Category: Politics

  • JAMES FERNYHOUGH. Revealed: Australia’s richest professionals and the suburbs they live in.

    If you’re a surgeon living in one of the opulent suburbs on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour, then congratulations: you are a member of the highest paid group in Australia. This will come as no surprise for people who have experienced fee gouging by surgeons  and anaeshetists (more…)

  • CLIVE KESSLER. Malaysia’s electoral fantasy belies worrying reality.

    Malaysia’s fourteenth general elections (GE14) have finally been called. For almost a decade Prime Minister Najib Razak has ruled on recurrent hints of a snap, surprise election; this is the second time he has let the Parliament run close to its full five-year course. On 7 April, Najib dissolved the Parliament, leaving it to the Election Commission to proclaim 28 April as the nomination deadline for candidates and 9 May as the day of the vote. Rather than holding the election as usual at the weekend, when city-dwelling voters may easily return to the villages where many are registered to vote, GE14 will be held on a Wednesday — yet another obstacle to the opposition’s hopes of prevailing because of a high voter turnout. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Government by the bankers, for the bankers, and, in Turnbull’s case, of the bankers.

    As Malcolm Turnbull returns, no doubt reluctantly, from the photo-ops of Europe to the harsh world of Australian politics, he is inevitably turning his mind to the oncoming conflict and the need to vaporize Bill Shorten.   (more…)

  • GEOFF RABY. The current mess in Australia/China relations

    The Australia/China relationship is at its lowest point since the bloody crackdown in Tian’anmen Square on 4 June 1989 which provoked western sanctions against China.  Arguably,  it is even worse now.  Back then the Chinese Government was bending over backwards to entice ministerial-level visits from Australia.  Today the Chinese Government is telling our Ministers not to bother applying. (more…)

  • LAURIE PATTON. Vindicated: NBN Co. boss admits multi-technology mix (MTM) flaws.

    The departing head of the trouble-plagued NBN, Bill Morrow, has finally come clean. He has finally conceded that reusing Telstra’s ageing copper wires is creating major problems. (more…)

  • GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …

    The ABC’s Spirit of Things has woven together several ANZAC stories, including the revelation that the puggaree on our slouch hat is a variant of the Sikhs’ turban. The program starts with presenter Noel Debien interviewing Marist Brother John Lutterll, who has written a biography of an Australian who served in the Gallipoli campaign as a radio operator on the troopship Hessen – Norman Thomas Gilroy.  The interview is about the life, politics and theology of Australia’s first cardinal. It also provides insight into the enduring differences between the NSW and Victorian branches of the Labor Party.

    The most eloquent and moving Anzac Day speech was from French Prime Minister Édouard Phillipe at the opening of the Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux.

    To understand current developments in North and South Korea, a little history is useful. The New Yok Times has provided a two minute video of the history of the Korean War. In that context these photographs on the ABC website are extraordinary, because technically the two sides are still at war after 68 years

    Don’t believe the official narrative in the Syrian chemical weapons controversy – Truthdig.

    Can Anzac Day now return to a day of solemn reflection – Paul Daley, the Guardian.

    Japan demands that the Koreas pull a dessert from summit menu because it mentions disputed islands – South China Morning Post.

    The secrets of old parliament house revealed – Canberra Times

    The demise of the nation state – Rana Dasgupta in the Guardian

    The diggers built a proud banking culture and the suits ruined it – The New Daily

    Never mind Fox: Trump’s most reliable media mouthpiece is now Christian TV – Politico

    Why Trump Is Winning and the Press Is Losing – New York Review of Books.

    Caritas and other Catholic agencies divest from fossil fuels – La Croix International.

    On Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue this 28th April,  former ALP Minister for Trade, Craig Emerson discusses the livestock export  industry; Alan Kohler on the pay structure of financial advisers; veteran middle east analyst, Anthony Bubalo discusses potential good news coming out from the Middle East; A Foreign Affair with guests Alan Dupont, Jonathan Pearlman and  Gorana Grgic and former ambassador to China, Geoff Raby on his travels along the Silk Road. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/

    Defend the ‘rule-based’ order in Asia at any cost?  Hugh White

     

  • PETER MARTIN. How the Coalition ran interference for the banks.

