Category: Politics

  • PAUL BARRATT. Managing ANZUS in the age of Trump. Quo vadis series.

     

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Summary.  Australia should do a ‘really deep stocktake of what is in our vital national interests and what we are prepared to sign up to’ . (more…)

  • The Global Strategic Landscape – present realities, and prospects under Trump. Quo vadis series.

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Australia should call on all the nuclear weapon states – in particular, the two major arsenal-holders US and Russia – to return to the prudent protocols and courtesies of classical great power diplomacy, within the protocols and disciplines of the UN Security Council system of global collective security. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Trump – Seize the moment. Quo vadis series.

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Summary. We have a unique moment to do something Australia has never done – make a rational distinction between our national interests and our enduring regard for the US. (more…)

  • CAVAN HOGUE. Has the alliance got us into more trouble than it has got us out of? Quo vadis series.

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Summary. Trump does give us an opportunity to do things we should have done long ago. (more…)

  • ANDREW FARRAN. ANZUS – Reality check coming soon! Quo vadis series.

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Summary. We need diplomacy of the highest order, not military interventions which, as we have seen, generally make conflict situations worse. (more…)

  • RAMESH THAKUR. ANZUS in the time of Trump. Quo vadis series.

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Summary. Trump has the potential to mark an inflection point in the evolution of Australia as a self-confident and independent Indo-Pacific actor.

    (more…)

  • GARRY WOODARD. Trump and ANZUS. Quo vadis series.

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Summary. Will Australia allow itself to be drawn into Sino-American tensions in the incorrect belief that it has no choice under ANZUS or ‘five eyes’. (more…)

  • RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The Trump Presidency and Australia. Quo vadis series.

     

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS

     Summary. Our relationship with the US is of course very important and substantial. This does not mean that we should be seen as not responding quickly to the greatly changed world of 2016. (more…)

  • MICHAEL KEATING. Donald Trump and the ANZUS Alliance – Quo vadis series.

    Quo vadis – Australian foreign policy and ANZUS.

    Summary. Dennis Richardson, the Secretary of the Defence Department, recently informed us that the ANZUS Alliance was ongoing, irrespective of who was President of the United States. Of course, this is true, but so what? What was the point of Richardson’s admonition, and what was he hoping to achieve? It would be most unfortunate If Richardson’s comment was a crude attempt to stop the much-needed debate in Australia about how we should adjust to changing circumstances in the Asia-Pacific region and develop a more independent foreign policy as advocated in numerous articles posted on this blog. To my mind it is now more important than ever for Australia to forge an independent foreign policy, given the uncertainties attaching to future American policies and priorities under President Trump. (more…)

  • TIM HARCOURT. Trump, Trade and jobs

    Australia needs to remember that embracing open markets can only be done with well developed market institutions and social safety nets.

    Whether you love or loathe the President-elect of the United States, Donald Trump can get an economic policy issue media attention, as well as himself. Take the issue of trade and jobs, for example. After being a niche research topic that a few trade and labour economists (like me) were involved in, but few others in the media paid attention to, the Trumpster has thrust trade and jobs into the headlines. It dominated the presidential election campaign especially in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (which remarkably Hilary Clinton didn’t visit) and even at the APEC Summit at Lima. I was gob smacked to hear Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Trade Minister Steve Ciobo talking about trade deals that are “good for workers” all the time at press conferences in Peru. Although back in 1992, the first President George Bush said he signed the free trade agreement with Canada (the predecessor to NAFTA) because he wanted to create “good jobs at good wages.” Whether he did achieve this wish in reality it seems, can be tested by the 2016 election outcome, where blue collar voters rebelled against free trade agreements. (more…)

  • ANDREW MARKUS. Australians more alarmed about state of politics than impact of migration and minorities.

    There is no shortage of expert commentary on current shifts in public opinion, understood as a revolt against political elites.

