Category: Politics
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RAMESH THAKUR. What a Twitter-Happy Trump Might Mean For Nuclear Diplomacy
Far from making America great again, Trump is more likely to make America grope again in the darkness of the post-nuclear age. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull on his knees.
The recalcitrant right is, if anything, more antagonistic than ever as the season of peace and goodwill drags on. (more…)
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TIM COSTELLO. Abandoning generosity in Overseas Development Assistance.
Yet we are set to see our aid commitment as a percentage of national income drop to a record low level. Already since 2012 it has slumped from 0.36% of national income to 0.23%. This relegates us to the lower half of OECD countries in terms of generosity despite being near the top for economic capacity. In fact we were roughly three times as generous in the 1960s, even though today we are roughly three times as wealthy. (more…)
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JOHN TULLOH. Just a case of Israeli ‘chutzpah’ or the action of a village tyrant?
The apoplectic rage of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was something to behold. How dare the U.N., an organisation he takes little notice of anyway, condemn his ever expanding housing program for Jewish families in the contested West Bank and how dare the U.S. not even bother to veto it as has been the custom. (more…)
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RICHARD BUTLER. Julie and Julia in the Promised Land
Australia’s position on Israel’s policy of building settlements in occupied Palestinian land is contrary to that of a clear majority of countries. It is driven by domestic political calculations, by both sides of Australian politics. Foreign Minister Bishop’s unnecessary public reiteration of this position not only addresses a favoured domestic constituency, but seeks to reassure the Trump camp of our fealty. (more…)
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RAMESH THAKUR. AHRC President Gillian Triggs: a year of living dangerously. Part 2 of 3.
Asylum seekers and children in detention
There are four separate issues that typically get lumped into one confusing debate: the policies on asylum seekers, boats turnback and offshore detention; and the treatment of detainees. (more…)
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RAMESH THAKUR. AHRC President Gillian Triggs: a year of living dangerously. Part 1 of 3.
Increasingly, voters are frustrated with parties captured by special interests or catering to noisy minority activists. Citizens want competent governance that promotes the general welfare. (more…)
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WAYNE SWAN. The blindness of affluence and the need for a more inclusive form of prosperity.
This is a repost from 15 November 2016.
Just over two years ago I was in New York working with Larry Summers and Ed Balls to prepare a report for the Center for American Progress on inclusive prosperity. One morning I had the opportunity to walk the High Line and on the side of an old brick building was a large advertisement which read “the French aristocracy never saw it coming either.”
It was yet another reminder of the ground swell of support sweeping around the world for a more inclusive form of prosperity and it’s been an image seared in my mind ever since.
In early 2015 the Inclusive Prosperity Commission Report was published. Its first paragraph concluded that growing inequality is a threat to “the political system and for the idea of democracy itself”. (more…)
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PETER SAINSBURY. A timely call to end massive public subsidies of the private health insurance industry
The private health insurance industry is a parasite on the health system and the public purse. The government-funded rebate on private health insurance premiums goes to the insurers, not the health care providers, and allows the government almost no control over how its money is used to treat sickness and promote health.
If, for some reason unsupported by most of the evidence, the Government wishes to support private hospitals and private practitioners (as distinct from private health insurance companies), it would deliver itself, the public and patients a much better deal if it by-passed the useless middleman and negotiated with and paid private providers directly. (more…)
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How inefficient private health insurance, drug manufacturers and distributors drive up costs.
In parliament, forty years ago on 27 September 1967, Gough Whitlam described the factors driving up the high cost of healthcare in Australia. The same vested interests drive up costs in Australia at the expense of the taxpayer and the community. John Menadue. (more…)
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RAMESH THAKUR. UN rebuffs Netanyahu and Trump.
The United Nations Security Council’s pre-Christmas condemnation of Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied territories surprised many and infuriated Israel. The move was rebuff to both Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to incoming US President-elect Donald Trump. How did it happen? And what will be the likely ramifications. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Who said this and when.
