Category: Politics

  • China’s deepening engagement in Australian society: is it a concern?

    The PRC government’s influence in domestic Australia – long active but not altogether visible or much remarked – is now emerging as a big, contentious and potentially disruptive issue in the relationship, and a thorny one for policy-makers. In some respects, it may be more challenging and more pressing than other more prominent issues like the South China Sea. Unlike PRC actions in the South China Sea it is difficult to ascertain what precise actions the PRC is taking within Australia and what influence these actions are having. (more…)

  • GILES PARKINSON. Coalition launches fierce attack against wind and solar after blackout.

     

    The Coalition government launched a ferocious attack against wind and solar energy after the major South Australian blackout, even though energy minister Josh Frydenberg and the grid operators admit that the source of energy had nothing to do with catastrophic outage.

    Frydenberg, however, lined up with prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, independent Senator Nick Xenophon and a host of conservative commentators, including Andrew Bolt, Alan Moran, the ABC’s Chris Ullmann, and Fairfax’ Brian Robins to exploit the blackout to question the use of renewable energy.

    Frydenberg used the blackout to continue his persistent campaign against the renewable energy targets of state Labor governments in South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, saying that the blackout was proof that these targets were “unrealistic.” (more…)

  • BOB KINNAIRD. The Coalition’s Backpacker tax and work rights package

     

    The Coalition’s backpacker policy announcement yesterday focussed on tax rates but also includes a significant expansion of work rights under Australia’s working holiday maker program (WHM or 417 and 462 visas). …. The Coalition’s main aim is to provide an increased supply of cheap and captive foreign labour to the agricultural sector on a long-term basis. But the new policy applies to WHMs in all sectors. (more…)

  • FRANK BRENNAN SJ. Another win for ‘David’ Timor against ‘Goliath’ Australia

    David Timor has once again scored a win against Goliath Australia in the international legal forum. Last time it was in the International Court of Justice which took strong exception to Australia’s raiding of the office of a lawyer involved in the preparation of Timor Leste’s case, though admittedly Australia’s one ad hoc judge did dissent on key points from the other 15 judges! (more…)

  • JAMES GERRAND. Cambodia Crackdown. Part 2 of 2.

    Part 2   Hun Sen’s Red Brotherhood

    Hanoi cannot be seen to be interfering in Cambodian affairs but the Vietnamese military has cemented close ties with the Hun Sen regime – none closer than with the Prime Minister’s personal Bodyguard Unit (BHQ), their go-to-man being the Deputy Commander Dieng Sarun. General Sarun’s shadowy Senaneak Youth League (read pro-CPP thugs) mounted the street protest that led to the brutal beating of two opposition MPs by several of his BHQ soldiers outside the National Assembly in October last year.   (more…)

  • ANDREW FARRAN. ‘We must get out of Syria’

     

    A comment in support of Richard Woolcott’s blog: “Australia’s Shambolic Policy on Syria – Up Shi’ite Creek Without a Paddle. – We must get out of Syria” 

    Richard Woolcott has stated with clear reasons why we should get out of the Middle East conflict which threatens to broaden and involve us in an expanded war that is not in our interests. One wonders how any times these points need to be made to the government before it acknowledges the folly of its situation in Iraq/Syria.  (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. ‘Faster economic growth demands better chief executives’.

     

    There was a revealing heading in a recent article by Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the SMH, ‘Faster growth demands better chief executives’. He concluded his article by pointing to the need for business leadership to seize the economic opportunities .‘ Our overpaid and underperforming chief executive officers are getting (it) wrong’.

    He says ‘Deloitte Access estimates that if the gap in management quality between Australia and the US were halved today, our productivity would rise to 80% of the US level, up from its present level of 77%. Achieving such an increase today would lead to a 5.3% increase in gross domestic product over its present level. This represents an increase in GDP of about $70 billion, equivalent to about $3,000 a person per year. … Deloitte Access concludes from other research that fast-growing businesses “take an attitude that success is in their hands and nobody else’s.” But so often our business sector keeps running to government for help . The rubric it invariably uses is ‘getting rid of regulation and red tape’.

