It’s not a time for business as usual. It’s a time for outbursts of horror, for open-throated cries for justice – a time for sackcloth and ashes, for fasting and floggings of repentance – a time to cease celebrating, singing, canonizing and collecting money – a time to call a halt to ordinary business, to close the shop, to stop preaching and declare a time of silence during which the religious leaders will cover their celibate loins and prostrate themselves before the community – a time to embrace the victims and their wounded families. (more…)
Blog
-
JOHN DWYER. The parlous state of strategies to protect consumers from health care fraud. Part 2 of 3.
Credible scientific evidence of clinical effectiveness should underpin the delivery of health care. Satisfactory health outcomes and cost effectiveness require this approach. In Australia however pseudoscience flourishes as regulatory bodies fail to protect consumers from health care fraud and a massive industry prospers as it convinces consumers to use expensive supplements they do not need. In this three part examination of the issue the extent of the problem is examined, as are the changes that would better protect consumers. (more…)
-
KIERAN TAPSELL. Vatican Reform on Child Sexual Abuse in Disarray – Does Pope Francis get it?
Zero tolerance in a professional context almost invariably means dismissal, but Pope Francis’s claim that the Church has a “zero tolerance” policy is not borne out by the figures he presented to the United Nations: only one quarter of all priests found to have sexually abused children have been dismissed. That’s a 75% tolerance not zero. (more…)
-
JACK WATERFORD. We need a Catholic Yom Kippur, and a serious sacrifice.
The major intersection between the child abuse royal commission and the Catholic Church went into act four over the past week. The drama, plot and moral of the miracle play would be much enhanced if scene one, rather than scene four, of act five began with the resignations of each of Australia’s archbishops, along with that of the nuncio, the archbishop representing the Pope in Australia.
-
JOHN DWYER. The parlous state of strategies to protect consumers from health care fraud. Part 1 of 3
Credible scientific evidence of clinical effectiveness should underpin the delivery of health care. Satisfactory health outcomes and cost effectiveness require this approach. In Australia however pseudoscience flourishes as regulatory bodies fail to protect consumers from health care fraud and a massive industry prospers as it convinces consumers to use expensive supplements they do not need. In this three part examination of the issue the extent of the problem is examined, as are the changes that would better protect consumers. (more…)
-
IAN McAULEY. Pauline Hanson’s youth support
A recent survey has found surprisingly high levels of support for One Nation among young voters in George Christiansen’s electorate in northern Queensland. At first sight this seems incongruous with the Brexit and Trump votes, which showed younger people were more supportive of mainstream parties of the centre-left.
-
RICHARD WOOLCOTT. The US has ‘wasted $6 trillion’ in the Middle East without achieving any success.
In a statement on 27 February President Trump said that the United States
had spent $ 6 trillion in the Middle East and had ” got nowhere “. It had produced a “mess” and a ” hornet’s nest “. In a conflict United States must always be “winning ,or not fighting at all”. (more…) -
JAMES O’NEILL. Iran and the new multipolar world.
During the last Presidential campaign, the Republican nominee Donald Trump made a variety of statements that suggested a changing focus in US foreign policy. He promised, inter alia, no more attempts at regime change, an effective fight against the terrorist organisation ISIS, and better relationships with Russia. Fine words, but as has been said before, “don’t listen to what we say, watch what we do.” (more…)
-
MICHAEL WEST. Australia’s march to corporatocracy.
Confounding the familiar government narrative of reckless spending binges by Labor, the Coalition actually has the record of greater profligacy when it comes to showering billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on external consultants. (more…)
-
RAMESH THAKUR. Contrasting US and UN leaders: The brash disruptor vs. the softly softly conciliator
Both UN Secretary-General (SG) Antonio Guterres and US President Donald Trump took office in January. They could not be more different in background, temperament, experience and leadership style. Trump is brash, loud, vulgar, an amateur outsider and the ultimate disruptor, used to bossing everyone else, who does not do sensitivity. Guterres is courteous, sophisticated, cultured, professional, a global insider and the ultimate conciliator who persuades and coaxes colleagues to follow his lead. (more…)
-
JAMES O’NEILL. Australia and the Iraq War: some new revelations.
“It is difficult not to conclude that Howard’s statement to Parliament on 18 March 2003 following his telephone conversation with Bush was a political statement designed to bolster what was an untenable decision to commit Australia to yet another foreign war on behalf of the Americans.” (more…)
-
PAT POWER. The Royal Commission and the need for reform.
Despite all the warnings, I don’t know of anyone who has not been shocked by what has emerged from the Royal Commission. For twenty years or more, we have heard accounts of abuse, sometimes very close to home. But somehow the magnitude of it all has been almost beyond comprehension. (more…)
-
IAN VERRENDER. Malcolm Turnbull faces growing discontent from the middle, not just the fringes
Has there ever been a more demoralising time to be Prime Minister? There’s been the expected sniping from the sidelines and the continued calls for the Coalition to shore up its base and prevent leakage to parties like One Nation.
-
PAUL CLEARY. How Australia wasted the mining boom.
