Blog

  • IAN McAULEY. Reframing public ideas Part 6: Jobs

    Governments brag about the number of jobs created on their watch. Does our obsession with “jobs” distract us from other ways in which people can contribute to society and share in its bounty? (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. Memories and Massacres- A REPOST from July 10 2017

    The release by Newcastle University’s Centre for 21st Century Humanities of a map of colonial frontier massacres has attracted a burst of media attention. It draws national interest back to those questions that were highlighted during the history wars of a decade and more ago.

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  • John Menadue. The Coalition, Barnaby Joyce rural poverty and rural health. (Repost from 16 January 2016)

    It is not surprising that independents are making headway in country electorates. But what is the ALP doing?   (more…)

  • MICHAEL WEST. Treasury hides corporate welfare data.

    There it was right on cue, at the cusp of the New Year weekend, a government press release about the cost of welfare bludgers trumpeted loudly across the press and the TV news bulletins.  (more…)

  • PETER BROOKS. Movement on out of pocket expenses.

    Over the last few years much as been written on the issue of out of pocket (OOPs) medical expenses in Australia including a number of contributions in this newsletter. There has been a Senate enquiry and much coverage in the media. The issue of out of pocket expenses is not new – the Grattan Institute conducted a review last year pointing out their rapid increase and that they were impacting on the most vulnerable in society . While a recent OECD Report (https://www.oecd.org/…/Health-at-a-Glance-2015-Key-Findings-AUSTRALIA.pdf) showed that in Australia OOPs account for 20% of expenditure on health care , slightly higher than the OECD average of 19%. By contrast, out-of-pocket costs account for only 10% of health spending in the United Kingdom, 13% in New Zealand and 14% in Canada, which have similar government funded health systems. Out-of-pocket costs also comprise a low proportion of health spending in France (7%), whose health system is largely funded by social security.   (more…)

  • MICHAEL KEATING. Trickle-Down Economics and a Company Tax Cut

    Despite the evidence of the last few decades that ‘trickle-down’ economics doesn’t work, big business and its apologists in the media are calling for a company tax cut to stimulate investment. The reality, however, is that increased investment is principally in response to increasing aggregate demand. The required increase in aggregate demand in turn requires less inequality and faster wage growth, not bigger business subsidies.   (more…)

  • MICHAEL KELLY. Canada shows us how it is done.-A REPOST from July 5 2017

    The Refugee Council of Australia’s call for more affordable and community based ways of settling refugees is only the latest attempt to bring both community good will to refugees and the implementation of a proven and superior alternative to government processes. (more…)

  • LINDA SIMON. What has happened to enrolments in the TAFE sector?-The creeping commercialisation of education.- A REPOST from October 6 2017

    Enrolments in the TAFE sector have dropped in many qualifications. Tracing the reasons for this change at a time when Australia needs more skilled technicians and paraprofessionals is complex.  They appear to be tied to the overall changes in funding of tertiary education, the increase in student fees as well as the status of the VET sector.  (more…)

  • GEOFF RABY. Where have all the grown-ups gone on China policy?- A REPOST from June 23 2017

    Malcolm Turnbull’s glib talk of ‘‘frenemies’’ does nothing to help the urgent debate over how we handle the rising power of China. (more…)

  • JOHN TULLOH. The torment of the impossible Kurdish dream.

    For all the promises, for all the sterling work they have willingly done in the fight against evil, for all the sympathy they have engendered, the Kurds will never achieve their greatest aspiration: their own homeland. The fact is the world doesn’t care. They are a people on their own to be exploited when it suits interests of the Middle East.   (more…)

  • PETER BRENT. Peter Dutton for Prime Minister!

    Peter Dutton is a household name. Most Australians would see the inaugural home affairs minister as tough and politically incorrect — proudly so — tolerating no nonsense from do-gooders and bleeding hearts. He doesn’t take a backward step; his often bellicose pronouncements about asylum seekers and migrants delight fans and incense opponents.  Dutton has run the government side of the latest News Corp–Coalition tag-team outrage campaign — the one about Melbourne’s “African crime wave.” He is, perhaps, the worthiest of today’s crop to assume the mantle of the legendary John Howard.  (more…)

  • JIM COOMBS. The Economics of Stop The Boats : A sense of Proportion.

