Category: Politics

  • WALTER HAMILTON. Minamata Remembered

     

    This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the methyl mercury poisoning in Japan that caused ‘Minamata Disease’. Shocking images of victims captured by the American photographer W. Eugene Smith (his Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath perhaps the best known) have served ever since as a warning to the world of the threat from industrial pollution.

    Documents recently obtained by NHK television’s Close-Up Gendai current affairs program have revealed how politicians and bureaucrats colluded with the firm responsible for the pollution scandal, Chisso Corporation, to keep it afloat using public money while restricting compensation payments to victims. (more…)

  • TONY KEVIN. A successful reawakening of serious Russian studies in Australia ?

     

    Doctor Dorothy Horsfield of Australian National University is to be congratulated for her vision and hard work in mounting the first serious academic Russian studies conference in Australia for many years, ‘Putin’s Russia in the Wake of the Cold War’, on 24-26 August, under the auspices of the Australian National University’s Humanities Research Centre in Canberra. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. A Foreign Affairs White Paper. What is there to inquire about?

     

    We have just had a Federal election, so now the inquiry season has begun. The government already has a Royal Commission inquiring into the detention of children in the Northern Territory, it wants a plebiscite on gay marriage, the inquiry into institutional child abuse is still running, and the Opposition wants one on the banks. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Medicare – the Labor Party does not understand its own creation.

     

    It is claimed that at the last Federal election, the Coalition lost support because it was going to undermine Medicare. In fact, at the last election, the ALP was proposing to do more to undermine Medicare than the Coalition.

    Let me explain. (more…)

  • Why a Single-Payer Healthcare System is Inevitable

    Private markets for health insurance pose a structural problem, and Obamacare can’t fix it. (more…)

  • PAUL BARRATT. Would war powers reform really leave national security in the hands of the minority parties?

     

    During a segment on war powers reform on ABC TV’s current affairs program Lateline (25 August – see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-25/mps-call-for-iraq-war-inquiry/7786424 ) Australian Strategic Policy Institute Executive Director Peter Jennings expressed opposition to parliamentary involvement in decision-making about deployment of the ADF, saying:

    If you look at how parliaments are structured, you’re really saying that you’re going to leave decisions to go to war to a handful of crossbenchers in the Senate,” he said.

    So if we were to have a debate today about deploying, that means it’s going to be Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson and her supporters. It’s going to be Nick Xenophon. Are they the people we want to give Australia’s war powers to?

    This argument is disingenuous to put it at its most charitable. The key determinant of whether or not a motion to deploy the ADF into international armed conflict would pass both Houses of Parliament is whether or not the Government of the day can persuade the Opposition that our national security and/or the nation’s vital interests are at stake. If the Opposition votes with the Government, the views of the minority parties cannot affect the outcome. (more…)

  • WALTER HAMILTON. Stand off in the East China Sea

     

    About eighteen months ago, while talking with a policy analyst at Japan’s Defense Ministry in Tokyo, I asked how the confrontation with China over the disputed Senkaku (or Daioyu) Islands in the East China Sea was affecting morale in the Self-Defense Forces.

    ‘I recently visited Sasebo,’ he replied, referring to the southern base of the SDF units designated to repel any Chinese attempt to occupy the islands. ‘The expression on the faces of the men was very different from what I’m used to seeing at Ichigaya,’ the district of Tokyo where the Defense Ministry is located. In the Ichigaya compound, a certain non-military air prevails; you’ll notice chirpy tour groups being shown around twice a day and snapping up souvenirs at the commissary. (I cannot imagine this at Russell Hill in Canberra!)

