Category: Politics

2018 may well go down as a defining year for President Xi Jinping’s leadership – one that marks the beginning of the end for the “President for Life”.   President Xi began the year in full command of the country, seemingly ascendant on the world stage with his signature Belt and Road Initiative and, in the face of President Trump’s unilateralism, incredulously a newly found champion of the multilateral trading system and defender of the WTO and other features of the fast-receding liberal multilateral order.  But by year’s end, Xi is under pressure.  (more…)

This week I cheekily wrote to the leader of the Federal Opposition seeking an urgent appointment before he embarks on his party’s convention this weekend. Because I doubt that I will get to meet with him, here is what I would like to say to him and to the leaders of each of the other political parties as well as the cross benchers.
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Half a century ago five neighbouring nations got together with a set of fine ideals.  These included boosting economic growth, promoting peace and lifting living standards.  That was the excuse. The real purpose was to block the spread of Communism, now a spent force outside China and satellites like North Korea. So why keep the Association of Southeast Asian Nations alive?  (more…)

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has used an address to the Labor national conference to deliver a fresh swingeing attack on the Murdoch media, declaring “it is not a news organisation, it is a political party”. (more…)

With his weekend announcement of a $6.6 billion affordable rental construction program, Bill Shorten has dramatically reinforced Labor’s emphasis on housing as central to the Party’s 2019 election policy pitch. The initiative, Labor’s first significant housing investment pledge in four federal elections, aims to help qualifying low-to-moderate income earners increasingly squeezed out of urban housing markets. It builds on Chris Bowen’s vow, ahead of the last federal contest, to restrict landlord investor negative gearing tax handouts to those helping to expand supply through newly-built housing acquisition. (more…)

The darkest hour, they say, is just before dawn. And it just may be that a glimmer of light is appearing in the five year nightmare of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison dynasty. (more…)

It will require a Herculean effort to clean out the greed, corruption, sense of entitlement, selfishness and ideological blindness at the “commanding heights” of Australia’s government, economy and society. The banking royal commission has exposed merely the tip of this ugly reality. In business, in the professions, in the media and in politics, many of those at the top are the custodians and reproducers of a culture that is morally fetid.  They remain obsessed with themselves, their cronies, their salaries and bonuses, their perks of office. (more…)

We should not accept that it is inevitable that people will die on our roads. While drivers must behave responsibly, governments need to take actions which might seem radical in a society obsessed with cars.  (more…)

On Monday the Government will release the mid-year update of its economic and fiscal outlook. The Government hopes that the announcement of a return to budget surplus in 2019 will underpin its claims as an economic manager in the run-up to the May election. Clearly, however, that projected surplus will depend upon the assumptions employed, and it is contended here, and in advance, that we should be very suspicious of the most critical element in the government forecasts – the wage forecast.   (more…)

It appears that Scott Morrison has now given up on this world and is planning to move on to the next. (more…)

Legal wheels are turning fast in Malaysia and US to jail the ex-premier and hold the American investment bank responsible for money laundering and fraud worth billions of dollars (more…)

A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media (more…)

No public hearings? Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s proposed Commonwealth Integrity Commission is deeply flawed in its current conception under the authorship of Attorney-General Christian Porter and the Attorney-General’s department. (more…)

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P & I doesn’t attempt ‘balance’. It has a point of view.   (more…)

Botched State road projects, toll road fee hikes and congestion grab big headlines and make good sport for critics of State governments.  (more…)

Francis Sutherland Hambly, the doyen of university education in Australia, died in Canberra on 21 November 2018, aged 83.  Frank served the universities as Director and Secretary of the Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee (AVCC) from 1966 to 1996; indeed he personified the AVCC. (more…)

Queensland’s longest-serving Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, cultivated the public image of a country bumpkin. A book about his career was called The Hillbilly Dictator. Donald Trump has taken a similar act to the international stage. Has the world ever seen such a performance? No Hollywood star goes close to The Donald. The President of the United States wins all the Oscars.   (more…)