    Why throw away money on preventing refugees when we should see the economic benefit they might bring ?   (more…)

  • JERRY ROBERTS.   The Real World

    A streak of idealism runs across the pages of Pearls and Irritations. That is good.   Political comment without idealism is mere gossip but what are the chances of fulfilling ideals in the real world?   (more…)

  • RICHARD BUTLER. The Real Danger: A New Nuclear Arms Race.

    New US nuclear weapons policies, quantitative and qualitative will ensure that a new nuclear arms race proceeds. Global danger will increase as will the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons. Its not just Trump that is at issue. He has merely enabled an increased influence of the US military/industrial/intelligence complex and, of a specifically imperial mind-set, in the US: the one that has seen the US author war repeatedly since the Second World War. Does the Alliance compel Australia to support this?   (more…)

  • ANDREW LEIGH. The false economy of sacking public servants in favour of consultants.

    Would you burn $1 of petrol driving to the other side of the city so you could save 50 cents filling up? Would you recommend to a friend that they buy the cheapest printer, knowing it has the most expensive ink cartridges? Do you advise family to save money by not getting the flu vaccine?  Of course not. Fortunately, we’re familiar with the idea of a false economy: a saving that turns out to be illusory because it eventually costs you more. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to have cottoned on to what this means for the Australian Public Service. While public service jobs have been decimated, spending on consultants has ballooned. Work that used to be at the core of the public service, like policy development and stakeholder engagement, is increasingly outsourced.  (more…)

  • Nuclear arms: Look ahead to 2018 in hope, not back at 2017 in anger

    We begin 2018 with a surreal contest between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as to whose nuclear button is bigger. Against North Korea’s anxiety-inducing rapid nuclear advances, the biggest positive story line of 2017 was a new United Nations nuclear ban treaty adopted on July 7 and opened for signature on Sept. 20. (more…)

  • CHRIS BONNOR AND CHRISTINA HO. Selective school decisions coming back to haunt us.

    Almost alone in Australia, New South Wales has been expanding its number of selective schools, accompanied each time by arguments about the need to increase choice and cater for the gifted and talented. And each time we are left with one less school for local students, together with an ongoing trail of collateral damage to other schools and overall student achievement.  The Department of Education, successive governments and even peak education groups have long ignored the downsides of selective schools – until now. The NSW Education Minister now wants to open the doors of these schools to solve a student accommodation problem.  (more…)

  • JENNY HOCKING. The palace treats Australia as the colonial child not to be trusted with knowledge of its own history-A REPOST from September 11 2017

    Forty-five years after Governor-General John Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, records of his communications with the British monarchy in the lead-up to that event are still withheld from us, the Australian people. (more…)

  • IAN DUNLOP. Facing “Disaster Alley”, Australia shirks responsibility- A REPOST from June 27 2017

    The first responsibility of a government is to safeguard the people and their future wellbeing. The ability to do so is increasingly threatened by human-induced climate change, the accelerating impacts of which are driving political instability and conflict globally. Climate change poses an existential risk to humanity which, unless addressed as an emergency, will have catastrophic consequences. (more…)

  • GEORGE RENNIE. Australia’s lobbying laws are inadequate, but other countries are getting it right- A REPOST from June 23 2017

    Lobbying is a necessary component of representative democracy, yet poses one of its greatest threats. (more…)

  • IAN McAULEY. Reframing public ideas Part 5: Competition

    Competition is a means of encouraging innovation and productivity, and bringing those benefits to the community. When it becomes an end in itself, however, it can impose costs on us all. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Turnbull’s scare campaign on negative gearing

    Exclusive, scoop, shock, horror! Politicians tell porkies!  In an amazing journalistic breakthrough, it can be revealed that sometimes Australia’s political leaders may not hold strictly to the unvarnished truth. Lengthy and painstaking research shows that there are times when they exaggerate and even mislead the public in a quest for advantage.   (more…)

