During the 1930s, around ten million Russians and Ukrainians starved to death in a horrific event known as Holodomor. Historians have attributed this disaster in part to the quack theories of Trofim Lysenko, Stalin’s hand-picked boss of Soviet agricultural science. It was the world’s first big case of politics distorting the objectivity of science, for its own ends. (more…)
Blog
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RICHARD BUTLER. DPRK: The “New Cuban missile crisis”?
The DPRK nuclear weapons programme does not constitute a new Cuban missile crisis. Any military attack upon DPRK would be disastrous. A new political negotiation must be constructed. This is not a problem to be solved by the US alone. (more…)
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JOHN MENADUE. 457 visas and our temporary residence system.
In light of government announcement on 457 visas, I have reposted below an article originally posted on 18 November 2016. See also at end, a link to an article by Joanna Howe in The Canberra Times yesterday. John Menadue.
Oversight of the management of work rights of temporary entrants into Australia is broken and needs fixing.
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull on superannuation and housing.
But that means nothing to the ideological right, which is now shamelessly defying Turnbull on every level. Naturally Tony Abbott is front and centre of the rebellion, with most of the usual suspects on the backbench. (more…)
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Sydney house prices – an increase of 18.9% in one year!
With only a month to go to the federal budget, the news that Sydney’s median dwelling prices rose by 18.9% in the 12 months to March is sobering. It is surely enough to jolt the Turnbull government into finally adopting bold measures to curb speculative demand in the housing market. Calls to reform negative gearing and/or the overly generous 50% CGT discount are coming thick and fast. David Murray is the latest heavyweight to add to these calls. The Coalition ignores them at its political peril. (more…)
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DAVID M SCOTT and PETER SEAL. Medical specialists – maintaining a high standard and duty of care.
In recent times, several articles have appeared in the print and electronic media about the alleged ‘high fees’ and ‘poor accountability’ of medical specialists. A few weeks ago on his ‘Pearls and Irritations’ blog, John Menadue posted one such piece titled ‘Medical specialists – high fees and poor accountability’. The Australian Society of Anaesthetists (ASA) believes that some of John Menadue’s strongly asserted claims merit a measured response, and wishes to address some misconceptions that have arisen. There are almost 5000 specialist anaesthetists in Australia, and they comprise approximately 4.5% of the nation’s medical workforce. The ASA has been supporting, representing and educating anaesthetists in this country since 1934.
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Our misguided wars of choice.
In this article in the Boston Globe of April 16, JEFFREY D SACHS speaks of the risks that the US and the world are running. He speaks of the US ‘wanton addiction to war’. John Menadue.
“There is one foreign policy goal that matters above all the others and that is to keep the United States out of a new war, whether in Syria, North Korea or elsewhere. In recent days President Trump has struck Syria with Tomahawk missiles, bombed Afghanistan with the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal, and has sent an armada towards nuclear-armed North Korea. We could easily find ourselves in a rapidly escalating war, one that could pit the United States directly against nuclear-armed countries of China, North Korea and Russia. …
America has developed a level of wealth, productivity and technological knowhow utterly unimaginable in the past. Yet we put everything at risk through our wanton addiction to war.”
Jeffrey D Sachs is University Professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
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MUNGO McCALLUM. Turnbull’s Passage to India.
He may not have landed any concrete results, but he continues to give the myths and legends a good workout.
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JAMES O’NEILL. Scientific evidence exposes the falsity of US government claims about Syrian gas attack.
The irresistible conclusion is that those same senior politicians know that the White House claims are false and misleading and therefore highly dangerous to Australia’s national security. That they should maintain their silence on this while continuing to perpetuate a barrage of lies and half-truths about the ongoing Syrian tragedy raises serious questions about their fitness to govern. (more…)
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ALLAN PATIENCE. The seduction of pessimism.
It seems that the end is nigh of much of what we know and love about our planet as climate change intensifies across the globe. Climate change science is painting a depressingly pessimistic picture of the future. Is there no hope? (more…)
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BOB DOUGLAS. Are humans headed for early extinction?
Observing the national and international political scene, one could be forgiven for believing that all we need to do is promote economic growth and jobs and everything will be okay. We have become besotted with the idea that money and markets will solve all of our problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, our commitment to endless economic growth and denial and ignorance of its ecological consequences is an integral part of the problem, which must urgently be addressed if our grandchildren are to survive. (more…)
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RAMESH THAKUR. Donald Trump is more believable and moral than Putin – Seriously?
Instead of cheering US resort to increasingly robust use of military firepower as the first response to international crises, Western leaders should be ring-fencing Trump’s instinct to reckless behaviour in order to avoid a catastrophe. (more…)
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Trump is Ignorant of History and So is His Chump Sean Spicer
This article by Middle East expert, ROBERT FISK, was first published in The Independent on 12 April 2017.