    In this blog I have often remarked that some business people and particularly the Business Council of Australia spend a great deal of time lobbying governments to advance their business interests rather than running their businesses, or ‘sticking to their knitting’. (more…)

  • JAMES GERRAND. Cambodia Crackdown – part 1 of 2

     

    Part 1 ‘Kill a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys’

    Around my regular haunts in Phnom Penh are daily reminders of Cambodia’s enduring capacity for political violence: in Kabko market my favourite street restaurant was the scene where political adviser Om Radsady was shot dead in 2003; in a similarly blatant daylight execution, trade union leader Chea Vichea was gunned down in 2004 among the news stands at the end of my street where I buy the Cambodia Daily each morning; and now whenever my tuktuk driver pulls in to the Caltex station on the corner of Mao Tsetung Boulevard, I suppose I’ll be forever reminded of Dr. Kem Ley’s body sprawled dead on the floor of the Caltex convenience store. (more…)

  • LINDA JAKOBSON. Beware the China alarmists out there

     

    The quandary over what to do about People’s Republic of China government influence in Australia has burst on to the political scene. For the past months there has been ongoing media commentary about the consequences of political donations by businessmen with Chinese connections; and a piece in The Australian Financial Review claimed that hundreds, if not thousands, of Chinese citizens in Australia are gathering information for Chinese authorities.

    These are contentious issues, ones that cause unease within the government, among public servants and citizens at large. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. World’s best practice – the Gulags on Manus and Nauru.

     

    At a sparsely attended audience well past prime time at the United Nations General Assembly, Malcolm Turnbull used his pulpit to proclaim that Australia’s border security was the world’s best.

    And it is – up to a point. Not since the demolition of the Berlin Wall has there been such ruthless sealing of our frontiers. The boats may not have stopped entirely, but they have been very effectively repelled from our shores.

    We have, as even Peter Dutton, Turnbull’s hanger on in New York, admitted, something of a natural boundary; the country is, as our national anthem notes, girt by sea. No other major nation on earth has such an advantage. (more…)

  • RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Australia’s Shambolic Policy on Syria – Up Shi’ite Creek Without a Paddle.

     

    We must get out of Syria.

    The war in Syria is extraordinarily complex. It really began in 2011 with the failures of the so-called Arab Spring.

    Now the core conflict is between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and the rebel groups which oppose him. Both sides have split into several militias, which have attracted foreign fighters, including a number of Australians. (more…)

  • CHRIS BONNOR. Institutionalised farce: funding Australia’s schools.

     

    The nation’s education ministers have just had a day together to sort out school funding. There was considerable posturing but little agreement. And they managed to sidestep real problems and urgent solutions. They do have some awareness of the institutionalised inequality created, in part, by school funding – but no real will to fix it.

    In a new report Bernie Shepherd and I outline the problem, starting with the contrasts between the schools in Albury and Wodonga, two of our most prominent border towns. One school on the NSW side is Albury Public School. Across the Murray is Wodonga Primary School with students who are less advantaged. After all the talk about equity you’d expect the strugglers at Wodonga to be better supported. Quite the opposite: while NSW annually provides over $8000 for each of the students at Albury Public, those in the Victorian school make do with $2000 less. (more…)

  • LUKE FRASER. Roads: Minister Fletcher will need a good nose for bullshit to deliver genuine reform a la Paul Keating.

     

    Both the Grattan Institute [i] and Ross Gittins [ii] have lauded Minister for Urban Infrastructure Paul Fletcher for his hard talk on road reform. Gittins compared him to Paul Keating.

    Fletcher is setting out with a reformer’s zeal. Like Keating, he shows a willingness to level with the public about big problems and the costs of inaction.

    It would be a pity if poor advice sees Fletcher telling us about the wrong problem. If he is to approach comparison with Keating, he must be alert to policy furphies. (more…)

  • IAN McAULEY. The Mounting Case For A Royal Commission Into Banks And Insurance Companies

    An overwhelming majority of Australians support a Royal Commission into the finance sector. Ian McAuley explains why.

    We’re paying too much for a bloated financial service sector.A prominent example is Australia’s largest health insurer, Medibank Private, which in the last financial year absorbed just over a billion dollars of contributors’ premiums in management overheads and profits – $511 million as profit and $516 million as management expenses. Spread over its 1.9 million policies that’s $540 per policy holder.

    Using a combination of subsidies and penalties (most notably the Medicare Levy Surcharge) successive governments have bludgeoned Australians into holding private health insurance, even though it has proven to be a woefully ineffective and high-cost mechanism of doing what Medicare can do so much better.

    Out of every dollar that contributors spend on private health insurers, only 83 cents comes back as claims paid. By comparison, of every dollar that passes through Medicare and the Australian Tax Office, 95 cents is spent on health services.

    It’s no wonder people are annoyed with private health insurers: in a recent survey 78 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposition that “private health insurers put profits before patients”. And it’s no wonder that the government’s stealthy moves to displace Medicare with private insurance met with so much resistance in the recent election.

