Malcolm Turnbull has announced a submarine building program that has an effective rate of protection of 300%. Yes 300%. That is the additional cost we will pay compared with buying at best price in the international market. (more…)
Blog
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STEPHEN LEEDER. Review of the Medicare Benefits Schedule.
The Medicare Benefits Schedule, or MBS, is the basis for Medicare payments made for medical care in the community. It runs to over 900 pages and contains 5,700 items. Well over $2Ob pass through its ledger each year. It includes long and short clinical consultations and surgical procedures ($17b), pathology tests ($2.65b) and x-ray and other imaging ($3.2b) that form the bulk of out-of-hospital care, mostly but not entirely ($1b not) provided by doctors. (more…)
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FRANK BRENNAN, TIM COSTELLO, ROBERT MANNE and JOHN MENADUE. Stopping Boats and Saving Lives Four Years On …
How much longer will we continue to punish proven refugees who are our responsibility while they await interminable, uncertain futures in Nauru and Manus Island? Everyone knows that not all the proven refugees will be resettled in the USA even once the USA resumes taking refugees in October 2017. Kevin Rudd first announced the most recent plan for removing unvisaed asylum seekers offshore on 19 July 2013, seven weeks out from the 2013 election. Richard Marles helped with the negotiation of the deal. (more…)
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GREG LOCKHART. What were we fighting for at Gallipoli, in Palestine and on the Western Front? (Part 3 of 5)
Part 3. Empire over nation.
In 1914-18, the fight for Empire against Asia minimised independent Australian national interests. Ambiguous, interchangeable use of the terms ‘empire’ and ‘nation’ also protected that ‘imperial’ bias in our political culture. (more…)
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The parliamentary eligibility law is an ass – but it is the law.
Australia’s restrictive eligibility criterion for entering Parliament is out of touch with modern reality but, as long as it is the law of the land, it has to be enforced and be seen to be impartially enforced. (more…)
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LOUIS COOPER. President Trump’s 17-page list of changes to the North American Free Trade agreement [NAFTA] are causing some political problems for Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
NAFTA came into force on January 1 1994. It replaced the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA’s basic premise was to ignore the international borders and reduce or eliminate tariffs for much of the trade between Canada, the United States and Mexico. For the most part, it has been beneficial to the North American economies and the average citizen, but harmful to a small minority of workers in industries exposed to trade competition. (more…)
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JAMES O’NEILL. Germany’s Ostpolitik in the Modern Era
Germany recognises that there is a fundamental shift in the economic, political and military balance of power to the east. It is now flexing its political muscle to match its economic might.
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JOAN STAPLES. Environmental NGOs, Public Advocacy and Government
Environmental NGOs fear the Federal Government is moving to limit their public’ advocacy by requiring them to spend 50% of their income on practical environmental tasks such as tree planting. (more…)
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JOHN AUSTEN. Road spending incurs billion dollar new debts annually – nobody notices (Repost from 27 June 2016)
It’s traditional that election time in Canberra brings out the road lobbies who ask for ‘all that extra cash’ which governments raise from fuel excise to be ‘put back into our roads’. The problem is that the facts no longer bear this out. Australia is spending more on roads than it collects from fuel excise and vehicle registrations. It is going into more and more debt to build roads. What is worse, it appears that official figures are being fudged to obscure this inconvenient truth from scrutiny – lest it get in the way of more promises for more and more multi-billion dollar road projects. (more…)
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GREG LOCKHART. What were we fighting for at Gallipoli, in Palestine and on the Western Front? (Part 2 of 5)
Part 2. Empire against Asia
The ‘imperial’ nature of Australia’s involvement in the Great War was distinctively Australian and, it should be said, a sign of the doubt white settler society had about its survival as a remote outpost of the British Empire in Austral-Asia.
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Big business influence wanes as public rejects ‘bizonomics’
In this article in the Fairfax media on 24 July 2017, ROSS GITTINS refers to the debate in Pearls and irritations about neoliberal economics. John Menadue
The collapse of the “neoliberal consensus” is as apparent in Oz as it is in Trump’s America and Brexitting Britain, but our big-business people are taking a while to twig that their power to influence government policy has waned. -
RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Government policies have made us less safe.
The establishment of an enlarged Department of Home Affairs under the ministerial control of Peter Dutton is an unnecessary mistaken policy. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Greek Wisdom.
The Greeks said it succinctly: the system of tyranny is only as good as the worst man who can become a tyrant. Step forward, Peter Craig Dutton, Master of the Universe. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE: Privatisation is costing consumers and damaging economic reform. (Repost from 26 July 2016)
‘Privatisation is costing consumers and damaging economic reform’ said Rod Sims, the Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, recently. He added ‘Poorly regulated privatisations are driving up prices and have little to do with economic reform … this situation is getting worse and as the main concern of governments with privation is maximising proceeds from the sale by fighting against effective regulation. … A sharp uppercut is needed. [Privatisation] is increasing prices. … The whole idea of asset sales is that the private sector can run them more cheaply than the public sector. … Very bad reform implementation [of privatisation] has been a big part of the current backlash against any economic reform’
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What were we fighting for at Gallipoli, in Palestine and on the Western Front? Part 1 of 5-part series.