    Within Europe and the United States interpretations are supported by the British vote to leave the European Union, the increasing popularity of far-right parties campaigning on anti-immigration and nationalist platforms, and the success of Donald Trump in winning the US presidency.

    In Australia, commentators point to instability in politics, elections that fail to return clear majorities, the loss of office of first-term governments in Queensland and Victoria, growing minor party representation in the Senate, and public unease at immigration policy and the Muslim presence. (more…)

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. The travesty of Britain’s greatest legacy – parliamentary government

     

    To my generation which saw the almost bloodless collapse of the Soviet Union, Trump’s election is small beer in the scale of improbabilities. But the combination of Trump and Brexit, so improbable scarcely a year ago, raises a more astonishing proposition.

    It is that so much of our hopes for stability and the success of Western liberalism should now centre so largely on Germany! The question can even be put in the terms Disraeli used in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war and Bismarck’s Proclamation of the German Empire in the Palace of Versailles: “Is it to be a European Germany or a German Europe?”  (more…)

  • CHRISTIAN DOWNIE. Why China and Europe should form the world’s most powerful ‘climate bloc’.

     

    Filling the void created by Donald Trump!

    It seems almost certain that US President-elect Donald Trump will walk away from the Paris climate agreement next year. In the absence of US leadership, the question is: who will step up?

    Sadly this is not a new question, and history offers some important lessons. In 2001 the world faced a similar dilemma. After former vice-president Al Gore lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush, the newly inaugurated president walked away from the Kyoto Protocol, the previous global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (more…)

  • MARK BEESON. Trump’s America: the irresponsible stakeholder?

    Will China fill the void that will be created by Trump?

    How times change. A decade or so ago, former World Bank president and deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick suggested to China that it needed to become a “responsible stakeholder”. Even at the time this advice looked slightly condescending and patronising. Now it looks bizarrely out of kilter with a rapidly evolving international order.

    In the twilight of the Obama administration, Xi Jinping is the most important leader at the current APEC summit in Peru. His keynote speech in support of trade liberalisation means he is also the current standard-bearer for continuing economic integration and the sorts of institutions that are supposed to facilitate it. (more…)

  • RICHARD LETTS. National Opera Review: propping up the 19th Century

     

    The National Opera Review has reported. Instigator George Brandis is probably well enough satisfied.

    The Terms of Reference are pure Brandis. The name is National Opera Review, the game is a review of the four larger companies funded by the Commonwealth. Excluded are the Victorian Opera and the numerous small companies that are the growing edge of opera in Australia. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Trump, Turnbull and ANZUS.

    So with a single bound across the Pacific, Trumpery has come to Australia – or at least to our elected leaders, which is the troubling bit.

    Last week Malcolm Turnbull was inveighing against the elites – yes, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, the multimillionaire lord of Wentworth, Mr Harbourside Mansion himself.

    His complaint that the “elitist” ABC was talking about section 18c – the ABC, not the manic Murdoch press which has spent relentless months on the same subject until Turnbull was forced to throw a chunk of raw meat to his right wing predators in the form of an inquiry, and the forthcoming dismemberment of the unlucky Gillian Triggs, who has been designated as official blood sacrifice. (more…)

  • IAN McAULEY. Opportunity Knocks: The Economics Of A Trump Victory

    There’s ever reason to believe Donald Trump policies will hurt Australia. But there’s some important differences and insulation. Trump’s election has energised Australia’s far right. Abbott, Abetz, Bernardi, Canavan, Christiansen and Hanson have all said, in one way or another, that Trump’s victory vindicates their own policies.

    On the day after the election the Telegraph portrayed Trump as America’s saviour, and blamed Obama for everything that has gone wrong in America over the last eight years. (more…)

  • ROBERT MICKENS. Ugliness has trumped decency, kindness and goodwill 

    Pundits have failed or refused to acknowledge the chief motive for Trump’s victory – the deep and visceral hatred so many Americans have for the Clintons, particularly towards Hillary Clinton

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  • GEOFFREY HARCOURT. The pluses and minuses of globalisation

     

    Donald Trump’s victory in the American Presidential election has brought into prominence greatly divergent views concerning the merits or demerits of globalisation. Here we set out the criteria that need to be met before globalisation can be regarded as a world welfare improving institutional arrangement.

