Our bumble-footed Attorney-General, George Brandis, has finally got something right. The resignation of the Solicitor-General, Justin Gleeson, was the proper course of action for him to have taken.
Indeed, it was inevitable: when the first and second law officers of the nation are irrevocably divided, one of them must give way and if the first won’t, the second must. (more…)
This week the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released its Health expenditure Australia 2014–15 report.
This document contains a wealth of information about the way in which we allocate resources across our health system.
There are many interesting stories in this data which can help us understand how our health system works and what we can do to improve it.
CTP, Compulsory Third Party insurance (Green Slips) in NSW are looking increasingly like a scam. In theory, if you are injured in a motor vehicle accident that is not your fault, all ‘reasonable and necessary’ treatment is currently paid for by your insurer. People might assume this means good, standard medical practice. This is not so.
In principle, patients are entitled to immediate and early treatment but the first problem is that insurers have up to 3 months to decide if they are liable for the accident. Payment can be delayed until the liability is accepted. Sometimes when two cars collide both insurers decide that the other is liable, and neither will pay. This is quite common. (more…)
Are there shades of 1914 in today’s international collisions? So much is different. Talk of ‘parallels’ is probably overstatement. But there are disturbing continuities.
The setting in 1914
In 1914, the ‘Hobbesian’ fatalists who believe that nation states are always natural enemies, and that warfare is more or less inevitable, held sway in many nations.
The megafauna in the jungle of vested interests, that is, the ‘defence’ industries and their bankers, were extremely powerful. They funded the lobby groups, the ‘think-tanks’ of the pre-1914 world, the army leagues, navy leagues, universal service leagues, and so on. These were filled with sombre-faced ‘realists’, shunning ‘sentimentalism’, briefing journalists about the challenge of ‘inescapable geo-strategic realities’ to be met with ever more arms spending.
Most decision-makers knelt before the great God Deterrence. Supposedly, only superior armed force could guarantee peace. (more…)
Release ‘the Palace letters’! Why I am taking a Federal Court action against the National Archives to release correspondence between Sir John Kerr and the Queen.
When the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, took the unprecedented and divisive action of dismissing the Whitlam government, he claimed to have acted alone, to have ‘made up my mind on my own part’. In this solo performance, as insistently and repeatedly presented by Kerr, he at no stage raised even the possibility of Whitlam’s dismissal with the Queen. By ensuring her ignorance, Kerr claimed, he had ‘protected the Queen from getting involved’. Nothing could be further from the truth. (more…)
This is an edited extract of a talk delivered to the Integrity 20 Conference at Griffith University on October 25, 2016
If you had been told 30 years ago that Australia would create the least asylum seeker friendly institutional arrangements in the world, you would not have been believed.
In 1992 we introduced a system of indefinite mandatory detention for asylum seekers who arrive by boat. Since that time, we have accepted the idea that certain categories of refugees and asylum seekers can be imprisoned indefinitely; that those who are intercepted by our navy should be forcibly returned to the point of departure; that those who haven’t been able to be forcibly returned should be imprisoned indefinitely on remote Pacific Islands; and that those marooned on these island camps should never be allowed to settle in Australia even after several years.
How then has this come to pass? There are two main ways of explaining this. (more…)
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders’
Scathing Critique of Government’s Attacks on Civil Society
In 1998, after 14 years of haggling, the UN General Assembly finally adopted the landmark UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. After another 10 years of thinking about it, the Australian government agreed to sign on to the Declaration.
The Declaration’s purpose is to promote the work of individuals and civil society organisations which act to protect people’s fundamental human rights and to ensure that in doing so, they themselves do not become the subject of human rights violations.
In signing on, the Australian government agreed to issue a standing invitation to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, an independent expert appointed pursuant to the Declaration, to visit Australia. The Rapporteur’s role would be to evaluate the Commonwealth and State governments’ record in meeting the standards of protection the Declaration sets down. (more…)
On 3 October, taking another step on the road to a new cold war, Russia suspended the 16-year bilateral plutonium disposition agreement with the US. Are the two countries sleepwalking into a war that could cross the nuclear threshold – remembering that those sleepwalking are unaware of it at the time?