    When it comes to general insurance – the insurance that covers cars, houses and business assets – the industry’s performance is even worse. Health insurers, it turns out, are the leanest among a well-fattened lot. (more…)

  • TRAVERS McLEOD, PETER HUGHES, SRIPRAPHA PETCHARAMESREE, STEVEN WONG, TRI NUKE PUDJIASTUTI. Developing a regional refugee framework.

    September has seen a surge of international summits. First came the G20 in Hangzhou, then ASEAN and the East Asia Summit in Vientiane, plus the Pacific Islands Forum in Pohnpei.

    And, on consecutive days this week, the United Nations in New York hosted a summit on refugees and migrants, followed by US President Barack Obama’s special leaders’ summit on refugees. Representatives from government, business and civil society gathered to decide how best to move the dial on unprecedented mass displacement.

    It’s easy to be sceptical of talkfests, but the New York summits carried special significance. They show that forced migration has become a matter of high politics. And unless managed more effectively, forced migration will have permanent and intensifying negative impacts on countries across the globe. (more…)

  • JON STANFORD. Business welfare under the Coalition: two case studies (2)

    This is the second of two articles by Jon Stanford on the Coalition’s approach to industry protection and ‘business welfare’. Part 1 (Motor Cars) can be found at Jon Stanford. Business welfare under the Coalition: two case studies.

    Naval shipbuilding

    At the outset, we need to understand that there are no significant defence reasons for building naval platforms in Australia. Self-reliance means that Australia must be capable of maintaining its defence platforms and systems to a high standard and returning damaged assets to full availability as quickly as possible. Australia does not produce a single missile or weapons system that is employed on its ships, not even a 5-inch gun. Apart from the excellent CEA Technologies naval radars, almost every defence system in the ADF comes from overseas. We do not build any fixed wing platforms for the RAAF, nor do we make the Abrams tank. A sensible acquisition policy should focus on value for money, with local procurement only occurring when it represents an efficient use of resources. (more…)

  • MICHAEL McKINLEY. The unmooring of our national defence from our national interest. Part 4 of 4.

     

    Australia is currently courting offence rather than, as governments so often assert, defence – a transformation which might only charitably be attributed to absent mindedness if the alternative, stealth, is excluded. It is, moreover, a change wrought, in the first instance, as a consequence of the ways in which Australia thinks about its national defence, but also of both the logic and the inherent dangers arising from and within the Australia – US alliance. While an extraordinary number of avenues of inquiry are possible, there are four which are pursued, the drift to offence itself, followed by, second, the emergence of the “post-democratic” military and security complex in the US; third, the strategic dimension to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and fourth, Australia’s developing relationship with NATO.

    Part 4. Australia and NATO (more…)

  • JOHN NIEUWENHUYSEN. Rising hostility to refugee movement.

     

    The inspiring poem by Emma Lazarus carved on the Statue of Liberty clearly reflects the ethos and caring spirit of a bygone era:

    “Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
    Send these, the homeless, tempus-tost to me…” (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Happy birthday Malcolm Turnbull.

     

    A bit over a year ago, Malcolm Turnbull decided that it was all about winning.

    Not winning for the nation, or winning for the party, and certainly not winning for his long-held policies, but winning for himself – making himself number one.

    So he set about buying votes; it was, after all, almost second nature. That was the way he obtained his preselection and bludgeoned his way past the sitting member for Wentworth in the first place. (more…)

  • PETER HUGHES. Who is running the show?

    A new narrative. Why Australian immigration policy needs a positive approach

    With Pauline Hanson taking a hard-line on immigration in the Senate, it’s time for the government to change its tune or risk relinquishing the debate.

    It’s time the Australian government put together a positive narrative for Australian immigration policy. (more…)

  • MACK WILLIAMS. Here we go again: Julie Bishop and Duterte!

     

    Foreign Minister Bishop’s not so gentle rebuke of President Duterte that the Philippines as a claimant state should pull its weight in the South China Sea eerily had all the elements of the earlier Australian approach to the acrimonious bilateral debate between Washington and Manila over the closure of the huge US bases in the Philippines. Much of which occurred in my 5 years as Ambassador there. Driven by our perceived Alliance obligations we were under instructions from Canberra to offer what assistance we could to the US in their debate with the Philippines on the grounds of regional security. (more…)

  • MICHAEL McKINLEY. The unmooring of our national defence from our national interest. Part 2 of 4.