    First, and absolutely fundamental and necessary, is the need for nation states engaged in trade and international borrowing and lending to implement domestic policies that establish sustained full employment of their work forces and normal capacity working of their existing stocks of capital goods and human capital. (more…)

  • IAN MACPHEE. Peter Dutton has it wrong on Malcolm Fraser.

    The attack by Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, on Malcolm Fraser’s refugee policies is outrageous. We have had a succession of inadequate immigration ministers in recent years but Dutton is setting the standards even lower. Yet, Turnbull recently declared him to be “an outstanding immigration minister”. The Liberal Party has long ceased to be liberal.

    Dutton’s attack on Fraser’s refugee policies grabbed headlines he had hoped for. The SMH headline was “Peter Dutton attacks Malcolm Fraser’s refugee legacy”. The Australian’s was: “Peter Dutton says Malcolm Fraser’s immigration policy to blame for crime gangs.” These were the headlines that Dutton must have wished for after his interview with the extremist Andrew Bolt on Sky News. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Peter Dutton has got it wrong in blaming Malcolm Fraser on refugees.

     

    This is a slightly edited text of an interview with Elizabeth Jackson on The Saturday AM program on ABC radio on 19 November 2016-11-19

    ELIZABETH JACKSON: The former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and former secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs has hit back at comments from the Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, that Australia is now paying for the mistakes of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser.

    In a television interview Mr Dutton said Malcolm Fraser made mistakes in bringing some people to Australia the 1970s and he said, “We’re seeing that today.”

    Mr Dutton said many foreign fighters getting involved in conflict zones were the children or grandchildren of migrants who came in the 1970s.

    John Menadue was a senior public servant under both Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser in the 1970s and in the 1980s in the Immigration portfolio.

    I asked John Menadue whether Australia was, in fact, now paying for Malcolm Fraser’s mistakes. (more…)

  • MACK WILLIAMS. Trump : Getting our priorities right

     

    Is China going to fill the void?

    The media-hyped flurry to try to establish the likely policy guidelines of the Trump administration is timely and natural but should be approached very cautiously. Not only is it virtually impossible at this moment to reach many definitive conclusions it is no less easy to identify the likely key players in the new administration – even within the close-in transition team as the sacking of Governor Christie and his cohort has illustrated. At the same time Australia needs to undertake a proper review of the major strategic trends in our region which have been developing for some years – and pre-date Trump. Concerns about the implications for our region stemming from Trump’s comments in the campaign certainly served to accelerate those trends. But we are where we are today because of the fundamentally changing strategic scene. (more…)

  • DAVID PEETZ. An industrial relations furphy.

    The media excitement surrounding the theatrics of former Senator Bob Day and current Senator Rod Culleton seemed to obscure the real issues facing the federal government’s industrial relations legislation.

    The government failed to put bills re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), and a new, government-appointed Registered Organisations Commission, onto the notice paper for discussion in the Senate when it was expected to. Most in the media took this to mean that Day and eccentric One Nation Senator Culleton are critical to passage of the bills. (more…)

  • ALLAN PATIENCE. What’s Next After Neo-Liberalism?

    The evidence is now irrefutable that the neo-liberal project that has dominated public policy across the major economies for nearly four decades now has been an unmitigated disaster. If nothing else, those who voted for Donald Trump have made that abundantly clear. In Australia neo-liberal (or economic rationalist) policies have resulted in wages stagnation, widespread job insecurity and declining living standards for the majority of the population. Neo-liberal taxation strategies favouring big corporations and the rich are a major cause of the fiscal crises facing governments at all levels across the country. Gold-plated promises that a deregulated economy, freed-up market, and pared-back state would see the majority of Australians benefiting from the trickle-down effects of economic growth have gone up in smoke. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Donald Trump – a change agenda?