    The Coalition wasn’t merely asleep at the wheel when it came to the practices being exposed at the banking royal commission: it pulled out all stops to allow some of them to continue, including attempting to circumvent the will of parliament, in an extraordinary 12-month burst of activity that began within weeks of its election.

    It had inherited Labor’s Future of Financial Advice Act, legislated in 2012 but not due to take full effect until mid-2014, 10 months after the election that swept it to power. (more…)

  • MICHAEL PASCOE. It’s confession time and there’s much for the government to confess

    If confession is good for the soul, key government figures should be mightily uplifted by the admissions now pouring out of them, however obliquely. (more…)

  • EMIRZA ADI SYAILENDRA. Indonesia’s elite divided on China

    The diffuse nature of policymaking in Indonesia discourages its leaders from departing from the country’s status quo policy towards Beijing. The status quo aims to allow Jakarta to have its cake and eat it too — that is, enjoy close relations with Beijing while preserving its strategic autonomy in ASEAN. (more…)

  • ROGER COHEN. The insanity along the Gaza fence

    Israel has the right to defend its borders, but not use lethal force against unarmed protesters. (more…)

  • JUSTIN GILLIS and HAL HARVEY- Cars are ruining our cities

    We give up our public space, our neighbor-to -neighbor conversations and ultimately our personal mobility for the next car, and the next one. More and more countries and cities are turning to congestion taxes. (more…)

  • LINDSAY MURDOCH. Former Islamic cleric could be Malaysia’s kingmaker.

    Unlikely election alliance between PAS and UMNO could result in the country taking a stronger Islamic direction.

    (more…)

  • VIC ROWLANDS. Reclaiming Democracy

    Liberty and Equality are simple characterisations of the right and left in politics and Fraternity is what enables the two to co-exist productively. A substantial moderate centre still represents the best chance of resolving difficult and contentious issues, and achieving a consensus.  (more…)

  • MARGARET O’CONNOR. Institutional reform following the Royal Commission on child sex abuse is women’s work.

    Women – from those who quietly brought pressure on parliamentarians through to the Prime Minister and Governor General – brought about the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Yet the response to the Commission is being handled as if it is all blokes’ business. (more…)

  • RICHARD BUTLER. Admiral Harris is not coming: does it matter?

    The decision by incoming US Secretary of State Pompeo, to withdraw the nomination of Admiral Harry Harris as US Ambassador to Australia, is something within his gift. Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull had fervently welcomed the proposed appointment. Presumably she and Malcolm Turnbull will now formulate ways in which to suggest that it’s of no particular consequence. Is it or does it reflect what America really thinks of us?  (more…)

  • MACK WILLIAMS. North Korea – it’s summit time!

    The pace of developments on the  Korean peninsular in the past month or so has been breathtaking matched by  the plethora of pundits who have sought to interpret what it all means and where we may be headed. Not surprisingly given the history and geography and the stakeholders involved much of coverage has been confusing and often contradictory. Facts are hard to come by as also has been reliable inside information. But it is all about to kick off with the two Korean leaders holding their summit later this week in the DMZ. So what do we know? (more…)

  • ELIZA BERLAGE. Our flailing aid created a Pacific problem.

    The report by Fairfax’s David Wroe of a potential Chinese military presence on Vanuatu sent alarm bells ringing for many. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said a Chinese military base in the region would be ‘of great concern’ and Australian diplomats met with Vanuatu officials last week to find out more details.

    (more…)

  • DAVID STEPHENS. Lest We Forget again: Anzac Day is an opportunity to confront our violent frontier past and its shadow today.

    Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a young Somali-Australian Muslim woman, was driven out of Australia last year after she implied that the Anzac sacred cow might be ready to graze new territory. ‘Lest. We. Forget.’, she said, ‘(Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)’. I thought she was on the right track and I said so, copping some of the bilious and vicious response that she herself received. Yet, surely, after a century we can move beyond dead soldiers and broaden the remembrance focus to other weighty matters where Australians bear some responsibility and where they should have some interest in making things right. Such a matter is right in front of us. (more…)

  • SUE WAREHAM. Honouring the war dead means learning from the horror.

    This Anzac Day, as on every other, we will hear of the horrors of war to which many of our service people have been exposed, horrors that certainly call into question any notion of us assuming the title “homo sapiens”.  We will “honour the fallen” and utter the hallowed words “lest we forget”, as we carefully forget every lesson that the last century and more of bloodshed could teach us. (more…)

  • MUNGO MACCALLUM. Morrison spins some fairy tales

    Last week the Sydney Daily Telegraph spent a couple of days playing silly buggers with our beloved Treasurer Scott Morrison, depicting him first as Santa Claus and then as not. (more…)

  • RICHARD FLANAGAN. Freedom means Australia facing up to the truth of its past. (Part 2 of 2)

    We should, of course, question these things more. We could ask why – if we were actually genuine about remembering patriots who have died for this country – why would we not first spend $100m on a museum honouring the at least 65,000 estimated Indigenous dead who so tragically lost their lives defending their country here in Australia in the frontier wars of the 1800s? Why is there nowhere in Australia telling the stories of the massacres, the dispossession, and the courageous resistance of these patriots?  

    (Second Extract from a speech by Richard Flanagan to the National Press Club on 18 April 2018)   (more…)

  • JIM COOMBS. Crime and Punishment: Who do we do first, the Banks (and “financial advisers”) or “dole bludgers”?

    I was horrified today to hear that the coalition government this week wants to step up its pursuit of “welfare cheats”, a few millions of dollars chasing the poor, disabled and ignorant. Then Treasurer Scott Morrison is impelled to say, the government “might” gaol the execs who defrauded bank customers of what may well prove to be billions, not due to impoverishment (quite the reverse), disability (lets grab the loot) and we know it’s illegal (but that’s business, isn’t it ?) A further Memo to Kenneth Hayne: Proportionate punishment, enshrined in law, should mean that if a dole cheat manages a few thousand and gets two years, then a crook banker who engineers billions should get a life sentence. Has anyone even been charged ? Until “equality before the law” becomes a reality rather than a legal fiction, now we know that they knowingly engaged in systematic theft, the managers , if the principle holds, should have a severe criminal penalty imposed, and the bank should have its licence revoked, on the basis of clear breach of trust.  All those shareholders who thought banks were a licence to print money ( i.e., steal), should wear the risk they took in buying the shares. Isn’t that what capitalism is all about ? (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. The banking royal commission confirms our worst fears about many business executives and crony capitalism

    There was a revealing heading in an article a while back by Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the SMH, ‘Faster growth demands better chief executives’. He concluded his article by pointing to the need for business leadership to seize the economic opportunities -‘ Our overpaid and underperforming chief executive officers are getting (it) wrong’.

    But it is all much worse than we thought as the incompetence  and greed of  some of our senior business executives  has been revealed in the banking royal commission. 

    We also now know why the Liberal Party resisted for so long a royal commission. It was to protect their business mates. It is called ‘crony capitalism’

    (more…)

  • RICHARD FLANAGAN. Australians in WWI didn’t die for Australia. They died for Britain. (Part 1 of 2)

    And so, the Monash Centre, for all its good intentions, for all the honour it does the dead, is at heart a centre for forgetting. It leads us to forget that the 62,000 young men who died in world war one died far from their country in service of one distant empire fighting other distant empires. It leads us to forget that not one of those deaths it commemorates was necessary. Not 62,000. Not even one.

    (The following are extracts from Richard Flanagan’s address to the National Press Club on 18 April 2018. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.)  (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Girt by Sea – Australia, the refugees and the politics of fear.

    Some at least of the South Africans who have come here, and no doubt most of those Dutton is promoting, want to emigrate to get away from blacks.   (more…)

  • ERIC WALSH. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un.