    What he saw in the faces of the troops at Sasebo was the tense and fixed expressions of soldiers and sailors who realize their next deployment might not be an exercise, but the real thing.  (more…)

  • FRANK BRENNAN. Why Turnbull has no option other than a plebiscite on Same Sex Marriage

     

    In The Australian Paul Kelly writing on the same sex marriage plebiscite said (23/8), ‘Lawyer and priest Frank Brennan, who has always argued the issue should properly be decided by parliament, told this column: “Contrary to Justice Kirby I have urged proponents of same-sex marriage to support legislation for a plebiscite because there is no other way that the matter can be resolved during the life of this parliament with Malcolm Turnbull remaining as Prime Minister.”’ Let me explain. (more…)

  • RICHARD BUTLER. Nuclear disarmament – Australia’s Profound and Cynical Failure.

     

    In 1995 Prime Minister Keating established the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. He did this because he was appalled at the intensity of the, mainly US/USSR, nuclear arms race. He wanted to find a safe way in which nuclear weapons could be eliminated, to which international agreement might be given. The Commission was composed of 16 eminent persons from relevant fields. Keating appointed me as Convenor of the Commission.

    In 1996, Keating having lost the national elections, I presented the completed Commission Report to Prime Minister Howard. His demeanor was as if I was handing him a funnel web, but I had taken with me to the meeting, Commission member Sir Josef Rotblat, 1995 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. I asked Joseph to make the speech. Howard was obliged to be polite to him.

    A month or so later, in New York, Australia broke a deadlock on the text of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which was then adopted by the General Assembly. It makes illegal the conduct of all nuclear explosions, in all environments, for all time.

    A month later it was signed by all Permanent Members of the UN Security Council – the recognized Nuclear Weapon States. I was present at the table when President Clinton signed for the US. Although its terms are being observed by all signatories, CTBT has not yet formally entered into force because it has not been ratified by a few essential states, including the US.

    Last week, in Geneva, a negotiation involving all state members of the UN Conference on Disarmament, came to an end. The agreed report, to be sent to the UN General Assembly, proposed that the Assembly institute a multilateral negotiation on a Treaty to ban all nuclear weapons.

    It had been understood in Geneva that the report would be adopted by consensus. It had been the subject of much negotiation and compromise. At the last moment, Australia’s representative, objected and insisted that there be a vote. The vote had the following result: 69 in favour, 22 against, (all 7 nuclear weapon states ),13 abstentions. Although there was deep concern, indeed some anger, that Australia had insisted on a vote, the result was considered to be clear enough. So, the proposal of a Ban negotiation will go to the General Assembly. It is considered certain that the Assembly will adopt the proposal and establish a negotiating mechanism to commence work, next year, on a Ban Treaty. (more…)

  • ANDREW MACK. ‘National security’ and the Ausgrid bid

     

    On 19th August Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison confirmed his earlier decision to block the NSW government’s planned lease of 50.4 per cent of the New South Wales Ausgrid electricity distribution network to two Chinese companies: the Chinese government-owned State Grid Corporation of China and Hong Kong listed Cheung Kong International (CKI). Morrison based his decision on the Foreign Investment Review Board’s advice that these companies represented a threat to the ‘ national interest…on the grounds of national security’. When asked at a press conference what specific security threat was posed by the Chinese bidders Morrison replied: The only person who’s security-cleared in this room to hear the answer to that question is me’.

    The Treasurer’s cryptic media release and public comments leave many crucial questions unanswered. In particular, was the security issue the most important factor or were there other important considerations at play? What was this ‘exhaustive process’ and the major parameters applied? (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Long Tan – minding our manners.

     

    It is entirely understandable that Australian veterans were disappointed by the Long Tan commemoration stuff up; it is clear that the negotiations, such as they were, between the governments in Hanoi and Canberra were misconstrued, probably on both sides.

    It caused unnecessary grief and irritation, and this is to be regretted. But it is worth looking at the bigger picture: allowing the erection of a memorial cross at Long Tan at all was a remarkably generous gesture by the Vietnamese. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Born to rule and oppose.

     

    It is really hardly surprising that Bill Shorten is proving reluctant to co-operate with the new government he so nearly toppled.

    After all, when the Liberals were in opposition from 2010 t0 2013, they had a policy of remorselessly opposing anything and everything that the government suggested.

