Last month, my friend and colleague Chris Bowen, the Shadow Treasurer, delivered a major speech to the Asia Society in Sydney. In it he outlined Labor’s approach to Asia. FutureAsia will be a whole-of-government framework underpinning our efforts to deepen and broaden our engagement. As the Shadow Treasurer said, Asian economies are changing, and Australia isn’t keeping up. (more…)
Blog
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JOHN MENADUE. The end of car manufacturing in Australia
Last Friday General Motors Holden closed its last Australian manufacturing plant at Elizabeth in South Australia. In an attempt to save Christopher Pyne. Malcolm Turnbull has told us that ship and submarine building in SA will take up the slack. But consider the figures. The car manufacturing industry employed 200,000 people across Australia with an effective rate of protection of 8% .The submarine project will employ about 2000 people in Adelaide but with an effective rate of protection of 300 %. Yes 300%. Go figure that out for a waste of money! (more…)
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RANALD MACDONALD. Open letter to Communications Minister, The Hon. Mitch Fifield
Can we just be serious just for a moment?
Having read your piece in The Australian headed “Shrill Attacks on ABC Adjustments Are Hysterical, Unhinged” (9/10/17), I cannot believe that you, Minister, REALLY believe in what you have written. (more…)
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TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI. Australian Roulette: The Games our Government Plays with Asylum Seekers’ Lives
As the former refugee detention centre on Manus Island is closed down, asylum seekers there are being encouraged by the Australian government to “volunteer” for removal to Nauru. This confronts them with a pressing and terrible dilemma. Should they stay without support in the dangerous environment of Manus, or put themselves back into de facto detention in a place whose conditions have condemned as unsafe by the UNHCR? The Australian government is forcing them to gamble with their lives. (more…)
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JAMES O’NEILL: Requiem for a democracy
The Australian Security agencies have asked again for further powers to enable them to prevent terrorist attacks. Among the requests made are for extended detention powers, increasing the time a “terror suspect” can be detained without charge from 14 to 28 days. (more…)
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KELLIE TRANTER. Pine Gap: Full Knowledge & Concurrence
Heavily redacted documents produced in accordance with Freedom of Information laws appear to imply that the Australian government has full knowledge of current and future operations taking place at Pine Gap and that it is given the opportunity to approve or deny proposed future conduct carried out at the base. This may have serious ramifications for Australia, a signatory to the Rome Statute, in any future proceedings in the International Criminal Court. (more…)
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MUNGO MACCALLUM. Bravura performance from Tony Abbott as stand-up comic.
Tony Abbott’s bravura performance as a stand-up comic at the Flat Earthers Twilight Home Laugh In, or whatever it was called, deservedly received rave reviews – the consensus was that he was a raving ratbag. (more…)
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IAN McAULEY. Yet another futile attempt to support private health insurance
The government’s changes to private health insurance have little, if anything, to do with health policy. Rather they are about staving off the insurers’ death spiral of rising premiums and desertion of profitable customers, and protecting the government from the embarrassment of yet another five or six per cent rise in premiums in 2018. (more…)
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MICHAEL KEATING. Should VET be contestable?
The introduction of contestability into training markets is often cited as a prime example of the failures of privatisation. However, the totality of the evidence is rarely examined in support of this allegation. This article aims to fill this gap. It finds that a contestable training market can fail if not properly regulated, but now that Australia’s training market is being properly regulated, the quality of training is being preserved, while competition is reducing costs and increasing choice and responsiveness to customer needs. (more…)
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KATE CHARLESWORTH and PETER SAINSBURY. The Devastating Health Costs of Coal.
Amid all the debate about energy policy – about security, affordability, and carbon emissions – there is one critical issue that has barely rated a mention: human health. Coal is hazardous to our health; renewables are not. In any discussion about energy, the human health costs of coal and the significant health benefits of switching to safe and healthy forms of energy must be considered as seriously as security, affordability and emissions. (more…)
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RAMESH THAKUR. Gorbachev: A voice of sanity from a past that has become a foreign country
Ramesh Thakur would welcome the shock and awe of PM Turnbull and Foreign Minister Bishop backing Gorbachev’s plea for a summit to restore US–Russia relations to normalcy and lining up with Iran, the Europeans, China and Russia in recommitting to the Iran nuclear deal as a rare triumph of diplomacy over warmongering. (more…)
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ANDREW FARRAN. Trump is being reckless with the Iranian nuclear deal
President Trump’s decision this past weekend to de-certify the nuclear deal with Iran displays a recklessness almost on a par with his apparent readiness to vaporise North Korea with nuclear bombs. He is in error in citing non-nuclear aspects of the Iranian government as bearing on the agreement. -
RICHARD BROINOWSKI. Trump’s foolishness over Iran
Those with short memories forget what a gem of non-proliferation the Iran Framework Agreement of July 2015 is. Trump wants to trash it. If he succeeds it will create regional uncertainty and the likelihood of nuclear proliferation that the Framework currently postpones. Along with his posture towards North Korea, Trump’s contempt for Iran makes him the most dangerous of American presidents. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. The unfairness and waste of private health insurance and the threat to Medicare. Repost from April 21 2017
History is repeating itself.
Medicare was created by the Whitlam government because of the abject failure of private health insurance or, as it was then called voluntary health insurance.
