Category: Politics

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. What was all that about?

     

    Afghan troops who were trained in Uruzgan until 2013 by Australian soldiers are now reportedly confined to barracks. More for their own safety than the protection of the province, it seems, because the Taliban have waited them out and are progressively taking back control of Uruzgan, just as contending forces have done in Afghanistan for centuries. After 41 Australian deaths and many more of Afghans, Australian military figures are casting about to make their loss seem worthwhile. Former General Peter Leahy, now at ANU, says if Australia had been able to rebuild Uruzgan that would have lent legitimacy to the Afghan government. http://ab.co/2ccmYA6 The Chief of Army, General Angus Campbell, on the other hand, says Australia’s contribution wasn’t just to Uruzgan, but to the coalition effort in the whole of Afghanistan. Either way, they assert, Australia’s losses were not in vain. (more…)

  • PETER WHITEFORD & DANIEL NETHERY. Where to for welfare?

     

    The Coalition’s proposed budget cuts would have a disproportionate impact on low-income groups, write Peter Whiteford and Daniel Nethery in this detailed analysis for Inside Story. (more…)

  • ADELE WEBB. He may have insulted Obama, but Duterte held up a long-hidden looking glass to the US.

    This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative with the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.

    Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has taken his “bad manners” – having gained global notoriety with his election campaign insults earlier this year – to a new level.

    At a press conference at Davao International Airport on Monday, on his way to meet US President Barack Obama and other leaders attending the ASEAN summit, Duterte muttered a few short words in tagalog at the end of a lengthy and irritated reply to a local journalist. With those words, he again made international headlines.

    If that were all there was to it, we could rightly roll our eyes and move on. After all, Duterte’s language is vulgar; his slander of people and groups is liable to incite violence; and his determination to kill drug pushers (to fight “crime with crime”) an abuse of power. He should not be defended for any of this.

    But as someone who has spent a long time studying US-Philippine relations, I think there’s something more for us to see here. And if we want to judge the Philippine president (and, by default, the nation for electing him) from high moral ground, I think we have a responsibility to pay attention to it. (more…)

  • Defence & Australian Strategic Policy Institute – Joined at the Hip

    Following on John Menadue’s recent item in which he dissected the funding of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the pervasive influence of the ‘Australia/US Defence and Intelligence Complex’ of which ASPI is a part, he questioned whether ASPI as a supposedly independent source of strategic advice could provide the advice necessary to get the balance right for Australia between the US and China.

    Andrew Farran argues that it is already too late because of the intertwining threads of our intelligence and military arrangements with the US, now inextricable. We have missed the opportunity to develop a force structure suited to our national strategic situation and interests at far less cost than will be incurred by partnering US strategic operations. In this regard ASPI has lost its original purpose and is not providing the independent strategic advice to government envisaged for it.  (more…)

  • PATRICK McGORRY. We must settle the refugees before it is too late.

    In this article in the SMH, Patrick McGorry, the President of the Society for Mental Health Research, says;

    The time has come, before it is too late, to re-settle these fellow human beings and not just the children, but all of those who qualify as genuine refugees and who deserve a second chance for life.

    See link to article below:

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/we-must-resettle-the-refugees-before-it-is-too-late-20160907-grav05.html

     

     

  • EVAN WILLIAMS. How to fix the Senate.

     

    Among the many self-inflicted wounds Malcolm Turnbull has sustained since the knifing of Tony Abbott, his biggest problem remains an unworkable and unpredictable Senate. The election result has raised once again a perennial question in Australian politics – how best to define the powers and proper role of the upper house. With sophisticated preference deals and refined techniques of voter manipulation now the norm, the Senate has become a minefield , not only for Turnbull but for both sides of politics – a rabble of conflicting interests and an obstruction to effective government. Can anything be done to reform it? (more…)

  • TONY KEVIN. ‘Putin meets Turnbull’: an interesting encounter at Hangzhou.

     

    Chris Ullmann’s ABC News report on main outcomes for Australia of the Hangzhou G20 Summit led with an account of an impromptu ‘encounter’ between Malcolm Turnbull and Vladimir Putin. Maybe they bumped into one another in the hotel lift or corridors? We don’t know which side initiated this conversation, but it could be a positive step towards normalising Australian-Russian relations.** (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. The new compradors in the China Australia relationship.

     

    In this blog on 14 October last year I wrote.

    Compradors are sometimes described as those who help a foreign country exploit their own. I was reminded of this when I read that the ALP Caucus had compromised its concerns over jobs for Australians and was prepared to waive the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement through the parliament with only a ‘diluted’ list of demands as the AFR put it.