    Tony Abbott extravagantly sauced Julia Gillard’s goose, and now Shorten is applying a touch of relish to Malcolm Turnbull’s gander; What goes around comes around. (more…)

  • GREG BAILEY. Populist Limitations on the role of the IPA in the New LNP government

     

    On July 2 the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) had at least two of its members elected to parliament in the Double Dissolution, James Pattison and Tim Wilson and that Senators Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm, at times members of the IPA, also were reelected, albeit on small quotas. LNP politicians like George Christensen and Cory Bernardi, both assumed to be thorns in the side of Malcolm Turnbull, have received the praises of the IPA because of speeches they have given, echoing broad IPA doctrines such as small government, abolition of the nanny state and individual self-reliance. But the propitious environment for the likely direct influence of the IPA on the formation of policy has changed, though not as in clear cut a manner as one might think. (more…)

  • DEE JARRAK. Is there a middle path to addressing Australia’s asylum seeker dilemma?

    Perhaps we could try to combine humanitarian principles with political pragmatism to find an acceptable “solution” to Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.

    Offshore detention policies are falling apart, and a new documentary film, Chasing Asylum, is again arousing shame and anger at the appalling psychological and physical damage we inflict on people who have attempted to seek asylum in Australia.

    But then there’s a lot of righteous emotion on all sides of the asylum seeker debate. (more…)

  • EMMA CAMPBELL. Is South Korea still interested in unification?

    It is not easy being a young person in globalised South Korea. The intense competition that defines South Korea’s education system and the irregular employment market that awaits graduates has led to rising inequality, falling birth rates, insecure employment and high numbers of youth suicide.Beyond South Korea’s domestic wellbeing, globalisation and its accompanying economic insecurity also have implications for foreign affairs, particularly attitudes towards North Korea. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. The Battle of Long Tan turns Fifty

     

     

    Some excitement was generated in the Australian press around 15 August when it was reported that the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan would be commemorated by Australians at the site of the battle at a rubber plantation in Phuoc Tuy Province. So it was – by a small and subdued group of ex-diggers with no medals, uniforms, ANZAC pomp nor post-ceremonial piss-up, nor even a brass band or bagpipes. Festive crowds of Australian tourists who wanted to go were not allowed. In fact the event may not have gone ahead at all but for some eleventh hour pleading by Prime Minister Turnbull to his opposite number in Hanoi. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. On Nauru and Manus, we need leaders who will appeal to the better angels of our nature.

    I was interviewed on 17 August by Andrew West, the presenter of the Religion & Ethics Report, Radio National, ABC.

    One thing I emphasised was the importance of leadership. If only Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten would shake hands on a deal to maintain and if necessary strengthen turnbacks and bring all the wounded souls in Nauru and Manus to Australia. That is the type of leadership and bipartisanship that we desperately need. They would be applauded for their wisdom and courage in breaking out of the cycle of fear and violence which accompanies our refugee policies. See link to interview below.

    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport/john-menadue:-what-we-are-doing-on-manus-and-naru-is-immoral/7760026

  • JULIANNE SCHULTZ. You’ll miss it when it’s gone: why public broadcasting is worth saving.

    In an age of global media abundance, the notion that public broadcasting is a mechanism to address “market failure” is beguiling. It is also fundamentally wrong.

    Public broadcasters have a unique national responsibility to provide a public good to citizens, rather than the more narrowly defined and easily measured mission of commercial broadcasters, to engage consumers and maximise the return to shareholders.

    Public broadcasters provide a return that is more complex to measure, but with the increasing sophistication of “impact measurement”, not impossible. The exact nature of the outputs and outcomes varies from one country to another, but includes providing platforms for news, entertainment and education that foster a shared sense of national coherence. (more…)

  • CHRIS BONNOR & BERNIE SHEPHERD. When public schools become part of the problem

     

    School education in Australia has been invaded from the west. In 2010 Western Australia added its contribution to free-market orthodoxy by declaring that its public schools would be given greater control over staffing and budgets. From 2010 an increasing number have become independent public schools.

