Until there is more positive signalling out of Washington, the Australia–China relationship will remain frozen. Neither Morrison nor Albanese has the grace, courage, or diplomatic skills to challenge the status quo.
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Category: Top 5
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Morrison can barely hide his disdain for China; Labor fears being wedged
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A royal abuse of political power
The revelations this week by The Guardian UK of the Queen’s secret intervention in political matters to protect her personal fortune are simply extraordinary. New documents from the UK Archives set out in excruciating detail the power of the monarch to vet legislation in her own interests. Under the guise of exercising the arcane ‘royal consent’, long considered a mere formality taken only on ministerial advice, the Queen and Prince Charles can secretly alter any Act that might affect the monarch personally. This they have done with alacrity.
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Can we clean up gambling in Australia?
ClubsNSW has become a powerful political force, and along with the Australian Hotels Association is a major political donor. ClubsNSW has in fact signed an MoU with every NSW premier since Barry O’Farrell. Why this is necessary is a mystery.
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ABC Country Hour – mouthpiece of Liberal National Party and rural elites?
ABC Country Hour is marketed as the “voice of the bush”; but whose voice and whose bush? A recent investigation reveals how Country Hour does the bidding of the Liberal and National Parties and their powerful friends while glossing over the likes of climate change, Indigenous issues and the #watergate scandal. (more…)
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How good is Morrison’s Australia? Going backwards and being left behind
After seven years of a Coalition government, household debt is the second highest of 43 countries; we ranked third last out of 35 OECD countries for wage growth and we have the third most unaffordable housing market in the OECD. But the good news is that the combined worth of Australian billionaires is 52.4% higher in December 2020 than it was a year earlier.
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Unaccountable leaders set the tone for all in public service
The decline of good government has not been an accident. Those in public service are probably of much the same calibre, idealism and intellectual capacity as ever. What they are not getting is leadership – by words or by deeds.
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Housing Hypocrites: Tim Wilson’s housing affordability crusade just an assault on super
Tim Wilson is the latest Coalition politician to cry crocodile tears over the housing affordability crisis, calling for Australians to access their superannuation to buy a house. Yet Coalition policies – from negative gearing, property subsidies, money-laundering, super fund borrowing to banking and lending standards – are all about pushing up house prices to benefit those who already own a house.
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Myanmar: the US howls and seethes from the sidelines but it has no influence
America is calling the military takeover in Myanmar a coup. Not quite. Myanmar’s fragile democracy always existed at the pleasure of the military and the military became displeased when it appeared the people wanted to strengthen democracy. (more…)
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Taiwan: a ‘wicked’ strategic problem for Australia
ASPI’s executive director Peter Jennings is banging the war drums over Taiwan again. He would have Australia automatically marching into a war in defence of the island. Why would Australia go to war over Taiwan? (more…)
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Coalition’s political games don’t mix well with existential threat
We could secure a spectacular future for ourselves and help the planet. Instead the federal government dodges the hard decisions; passes the buck. Fortunately, state and territory governments are stepping up to the plate.
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Parable for Australia Day: rewriting history with Japanese as victors
I recently wrote an article suggesting we should be sensitive to the pain our choice of the date of Australia Day causes our original inhabitants. A friend replied that we can’t bow to the opinion/demands of every minority group and change the date. I noted that a people who’d been here 300 times longer than us is hardly just another minority group and offered the following parable. I haven’t heard from him since.
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A Rightful Place, from colonisation to reconciliation
In the lead up to Survival Day this year, three key reports have been released, the interim Report to the Australian Government by the Indigenous Co-Design team on the Voice; the Human Rights Watch World Report for 2021; and the 2021 State of Reconciliation in Australia Report released last week by Reconciliation Australia. (more…)
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What do we really celebrate on Australia Day?
