Category: Politics

  • The Arms Race Between Elite Sydney Private Schools is Fuelled by Govt Over-Funding.

    New figures show that the arms race in ostentatious facilities between elite private schools in Sydney is being fuelled by more than $170 million a year in government over-funding. Over-funding frees up private income from hefty fees and donations to finance opulent buildings and facilities in competition with other elite schools. It denies much needed resources for disadvantaged schools facing severe shortages in teaching staff, educational materials and modern classroom buildings.  (more…)

  • How liberals can reclaim nationalism.

    In this article in the New York Times International Edition of 5 March 2018 Yascha Mounk argues that ‘instead of exhorting their fellow citizens to live out their nations highest ideals, many activists seem content with denouncing past and present injustices.. This has enabled the bigots and racists to bend the meaning of the nation to their own sinister ends’.   (more…)

  • JOHN WARHURST. Demystifying the Coalition

    The downfall of Barnaby Joyce and his replacement by Michael McCormack from Wagga Wagga as Nationals leader shows once again that maintaining the Liberal-National coalition has a considerable impact on the nation, and thus it deserves greater attention and transparency. Instead it is clouded in secrecy and often taken for granted. (more…)

  • Revealed: the extent of job-swapping between public servants and fossil fuel lobbyists.

    Last month Australia slipped further down the rankings in the international corruption index. Among a wide range of factors cited by Transparency International was Australia’s “inappropriate industry lobbying in large-scale projects such as mining”, as well as “revolving doors and a culture of mateship”. (more…)

  • Michael Lambert: Trump’s Steel and Aluminium Tariffs

    President Trump has foreshadowed tariffs of 25% on all imported steel and 10% on all imported aluminium, reversing America’s historic commitment to free trade and proper governance in trade policy. It is also repeating an action taken by George W Bush in 2002 which completely failed and was reversed in 2003. (more…)

  • PAUL BARRATT. Are all those consultancies really necessary?

    The Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit is currently conducting an inquiry based on any items, matters or circumstances connected with Auditor-General’s Report No. 19 (2017-18). This report reveals enormous expenditure on consultancy contracts, and the matters being inquired into by JCPAA include the effects on APS capability and capacity; the extent to which consultancy contracts are being used to deliver core APS outcomes; the associated benefits and risks; and unforeseen and unintended consequences.  (more…)

  • CATHERINE KING AND ANDREW LEIGH. It’s no wonder we’re questioning the value of private health care.

    Australians are questioning the cost and value of private health more than ever. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Adani.

    Bill Shorten has finally taken a firm position on the Adani coal mine: procrastination. (more…)

  • ALLAN PATIENCE. Time to inject some realism into the China debate.

    A rising chorus can be heard in Australia voicing fears about China’s alleged intrusions into our domestic affairs. There are disturbing echoes in all this of a narrative about a dangerous China lurking in the interstices of Australia’s society and economy. These echoes need top be addressed before we can have an intelligent debate about how to respond to China’s re-emergence as a great power and how our foreign policy can be revised to prevent Australia being drawn into great power rivalries in the Asia Pacific. (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. Where Was The Governor-General?

    Sir Peter Cosgrove was not in Canberra last week to swear in the new leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime-Minister. As far as I am aware there was no official explanation for his absence. But it turned out that he was on a ‘secret’ visit to Iraq to visit the 300 Australian troops at an airbase just outside Baghdad. Secrecy may have been necessary for reasons of security but it also had the advantage of avoiding the questions which the electorate has a right to ask. What are our soldiers doing there now that ISIS had been defeated? Will they be coming home? And If not why not? The Governor-General, though nominally the Commander in Chief, provided little enlightenment in his brief reported comments. One thing is certainly clear. The soldiers are not coming home soon. Indeed Australia is putting pressure on New Zealand to delay the departure of its contingent of 100 troops planned for November this year. Cosgrove himself remarked that no-one would have foreseen in 2003 that Australia would still be in Iraq fifteen years later. There is clearly no end in sight to our Middle-Eastern adventure. 

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  • FRANK BRENNAN. Edging closer to a just regime in the Timor Sea.

    On Tuesday the governments of Timor Leste and Australia will sign a maritime boundary treaty in New York in the presence of Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations. This day has been a long time coming. 

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  • MARK BEESON. Can Trump be socialised into good behaviour and policymaking?

    Will Donald Trump have a lasting and possibly pernicious impact on American foreign policy, or will the so-called ‘adults’ in his administration educate him and change his ways?  (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Federal Hotels win in Tasmania

    So Tasmania has a new government.  Yes, I know the Libs are still in office at 1 Salamanca Place and Will Hodgman is still premier. But the real government, the one run by the pokie industry under the Federal Group and the Farrell family has now been confirmed as the successor of the dynasty of rent seekers who actually manage the Apple Isle.   (more…)

  • IAN McAULEY. Tax reform, not tax cuts

    From an unlikely source comes a message that Australia doesn’t need “smaller government”. Rather we need tax reform to ensure we can build a social safety net, and fund world-class health and education. (more…)

  • SCOTT BURCHILL. Class power in the US.