  • IAN WEBSTER. Policy failures in mental health

    Mental health problems arising out of modern despair have to be tackled with insights gained from the day-to-day lives of society’s outcasts and the social sciences.  Matthew Fisher, (Australia’s policy failure on mental health, Pearls and Irritations, 14 December 2017) argues that Australian mental health policies have failed: “(We) are subject to a deafening silence from politicians, organisations and the key individuals who shape Australia’s policy discourse and action on mental health”. The ubiquitous mental health problems arising out of social conditions and chronically stressed lives are neglected: “The social causes of mental illness and their impacts on populations, as something we might act on, are largely hidden”.  (more…)

  • A paraplegic woman and her elderly carer.

    A well-known and respected doctor has written to me about caring for his loved wife.  He outlines a compelling and human story.  With his permission I share with readers his account of the burdens and cost of caring. John Menadue.   (more…)

  • ANDREW GLIKSON. Climate change, droughts and wars: is there a nexus?

    According to Al Gore during 2006 and 2010 some 60 percent of farms in Syria were destroyed and abandoned and some 80 percent of the livestock were killed during the most severe drought parts of the Middle East ever recorded[i]. Subsequently more than a million Syrians migrated into cities, along with refugees from the Iraq War, setting the stage for a civil war. Beginning with the ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations in Syria in January 2011 and a brutal crackdown by the regime, the conflict escalated since July 2011, killing over 450,000 and displacing more than 12 million Syrians[ii]. More than 4.8 million Syrians left the country.   (more…)

  • ALLAN PATIENCE. It’s Time for New Politics.- A REPOST from June 12 2017

    How do we explain the phenomenon of a Bernie Sanders, who almost certainly would have won the US presidency if he’d been the Democrat candidate running against Trump? How do we account for the astounding failure of, first, David Cameron and now Theresa May, to maintain the Conservative Party’s dominance of contemporary British politics? How is it that a political maverick like Jeremy Corbyn can drag a recalcitrant British Labour Party kicking and screaming to the brink of government in the UK? These questions point to the failure of old politics and the urgent need to imagine a new politics for progressing the West into the twenty-first century. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Domestic violence, not terrorism, is the big killer in Australia- A REOST from November 10 2017

    Compared to other risks, we have little to fear from terrorism. In the last two decades only three people in Australia have died from terrorism. But there is a ‘vividness’ bias in terrorism because it stands out in our minds. Importantly, a lot of politicians, businesses, stand to gain from exaggerating the terrorist threat. It is also easy news for our media.
    The Domestic Violence Death Review Team in NSW established by the Coroners Court has given us some chilling information that shows that domestic violence is a much more serious threat than terrorism. (more…)

  • GARETH EVANS. Trump’s US has abdicated global leadership- A REPOST from June 20 2017

    Following his presentation at the EU-Australia Senior and Emerging Leaders’ Forum last week, ANU Chancellor and former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans spoke with Melissa Conley Tyler, Executive Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Evans said that by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and progressively shunning its allies, the US has finally abdicated its global leadership role. The days when the US led the world in developing international institutions and laws for the advancement of global goods were now over. (more…)

  • GEOFF MILLER. Singapore, Australia, “the Quad” and ASEAN—same same but different!

    Singapore and Australia are having to deal with the same set of problems and relationships as the strategic situation in the Asia-Pacific changes.  Singapore isn’t a contender for an expanded “Quad” but, as next year’s Chairman of ASEAN, it will have an important role to play in one of the Turnbull Government’s major foreign policy initiatives, the ASEAN-Australia Summit to be held in Sydney next March. A REPOST (more…)

  • CAROL SUMMERHAYES. At a tribute to Graham Freudenberg.- A REPOST from June 8 2017

    Graham revealed in his memoir that he wrote his first speech in Brisbane in May 1945, aged 10, at the time of VE Day, and delivered it to his mother. In 1946 he scored a job with ABC Radio reading scripts of school broadcasts – “I learned a lot about the use of English written to be spoken”. He didn’t know then that this experience would be life-forming: his speeches over the years stand out as words meant to be heard as well as to be read, a different sort of writing altogether.  
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