Fisk comments ‘Gas, cruise missiles, barrel bombs, Hitler and the American media. Mix them all up and I suppose you get Trump’s new policy in the Middle East.’ (more…)
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ANDREW HAMILTON. Labor Party reform through Catholic Social Teaching
It can be disconcerting to hear our family history told by a sympathetic but unaligned outsider. We may recognise the partisanship that coloured some of our past judgments and be led to reconsider them. (more…)
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GILES PARKINSON. Tide turns as solar, storage costs trump ideologues and incumbents
Looking at the machinations over the proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin this week, or seeing certain Coalition Senators howling at the moon over wind turbine “emissions”, or the Treasurer brandishing a lump of coal in parliament, it is hard to imagine that any sort of progress has been made in Australia in what all but a determined few accept is the inevitable clean energy transition. (more…)
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Is it time to resurrect the Albury-Wodonga city plan?
The housing crisis, hitting young Australians in particular, is one of the cruelest consequences of economic rationalist policy making to which both our major political parties remain super-glued. Neither party has a clearly articulated, long-term solution to this ideologically generated and completely unnecessary crisis. (more…)
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JENNY HOCKING. Why was Malcolm Fraser Hidden at Yarralumla When Sir John Kerr Dismissed Gough Whitlam?
Revelations from the secret correspondence between the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, and the Queen in the months before the dismissal of the Whitlam government have shed new light on a persistent puzzle. When Kerr dismissed Gough Whitlam at 1pm on 11 November 1975 why was the leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser already there, secreted at the other end of the Yarralumla corridor with the Governor-General’s private secretary, David Smith? (more…)
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IAN VERRENDER. Distribution of debt poses new trigger to the property, housing market
The trigger has been cocked. Our attitude to property has changed. No longer is it merely a castle, a family retreat and a place in which to find shelter. It’s now a highly geared investment vehicle. It will take enormous skill and a huge degree of luck for our regulators to reset the safety catch. (more…)
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RICHARD BUTLER. US Missile Attack on Syria
The US missile strike on Syria was an act of aggression the consequences of which could be immense. The facts of what happened at Khan Sheikhun must be established. (more…)
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JOHN TULLOH. Turkey – Erdogan’s day of judgment.
Turkey’s voters face a momentous choice: whether they want their president to have the dictatorial power of a potential tyrant or one whose authority remains curbed by parliamentary government. (more…)
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KEITH JOINER. Negating the Impact of the Future Submarine at Next Election
Australia’s future submarine project has already been a factor in Australia’s political pulse, in both the fever of pre-elections and in the now omnipresent prime-ministerial instability between these all-too-frequent elections. South Australia’s Xenophon factor has become powerful, and appointments like the new Defence Industry Minister from South Australia are probably an attempt to mitigate that factor. (more…)
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PETER JOHNSTONE. An Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops of Australia
Most Australian Catholics have long been aware that the structures of their Church are autocratic; most were brought up accepting that Church decision making is unaccountable and often secretive, that bishops are remote from their people in their decision making, and that the views of laypersons count for little, particularly if they are women. In more recent times, Catholics have increasingly questioned this dysfunctional governance; many have walked away and many have witnessed their children walking away. The widespread disillusionment of Catholics has peaked with the revelations emerging from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. (more…)
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ROB BRIAN. Easter Reflections
This is not an easy time to be a believing/practising Catholic. Indeed, many good people have given up on the Church because of the horrendous revelations of widespread sexual abuse of children by priests and religious and by the possibly even more despicable covering-up by those who should have known better and who should have had a primary concern for the victims rather than for “the good name of the Church”. (more…)
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MAUREEN BRIAN. Easter – Radical Awareness
In a recent ABC interview with Richard Glover and her co-author Monsignor Tony Doherty about their recently published book Attachments, Ailsa Piper presents us with the challenge to “become aware of the thing that comes at you”. Two chance encounters over this fourth week of Lent have given me pause to reflect that to live a life of unpredictability is to become immersed deeply in the Paschal Mystery, and that the paradoxes inherent in that Mystery can be daily experiences. (more…)
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RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The importance of better security and trade policies.
The relationship between the United States and China is now the most decisive bilateral relationship in the world. It works on two levels, one public and one private.
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IAN McAULEY. Can we please have a more intelligent debate about corporate taxes
The simple explanation behind the Commonwealth’s proposal to cut corporate taxes is in terms of a struggle between the interests of business and of the broader community, but it is also about the Coalition’s determination, under pressure from vested interests, to wind back the economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating Government. (more…)
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MICHAEL McKINLEY. The Foreign Policy White Paper: A Plea To See Things As They Are
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” George Orwell. (more…)
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PETER BROOKS. Physicians ‘outed’ on fees – Time for Patients to take more control.
If all [of the above] fail to work perhaps a review of what Pierre Trudeau and his government did in 1984 when they took on a system not dissimilar to ours –uncontrolled fee for service- and legislated that doctors could charge what they liked BUT unless they adhered to the fee negotiated between the Provincial Government and the profession (on an annual basis) the doctor lost all access to a Medicare reimbursement. This system still works today in Canada and few doctors opt out of it. Now there is a thought- and a significant game changer.
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JAMES O’NEILL. American missile strikes in Syria raise fresh questions.
Not for the first time, unilateral and illegal actions by the Americans pose a grave threat to the safety of the planet and its inhabitants. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Another distraction, but what a distraction.
The starting point is putting a price on carbon – some form of emissions trading policy. But this is total anathema to the coalition party room – worse even than negative gearing. (more…)