    All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind (Adam Smith).

    Class is a Communist concept. It groups people together and sets them against each other (Margaret Thatcher).

    [Current opposition to free trade in the United States is] heavily influenced by perceptions that voters themselves now view trade issues in terms of a domestic class struggle, not as promoting exports and global integration (David Hale, economist). (more…)

  • GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND …

    In the Fairfax press Martin Myer of the Myer Foundation has an article “Rules around foreign donations threaten to cripple thousands of charities”.  It’s about legislation currently in Parliament, which ostensibly is designed to track foreign political donations, but which would actually place huge administrative burdens on organisations involved in policy advocacy and on their donors.

    The principles of taxation are complex: in 2009 it took five volumes of the Henry Review to explain tax reform. But on ABC Radio National The Economists website is a lively 28 minute discussion “The joy of tax” between three experts, telling you (almost) everything you need to know about tax and tax reform.

    Commenting on Tony Abbott’s rant calling for reduced immigration, Jessica Irving suggests that while at university he may have snoozed off at a crucial point in his economics lectures. Her article “Tony Abbott’s economic argument against immigration is flawed” dismisses the argument that immigrants take jobs from those who are already here, and she recommends that the government take up recommendations of the Grattan Institute to lower the discount rate governments use to evaluate infrastructure projects so that we can provide for a growing population.

    On Phillip Adams’ Late Night Live is an interview with Kate Raworth of Oxford University about the need for “An economics for the 21st century” to deal with problems of inequality, pollution and overuse of the earth’s resources.  She gives a convincing and empirically-based critique of the neoliberal idea that the workings of the market inevitability reduce inequality.

    Philosopher and author Damon Young writes on his blog and in the Canberra Times about “The deceptive story of virtuous homebuyers”.  We can engage with the yarn that all first home buyers are struggling, but in reality many have significant support from parents. The most disadvantaged are those who will never be able to buy real estate and will face a lifetime as renters, and “those excluded from stable housing altogether, by poverty and violence.”

    Love, justice and humility to abuse survivors – Robert Fitzgerald, Eureka Street (Audio).

    Is the British Establishment finally finished – the Guardian

    The book Xi Jinping wants people to read for all the wrong reasons – the Canberra Times.

    Malcolm Turnbull decides he does need an NBN connection of 100Mbps – buzz feed.

    Kevin Rudd protests that Clive Hamilton attacks are just not on – Canberra Times.

    Battered Barnaby Joyce all too belatedly bails out – Jack Waterford, Canberra Times

    Michaelia Cash’s slur on women staffers in Parliament this week further debased our already-degraded political system, forced Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull back into his post-Barnaby Joyce corner and further exposed a Coalition killing itself with its own mistakes, writes Michelle Grattan.

    Lessons in feminism via Jacinda Adern, Michaelia Cash and Bill Shorten – the Guardian

    Will Turnbull’s Snowy Hydro continue his war against battery storage – RenewEconomy

    On Saturday Extra this 3rd of March, Geraldine Doogue discusses primarily elections and leadership. Italy goes to the polls on Sunday under new electoral laws, writer Tim Parks explains; Germans find out on Sunday if Angela Merkel has been able to form a coalition with the SDP five months post the election, political analyst Mark Kayser discusses and Geoff Raby, former Australian ambassador to China talks about Xi Jinping’s grab for eternal power. Also academics Sarah Teo and Ralf Emmers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore discuss Asia’s middle powers. And in the month of March Saturday Extra will be bringing a special series on emerging and established historians bringing in a new genre. ANU’s Tom Griffith explains what this is and Tony Hughes d-Aeth discusses his literary history of WA’s wheatbelt area.

     

  • MACK WILLIAMS. Australia : US – Limits and responsibilities of mateship!

    The recent quick visit of the Prime Minister to Washington has raised more questions than it has answered about the state of Australia’s relations with the US and China. Have the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister set out a new policy on China and the South China Sea or are they just playing at trying to distance themselves modestly from Washington? (more…)

  • JEFFREY A. BADER. Seven things you need to know about lifting term limits for Xi Jinping

    At its annual meeting beginning on March 5, the Chinese National People’s Congress appears poised to adopt a “recommendation” by the Communist Party that the two-term limit for president and vice president be eliminated. The change is of course not an expression of a preferred governance norm for longer terms, but rather a dramatic shift designed to permit President Xi Jinping to stay in power after his second presidential term expires in 2023. (more…)

  • STEPHEN FITZGERALD AND LINDA JAKOBSON. Engaging with China does not mean being an agent of China

    [A letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27 February 2018]

    Clive Hamilton conveys a message which must be challenged, namely the insinuation that any person who engages with the Communist Party of China (CPC) should be viewed with suspicion or as belonging to a CPC fifth column (“Powerful relations raises a red flag”, February 24-25). It is wrong and indeed damaging to Australia’s interests if people (Hamilton refers to unnamed powerful corporate figures) who have dealings with the CPC are to be looked upon as untrustworthy. (more…)

  • DAVID MACILWAIN. Standing up Against America.