One possible pathway to slide into war would be to act on the growing chorus of calls in the Washington beltway for a no-fly-zone over Syria. In a bon mot often misattributed to Mark Twain that is so good it deserves to be true, God is said to have created war so Americans could learn geography. Russia–US tensions are rising again and could boil over if Hillary Clinton becomes president, which seems all but certain.
The threat of war comes less from Russian revanchist or imperial ambitions and more from the US insistence that no other power must have the economic resilience and military capability to resist Washington’s will, anywhere. Rooted in the triumphalism of US supremacy in the post-Cold War unipolar moment, this is both unsustainable and increasingly risky as US primacy wanes against the steady accretion of economic, military and diplomatic power by China and Russia’s recovery. The fierce US resistance of the inexorable tide of history also spells dangers for Australia. (more…)
The US elections campaign has set-up a deeply negative framework for the future management of US/Russia relations. If Hillary Clinton is President her past attraction to military solutions to foreign policy problems will need revision, if conflict is to be avoided.
Speaking at the Alfred Smith dinner, in New York, on October 20th, Hillary Clinton referred to a difficulty Donald Trump had apparently encountered in his use of a teleprompter, during a campaign event. She said to Trump:
“They’re hard to keep up with, and I’m sure it’s even harder when you’re translating from the original Russian”. The audience was, largely, amused.
This wasn’t merely a joke. It reflected her assessment that there was domestic political mileage in hostility towards Russia and Putin and harm to be done to her opponent by calling attention to, and misrepresenting his stated preference for trying to get on with Russia, rather than fight it. Another Clinton aside illustrated further her assessment of the “Russia card”: “We all know who Putin wants to win, and it’s not me”. (more…)
In a long and often exasperating presidential campaign, Americans and the world have been subjected to Donald Trump’s odious and often incoherent rhetoric, and from both sides much vitriol and endless accusations of deceit, crookedness and sexual misconduct.
In this largely policy-free contest, Hillary Clinton’s approach to the immense challenges facing the United States has escaped serious scrutiny. Yet, how America views its place in a rapidly transforming world has far-reaching implications not only for security at home and abroad, but for the economy, financial markets, the environment and much else. (more…)
I have been an advocate of Working Holiday Programs (WHPs) for over 40 years. These programs were an excellent opportunity to ‘foster closer ties and cultural exchanges between Australia and partner countries with particular emphasis on young adults.’. The programs were reciprocal.
But the nature of WHP’s have changed dramatically in recent years. In Australia they have become mainly labor market and cheap labor programs.
A recent report of the Fair Work Ombudsman has drawn attention to widespread exploitation and underpayment of working holiday makers. (more…)
Those eminent jurists Malcolm Turnbull and George Brandis are normally very careful with the words they use; indeed, Brandis did his best to bore a senate committee rigid as he spent many minutes explaining exactly what he meant by the term “consult.”
But in spite of their learning and erudition, our latter day Perry Masons seem unable to distinguish between the difference between “refute” (which is the one they constantly use) and “rebut” (which what they presumably mean). (more…)
It is more than timely that focus on increasing inequality in Australia include recognition of a massive contributing factor: the lack of affordable housing, especially for older women.
Several groups have been identified as severely disadvantaged by the lack of affordable housing: unemployed young people, single parent families, and low paid workers who need to live near their place of work. Older women, especially single older women need to be recognised as facing an increased risk of homelessness.
How has this come about? (more…)
In the normal world, the question of whether a gun could fire seven rounds or five rounds would be largely academic; if there was a dispute it could be expected to be settled swiftly and uneventfully.
But in the confused and murky world of Malcolm Turnbull, in which reality and fantasy merge into a nightmare and every step seems mired in quicksand, with progress tortuous and salvation impossible – well, that’s just another average week.
Within four short days what should have been the merest glitch has developed into major shit storm in which Turnbull and his predecessor, Tony Abbott, are trading accusations of deceit and engulfed in righteous outrage which will delight the opposition and the media for days, if not weeks to come. (more…)
In the coming weeks I will be posting articles on the high costs and corporate nature of pathology in Australian. The following article by Stephen Duckett in The Conversation, even though posted in February this year, helps set the scene. John Menadue
The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) set the cat among the pathology pigeons late last year. One of the government’s flagged changes, estimated to save around A$100 million a year, was to abolish the bulk-billing incentive Labor introduced in 2009. (more…)
My name is Professor Jenny Hocking, I am a Monash University academic and Gough Whitlam’s biographer. I have launched an historic action against the National Archives of Australia to release the ‘Palace letters’ relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government, withheld from the Australian people at the behest of the Queen. (See https://chuffed.org/project/release-the-palace-letters for donation links.)
