Australia’s health workforce is under pressure. Wait times are growing. Burnout is rising. Yet the country is awash in policy – just not the kind that solves these problems at the root. (more…)
Category: Politics
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An India-Australia mineral partnership is critical for resilience
Critical minerals have become lynchpins of the 21st century economy as countries move towards green energy and digitisation. (more…)
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Requiem for liberalism: Palestine and the exposure of Western ideals
Continued enabling by ostensibly liberal democratic governments of the ongoing genocide in Gaza (where increased condemnation remains unmatched by tangible actions to end the carnage) reveals more than the hypocrisy of those who purport to represent us. (more…)
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Saving Marwan Barghouti is our duty
Seeing video evidence this week of the physical and psychological mistreatment of the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti sickened me. (more…)
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The response to recognition
The recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia, leading, it is hoped, to full UN member state status, is an important development. (more…)
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The economic reform roundtable and taxation
Taxation is on the agenda of the Economic Reform Roundtable and, despite Albanese’s reluctance to consider tax changes, it will be impossible to achieve Labor’s goals without reform to raise more revenue. (more…)
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Finance’s bleeding hearts think PwC has suffered enough
Has the Department of Finance entirely lost the plot? Has its thinking about the PriceWaterhouseCooper scandal — that the matter can now be swept under the carpet and PwC brought in from the cold — infected a police force itself compromised by its relationships with PwC? (more…)
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Bendigo writers’ festival fiasco
If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable. A code of conduct for a writers’ festival? (more…)
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China’s shift to quality is redrawing Southeast Asia’s tech map
On 1 August, China’s state planner announced a crackdown on “herd behaviour” in emerging industries, targeting the surge of capital into hot sectors such as electric vehicles, batteries and solar. (more…)
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First they came for the Palestinians
A Michael Leunig cartoon from 2012, that holds its relevance. (more…)
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You aren’t laughing now, are you?
The British media has always been populated by larger than life figures – from Northcliffe to Maxwell, Beaverbrook to Harmsworth, Barclay to Lebedev and, of course Rupert Murdoch. (more…)
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After the genocide in Gaza
So what happens next, sports fans, fellow Australian citizens? Now that Israel is starting to run out of Palestinian children and women to kill, hospitals to smash, and people to starve. (more…)
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The Ukraine war after the Alaska summit
The Trump-Putin encounter in Anchorage has angered some, disappointed others and baffled many more. Yet it has told us much about the state of the war in Ukraine, and the obstacles to the ending of hostilities. (more…)
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Message from the editor
Last Monday night I was part of a panel discussion on the future of Palestine with a fascinating group. (more…)
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Has Labor abandoned major tax reform?
No policy area in Australia is in greater need of major reform than taxation. (more…)
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The US has changed. Australia hasn’t. It’s time to talk about where the relationship goes from here
Seven months after Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term as US president, we are facing the most important moment in Australia’s foreign policy since the Iraq war. Australia needs to have a national conversation on the future of its alliance with the United States. (more…)
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Boots on the ground: Why Australia must support a UN peacekeeper mission to Gaza
Living through a genocide is deeply traumatic. (more…)
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Trump denies women in need access to contraception
For several decades, there were major gains globally in access to family planning and reproductive health services. (more…)
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1975: The Whitlam dismissal’s smoking gun
The dismissal of the Whitlam Government by Governor-General John Kerr on 11/11/1975 still rankles at the heart of Australian democracy. (more…)
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Labour market data: Complex, imperfect and politically convenient
Labour market data is politically potent, technically complex and often imperfect. Recent US events are a reminder that Australia’s own systems deserve closer scrutiny. (more…)
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Trump’s attacks are driving what BRICS was meant to do: encourage co-operation among non-Western powers and reduce dependence on the US
At first glance, US President Donald Trump’s renewed “America first” agenda seems aimed at the heart of the BRICS bloc of developing nations. (more…)
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A focus on consumption is the wrong way to go
In many countries around the world, from China to the US to Australia, there is concern that people are not spending enough of their money. They are saving it. (more…)
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More fundamental changes to the means test are needed than those intimated by DSS
Based on the redacted version released recently under Freedom of Information( FOI), DSS’s incoming government brief seems overall to be a valuable document, particularly the volume titled, ‘Strategic Considerations’, which canvasses longer-term challenges for the portfolio. (more…)
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Our bravest journalists today are all working and dying in Gaza
Palestinian reporters are being murdered before their own cameras to expose true horrors to an indifferent or even pro-genocidal world. (more…)
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Environment: 18th century vicar describes controlled burning in English countryside
English farmers used controlled burns of gorse 300 years ago. Too hot and dry even for cacti. Urbanisation induces genetic evolution in birds. China powering ahead with the roll out of wind and solar. (more…)
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Fifty-five years on, Bertrand Russell’s words are worth returning to
Believed to be one of the last things renowned philosopher, pacifist and public intellectual Bertrand Russell wrote, it is as relevant today as it was 55 years ago. (more…)
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Restaurant reviews benefit restaurants
The question burns: What are Nine Publishing’s restaurant reviews in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald trying to do? What is their purpose? (more…)
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Economic reform and the productivity slowdown
The productivity slowdown is mostly due to slower technological progress. The economic reform agenda should focus on measures to improve competitive pressures for firms to innovate and improve. (more…)
