Civilisation itself is now imperilled. (more…)
In 2009, Senator John Faulkner introduced legislation in the Senate which would have prohibited foreign political donations. The legislation was defeated by the Coalition in the Senate. A lot of ‘foreign interference’ in Australian political life could have been nipped in the bud if the Coalition had been serious about curbing political donations. Unfortunately, Anti-Chinese sentiment is now driving the debate on political donations. This could have been avoided.
See following, second reading speech in the Senate by Senator Faulkner.
Let’s clear up any confusion about the size of the Chinese economy. (more…)
In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer talks about the danger of war against Iran, the deterioration of trans-Atlantic relations under U.S. President Donald Trump and the serious need for Germany to invest massively in the European Union’s future. (more…)
We are a nation in denial that we are ‘joined at the hip’ to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, almost a ‘hidden state’, that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its ‘manifest destiny’ which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others. The problems did not start with Trump. They are long standing and deep rooted.
We are running great risks in committing so much of our future to the US. We must build our security in our own region and not depend so exclusively on a foreign protector.
Unfortunately many of our political, bureaucratic, business and media elites have been so long on an American drip feed that they find it hard to think of the world without an American focus.. We had a similar and dependant view of the UK in the past. That ended in tears in Singapore. (more…)
Had former U.S. President Barack Obama “done a Trump” with North Korea — agreed to a summit with Kim Jong Un without requiring denuclearization first, secretly sent his secretary of state to Pyongyang, described Kim as “honorable.” canceled joint military exercises with South Korea, been prepared to consider pulling U.S. troops out of Korea — the right-wing establishment and populace would have branded him a traitor. President Donald Trump earned multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize for the same — until his National Security Adviser John Bolton nearly cost him any chance of that treasured award. (more…)
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, journalist Peter Hitchens commented last month on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR): ‘Talking of war, and Syria, many of you may have noticed frequent references in the media to a body called the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”, often quoted as if it is an impartial source of information about that complicated conflict, in which the British government clearly takes sides. The “Observatory” says on its website that it is “not associated or linked to any political body”. To which I reply: Is Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office not a political body? Because the FO just confirmed to me that “the UK funded a project worth £194,769.60 to provide the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights with communications equipment and cameras”. That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? I love the precision of that 60p. Your taxes, impartially, at work.’ (more…)
A recent report on freight and supply chains leads governments astray. This the first of two articles challenging its view that more bureaucracy and data is needed to deal with a supposedly ubiquitous task. (more…)
India has a deepening bilateral security relationship with Myanmar, and is taking steps to help address the crisis in Rakhine State. But Chinese influence in Myanmar is growing – and meaningful cooperation between Beiijing and New Delhi remains unlikely. (more…)
India Inclusive event hears that attacks against minorities have increased since the BJP came to power (more…)
It’s illegal for Australian entities to bribe foreign entities, but apparently we’re perfectly happy to take dirty money from bribed foreigners and consort with corrupt leaders.
Malaysia’s prime-minister-in-waiting, Anwar Ibrahim, called us out on Friday, expressing a view that Australia has been “completely dishonest” about ousted leader Najib Razak, and “complicit” in Malaysian corruption. (more…)
Japan has been reeling ever since 8 March when US President Donald Trump met with South Korea’s national security adviser Chung Eui-yong and announced, to the world’s surprise, that he would accept the offer to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Until then, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was confident that he was ‘managing’ Trump well, starting with the meeting in Trump Tower on 17 November 2016 that made him the first foreign leader to meet with the then president-elect. This was followed by the meeting in Washington, DC on 10 February 2017 and golf and dinner in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, when North Korea’s missile launching forced an impromptu news conference pledging US–Japan solidarity against North Korea.
In an unexpected concession in the early hours of Tuesday (June 5), the National Palace said Malaysia’s supreme ruler, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, had withdrawn its consent for incumbent Apandi Ali to continue as the nation’s top lawyer.
With concerns about Italy’s public debt growing, Italian populists have taken a page from US President Donald Trump’s playbook and threatened to blow up the eurozone if they don’t get their way. The European Union must resist the temptation to engage in a dangerous game of chicken.
(more…)
Foreign Minister Lavrov asserted Russia’s role in the current process as a stakeholder in the stability of northeast Asia; he flagged the need to revive six-party talks; it also seems Putin will meet Kim Jong-un soon.
[If President Trump thinks that the DPRK issue is one for the US alone to determine, he will be deluded. As the article below indicates, there is a very strong historical link between Russia and the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung. John Menadue] (more…)
Plainly Trump is fixated upon the domestic political scandals in which he is mired. The idea that he can find salvation through an achievement on the international stage is dubious. Whatever happens at the Summit with Kim Jong Un will not cause those scandals to disappear and, the outcome of the Summit is not uniquely in his gift. Although not at the table, China and Russia will have a say. (more…)
Last week the Government announced a further two year extension on its deadline for community television stations to vacate their free-to-air spectrum. The death knell first rang back in September 2014 when then communications minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that all CTV licences would end in December 2015. Since then the sector has limped on courtesy of a series of last minute reprieves. (more…)