The NSW Government has announced it will knock down and rebuild Allianz Stadium at Moore Park at a cost of $700 million and the Olympic Stadium at Homebush, only 17 years old, at a cost of $1.6 billion. However, there is little ‘business case’ evidence that new stadiums would make a material difference to attendances at football games, although Sports Minister, Stuart Ayres argues, “With better quality facilities, more people will come and attend matches.” (more…)
Blog
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PETER BROWNE. Historian of the present.Ken Inglis
When I visited Ken Inglis early last month, a few weeks before he died, I found him engrossed in the day’s edition of the Sunday Age. It was perhaps eighty years since he’d begun reading the papers as a schoolboy in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Preston, and during that time he’d become one of Australia’s most highly (and warmly) regarded historians. But his passion for the press — his fascination with the way it recorded “the history of the present”, as the historian Timothy Garton Ash calls it — was undiminished. And not just newspapers — on the table beside his bed were copies of the New Yorker, the magazine that helped shape his style and fuel his remarkable curiosity. (more…)
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KATHARINE BETTS AND BOB BIRRELL. How do Australian voters’ view the level of immigration? TAPRI and Scanlon compared
There has been growing controversy about Australia’s level of overseas immigration. In the year to March 2017 Australia’s population is estimated to have grown by a massive 389,100, some 231,000, or 60 per cent of which was due to net overseas migration. For the last few years around two thirds of the net growth in migrants have been locating in Sydney and Melbourne. (more…)
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TIM WOODRUFF. A proposal for health-promoting welfare reform: could it help six million Australians?
On an almost weekly basis now I’m asked as a medical specialist to write a letter to help a patient be accepted by Centrelink as unable to work. My letter and that of the patient’s general practitioner are then assessed by staff with limited or no medical training. (more…)
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KIERAN TAPSELL. The Royal Commission Report on the Melbourne Archdiocese
On 5 December 2017, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released a redacted version of its Report of Case Study No. 35: the Archdiocese of Melbourne. It strongly criticized Church personnel for failure to protect children under its care. It blamed both the culture of secrecy and inadequate structures for the failure, and described those failures a number of times as “appalling.” (more…)
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LARRY JAGAN. Suu Kyi should heed Pope’s suggestion on UN role
Pope Francis’ visit to Myanmar last week was an overwhelming success and may provide the much needed spark to ignite the government’s peace process and its efforts to bring reconciliation to the country’s violence-torn western region of Rakhine. The Pope’s message was loud and clear: the only way forward for Myanmar was “love and peace”, the title used for his visit. (more…)
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FRAN BAUM. Beyond the social determinants: a manifesto for wellbeing
Last week the Australian Health Policy Collaboration launched their Health Tracker by socioeconomic status, which is a report card on the health of adult Australians in relation to chronic diseases, risk factors and rates of death, by quintiles of disadvantage. (more…)
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ALISON BROINOWSKI. Truth is not an excuse.
If ASIO bugged Mr Huang’s phone, and sat on what it knew, the political timing of the latest leak against Dastyari could not have been more deliberate. (more…)
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Why should Israel’s lobby have different standards?
The government’s plans to tackle foreign influence in Australian life provide an opportunity for the first time to define the level of Israeli activity designed to influence the making of our foreign policy. George Brandis didn’t plan this. But it is likely to be an outcome. (more…)
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TIM COSTELLO. A striking lack of ambition.
The Turnbull Government’s white paper on Australian foreign policy has raised as many questions as it has provided answers. Much comment has focused on its failure to resolve, or even point to a resolution of, the tension between Australia’s unwavering adherence to US hegemony and the undeniable rise of China as a global and regional power. (more…)
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ALLAN PATIENCE. It’s time for a citizens’ constitutional convention.
Unsurprisingly, very few Australians have any interest in their Constitution. It was designed in the closing stages of the 19th century by mostly older white men (no women were involved) for a “horse and buggy” era. It is an awfully dull document, originally an Act of the British parliament, intended to persuade a gaggle of recalcitrant colonies to come together into a federal compact. In contemporary Australia there is no serious educating of citizens about the extent of federal powers, the complexities of federal-state relations, whether the Constitution is truly protective of human rights, and just how adaptive it is to the challenges of the contemporary world. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. A hope for the future?
There is plenty to criticise in the current state of Australian politics. It is important that expert commentators continue to point out the shortcomings of the system and the poor quality of those attracted to politics. There are however, occasional reasons for optimism and the inaugural speech of the new Greens Senator for Western Australia is certainly one worth noting. (more…)
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PETER GOSS. How to achieve excellence in Australian schools: a story from the classroom
A new Gonski review is examining how to achieve educational excellence for Australia’s 3.8 million school students. The success of the review will ultimately depend on whether its recommendations lead to better practice in the classroom. And the best way for policy makers to improve classroom practice is to develop a more adaptive education system. (more…)
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ROSS GWYTHER. A sledgehammer for a walnut ?