    If this agreement proceeds, Australian workers are likely to be much more vulnerable. Not surprisingly the President of the ACTU, Ged Kearney said that ‘this is about Australian jobs so we will keep fighting for those jobs’. No wonder the unions are unhappy about the attitude of Labor parliamentarians.

    There is a problem; a large Labor elite with fellow travellers whose careers outside parliament as consultants and lobbyists depend on Chinese connections and largesse. They are cultivated with money, travel and entertainment. They cling like limpets to the relationship with China. They have a lot to lose if they upset China. And it shows.

    As Upton Sinclair put it so succinctly ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it’.

    The above was written almost a year ago. The problem has worsened since then. (more…)

  • MARIAN SAWER. Democracy for sale?

     

     

    Since the 1980s Australia has become known for its laissez-faire or lackadaisical attitude to the role of money in politics. At the federal level Australia introduced public funding for political parties to reduce reliance on private donations, but corporate donations have continued to grow – reaching $202 million in 2013–14.

    Disclosure to the Australian Electoral Commission is required for donations of over $13,200 but there are no source restrictions or limits for donations. (more…)

  • CHRIS BONNOR. Reports on schools: lift the bonnet … and ration the petrol.

     

    A couple of reports out on schools this week are urging policy shifts, but in different directions. The latest offering from the money-doesn’t-matter brigade comes from the Productivity Commission in its draft report Lifting the bonnet on Australia’s schools. Meanwhile Jim McMorrow has completed an analysis which shows that when it comes to money, public schools and disadvantaged schools generally face a lean future.

    The Commission wasn’t crudely asked to investigate the alleged non-link between money and results – but it was happy to throw around a few generalisations – and the media reports certainly focused on this issue. (more…)

  • SPENCER ZIFCAK. Freedom of Speech and the Racial Discrimination Act

     

    Within days of the July election result having finally been announced, forces within the Conservative faction of the Liberal-National party moved to re-open the debate on reform to S.18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). Section 18C makes it a civil offence to insult, offend, humiliate or intimidate a person on the grounds of their race.

    The Prime Minister has made it clear that he is not interested in pursuing the matter. Sensibly, he does not want to re-open the damaging schism that occurred when hostilities on the issue broke out following the Federal Court’s 2011 judgment against the conservative columnist, Andrew Bolt.

    Pursuant to S.18C, Bolt was found to have humiliated the indigenous applicants in the case by implying recklessly and incorrectly that because they had fair skin they were not really aboriginal. And that having fair skin they had chosen falsely to identify as aboriginal in order unmeritoriously to obtain financial and professional advantage. (more…)

  • LINDA SIMON. CEDA joins call for urgent VET Review

     

    The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has released a report into aspects of vocational education and training (VET) in Australia. The report is entitled ‘VET: securing skills for growth’ and makes a number of recommendations including the need for COAG to “undertake a long-overdue comprehensive, national review of the sector that aims to examine its role in meeting Australia’s skill needs”. It goes on to say that this review would form the basis of the COAG discussions towards a new VET Agreement between the Commonwealth and states/territories. The following discussion outlines some of the issues raised in the report and comments on the possibilities for change in this under-resourced and under-valued sector. (more…)

  • It’s Time to Close Australia’s Abusive Detention Regime

     

    In the last few years, there have been countless official reports that have exposed abuses and recommended the closure of centres on Nauru and Manus Island. November 2014, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention uncovered numerous reported incidents of assaults, sexual assaults and self-harm involving children; March 2015, an independent review by Philip Moss uncovered allegations of sexual abuse by staff in the detention centre in Nauru; August 2015, the Senate Select Committee’s final report into conditions at Nauru recommended the immediate release into the Australian community of all children and their families detained in Nauru and in onshore detention facilities; June 2016, an independent report titled “Protection Denied, Abuse Condoned: Women at Risk on Nauru” reported that “women were being routinely abused, raped and doomed to spend the rest of their lives on a tiny island nation, often alongside the perpetrators”; July 2016, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch researchers found that the Australian Government has “designed a system of deliberate abuse”, in Nauru to deter people seeking safety who arrive by boat. All of these reports were ignored by our politicians with the arrogance of history’s most callous rulers. (more…)

  • NICK DEANE. Reflecting on Troubled Waters. South China Sea

     

    The dispute in the South China Sea should not, legitimately, involve Australia. We are only involved because we have such close military ties with the United States. War between the US and China is not inevitable, but dangerous, military escalation is taking place. If hostilities break out, the war will be on our doorstep. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. ALP Ambush.