     

    First the Poms abandoned common sense in backing Brexit and now the Yanks have voted against their own best interests (and those of the rest of the civilized world) by electing Donald J Trump.

    This was not a rational decision; it was the ultimate political gesture, a defiant middle finger towards what they imagined was The Establishment, by which they actually meant anything and anyone they resented.

    It was the act of a demented driver who deliberately veers across the median strip into the oncoming traffic: he knows it will certainly harm him, he may not survive, but with any luck he will take a couple of expensive imported limousines and their fat cat passengers with him. There will be carnage and mayhem, but what a spectacle – that will show them all. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Donald Trump – a false prophet and implications for Australia.

     

    Trump prides himself in being a change-agent, but he really wants to restore the past and protect privilege. He will also do a great deal of social damage.

    Analysis of the US election tells us that many American ‘working class whites’ were sick of elites, whether they were in business, the media, Wall St, the banks, political parties, government and Washington with all of its special interests. These Americans in the rust belt states around the Great Lakes felt that the elites were not listening to them and that the political left was more concerned about culture wars and gender politics than the dignity of work. They knew that globalization and trade agreements brought great benefits for the 1%, but they were left behind. (more…)

  • ALLAN PATIENCE. The Tragedy of Trump

     

    If nothing else Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election is compelling evidence that the neo-liberal project has been a catastrophic public policy failure. Blindly believing that he is their saviour, the victims of neo-liberalism’s caustic consequences have seized the moment by voting for Donald Trump. They view him as some kind of Old Testament prophet who has come to lead them out of neo-liberal captivity – a saviour who will root out the causes of their humiliation, anguish and anger. They are convinced that he is one of them – outsiders who are losing in the great game of globalisation from above. They see him as a leader in the vanguard of a new and bitter class struggle against snobbish elites with their ivy-league degrees, machine men in government, bullying bosses of the big banks, left-wing media commentators, and big businesses that have off-shored their jobs. (more…)

  • FRANK BRENNAN SJ. A Welcome Deal and an Acceptable Legislative Compromise

     

    The Turnbull government has struck a deal with the USA which provides hope at last for the 1600 proven refugees on Manus Island and Nauru. There’s still a lot of work to be done before these refugees, including children, can get on with their lives after three years of unnecessary, hopeless agony. I welcome the government’s decision, and await the further detail.

    Sunday’s announcement was packaged in the usual Canberra wrapping with lots of military brass, restating the need to smash people smuggling rings, keeping the boats stopped, and turning back boats when it is safe and legal to do so. No boats have arrived in the last 840 days. 29 boats have been turned back. (more…)

  • JOHN AUSTEN. Sydney Metro – a disaster in store.

    The public has been given no serious justification for why Sydney needs a separate, distinct and very expensive new rail system like Metro. All we have is a very big bill and more on the horizon.

    Sydney could spend almost as much on its metro rail as Australia will pay for its new submarines, with little to no scrutiny of whether metro is the right solution and whether it might actually be working to the detriment of the existing commuter rail network and therefore to the detriment of Sydney’s economy and people overall. (more…)

  • What so many people don’t get about the US working class.

    In this article in the Harvard Business Review, Joan C Williams says:

    “If you want to connect with white working class voters, place economics at the centre. … Trade deals are far more expensive than we have treated them because job development and training programs need to be counted as part of their cost. … At a deeper level, both parties need an economic program that can deliver middle class jobs. Republicans have one. Unleash American business. Democrats? They remain obsessed with cultural issues. … Back when the blue collar voters used to be solidly democratic, good jobs were at the core of the progressive agenda. … The biggest today for me and other Americans is continued class cluelessness. If we don’t take steps to bridge the class culture gap, when Trump proves unable to bring steel back to Youngstown, Ohio, the consequences could turn dangerous.”

    Joan C Williams is a Distinguished Professor Law and Founding Director of the Center of WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.