Unbeknown to most Australians, a court case has been underway in Alice Springs over the past few months with implications far and wide. Employing a sixty year old law drafted during the height of the anti-communist 1950s in Australia, the Federal Government has called for seven years jail for each member of a small group of people known as the Pine Gap Peace Pilgrims, whose only offence was singing and praying in the grounds of Pine Gap in 2016. (more…)
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JAMES O’NEILL. The North Korean situation requires a different policy
It is said that one definition of insanity is to repeat the same process over and over again and expect a different result. That axiom was never truer than when it is applied to United States and Australian policy towards North Korea. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Agents of influence,presumably Chinese are in the news. But the really important agents of influence are organisations linked ‘hip to hip’ to the US and its military/industrial complex. One of these is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute which is an enthusiastic supporter of almost all things American. It pretends it is an independent think tank. Yesterday Bob Carr commented that ASPI and the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney both express ‘consistently pro American positions’ while receiving funding from ‘US corporations including armaments companies’
See below an earlier slightly edited post of mine concerning ASPI . (more…)
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JOAN STAPLES. Government targets international philanthropy for civil society.
A Bill expected to be introduced by the Government this week, may deliberately create confusion by linking foreign donations to political parties, with foreign donations to civil society organisations. It is expected to propose banning both. (more…)
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LUKE FRASER. Is Sydney in thrall to an infrastructure cargo cult? (Part 1 of 3)
This is the first of three articles considering transport infrastructure spending levels, shortcomings in transport governance and strategy and the potential for doing better. (more…)
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RICHARD BUTLER. North Korea joins the club
North Korea (DPRK) has made clear that it expects recognition as a nuclear weapon state (NWS). It has now implied, like most existing NWS, that it would follow a policy of “no first use”. US policy continues to be that DPRK nuclear weapon capability must be eliminated, or the DPRK will be. (more…)
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FRAN MARTIN. Overstating Chinese influence in Australian universities
Both Australia’s national government and its security agency ASIO have expressed concerns over the influence that the Chinese government exerts on Chinese student groups studying at Australian universities. They have also accused Beijing of using those groups to spy on Chinese students in Australia. (more…)
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MARK BEESON: When worlds collide: The unlikely relationship between Australia and China
The debate about Australia’s relationship with China is characterized by a degree of mutual incomprehension born of difference. Both sides share some of the blame for the current bilateral tensions. (more…)
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JOHN TULLOH. The potholed U.S. road to Jerusalem
It was a bizarre move earlier this year when a New York real estate investor, with no experience in politics, diplomacy or foreign affairs, was appointed to broker an Israeli/Palestinian settlement. He would follow in the footsteps of a succession of seasoned diplomatic hagglers who all departed empty handed. Now his task is likely to be more impossible than ever thanks to his father-in-law. (more…)
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MICHAEL PASCOE. What’s the story behind the Dastyari story?
What do leaking spooks, a dashed Dastyari and a dubious donor say about our most important trade partner? (more…)
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The Coalition government: In thrall to the Nationals.
The National Party receives about 7 % of the vote nation-wide in general elections. This is less than the Greens. Meanwhile over-all support for the Nationals is trending downwards. As a minority rump within the Coalition they nonetheless wield power that is way out of proportion to their representation in parliament. Coalition politics it seems is in thrall to the populist right. (more…)
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JOHN DWYER: When will we seriously tackle the Inequity associated with the delivery of health services to rural and remote Australians? Part 2 of 2.
Health outcomes for Australians living in rural or what are characterised as “remote” areas are far inferior to those of their city cousins. If you don’t live in metropolitan Australia your life expectancy is reduced by about four years. You are four times more likely to die of a stroke. Rates of obesity, infant mortality, mental health disorders, and diabetes are all much higher than is the case for our urban population. There is nothing new here, we have known about these realities for decades as well as the strategies needed to address the problem. At least five major enquires have reached similar conclusions over the last decade yet hardly any of the recommendations have been implemented as needed policies are stymied by political wrangling and incompetence.This is particularly true for attempts to solve the biggest problem of all; the shortage of Australian trained doctors in the “bush”. (Part two) (more…)
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JOHN AUSTEN. The NSW infrastructure mess keeps getting worse
This is an update on Sydney’s infrastructure puff piece saga. Previous articles in Pearls and Irritations pointed out that the NSW Government led by the Hon. Gladys Berejiklian MP does not understand infrastructure. The draft 40-year plans for transport and for the Sydney region are a mess, involve kindergarten errors and contradict each other. It now looks like the wheels are falling off. The Commonwealth must step in if only for its own sake. (more…)
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LAURIE PATTON. Unpopulate or perish – revisiting the Whitlam decentralisation vision in a digital age.
On the 45th anniversary of the election of the Whitlam Government Laurie Patton reflects on a forward-thinking policy that deserves revisiting for a digitally-enabled world. (more…)
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MICHAEL KEATING. Tax Cuts: What can we expect? Part 2 of 2
In Part 1 of this series, posted yesterday, the conclusion was that restoration of a sustained Budget surplus would require a combination of expenditure cuts and tax increases. This second Part 2 finds that the projected swing from Budget deficit to surplus requires a swing of 3 per cent of national income. It then explores the scope for expenditure cuts and tax changes to achieve this swing. The conclusion is that most of the required swing will have to be achieved by a net increase in taxation revenue relative to GDP. (more…)
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STEPHEN LEEDER. The double-ended spoon and how to meet our health needs
The Productivity Commission has recognised how joined up care for people with serious and complex illnesses can enhance their quality of life. Opportunities to prevent these problems abound and the time for action is now. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull and John Barilaro.
When the New South Wales Nationals leader John Barilaro called for Malcolm Turnbull’s resignation last week, it was simple for Turnbull’s federal allies to dismiss it as just another distraction – just another frustrated voice howling into the empty air. (more…)