The Palace letters, secret correspondence between the Governor-General Sir John Kerr and the Queen at the time of the dismissal, are the final missing piece in the puzzle on the most controversial episode in Australia’s political history. (more…)
Australia Day and Anzac Day are months away.
But I’m getting in early. It’s beyond time Australia cast off these sturdy cultural crutches that both, somehow, define national birth, so we can discover who and what we truly are.
Australia Day, celebrating British invasion in 1788, and Anzac Day, marking Australia’s involvement in the failed invasion of the Ottoman empire in 1915, are but relatively recent, fleeting moments of note among innumerable others in our 60,000-year continental human history. (more…)
ASIO Director-General is under-reported when he says anti-Islamic groups also threaten Australian security.
‘Incredible’ is a word over-used in the media when all they mean is ‘very’. So when something truly unbelievable happens, we have no description ready for it. In recent days, while American and Australian leaders were debating their various degrees of credibility, a revelation from the Director-General of ASIO, Duncan Lewis, was ignored by the mainstream media except the Guardian online and AAP (Reclaim Australia in Asio’s sights, intelligence chief tells senators, 19 October 2016). But what he said was close to incredible, at least for those with long memories of the domestic spy agency. (more…)
The late Professor Des Ball of the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre came as close as any on being a public intellectual on nuclear strategy.
While some of his counterparts in the United States felt that using nuclear weapons was feasible and sound, Ball, who died last week, issued his pieces with mighty caveats and sensible qualifications.
Controlling the process of deploying weapons of mass extermination in an active theatre, far from being deemed obscene, was lauded by advocates. Human sense will always prevail, somehow. (more…)
Of all the indicators of Australia’s evolving relationship with China, Crown Casino’s current problems are some of the most striking, unexpected and revealing. They present an unflattering but painfully accurate vignette of this country’s increasingly dependent relationship with the People’s Republic.
We have all become accustomed to the idea that Australia’s economic future is inextricably bound up with China’s. The Australian dollar is increasingly seen as a proxy for the health of the Chinese economy.Likewise, there are growing concerns that China’s real estate bubble may be infecting ours, as wealthy Chinese look for seemingly more secure investment opportunities outside China. (more…)
Almost everyone agrees that Budget repair will only be possible if both the revenue side of the Budget is reviewed as well as the expenditure side. In that context, the tax concessions for superannuation have loomed as a prime target.
Indeed, the Treasury Statement of Tax Expenditures shows that the annual cost of the present superannuation concessions is almost $30 billion and rising. Furthermore, it appears that 37 per cent of the total value of these concessions flows to people in the top decile of the income distribution. (more…)
There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton trumped her contender on domestic economic and social policy issues, migration, and proper respect for women. She has neutralised the personal emails and Clinton Foundation questions. Barring the unforeseeable, she will cruise to victory next month.
On foreign policy, her words and what she left unsaid left many important questions: and Trump more often found himself on the right side of the foreign policy argument, for those who follow these things. Such debates proceed according to a free flow of their own and important issues easily get submerged and diverted as the caravan rapidly moves on. Here are my notes for what they are worth. (more…)
Hamish McDonald wrote this article in the Saturday Paper on October 1, 2016. The paper was also a tribute to Des Ball who died recently. He was the best informed and independent commentator on Pine Gap. The following is an introduction to Hamish McDonald’s article with a full link at the end to the Saturday Paper. John Menadue
It’s one of two sacred sites to which you can drive from Alice Springs. The other is the red stone monolith of Uluru, said by the Pitjantjara to bring down a curse on anyone who removes a rock.
This one, though, is the huddle of gleaming white fibreglass domes known as Pine Gap which, if penetrated by the uninitiated, could threaten the security of the West. (more…)
This is Frank Brennan’s most recent post of Facebook.