    Like many reforms (?) over the last few decades it has a certain resonance and indeed was initially welcomed by a large number of schools. School principals have always complained about excessive bureaucratic control of their schools. (more…)

  • JOHN TULLOH. The uncertain future for Turkey and Erdogan.

     

    My friend! Leave not my homeland to the hands of villainous men!
    Render your chest as armour and your body as bulwark!
    Halt this disgraceful assault!
    For soon shall come the joyous days of divine promise;
    Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow? Perhaps even sooner! 

       A verse from the Turkish national anthem. 

    More than ever before, Australian tourists bound for Turkey and Gallipoli had better be on their best behaviour. They will find this otherwise welcoming and hospitable country to be in a state of growing uncertainty regarding its future. It is part of a concerted move away from secularism in favour of Islamic policies under the increasingly autocratic style of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, its touchy president who tolerates no criticism. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Olympic Games. A chance to celebrate and honour human achievements.

     

    My favourite Olympic Games story comes not from Rio in 2016 but from Persepolis in 492 BC.

    The setting was the court of King Darius I, who styled himself Darius the Great. His Persian empire was vast, but there were problems: the Greek Ionian states had revolted, and although they had been ruthlessly put down, the root cause remained — Greece itself.

    So he sent a trusted general, Mardonius, to finish off the Greek mainland. Mardonius’s troops smashed through Thrace and Thessaly with little serious resistance; but then something strange happened. Suddenly there was no resistance at all.

    When this was relayed to Darius the king suspected a trick, and called one of his Greek captives to explain. Well, said the Greek, it was simple: this was the time of the games at Olympia, when every four years the young men of Greece abandoned war to compete in various sporting contests.

    Incredulous, Darius asked what could draw them to these games; the winners must surely receive huge fortunes. Well no, actually, replied the Greek; all the winners received was a wreath of olive branches.

    The courtiers rocked with mirth and derision: what gullible fools these Greeks must be. But Darius was wiser. If these Greek will do so much for honour alone, he mused, what will they do when their homes and families are threatened? And at the battle of Marathon the Persians found out. (more…)

  • BRIAN TOOHEY. The quality of intelligence advice.

     

    A  former top US intelligence official David  Gompert has issued a sober warning to those who  want to lock Australia into any future war with China. Speaking  on Monday, Gompert  said a war between the US and China could be so ruinous for both countries and the world that it might seem unthinkable, yet it’s not. He said,

    “China and the US are at loggerheads over several regional disputes that could lead to military confrontation . . . If a crisis overheated, both have an incentive to strike enemy forces before being struck by them.”

    Gompert,  whom President Obama appointed as Deputy Director of National Intelligence in 2009, said China’s losses would greatly exceed those of the US in a war today, but  the conflict could still be “prolonged and destructive, yet inconclusive”.

    Others argue that an enduring victory could require a horrendous invasion to occupy large areas of the Chinese mainland,  then win  a  decades long gorilla war. (more…)

  • CAVAN HOGUE. Handing over our Defence to a foreign country.

    The Government has refused to allow a Chinese firm to invest in electricity because it is seen as a threat to our security but it has no difficulty in handing over our defence to a foreign country. Australian defence forces are so integrated with the US that it is hard to see how we can operate independently.  Of course the USA is an ally and a friend but it is naive to imagine that the US would ever put Australian interests before American ones. It never has and it would be mad to do so. We, however, have got involved in wars that serve American interests but not Australian ones. Countries don’t have friends, they have interests.

    Our leaders have made it clear that they will work closely with whoever is elected US President. This will be either Hilary Clinton who justified the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that it would be a blow against terrorists including al Qaeda. She chose to ignore the fact that Saddam Hussein was Osama bin Laden’s enemy and that the invasion benefited terrorists. Will we see a rerun of George W. Bush?

    Or perhaps we will be close friends with Donald Trump. Nobody really knows what he stands for, including himself.