The countries that have mastered the development of their resources, most notably Norway, worked out long ago that to truly prosper in the long run, the citizens who own these assets are entitled to share in the super profits derived from extracting their finite resource wealth. (more…)
-
TIM LINDSEY. Jokowi Lite: The Indonesian president’s non-visit
The relationship between our two countries is now back on a more normal diplomatic footing for the moment but we need to do better than that if we are to make the most of our proximity to this gigantic nation of 270 million that considers itself now ‘rising’. (more…)
-
How we can do better on education. (Jean Blackburn Oration)
When you do so little to require the winners from economic change to compensate the losers, and then, whether by accident or design, you have an influx of immigrants, you end up with Trump, Brexit and the resurrection of One Nation.
(more…) -
FRANK BRENNAN SJ. The Catholic wrap-up at the Royal Commission.
But in the past, these spiritual leaders were also professing their commitment to an institution which commanded their hierarchical obedience and clerical acquiescence in protecting the institution’s public reputation and its coffers. (more…)
-
NICOLE GURRAN and PETER PHIBBS. Housing policy is captive to property politics, so don’t expect politicians to tackle affordability.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s recent warnings that house prices would fall steeply under a Labor government confirm the underlying politics of housing policy in Australia. The default position for politicians is to sound concerned about housing affordability, but do nothing. (more…)
-
MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Abbott geyser.
Unless Malcolm Turnbull is prepared to take the pretender front on, to attempt to blow him away in the manner he is trying to dispose of Shorten, he will continue to cop the wrecking, sniping and undermining that Abbott is so enjoying. (more…)
-
NICOLE GURRAN & PETER PHIBBS. How the Property Council is shaping the debate around negative gearing, taxes.
We see their spokespeople quoted in the papers and their ads on TV, but beyond that we know very little about how Australia’s lobby groups get what they want.
-
Trump’s assault on the liberal international order
There is considerable skepticism about U.S. President Donald Trump’s commitment to uphold the post-1945 liberal international order crafted under American leadership and underwritten by U.S. military power, economic heft and geopolitical clout. Trump’s pre-election statements on trade, immigration, alliances and nuclear policy in particular seemed to question these four critical pillars of established U.S. policy. (more…)
-
TERRY LAIDLER. Reconstructing Juvenile Justice – a 7 point plan
A major public storm has erupted in Victoria about the government’s decision to locate a new juvenile justice detention centre at Werribee in the city’s south west. Locals see it as demeaning to their neighbourhood, but, in my view, it’s the whole idea is wrong, NOT the site! (more…)
-
DOUG CAMERON. Commonwealth can, and must, do more on housing and homelessness
The failure of the market to provide housing for all who need it is compounded by several political failures. (more…)
-
RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Policy for now and the future.
The United States has led Australia into one lost war ( Viet Nam),two ongoing losing wars ( the second invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan ) and,most recently, into the dubious operations in Syria opposing Assard . Russia ,China and Iran will not allow Assard to be removed and,as Ross Burns has so well argued,Australia would be prudent not to involve itself in this complex conflict . (more…)
-
CAVAN HOGUE. Ukraine – a pox on both your houses?
A solution to the fighting in Ukraine will require agreement and cooperation by three parties without undue interference from outsiders. The three parties are the Russian Government, the Ukrainian Government and the Eastern Ukrainian rebels. The outsiders are NATO and the USA. Australia is not a player. (more…)
-
IAN WEBSTER. The need for more balanced media reporting of alcohol and illicit drug problems.
To those who work in the health system, ‘ICE’ is but one problem among many and pales into the background of the prevailing problems of addiction and misuse of alcohol and drugs. (more…)
-
GREGORY CLARK. Amazing 1964 Hasluck request to Moscow for help over Vietnam
In 1964, I was witness to another independent Canberra initiative over Vietnam. It was a bizarre attempt by then External Affairs minister, Paul Hasluck, to persuade Moscow to join with the West in Vietnam to stop alleged Chinese aggression. (more…)
-
RAMESH THAKUR. The nuclear deal with Iran was a triumph of global diplomacy, not a success of US sanctions
The deal (with Iran) is worth defending for three reasons: it is a good accommodation of each side’s bottom lines; sanctions may not have been as decisive as the hawks seem to believe in explaining Iran’s signature; and unilateral US sanctions will prove even less effectual. (more…)
-
JOHN MENADUE. Medical specialists – high fees and poor accountability.
So much of the public attention is on care in general practice, but specialist healthcare has some very serious problems. The first is excessive remuneration of many specialists. In some cases it could only be described as greed. The second is the lack of accountability for care by many specialists and the unwillingness of their organisations to tackle the problem. (more…)
-
BRIAN COYNE. The randomness and chanciness of life…
In this short essay, Brian Coyne, explores how much randomness and chance play in the outcomes we experience in life. He asks how much we are influenced by the Christian biblical mythology that an afterlife where the first will be last the last will be first helps us cope with the inherent unfairness and injustice that is the outcome of randomness and chance in life. (more…)