     

    When Sam Dastyari was promoted to the shadow ministry earlier this year, Bill Shorten was unable, because of the opposition’s salary cap rules, to give him a pay rise.

    But now Dastyari can surely apply for a lavish bonus from Malcolm Turnbull, because his stuff up in accepting money from a Chinese firm was the only thing that stood between his stupidity and a week of total humiliation for the government.

    It was not only the defeats on the floor of the House of Representatives in the dying hours of proceedings; these were a fitting climax to a shambolic two days in which the Prime Minister was constantly on the back foot, driven by Shorten’s agenda to the extent that his own program – the great political, economic, moral issue of budget reform was barely visible. (more…)

  • PARIS ARISTOTLE. Rescuing people on Nauru and Manus Island.

     

    Statement from the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture, regarding people transferred by Australia to the refugee processing centres of Papua New Guinea and Nauru. (more…)

  • WALTER HAMILTON. What’s in it for Putin?

     

    Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pursuing a ‘fresh approach’ with Russia’s Vladimir Putin for resolving the territorial dispute that has prevented the two countries signing a peace treaty since World War Two. It is easy to see what Abe might hope to gain from a settlement, but no breakthrough can be expected unless it fits in with Putin’s own calculations. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Undermining Malcolm Turnbull.

     

    The baying pack of coalition backbenchers demanding the abolition, or at least the dilution, of the Racial Discrimination Act may be sincere crusaders for free speech.

    On the other hand they may be motivated by a desire to attack small-l liberals, of whom one is (or at least was) their own leader, Malcolm Turnbull. And some are just nasty.

    But in all cases they are guilty of that most heinous of political crimes: they are out of touch with the electorate. Despite the fanatical efforts of the ideological zealots of The Australian, there is not even a squall in the twttersphere of protest about the horrors of the repression of section 18c. (more…)

  • JOHN AUSTEN. How port privatisation will hobble Newcastle

    Commonwealth action is necessary to undo potential penalties on Newcastle Port.

    While the infrastructure conversation focusses on major projects like electricity grids it can ignore more significant matters.

    One such matter in NSW that deserves immediate attention is port privatisations. A deal included in the sales of Botany (2013) and Newcastle (2014) impedes the development of Newcastle Port and city. That deal also effects public confidence in privatisation.

    The deal, a ‘port commitment’, is that the state government would compensate Botany for competition from Newcastle using funds from Newcastle Port. [1]

    The deal reportedly requires Newcastle to pay around $100 to the NSW state Government for each container it handles in excess of an annual 30,000 ‘cap’. The cap increases modestly each year, as might also payments per container. The state government would pay this amount to the new owners of Port Botany. The deal lasts for another 47 years, yes 47 years. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Medicare, Private Health Insurance and the ALP

    In my article, ‘Down a different path in Melbourne: how Medibank was conceived’ written in 2000 for the Medical Journal of Australia (see link below), I described the history from 1967 to 1975 which led to Medibank/Medicare.  In that article, I highlighted one issue that drove Gough Whitlam’s determination to establish Medibank/Medicare. His concern was that “The Liberal and Country party Coalition’s voluntary health insurance scheme, supported by taxpayer deductions was wasteful and inequitable.”

    The package of measures that introduced Medibank/Medicare abolished the taxpayer subsidy for private health insurance. When the Hawke government introduced a revised Medicare in 1983 it removed the private health insurance subsidies that the Fraser government had introduced.

    The ALP today doesn’t understand the threat to Medicare of the $11 billion per annum  government subsidy to private health insurance. I drew attention to this in an earlier blog, ‘The Labor Party does not understand its own creation‘.

     

    ‘Down a different path in Melbourne:  how Medibank was conceived’.   Menadue article (1)

  • BRUCE DUNCAN. Don’t blame welfare for budget woes

     

    Prime Minister Turnbull promised us more centrist and fairer policies, but the Treasurer Mr Morrison appears to be playing a politics of resentment against people on income supports. On 25 August he declared: ‘There is a new divide – the taxed and the taxed-nots.’

    This sounds suspiciously like ‘lifters’ versus ‘leaners’, and implicitly blames those on benefits, particularly the poor, for the country’s debt. Dr Helen Szoke, chief executive of Oxfam Australia, was alarmed that the government seemed to be demonising the poor, while saying nothing about large companies avoiding taxes of billions of dollars. (more…)

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. On race discrimination.

