‘But the women (foreign correspondents) were (likelier than men) to be more thoughtful in looking at the wider context or human side of stories. In short, they were inclined to be nosier and would go the extra mile to pin down or dig deeper into an aspect of a story’. (more…)
Blog
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ANNE O’BRIEN. Clericalism is alive and well in the Catholic Church
The Royal Commission has provided few grounds for optimism concerning the future of the Catholic Church in Australia. The institution is moribund and its leaders are unable or unwilling to face reality. (more…)
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IAN DUNLOP. Hostage to myopic self-interest: climate science is watered down under political scrutiny
Scientific reticence allows politicians to neglect the real dangers we face. But waiting for perfect information means it will be too late to act. (more…)
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EVAN WILLIAMS. Dunkirk – film review.
We all know the story – or do we? It was one of Britain’s great wartime triumphs. With the British Expeditionary Force driven back to the French coast by advancing German armies, thousands of Allied troops were stranded on the beach at Dunkirk, and the call went out from Winston Churchill to rally the little ships and bring them home. Countless small craft – fishing boats, launches, dinghies, even rowing boats – crossed the Channel to gather survivors and ferry them home for joyful reunion with their families. (more…)
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MICHAEL LAMBERT. Australia’s electricity markets policy: The shambles continues.
Over the last week we have been treated to the depressing spectacle of the Prime Minister and his government reacting in a knee jerk, wrong-headed manner to two sensible and useful reports that have been released by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). This highlights the folly of not having a national plan for transitioning the National Electricity Market towards an increasingly renewable energy system. (more…)
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RICHARD BUTLER. Anarchy restored: Trump and Kim jong un.
The dispute over the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program is a disturbing example of the renewal of anarchy as the main determinant in international politics. It is being conducted by two unreliable leaders. Intervention by saner states is needed urgently. (more…)
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ANDREW FARRAN. The Korean impasse: transformed geo-politics.
While in recent weeks North East Asia has been on the edge of a precipice, the likelihood is that the military stalemate will grind on indefinitely. A decisive act by any of the principal parties would lead all into negative territory. Only an unlikely unilateral move by Kim Jong-un to abandon his nuclear/missile ambitions would alter the equation. (more…)
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BRUCE THOM. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and their implications for Australia
Massive losses in Texas, Florida and across the Caribbean in recent days reminds us again of the capacity of tropical cyclones to wreak havoc. (more…)
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ALAN KOHLER. Coalition’s retreat back to coal-fired power stations and the loony fog
In 2015 Australia’s businesses made the mistake of thinking the Coalition government was serious about tackling climate change, and solemnly lined up to support it….There won’t be any new coal power stations and the lives of existing ones won’d be extended unless the government bizarrely and unnecessarily pays for it. If that happened,it would bring about the final divorce of business and the Coalition and the final retreat by Malcolm Turnbull into the loony fog inhabited by Donald Trump and the coal dancers on the Coalition’s right. (more…)
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JOHN Menadue. It is scandalous how infrastructure spending escapes proper scrutiny
The gathering infrastructure mess in Australia requires open public inquiries, starting with the Sydney Metro. (more…)
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PAUL GREGOIRE AND UGUR NEDIM. Asylum seekers left destitute at hands of Dutton
Stooping to a new low, the Turnbull government has begun cutting off the welfare payment to vulnerable asylum seekers and given these people three weeks to vacate their government-supported accommodation. (more…)
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GILES PARKINSON. AGL bought Liddell for nothing – what will it cost Turnbull?
One of the late billionaire Kerry Packer’s famous quotes about business was that you only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime, a reference to his ability to sell the Nine Network to the late entrepreneur for a small fortune and then buy it back at a fraction of the price. (more…)
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CAVAN HOGUE. Sanctions and virtue.
Sanctions are a form of force but seem to be the only answer Western countries can come up with. There is no evidence that they are effective, probably because it is not the decision-makers who suffer from them. Pressure on China to do more does not take account of Chinese interests. China wants a buffer but not an out of control nuclear state in the DPRK. Kim is not suicidal but seems to understand the restrictions on outsiders better than some of them do. Negotiations seem like the only approach that would give Kim what he wants and lead to a loss of face by the USA. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Abbott and Turnbull are the real culprits on the energy policy mess. (repost)
This is a repost of an article that was originally posted on 14 June 2017. I have reposted this in light of current controversy on extending the life of coal fired generators.
In his journal, The Constant Investor, Alan Kohler sheeted blame very directly to the Coalition and Malcolm Turnbull. He said
Those crises have now arrived in the form of blackouts, and they are not caused by too much renewable energy… it’s due to a lack of investment, in turn due to a lack of policy certainty and clarity. This is entirely the Liberal Party’s fault — not just Malcolm Turnbull’s, although he is a rather pathetic figure now. If he didn’t go along with the hoax, he’d be sacked and another PM would. By taking the low road in 2009 instead of the high road, and deciding to mislead Australians about the true cost of energy, the Liberal Party condemned the country to a decade of confusion and stasis on energy policy. That reached a nadir of absurdity last week with the Treasurer’s coal stunt. The rest of Australia’s leaders, in particular the CEOs of our largest companies, should declare now that enough is enough, and pull these idiots into line. (more…)
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JENNY HOCKING. The palace treats Australia as the colonial child not to be trusted with knowledge of its own history
It’s more than 40 years since the dismissal of the Whitlam government, but under instructions from the Queen the secret ‘palace letters’ are still embargoed. (more…)
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ROD TUCKER AND JOHN DE RIDDER. How to fix the NBN pricing model: An open letter to Bill Morrow.