To find out what we were fighting for in the Great War we must get past the usual fig-leaf explanation, which is as remarkably effective as it is short on cover in Australian culture. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. A peace deal between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott!
The new Liberal Party Federal President Nick Greiner is aiming for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he’s doing it the hard way. (more…)
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CESAR JARAMILLO. Canada’s opposition to the nuclear weapons ban treaty has degraded its reputation on disarmament, at home and abroad. An open letter to Justin Trudeau on the banning of nuclear weapons
Dear Mr. Trudeau,
You recently dismissed this year’s multilateral process to negotiate a legal prohibition of nuclear weapons as “useless.” I’m afraid you were misinformed: it was anything but. (more…)
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MARGARET O’CONNOR. Reforming the Catholic Church: it’s up to the laity
The task of reform of the Catholic Church has to fall to the Church’s laity. This work is too important to be led by media figures and personalities with their twitter accounts, large public platforms and endless opinions. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. Rupert Murdoch’s abuse of power. (Repost from 7 August 2013)
Controlling 70% of Australia’s metropolitan newspapers, one would hope that Murdoch would exercise some responsibility in the use of that power. But none of that responsibility for Rupert Murdoch! (more…)
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JAMES O’NEILL. Lessons from Mosul: Double Standards, War Crimes and Lack of Accountability
Lest week the Iraqi government announced that Mosul has been ‘liberated ‘ from the control of ISIS. The major campaign for Mosul’s liberation began in October 2016 when the US led coalition massively increased both bombing raids and artillery attacks that had in fact been going on since ISIS captured the city in 2014. (more…)
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Aleppo and Fallujah. (Repost from 30 December 2016)
In light of the civilian disaster unfolding presently in Aleppo, it is timely to revisit the uncontradicted claims unwarranted action against civilians in Fallujah supervised by Australian military commander, Jim Molan. This piece was first published in 2008. If correct, the claims are an indictment on Australia’s military presence back then in Fallujah. What now passes for legitimate military action when civilians are so exposed? John Menadue.
The report from On Line Opinion, 4 August 2008, follows: (more…)
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BRUCE DUNCAN. Curious Vatican article challenges right-wing US Catholics
Was Pope Francis aware that the Jesuit periodical, La Civita Cattolica was strongly attacking right-wing US Catholics for abandoning Church social teaching by political alliances with very fundamentalist Christian groups? (more…)
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JIM COOMBS : Bean Counters Stand Up and Be Counted
Budget problems arise for governments who don”t control spending. Where are their financial advisers when gross overspending takes place. No business could survive the profligacy of our government’s spending. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. The litany of failed privatisations. (Repost from 20 March 2017)
Ideologues ,the self interested bankers and accountants and lawyers still persist with their fixation with privatisation despite the fact that it is failing in one area after another and the electorate shows very clearly that it does not want it. (more…)
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LOUIS COOPER. A Canadian’s mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay leads to a no-win for the Trudeau Government
Public debate over federal government’s $CA10.5 million payout to former “child terrorist” has tarnished Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. (more…)
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Trust is falling in Western democratic institutions
One clue to understanding the loss of trust in the professional integrity of the Western media is their unrelenting efforts to demonize Russian President Vladimir Putin. (more…)
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ANDREW FARRAN. The Fall of Mosul and Raqqa opens the door for Australia’s exit from the Middle East
Now that ISIS has for all intents and purposes been driven out of Mosul and Raqqa the time has come for the Australian government to step back and review its diplomatic policies, and military commitments, in that region and focus back on the region of primary concern: East and Southeast Asia and the Southern Pacific. Whatever becomes of Trump himself there is little likelihood of the US reverting to the status quo ante as existing under the Bush and Obama administrations. (more…)
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GEOFF DAVIES. The chasm between the society we are offered and the fair go we want
There is widely perceived to be a gap between our stumbling political system and the wishes of the Australian people. However those who look a little deeper into our Australian hearts see not just a gap but a yawning chasm. (more…)
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ALISON BROINOWSKI. Beware, armed response.
If Turnbull’s plan becomes law – and the prospects of the Opposition stopping anything to do with ‘fighting terrorism’ are remote – we can expect a terrorist attack to trigger an emergency response from the Special Operations Command, whose officers will have to be trained to shoot to kill other Australians. (more…)
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IAN MCAULEY. The National Party’s Dämmerung – an awakening for representative democracy?
The National Party represents a declining demographic with values out of step with most Australians. In most democracies it would be sidelined as a fringe group. It holds disproportionate political influence only because we are not facing up to the need to break from our dysfunctional polarised political system. (more…)