When interviewed by Fran Kelly this morning, Malcolm Turnbull suggested it was a simple binary choice: strong border protection including the cruel, endless warehousing of proven refugees (including children) on places like Nauru OR deaths at sea. It’s not a simple binary choice, and he knows it is not. If the government’s priority were safety at sea they would be transparent with us in how they intercept boats and send the people back to Indonesia, being so concerned about the safety of those very people on the boats. But that’s not their main priority. Their main priority and their main concern is stopping people coming to Indonesia and then leaving Indonesia heading to Australia seeking asylum.
There are three options: 1. Stopping and turning back the boats AND warehousing refugees on Nauru and Manus Island; 2. Stopping and turning back boats AND resettling the proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island in a timely manner; and 3 NOT stopping and turning boats back. Option 2 deserves consideration by our major political parties when they are satisfied that those on the boats are not fleeing persecution IN Indonesia and when they provide through UNHCR and IOM adequate processing and security IN Indonesia. Government, the Opposition, and refugee advocates should do more work on Option 2. By positing a choice only between Option 1 and Option 3, we are either positing the impossible objective of a hermetically sealed border or making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ
Professor of Law
Australian Catholic University
Spin designed to dehumanise and demonise asylum seekers.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of one of the most divisive national election campaigns in Australia’s recent history: the Tampa affair.
Coming just weeks after the September 11 terror attacks, the pitched battle between John Howard and Kim Beazley drew heavily on fear and panic. The divisions of 2001 are not only still with us, but they are far deeper today.
The September 11 terrorist attacks in the US were given a sharp-knife twist here in Australia. The country was still entangled in the issue of the MV Tampa and its cargo of more than 400 desperate asylum seekers. And there was a public outcry over the events surrounding the interception of the SIEV-4 and its 223 asylum seekers – some of whom, politicians claimed, had thrown their children overboard.
The way the media frames public debate on asylum seekers and their impact on Australia was forged in this time. Three key strategies helped achieve this. (more…)
From 1949 to 2007, Australian federal governments were defeated at the polls on only five occasions. Voters’ reluctance to rock the political boat over those six decades was not necessarily a reflection of great satisfaction with politics. Rather it was a symptom of their desire for, at least, stability.
A one-term government was unthinkable then. Governments were generally regarded as committed to nation-building and governing in accordance with a set of transparent political values. Leaders were not embarrassed to talk about their sense of vision and purpose; political idealism was expected. (more…)
Our Attorney General George Brandis states as an unviolable credo that a barrister must give fearless and impartial advice at all times.
This is a legal ideal, and perhaps one that he believes in, but the fact is that he, like all his predecessors in the office, faces an irreconcilable conflict of interest.
Certainly he is a lawyer, and a very important one: he is the first law officer of Australia. But he is also predominantly a politician; a senior government minister. And as such, he has an obligation to both prosecute and defend the decisions of the cabinet and the party room, even if – indeed, especially if – he disagrees with them. (more…)
Another week, another stuff up. Once again Malcolm Turnbull’s year of delivery has delivered a parliamentary prat fall.
This one was unprecedented, but not actually serious: for the first time ever, the government voted against itself. The mistake was quickly corrected, but there was considerable embarrassment in the process, an embarrassment compounded when the offending minister, Kelly O’Dwyer, was unable next day to explain the legislation of which she was in charge during the fiasco. (more…)
Legal advice on a government decision to go to war.
The legal spat between the Commonwealth Solicitor-General and the Attorney- General is potentially more serious than it might appear.
It is not uncommon that certain actions or proposed actions by governments raise either constitutional or international legal issues of questionable validity. In this context the Governor-General, the Parliament, the bureaucracy, the military and others in the official sphere may seek assurance that what they or the country are being committed to do is legal. Should it not be legal there may be serious personal consequences for them.
New Mandala co-founder Nicholas Farrelly reflects on a remarkable and contentious reign.
The 70-year reign of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej started and ended inauspiciously. It was a family tragedy that unexpectedly brought Bhumibol to the throne. He went on to become the world’s longest serving monarch but, in death, his formidable legacy is deeply tarnished by the ambitions of those who fought hardest to defend him.
In 1946, the untimely and mysterious death of his older brother, King Ananda Mahidol, catapulted the young Prince Bhumibol into a role for which he was unprepared. King Ananda died violently in Bangkok’s Grand Palace. He was found in bed with a pistol shot to the head. To this day, nobody knows who pulled the trigger. Forensic reports suggest that neither suicide nor an accident were likely. Whispered speculation about regicide has continued ever since. (more…)