As a result of the growth of private health insurance (PHI) since 1999 under the Howard government, Medicare is now seriously threatened. Government subsidies for PHI will take us back to the pre Whitlam and pre Medicare era. (more…)
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IAN MACPHEE. In Defence of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Rohingya crisis in Rakhine state in Myanmar (formerly Burma), one of the most unknown situations in the world, is now dominating daily news worldwide. Many commentators have rushed to judgment about the leadership of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi without understanding the challenges she faces. (more…)
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RAMESH THAKUR. Five Steps to Peace in Myanmar
The bloodshed in Myanmar has uprooted hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya, eroded the prestige of government leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and damaged the credibility of ASEAN and the United Nations. The crisis can be resolved, but not without international intervention. (more…)
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WALTER HAMILTON. Big changes mean more of the same in Japanese election
Early signs of trouble for the Abe government in Japan have seemingly evaporated under the more intense heat of election campaigning, and “more of the same” is now the likely outcome of the 22 October poll. (more…)
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WE ARE ALSO READING AND LISTENING TO …
Pearls and Irritations provides the following links for weekend reading: (more…)
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BRIAN TOOHEY. Could our new subs sink our new frigates?
Could Australia’s big new $70 billion submarines sink its big new $35 billion frigates? Could the frigates sink the subs? The questions are worth answering before we spend these huge sums on potentially vulnerable frigates and subs. The subs cost, in particular, is unnecessarily high due to the political decision to design and build bespoke subs in Australia. (more…)
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JULIAN CRIBB. Our Parliament: an unqualified failure for the future
Australian politicians have next to no qualifications or skills when it comes to deciding the focal issues of our time. No wonder the decision making of recent years has been so poor. Julian Cribb argues that a continued political bias against science, technology and education risks placing Australia among the also-rans of the 21st Century. (more…)
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JON STANFORD. Australia’s Future Submarine. Part 3 of 3. Responding to the criticisms
At the National Press Club in Canberra on 27 September 2017, Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies at the ANU, launched an independent report by Insight Economics on Australia’s future submarine (FSM). The report, Australia’s Future Submarine: Getting This Key Capability Right, was commissioned by Gary Johnston, a Sydney businessman and owner of the website, submarinesforaustralia.
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CHRIS BONNOR. A rare opportunity to fix schools
A little news item can tell a big story. This week the Guardian reported on a survey that revealed that Australian parents want schools to teach more social skills. It raises many questions: whose job it is anyway, what will fall off the curriculum to make space, how will we know if it works? But in one sense it is certainly timely: right now the Gonski 2.0 Review is giving us a once-in-a-decade opportunity to have our say about what schools should and shouldn’t do. (more…)
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SUE WAREHAM. Open letter: Parliament, not ministers, must decide Australia’s response to a Korean war
The possibility of war between the United States and North Korea – particularly a war triggered by one too many provocative moves by an unpredictable leader, leading to miscalculation or misinterpretation – continues to threaten millions of people. The consequences of any such war, even a “conventional” one, would be dire. (more…)
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MICHAEL GRACEY. Aboriginal health: An embarrassing decades-long saga
It’s been widely known for fifty years that the health of Aboriginal people lags far behind that of other Australians. Despite that and the expenditure of billions of taxpayers’ dollars, serious gaps persist between Indigenous versus non-Indigenous health and wellbeing. (more…)
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Elite Melbourne Private Schools to Get Big Funding Windfalls
Several wealthy Melbourne private schools are set to get large windfall gains from the Turnbull Government’s Gonski 2.0 funding model after revisions to their assessed student need. Many of the schools will get increases of $1-$3.2 million between 2018 and 2027 because their student need has been revised upwards due to implausible stories about disabilities. (more…)
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MICHAEL KEATING. Trump’s Economic Policies: Part 2 of 2
In Part 1 of this series of two articles, yesterday I examined the impact of President Trump’s economic program on the American economy. Today’s article discusses the impact of the Trump economic program on the rest of the world, and Australia in particular. The key danger is that Trump will further encourage a rise in protectionism, that will damage the foundations of the open economy that in the last seventy years has delivered the biggest rise in living standards in human history. However, continuing economic growth inevitably involves economic transformation, and maintaining support for the open economy will depend upon programs that better assist workers to adapt to structural adjustment pressures, from whatever source. (more…)
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JOHN QUIGGIN. Socialism with a spine: the only 21st century alternative
Socialism is back, much to the chagrin of those who declared it dead and buried at the “end of history” in the 1990s. When the New Republic, long the house organ of American neoliberalism, runs an article on The Socialism America Needs Now, it’s clear that something has fundamentally changed. (more…)
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SUSAN RYAN. Postcard from Ireland, a resilient democracy
It is heartening to see Ireland, so recently condemned as an economic basket case with social attitudes belonging in the middle ages effectively renew and redirect its democracy (more…)
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PAUL FRIJTERS. EU plans for VAT taxation are doomed to fail. Again.
Taxation is the potential downfall of the EU as an institution. The reason is that within the EU, several member states are making money from the tax evasion in other member states, a situation akin to having a wife slowly murdering her husband with poison. Unless this stops, a divorce becomes inevitable. (more…)
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JOHN TULLOH. The paranoia of the US/Iran relationship.
If North Korea were willing to sign much the same kind of nuclear agreement as Iran did in 2015, President Donald Trump would exult in the ultimate deal and there would be international relief far and wide. Yet now there is talk that he wants to ‘decertify’ the arrangement and thus risk giving Iran the excuse to revert to its nuclear ambitions just like Kim Jung-un. (more…)