Private health insurance is unfair and inefficient. It was because of this that the Whitlam Government established Medibank/Medicare. (more…)
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DANI RODRIK. Put globalisation to work for democracies.
A repost from the New York Times, Sunday Review, 17 September 2016.
A Chinese student once described his country’s globalization strategy to me. China, he said, opened a window to the world economy, but placed a screen on it. The country got the fresh air it needed — nearly 700 million people have been lifted from extreme poverty since the early 1980s — but kept mosquitoes out. (more…)
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WILLY BACH. Australia’s Collaboration in the CIA’s Secret War in Laos
US forces left Thailand in 1975-76 at the request of Thai authorities. SEATO was disbanded in 1977. Australia’s forward defence doctrine was quietly forgotten.
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull’s future.
The Chinese will be celebrating the year of the rooster. But for Malcolm Turnbull it is more likely to be just another year of the chicken. If not the feather duster.
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ROBERT MANNE. Yes Virginia, there is a solution to Australia’s asylum-seeker problem.
A new chapter of humanly decent policy with regard to asylum seekers, more reflective of the many fine and generous impulses in our history of welcoming refugees, can at long last be opened. For pity’s sake, let it be.
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HENRY SHERRELL, PETER MARES & ANNA BOUCHER. Another obstacle on the road to citizenship?
Making migrants ‘provisional’ risks Australia’s multicultural success. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. White man’s media – Rupert Murdoch’s faulty memory.
Rupert Murdoch has asserted again that he has never asked anything from any Prime Minister. (more…)
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MICHAEL KEATING. Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, 2016
The Government’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) released yesterday contains few changes and no surprises. The critical question is whether the path back to surplus is actually credible, especially given the many failed promises in the past. This post examines the government’s economic forecasts that underpin the budget numbers and whether the government’s approach to Budget repair is really viable.
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JOHN MENADUE. Series: We can say ‘no’ to the Americans. How the Fraser Government said ‘no’ on Chile and El Salvador.
In 1982, when I was Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, the Fraser Government ignored the pressure from the US that we should not help people in South America suffering at the hands of US-supported military governments. (more…)
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RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Series. We can say ‘no’ to the Americans
How Bill Hayden stood up to the Americans on Vietnam.
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IAN WEBSTER. Standing up for Medicare.
Fair access to health care is in the zeitgeist of European countries and Australia. The political sensitivities of this issue were demonstrated in the last election with the angst generated by the Labor Party’s “Mediscare” campaign. (more…)
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MICHAEL SAINSBURY. Packer kowtows after cash cow slough, Macau Crown row.
James Packer’s ignominious retreat from his once-lauded international strategy is continuing apace as 17 staff from Crown Resorts, the company he controls with 48% of its stock, continue to languish in Chinese detention centres. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull’s end of year report card.
It may well be that even if Turnbull has the will and nerve to try and move his ministry … finding convenient places to accommodate them without serious disruption will prove impossible. (more…)
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JOANNE WALLIS. Hollow hegemon: Australia’s declining influence in the Pacific
Australia has vital strategic interests in the Pacific but comparatively less influence with which to pursue them. Pacific states are largely unwilling to accept Australian leadership.
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Federal Government failure and State Government responses.
Various premiers have finally despaired of the torpor of the Turnbull administration. .. so the states have begun to go it on their own. (more…)
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Putin interferes in US election. In the past the CIA interfered in Japan.
The following is a New York Times Report of October 9, 1994. In a major covert operation of the cold war, the Central Intelligence Agency spent millions of dollars to support the conservative party that dominated Japan’s politics for a generation. (more…)
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QUENTIN DEMPSTER. NBN – Are you one of the lucky ones in Turnbull’s two-speed society?
If Australia was a corporation, we, its shareholders, would be justified in terminating CEO Malcolm Turnbull’s employment contract forthwith. (more…)
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ROBERT MANNE. The Australian’s attacks on Gillian Triggs.
The attack launched by the Australian on Gillian Triggs and the Human Rights Commission has been obsessive, petty, relentless, remorseless and ruthless. (more…)