    The highly- important upcoming meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and America’s Donald Trump  could hopefully  settle one of the world’s red-hot trouble spots. (more…)

  • GARRY EVERETT. Importance of seeing the ‘big picture’.

    Failing to see or accept the big picture is a condition that is currently affecting many organisations in our world, says Garry Everett, and four particular organisations stand out as having significant problems in this regard. (more…)

  • GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …

    Australia gets a mention in The Atlantic, but probably not the kind we wanted.  It’s a review of the work of Terry Hughes (of James Cook University) and others who have had a paper published in Nature on the effect of global warning on the Great Barrier Reef. Atlantic staff writer Robinson Meyer writes:  “The Great Barrier Reef will continue to collapse and die until humanity stabilizes the amount of greenhouse-gas pollution in the air. But fixing that problem will require remaking the energy system, moving away from oil and gas and to solar, wind, and other renewable sources.”

    Katie Acheson, Chair of the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition, writes in the Canberra Times about a war being waged in Canberra. It’s a war against young people, subjected to unaffordable housing, high unemployment, expensive education and inaction on environmental damage that will become manifest over their lifetimes.

    Foreign Affairs allows non-subscribers to access one free article per month. In an article “Eastern Europe’s Illiberal Revolution: The Long Road to Democratic Decline” Ivan Krastev,  of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia analyses the decline of liberal democracy in Eastern Europe.  “A new illiberal consensus is emerging, marked by xenophobic nationalism and supported, somewhat unexpectedly, by young people who came of age after the demise of communism. If the liberals who dominated in the 1990s were preoccupied with the rights of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, this new consensus is about the rights of the majority.”

    On the ABC’s  Rear Vision Annabelle Quince has assembled an  impressive collection of gambling experts  in her program Australia: the world’s biggest gamblers.  It’s a history of gambling in Australia, leading to the post 1970s fiscal pressure on the states to raise funds through taxes on poker machines.  By now Australia has 76 per cent of high-intensity poker machines (200,000 machines) and we spend $23 billion a year on gambling ($3000 a household). (29 minutes)

    Whichever way you cut it, Turnbull’s climate policy is still a sham – Giles Parkinson, RenewEconomy

    Senator Rand Paul suggests the chemical weapons attacks in Syria  could have been false flag, unless Assad is the dumbest dictator on the planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=K4V3jQCi8-o

    And Admiral Lord West wonders the same thing in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIA_dNkscsw

    In Syria, the fog of war, Ross Burns

    Scandal pursues Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe – New York REview of Books.

    The President Is Not Above The Law. The constitutional order may soon be at stake in the investigation of Donald Trump – The New York Times editorial.

    Politics with Michelle Grattan: “Clive Hamilton and Richard Rigby on Chinese influence in Australia”

    Clement Atlee, the mouse that roared – New York Review of Books.

    On Saturday Extra this 21st April, Geraldine Doogue speaks with James Eyers from the AFR on this week’s Royal Commission into the banks and a discussion on the default life insurance built into our superannuation funds with minister for financial services, Kelly O’Dwyer as one of the guests.  The disturbing rape stories coming out of India but is this more about a growing division between Hindus and Muslims in that country and navigating freedom of the press in this era of fake news with foreign correspondents Peter Greste and Salil Tripathi. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/

     

  • MARILYN LAKE. ANZAC from a Turkish point of view.

    As Anzac Day comes round once more so we must prepare for the accompanying bombardment of nationalist myth-making. Our sense of national consciousness, so the story goes, was born on 25 April 1915. A nation was born on that day of death. The Anzacs fought for ‘freedom and democracy’. They died so that we might live. 

    Mythologies serve to comfort and console. They smooth contradictions and reduce historical complexity. They make meaning of events that might otherwise be senseless or unbearable.  (more…)

  • MICHAEL PASCOE. The banking royal commission – it’s even worse than it looks

    If you think the banking royal commission is big, you’re wrong. It’s much bigger. (more…)