    Arguing that Australia should cut all support for US forces in Syria, and support the Syrian government and its allies in the fight against the terrorist insurgency. This starts with a recognition that the “White Helmets” are allies of Al Qaeda, supported by the US and UK. (more…)

  • The rant in The Australian on the Department of Foreign and Trade

    On 17 February, The Australian published an article by former Australian ambassador to the EU and former adviser to Tony Abbott Mark Higgie that was sharply critical of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Unfortunately, the initial takeaway from reading it was that it is more of a rant than a critical analysis of all that ails DFAT. (more…)

  • Australians prefer government funding for dental care rather than private health insurance

    Polling released by Essential Report on February 27 2018 revealed that 48% of Australians favoured abolishing the taxpayer subsidy to Private Health Insurance (PHI) and using the savings to establish a Medicare Dental Scheme. 32% opposed such a change and 20 % did not have a view.   (more…)

  • GORDON DE BROUWER. Achieving balance in Australia’s strategic thinking

    A lot has been said about the challenge that Australia and other countries in Asia and the Pacific face in balancing their security interests with the United States and economic interests with China. The need to deal systematically with this challenge is sharpening as Beijing and Washington shift their conventional approaches to international relations. China has been more assertive in its foreign policy, especially in the South China Sea and in cyberspace. Meanwhile, there is concern that the United States under President Trump is abandoning its support for a rules-based and market-oriented global order and is championing an order that prioritises protectionism, unilateralism and the pursuit above all else of American interests. (more…)

  • JOHN AUSTEN. We need a Metro public inquiry in NSW to sort out the railway mess

    A recent opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Heaald effectively called for a stop to criticism of the NSW Government’s approach to Sydney railways – in particular Metro – and for everyone to get onboard the transport ‘revolution’. I can’t agree.   (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull and Barnaby Joyce

    Incredibly, it is being counted as a win for Malcolm Turnbull. He has got rid of his errant deputy – Barnaby Joyce will retire to the backbench, just as the Prime Minister advised him to.   (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. A hundred years of mateship?

     I was astonished!  An SBS news report about the Turnbull visit to Washington declared that the two countries were celebrating their hundred years of alliance. Where had this extraordinary snippet of history come from, I wondered? I then discovered that it was the Australian Embassy which had had been talking about 100 years of mateship. (more…)

  • DUNCAN GRAHAM. Where’s Ozzie – down here or up there?

    This month Foreign Minister Julie Bishop spoke at the Menzies Research Centre in London on Australia’s Foreign Policy White Paper published three months earlier.

    Her theme circled around getting ‘rules-based order’ into Asia, just like Europe where she says nationalism has subsided.

    Dr Euan Graham (no relation), Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, wrote in The Interpreter that the address was ‘probably Bishop’s most important foreign policy speech since her Fullerton lecture in Singapore (to the International Institute for Strategic Studies) last March.’

    However, its inconsistencies whizzed past the media obsessed with the Barnaby Joyce affair, bewildering those trying to understand Australia’s political location and Facebook likes. (more…)

  • John Tulloh. Macedonia – What’s in a name?

       ‘I experienced the most beautiful thing that any Greek soul can offer, by just doing my duty’, said an exhausted Melbourne woman, Zoi Petalidou. ‘Because this is how I see it: as my duty and what my soul needed’. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Holy by-election, Batman, this could be serious!

    Well, that depends on where you sit. In the effective numbers in the House of Representatives, it actually won’t make any difference whether Labor’s Ged Kearney or the Greens’ Alex Bhathal fills the vacancy – given the voting record of the Green incumbent Adam Bandt, Malcolm Turnbull has no hope of securing an extra crossbencher on anything that matters.   (more…)

  • CAVAN HOGUE. Report from the Quotidie Praeco Romanum on the visit of the vassal chieftain Flexus Taurus to the Imperial Capital.

    Emperor Trumpus Augustus graciously received in audience today a barbarian chieftain named Flexus Taurus representing the vassal province of Terra Australis.  Flexus Taurus assured the Emperor that Rome had no more loyal vassal than Terra Australis whose inhabitants were devoted to all aspects of Roman civilisation. (more…)