     

    Assent by silence made Hitler’s crimes possible.

    As Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote:

    First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a Socialist.
    Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
    Because I was not a Jew.
    Then they came for me – and there was no-one left to speak for me. 

    The warning is as relevant as ever. The more we study how the Holocaust happened, the more we must realise how small steps of acceptance, acquiescence, rationalisation, political convenience and expedience, and above all, silence paved the path to hell from 1933 to 1945. For 80 years, we have glossed over the silent acquiescence of countries like the United States, Britain and Australia in the period after Hitler, for so long dismissed as just another ratbag, came to power by legal and constitutional means in Germany in 1933. (more…)

  • JULIA BAIRD. Australia’s Gulag Archipelago.

    In Dante’s view, the unfortunate souls who dwell in purgatory may suffer excruciating pain, but the promise of their final destination is clear: paradise. Those who languish on the remote, tiny islands — Manus and Nauru — that host Australia’s offshore immigration detention centers are not so lucky. (more…)

  • CHRIS BONNOR & BERNIE SHEPHERD. NSW public schools are bursting at the seams – but which ones and why?

     

    A news report in The SMH August 29th revealed that more than 800 public schools in NSW are operating at 100% of capacity or more. Apparently 180 of these are stretched beyond their limits. The report listed a large number of these schools.

    Where are these schools and why are they in high demand? Most are primary schools, usually located in metropolitan areas. There are 118 of these for which full My School data is available. 98 of these are located in metropolitan areas.

    The most noticeable feature of these 98 schools is that they already enrol advantaged students. Their average Index of socio-educational advantage (ICSEA) is 1069. This compares with the NSW average for public primary schools which is around 100 lower at 967. It is a big difference. (more…)

  • PAUL BUDDE. The financial future of NBN?

    By late 2016 – seven years after the launch of the NBN – over two million premises were able to connect to the NBN. So far three-quarters have access to FttH (fibre to the home), the remainder to wireless and satellite networks. The revised rollout of the so-called MTM (multi-technology mix) based on FttN and HFC) only began in earnest in 2016. The NBN company has now fine-tuned its rollout strategy and is set to extend the network by 40,000 premises a week; but from here on FttH will play only a minor role, mainly in greenfield installations. (more…)

  • RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Do we need a White Paper on Australia’s foreign policy?

    A White Paper could be useful if it is agreed to by the key ministers of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence, and Immigration and Border Protection ; and consistently applied by the Cabinet.

    A major problem which I see is that we seem to be in a period of fairly intense political and bureaucratic infighting over Chinese activity, especially on the South China Sea. My concern is that there are serious divisions within the Coalition and also divisions within the ALP. (more…)

  • ROSS BURNS. Looking for an end-game in Syria.

     

    Newspaper commentary on the Syria conflict has long struggled to provide new insights into the conflict. However, in an analysis published over the weekend in the New York Times, Max Fisher, adopted the novel approach of asking academic experts to comment on how other civil wars came to an end to see if any served as a precedent for Syria. (more…)

  • MEREDITH BURGMANN. ASIO and dirty secrets.

    In commenting this week, Meredith Burgmann said that ‘my view is that the stories in my book (Dirty Secrets: Our ASIO Files. New South Wales Publishing, Sydney 2014) collectively represent ASIO as being improper, incompetent, irrelevant, inappropriate and intrusive.’

    The following are extracts from her book. (more…)

  • Anti-global backlash is realigning politics across the West.

    In the WorldPost, Nouriel Roubini writes “Across the West establishment parties of the Right and the Left are being disrupted – if not destroyed from the inside.  Within such parties, the losers from globalisation are finding champions of anti-globalisation that are challenging the formal mainstream orthodoxy.” (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Scott Morrison – channelling Paul Keating or Joe Hockey.

     

    In his latest jeremiad on the state of the economy, Scott Morrison seemed torn between channelling Paul Keating or Joe Hockey.

    There was an echo of Keating’s warning about the country turning into a banana republic, in the prospect of the national debt reaching a trillion dollars (that’s $1,000,000,000,000, a figure of sheer fantasy for ordinary voters) and a glance to Hockey’s need to end the age of entitlement and designate the populace as either lifters or leaners, rebranded by Morrison as the taxed and the taxed-not (by whom he means not the wealthy who employ armies of lawyers and accountants to avoid their obligations, but the indigent who collect more in entitlements than they contribute to his coffers – a soft target for the richly rewarded demagogues of the tabloid press). (more…)