Dear Bill,
The NBN pricing model is in urgent need of repair. In this letter, we offer our thoughts on how an overhaul of the pricing model can solve a number of problems facing the NBN. (more…)
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GILES PARKINSON. Turnbull’s abject capitulation to the coal lobby is now complete
The kindest thing to say about prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s absurd proposal to extend the life of the country’s oldest coal generator is that he is playing politics. (more…)
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KATHARIN R. LESTARI. Indonesia speaks up as global support for Rohingya grows
The Indonesian government has stepped up its support for ethnic Muslim Rohingya promising humanitarian aid and a new hospital in their homeland in Myanmar’s Rakhine State as the military continues to torch villages while battling homegrown insurgents. (more…)
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PAUL FRIJTERS. What does the North Korean situation say about China?
It is easy to get drawn into the drama of rockets fired over Japan, and massive hydrogen bombs tested by a North Korean regime that likes to threaten mass extinction of its enemies, particularly with the tweeter-in-chief responding in kind. I worry though that the real game is in China, because the suspicion is that China has helped NK develop its technology, and one has to wonder what could drive the Chinese leadership to do such a thing. (more…)
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TEJSHREE THAPA. Watching Burma in Flames from Bangladesh
I stood at the edge of the Naf River on the Bangladesh border watching heavy smoke rise from a village on the Burma side. Bangladeshi border guards talked of fires all along the border targeting villages of Rohingya Muslims. (more…)
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PAUL FRIJTERS. It’s not about state versus markets.
It is said that all generals prepare for the last war. So too it often seems in ideology land, where the conflict with the Soviet Union seems to have left us with an obsession with state versus market. Just as we are not preparing for the cyber wars of the future by building obsolete submarines that would only have been useful in WWII, we are not addressing today’s economic challenges by thinking in Cold War economic terms either. (more…)
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GILES PARKINSON. AEMO says fossil fuel failures, renewable delays biggest threat to grid
The Australian Energy Market Operator has cited climate change, and the potential for large fossil fuel generators to fail in the summer heat-wave as the biggest threat to Australia’s electricity supplies in the coming years. (more…)
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RAMESH THAKUR. In the ‘Graveyard of Empires’, the US Military Presence Is on Life Support
As a private citizen, Donald Trump advocated for full US withdrawal. As president, he has chosen to perpetuate, prolong and expand the war, at further cost to US treasure and lives. (more…)
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PETER MCCULLAGH. Good Suicide versus Bad Suicide
Will legalised suicide, even when presented as ‘assisted dying’, adversely impact on efforts to reduce do-it-yourself suicide?
If it looks like a duck and it quacks, then . . . (more…)
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MAUREEN TODHUNTER. Imaginations of the world, unite!
As news and other media apparently edge us toward a war-ready footing, we need to think critically about what informs our views, to imagine our way into more enlightened, more peaceful co-existence. (more…)
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K. HUSSAN ZIA. American Objective in Afghanistan
The Afghans are not a nation as such but a composition of numerous tribes. These form loose groupings based on ethnicity. Individuals owe their allegiance first and foremost to the tribe and after that to the ethnic group. Among the latter, Pashtoons constitute the dominant force and are the main element in the insurgency. They are divided into a number of tribes and sub tribes that have a common code of conduct known as Pakhtoonwali. There are more Pashtoons in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. They have traditionally treated the border between the two countries as informal and interacted with each other freely. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Turnbull has had a quiet week: is that because no one is listening to him anymore?
Turnbull has had a relatively quiet week in the parliamentary break. But whether he continues to appease the right in the Coalition, or reverts to the old Malcolm, he has a more basic problem – people have stopped listening to him. (more…)
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ROSS GITTINS. Treasury must prevail against ‘pushy young punks’
The challenge for Treasury, the Productivity Commission and the rest is to be less doctrinal – less true to the one true economic rationalist faith – and more practical in giving advice that satisfies the pollies’ ever-present need to “do something” without the something they do causing a lot of harm, maybe even some good. (more…)
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PAUL BUDDE. Upgrading the NBN with G.fast has its limitations
Quite coincidentally, at the same time that G.fast is being discussed in Australia a similar discussion is taking place in the USA; and there is doubt there too about the contribution that G.fast can make to improve the performance of the faltering broadband systems in both countries. (more…)
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JIM COOMBS. Nicholas Gruen and the lessons of history.
Nicholas Gruen’s piece in the Saturday Paper, Making the Reserve Bank a “people’s bank”, while gratifying in its support for my recent piece, lacks a particular historical perspective: we’ve been there before. (more…)