    Cavan Hogue was a senior Australian diplomat and Ambassador to USSR and Russia.

  • Migration experts say it is unlikely closing camps on Manus and Nauru islands would re-start boats. We are beyond that point.

    See link below – article by Ben Doherty in The Guardian, 16 August 2016. It includes an interview with me, Peter Hughes and others, on the need to act quickly to process in Australia, the detainees presently held in Manus and Nauru.

     

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/16/after-the-nauru-files-how-can-australia-go-about-ending-offshore-detention

  • JOHN MENADUE. Tony Abbott now admits that he was wrong in opposing the Malaysian Arrangement.

     

    If only the Greens and many refugee advocates would also admit that they got it wrong. They allowed the perfect to become the enemy of the good.

    My strong conviction for several years is that the Malaysian Arrangement – it was not a Malaysian Solution – would have been an important building block in regional cooperation to manage the movement of displaced people. It would also have avoided the tragedy that is unfolding in Manus and Nauru. That tragedy will be on Australia’s conscience for ever. (more…)

  • RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Merchants of Death – the Weapons Trade

     

    According to Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick in The Untold History of the United States (2012), North Dakota Senator Gerald Nye persuaded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1934 to investigate the enormous profits made by American weapons makers during the Great War. Amplifying public indignation, Fortune magazine ran an article in March of that year claiming that it had cost the US Treasury $25,000 to kill an enemy soldier in 1917-18: ‘Every time a burst shell fragment finds its way into the brain, the heart or the intestines of a man in the front line, a great part of the $25,000, much of it profit, finds its way into the pocket of the armament maker.’ (more…)

  • FRANK BRENNAN. Time to defuse Nauru and Manus Island time bombs

    On the weekend, I joined Robert Manne, Tim Costello and John Menadue in calling for an end to the limbo imposed on proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. I think this can be done while keeping the boats stopped. I think it ought be done.

    Appearing on the ABC 7.30 program last Thursday afterThe Guardian‘s release of 2000 incident reports from Nauru, Peter Dutton, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, told presenter Leigh Sales, ‘I would like to get people off Nauru tomorrow but I have got to do it in such a way that we don’t restart boats.’ (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull, accident-prone and careless.

     

    When you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not, you’re not.

    Our Prime Minister was hardly responsible for the fact that the Australian Bureau of Statistics site crashed (or, the boffins insist, was pulled down) on census night. Only the very partisan and very silly are saying that it was his fault.

    But that’s not the point: he will still have to wear the blame for what has been an embarrassing blooper which not only may have derailed the census, but also will set back the public’s confidence of all forms of electronic commerce – what price internet voting for elections? Forget it. (more…)

  • MICHAEL KEATING. The Future Outlook for Economic Reform

     

    In a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Ross Gittins pronounced that we are ‘staring at the end of the era of economic reform. It has ended because it is seen by many voters as no more than a cover for advancing the interests of the rich and powerful at their expense.’

    Gittins then goes on to cite a lot of evidence that people are disaffected. Thus the size of the support for Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK, and to a lesser extent, the success of minor parties favouring more economic autarchy in Australia, all point to a threat to economic reforms aimed at deregulation and open markets. In addition, Gittins argues that the reform agenda has been captured by the supporters of small government bent on privatising those services that remain funded by government, often with what Gittins claims to be dubious results or worse.

    But according to Gittins, ‘the reformers’ greatest failure has been [to] … ignore their reforms’ effect on fairness’. Indeed, ‘at a time when technology and globalisation are shifting the distribution of market income in favour of the top few per cent of earners they’re pushing “reforms” to make the tax system less redistributive’.

    There is much that resonates in Gittins critique of the present reform agenda and why it is foundering. Nevertheless, I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective. (more…)

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG on Brexit. ‘They are not laughing now’.

     

    ‘They are not laughing now’. So the UKIP leader Nigel Farage gloated in the European Parliament in July 2016. It was not the first time these exact words have been uttered, in the same spirit of vengeful vindication in a European parliament. (more…)