    Australia is currently courting offence rather than, as governments so often assert, defence – a transformation which might only charitably be attributed to absent mindedness if the alternative, stealth, is excluded. It is, moreover, a change wrought, in the first instance, as a consequence of the ways in which Australia thinks about its national defence, but also of both the logic and the inherent dangers arising from and within the Australia – US alliance. While an extraordinary number of avenues of inquiry are possible, there are four which are pursued, the drift to offence itself, followed by, second, the emergence of the “post-democratic” military and security complex in the US; third, the strategic dimension to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and fourth, Australia’s developing relationship with NATO.

    Part 2.  Reflections on Australia and the Post-Democratic Military of the United States (more…)

  • The creeping Americanisation of Australian healthcare.

    In this blog, I have repeatedly posted articles about the threat to Medicare in the $11 billion pa. subsidy which the Australian government provides to support private health insurance companies in Australia. We are sleep walking into the destruction of Medicare unless we reverse this trend. The US health system dependent upon private health insurance is the most expensive and inequitable in the world.  (more…)

  • The unmooring of our national defence from our national interest. Part 1 of 4.

    Australia is courting offence rather than, as governments so often assert, defence – a transformation which might only charitably be attributed to absent mindedness if the alternative, stealth, is excluded. It is, moreover, a change wrought, in the first instance, as a consequence of the ways in which Australia thinks about its national defence, but also of both the logic and the inherent dangers arising from and within the Australia – US alliance. While an extraordinary number of avenues of inquiry are possible, there are four which are pursued, the drift to offence itself, followed by, second, the emergence of the “post-democratic” military and security complex in the US; third, the strategic dimension to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and fourth, Australia’s developing relationship with NATO.  (more…)

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG: On the Irish and other undesirables.

     

    Australia sometimes seems to suffer a mysterious case of multiple-amnesia over immigration.

    We are a nation built on migrants, but we have forgotten that almost every new wave of immigrants has been resented and resisted by those already here, especially those who were migrants themselves. It started around the 1820s when the convicts hated the first free settlers ‘taking our jobs’. We have forgotten that, without exception, each wave of immigrants has been successfully absorbed to national and individual benefit. We have forgotten that particular groups aroused special animosity, yet integrated so completely in one generation that it would scarcely occur to them to regard themselves as being of migrant origin. Such is Australia’s perhaps unique capacity to integrate and be enriched. (more…)

  • JON STANFORD. Business welfare under the Coalition: two case studies (1)

     

    The Abbott government came to power with a Treasurer who announced that the “age of entitlement” was dead and that he had no time for “business welfare”. In these two articles, Jon Stanford examines how this philosophy has been applied since 2013 to two manufacturing industries, passenger motor vehicles (PMV) and naval shipbuilding. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. The US pivot to the Pacific is off balance.

     

    President Obama’s rebalance or pivot to the Pacific is struggling.

    There have been some successes. Ever-loyal Australia signed up to US marines in Darwin and there may be more ‘cooperation’ to come!. There have been new US military agreements with the Philippines and Vietnam.

    But there have been some important downsides, particularly as China has responded to what it sees as intrusion in to its historic area of influence.

    Most significantly, President Obama’s proposed twelve-member Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, which deliberately excluded China, is in peril and will probably fail. (more…)

  • Nauru and Manus – the costs of detention.

    In this blog, we have drawn attention many times to the inhumanity of our policies towards refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru and Manus.

    In addition to our immoral conduct, there is also the extraordinary cost of keeping asylum seekers in detention. In the link below, Peter Martin in the SMH yesterday, estimates the cost at $573,000 for each asylum seeker, each year.

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-extraordinary-cost-of-keeping-asylum-seekers-in-detention-over-500000-each-20160914-grftcj.html

  • JOHN MENADUE. ‘Aunty, with our prospects in life – what is the point of being healthy?’

     

    The ABC Boyer Lecture series this year is being delivered by Sir Michael Marmot, the World Medical Association President and Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London .The main thrust of his lecture series has been about inequalities, poverty and social conditions – the social determinants – that have a major impact on health in the community.  (more…)

  • NIALL McLAREN. The Dangerous Folly of the “War with China” Scenario.

     

     

    Nick Deane “reflected on the troubled waters of the South China Sea,” concluding that we need to pay close attention to what our military alliance with the US may drag us into. War between the US and China would necessarily involve us, but not necessarily to our advantage. While for ordinary citizens, such an eventuality would be horror beyond comprehension, it doesn’t seem to trouble some of our leaders intent on spending a fortune on a dozen submarines with the capacity to interdict shipping in China’s near-coastal waters. The advantages of such projection of military power are not immediately clear but have doubtless been carefully tallied. (more…)