Spare a thought for Australian representatives abroad who face awkward questions about what we celebrate on our National Day. It just goes to highlight the confusion and hypocrisy about pretending it was a noble venture by heroic and benign colonisers. (more…)
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An ‘ugly plot’ by the ‘Democrats’ in Hong Kong
The arrest of 53 persons on January 6-7 this year in Hong Kong on suspicion of subversion has, once again, raised a frenzy of condemnation by western leaders and the media.
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A Letter to President Biden: Rebuilding US credibility
You will be acutely aware that, after the ravages of the Trump years, you have a big healing job ahead of you, not only at home but abroad. (more…)
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The Irrepressibles tame the Invincibles in their impregnable fortress
A transformative cricket series will do more to strengthen Australia–India bonds than any amount of public diplomacy.
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Australia’s Covid-19 quarantining – an abrogation of federal responsibilities! There is no national plan
Perhaps the most contentious issue of our Covid year is who is in charge of quarantining? With continuing outbreaks of Covid-19 linked to incoming travellers, Australians have reacted with astonishment that quarantining issues were not foreseen and planned for years ago. How did we end up where we are and what should be done about it? (more…)
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Latest hits from His Master’s Voice – Little Johnny and the Trumpettes
While our parliament houses will not be stormed any time soon, Sky News is still around, as is Rupert Murdoch, Trump’s great backer, and The Australian. So, too, are George, Pauline and Craig.
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Western governments will have blood on their hands unless they stop persecuting Julian Assange
The case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is complex, containing elements of law, freedom of speech and of the media, journalism, politics, international relations and health. In the recent hearing to determine whether Assange should be extradited to the US, health became the dominant discourse. He may die if several Western governments do not stop persecuting him. (more…)
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Copying and pasting government drops?
Spruiking the Coalition’s 2020 tax cuts; Australians’ ‘$200 billion’ war chest; Google’s experiments; free speech; and even a Liberal Party self-congratulatory piece on the NBN.
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Planting booby traps for Joe Biden in Taiwan
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the dying days of Donald Trump’s presidency, announced on 9 January that all “contact guidelines” regulating when and how US officials could interact with their Taiwan counterparts were “null and void.” (more…)
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The love affair that made America grate
Between rides and walks on the Trump Golf Course and embracing at the White House, Murdoch and Trump have debauched democracy.
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The ALP – the Australian Liberal-lite Party
When Labor leader Anthony Albanese dumped his party’s franking credits policy, the mainstream media duly trotted out the “retiree tax” line. “Subsidies to wealthy superannuants to continue” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
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Right outcome, wrong reasons on Julian Assange
British justice has been done, but it is hard to fathom. Assange’s crime is different from the usual. He embarrassed the US by revealing activities recorded by Americans themselves, and the lawlessness of the US military that continues every day, all round the world. (more…)
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The world after 2020
What a year 2020 was for Australia, with first the fires and then the pandemic. Now at the end of it, we’re still confronted with the challenges of climate change in the shape of floods, not fires, and our Prime Minister unable to get a speaking slot at an international climate change conference.
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Is the Darwin Dan Murphy’s Woolworths a Juukan Gorge moment?
As time has passed, opposition to Woolworths’ plans for a massive alcohol store near three dry Indigenous communities in Darwin has strengthened and become more vociferous. Even with the assistance of a pliant Northern Territory Government, approval of this shocking plan remains in doubt.
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What real reform looks like: increase wages and tackle inequality, climate change
The economy has been stagnating for years under successive Coalition governments. It badly needs fixing, but it can be done. This is how.
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The long-term global balance of power is favouring China
The twenty-first is likely to be China’s century. Over the period since I first started visiting and living in China in the mid-1960s, the global balance of power has shifted enormously in China’s favour. The US and the West have not declined, but China has grown more quickly, in economic, technological, infrastructure and political terms. This trend is likely to continue. (more…)
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Post Brexit? It is not pages of legal text that sustains communities. It is political commitment.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government may have got Brexit across the line, and avoided the embarrassment and discomfort the country would have suffered had they not, but clearly they have not delivered on what was promised at the 2016 referendum.
