Category: Politics

Graham revealed in his memoir that he wrote his first speech in Brisbane in May 1945, aged 10, at the time of VE Day, and delivered it to his mother. In 1946 he scored a job with ABC Radio reading scripts of school broadcasts – “I learned a lot about the use of English written to be spoken”. He didn’t know then that this experience would be life-forming: his speeches over the years stand out as words meant to be heard as well as to be read, a different sort of writing altogether.  
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Writing in The Guardian Alfred McCoy explains “how the heroin trade explains the US-UK failure in Afghanistan“. In that war-torn country opium is the farmers’ most viable cash crop, and the Taliban, once opposed to drugs, are now financed by the opium trade.

Canberra Times journalist Crispin Hull makes a strong case for fundamental tax reform, not only to make the collection of tax fairer, but also to boost public revenue. He also puts up for consideration the idea of a universal basic income, an idea gaining currency in many European countries, including Finland and Scotland.

Peter Martin writing in the Fairfax Press explains the vulnerabilities in our electricity supply industry. He shows how good fortune and good management have saved us from blackouts over recent weeks of hot weather. The weaknesses and vulnerabilities are not where the Commonwealth Government and the coal industry would have us believe they lie.

“For the vast majority of owner-occupiers and would-be buyers, falling house prices are good news”. This is a quote from The Age editorial of January 6 – a refreshing reminder that rising house prices over recent years have not owner-occupiers wealthier. In fact for many high house prices have simply allowed them to get into debt.

Robert Reich on the great Trump con.

Our ridiculous frenzy of road construction will swallow up resources for two decades – Canberra Times.

When it comes to refugees, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Dutton are hypocrites – Julian Burnside

Even the UK courts believe the UK’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia are wrong – which is why protesters were acquitted of criminal damage this week. In addition to selling military equipment for Saudi Arabia attacks in Yemen, BAE in Australia is a major funder of the Australian War Memorial with a theatre named in its honour. It is also a funder of the ‘independent’ think tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The Australian Chair is a former senior Australian official.

The growing support for preferential voting in the United States

Trump shows a host of personality disorders – Charles Blow in the New York Times

African gangs just the latest ruse to stoke national insecurity – Jack Waterford

Indonesians will not be getting cheap and easy-to-obtain Australian visas available to Malaysians and Singaporeans. Australian campaigners seeking better access for Indonesian tourists have been officially told there will be no changes. This is despite the Republic giving Australians free visas-on-arrival and the Australian Government claiming it wants more Indonesian visitors.  (more…)

This week’s ABC Four Corners program that revisited, after 30 years, Chris Masters’ revelations of police corruption in Queensland, “The Moonlight State”, brings to mind how widespread corruption in Australian politics has been since then.  (more…)

Pressure is building on the Prime Minister to intervene in the long-running dispute over the release of the ‘Palace letters’, the secret correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General Sir John Kerr in the months before Kerr’s 1975 dismissal of the Whitlam government. These letters are held by the National Archives in Canberra where they have been designated as ‘personal’ not official correspondence and embargoed ‘on the instructions’ of the Queen until at least 2027, with her private secretary retaining a final veto over their release even after that date. The reality is that we as Australians do not own our history while these historic letters, written at the height of our greatest constitutional crisis, remain hidden from us at the behest of the Queen.   (more…)

So here we go—2018, the year of delivery.

Or was that 2017, or maybe 2016? No matter – 2018 will be the year Malcolm Turnbull’s government seizes the initiative, surging forward to cement its underrated achievements to take control of politics and the economy.  (more…)

(In this article in Foreign Affairs Professor Tom Nichols points to great  public ignorance in the US about the world and the role of the US. The result is disturbing.)

In 2014, following the Russian invasion of Crimea, The Washington Post published the results of a poll that asked Americans about whether the United States should intervene militarily in Ukraine. Only one in six could identify Ukraine on a map; the median response was off by about 1,800 miles. But this lack of knowledge did not stop people from expressing pointed views. In fact, the respondents favored intervention in direct proportion to their ignorance. Put another way, the people who thought Ukraine was located in Latin America or Australia were the most enthusiastic about using military force there. (more…)

The republic is now emerging as a key election issue, with the Prime Minister a mere observer in its wake. In considering the powers of a president in a new Republic it is important to affirm that government can only be formed with the confidence of the House of Representatives. (more…)

This is the season for personal nostalgia. In my case, personal perspectives inevitably shade into the political. On 1 January Queensland Cabinet papers from 1987 were released; and as a further reminder of that era, on 4 January a state funeral was held for Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen who had died shortly before Christmas. (more…)

India’s decision on 21 December to slap overnight a 30% tariff increase on Australian imports of lentils and chick peas is just not what a stable, orderly trade system needs. But even so, do we need another discriminatory bilateral so-called ‘free trade’ agreement with yet another country (India) when all these taken together are a recipe for future trade wars as occurred in the 1930s.  (more…)

A journey through a land of extreme poverty: welcome to America – the Guardian.

Australia’s least competitive industries are earning super-profits Ross Gittins  – Canberra Times.

Michael Lewis writes on Trump’s campaign against Department of Agriculture scientists in Vanity Fair.

Americans can spot election meddling because they’ve been doing it for years – the Guardian

A quarter of the World’s land will be permanently drier if Paris climate goals not met: Study

NBN expert, Paul Budde laments ‘second-rate’ network – Newcastle Herald

Trump and the liar’s paradox from The Washington Post  http://wapo.st/2CDf6a4?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.2a8e5bb5f78c

In the Fairfax Media John Hewson’s New Year contribution warns that we should not repeat squandering policy opportunities as we did in 2017. “In almost every area of public policy the real challenges have simply been kicked down the road by an obsession with short-term, opportunistic, mostly negative, point scoring and blame shifting.”

In a re-broadcast of an ABC Religion and Ethics Report from May 2017, essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra examines the worldwide sources of popular rage that have led to phenomena such as Brexit, Trump’s election, the re-emergence of right-wing nationalism, religious dogmatism, civil unrest, and a general rejection of cosmopolitanism and liberal secularism. He frames his analysis in terms of the competing philosophies of Voltaire and Rousseau, and concludes that a path to reconciliation lies in a rediscovery of the values of solidarity and compassion.