The most pressing question: Is the global system there to serve people, or are people there to serve the global system? They also never address a central contradiction of globalisation: that capital is free to move, but for the most part people are not, unless they belong to the elite ranks. The inevitable backlash has begun. (more…)
Blog
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HAROLD LEVIEN. Solving our Housing Problem.
Housing investors have largely crowded out first-home-buyers from the Sydney and Melbourne housing markets. The Coalition Government has not simply failed to address this problem; its policies have been the principal cause. (more…)
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HAL SWERISSEN. Obesity: individual responsibility isn’t enough
When individual choices cost tax payers $5.2 billion in extra health and welfare services for obesity, the market has failed. When the market fails, it is legitimate for government to act. (more…)
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CHARLES LIVINGSTONE. South Australia’s gambling tax highlights the regulatory mess of online betting.
The South Australian government will introduce from July a “point-of-consumption tax” to claw back some of the gambling tax revenue it is seeing disappear over the border. The new tax is a reasonable response to a growing problem, and probably won’t send bookmakers to the wall. But it does highlight the current regulatory mess surrounding how we tax internet wagering in Australia. (more…)
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GEORGE BROWNING. Benjamin Netanyahu – Hero or Villain?
Benjamin Netanyahu is about to make an historic visit to Australia. Should he come and how should he be received? Having just guided legislation through the Knesset ‘legalising’ the illegal: settler outposts on private Palestinian land; he has seemingly set in motion an unstoppable movement which, taken to its ultimate conclusion, could deprive Palestinians of every inch of their ancestral land and establish Israel, a state devoid of morality or conscience. No wonder his President and Attorney General advised against it! (more…)
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JIM COOMBS. Do We choose reason and proportion or “Economic Reform” ?
So long as government vacates the field, the balance between rich and poor lurches further towards the rich. 8 individuals control half of the world’s wealth. Is that Balance or proportionate ? (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Political morality and preference deals.
Turnbull, having told us that he is now an agnostic on energy policy – whatever works, by which he means whatever is good politics has now become an agnostic, even an atheist, when it comes to political morality. (more…)
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JOHN TULLOH. What will Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop say to Benjamin Netanyahu?
It would be intriguing to know the position Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop intend to adopt in talks when the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visits Australia this week. It comes a week after Netanyahu had startling discussions with Donald Trump. The neophyte US leader on the Palestinian question did not seem too bothered what happened as long as both sides could reach ‘a deal’. Two-state, one-state, whatever! The two sides should work it out, he said, or perhaps get some of the friendlier Arab states involved, eh? (more…)
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ERIC HODGENS. The need for new Church Leadership.
While the Catholic population is increasing, active participation in parish life is steadily decreasing. This means that the pool of future lay leaders is steadily getting shallower. If this decline is to be reversed, now is the time to select lay leaders, train them to lead parishes and then formally appoint them as Parish Leaders. (more…)
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PAUL BUDDE. Australia needs a proper NBN.
Regrettably it appears that on both counts – proper infrastructure plans and the need for affordable services – the government and the nbn company, despite spending something like $50 billion, have failed to come up with the right solution for Australia. (more…)
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WAYNE SWAN. Coalition energy policy.
It’s a lost decade we couldn’t afford on climate change and energy policy – but when the consequences are felt in years and decades to come, it’s incumbent upon us all not to forget the political opportunists and charlatans who led us down this path. (more…)
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Malcolm Turnbull’s attacks.
But the real flaw in Turnbull’s strategy is its sheer negativity. The great dominators of parliament – Menzies, Whitlam and Keating most notably – all had something to say: they were policy powerhouses, intent on changing the nation in their own images. There was plenty of attack, plenty of a invective, but it was all aimed at providing a genuine agenda. (more…)
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PETER DAY. ‘The smell of the sheep’ (Pope Francis)
It should be noted that the intention of this reflection is not to play ‘the man’ (bishops, clerics), but rather ‘the ball’ (church governance, culture): to shine a light on a deeper and systemic illness that needs root and branch reform. Without such reform we will continue to produce fertile ground for the abuse of power, of which sexual abuse is a catastrophic symptom. (more…)
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TONY KEVIN. Update on Trump impeachment possibilities, and reaction in Moscow
The US liberal media onslaught on Donald Trump’s claimed absolute unsuitability for the US presidency continues. In every possibly way, Trump is being dissected forensically and brutally. (more…)
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MICHAEL SAINSBURY. A shonky affair.
Here lies the exquisite dilemma for the Packer lobbyists: help push the Chinese side to get a better deal, perhaps an exchange program for their incarcerated staff, or strike another deal, leaving all those ill-gotten gains sloshing around Sydney and Melbourne and finding their way to the Packer gaming tables. (more…)
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JAMES O’NEILL. General Flynn’s resignation raises fresh dangers.
As is now customarily the case, the mainstream media both failed to put Flynn’s actions in their proper context, and even more seriously failed to understand the significance of this week’s events. (more…)
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SUSAN RYAN, OLIVER FRANKEL, JOHN MENADUE. Upcoming series on Making Housing Affordable.
After Easter, Pearls and Irritations plans to publish a series ‘Making Housing Affordable‘ addressing key aspects of the housing crisis and recommending solutions, with contributions from a range of experts and other key stakeholders, including economists, planners, demographers, housing providers and policy makers. (more…)
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OLIVER FRANKEL. Making housing affordable. Vancouver’s new “Empty Homes Tax”
Vancouver’s response to the housing affordability crisis, now includes a new Empty Homes Tax at 1% per annum of the value of each empty home covered. Australian reports suggest that there may be 90,000 empty dwellings in Sydney and 83,000 in Melbourne. (more…)
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PETER JOHNSTONE. What sort of bishops do Catholics want?
Concerned Catholics who responded to a recent Catholics for Renewal online survey showed widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of their local diocese and parishes. Their dissatisfaction referred to current governance arrangements, the need for a stronger pastoral focus and more effective leadership from their bishop based on his willingness to consult widely. (more…)
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CAROLYN WHITZMAN. States drag feet on affordable housing, with Victoria the worst.
Moral panic over recent increases in visibly homeless people in central Melbourne has brought to the fore the critical shortage of affordable housing across the metropolitan areas of Australia’s wealthiest cities. But living on the street is only the tip of the iceberg. Many more households are living in insecure and/or overpriced accommodation. Their plight is due to an undersupply of appropriately priced, sized and situated rental housing. (more…)
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CHRIS BONNOR. A trans-Tasman story out of school
The Gonski recommendations were our best chance to create something better, but it didn’t happen in the way the review envisaged. As one of the Gonski architects puts it, instead we are just on a path to nowhere. (more…)
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RAMESH THAKUR. Australia needs to wake up, grow up.
Without abandoning ANZUS but downsizing it considerably, Australia must chart an independent foreign policy according to a Canberra-based calculation of national values and interests. Or does Australia really want to make the transition to aligning with Trump’s view that if only the West had confiscated Iraq’s oil and wealth after the 2003 invasion, there would have been no Islamic State militant group and all would have been honky dory? (more…)
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ROSS GITTINS. Outlook for Australian politics and government in 2017.
The area of economic reform where the government’s performance has been most egregious is on policy to ease our transition to a low-carbon economy and honour our commitments at the Paris conference. Leaving aside Abbott’s role in our policy regression, Turnbull’s disservice to the nation was to swear off introducing a carbon intensity scheme. (more…)
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FRANK BRENNAN SJ. The Catholic wrap-up at the Royal Commission
Last Monday, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse commenced its three-week examination of the causes of child sexual abuse and cover up in the Catholic Church in Australia over the last 60 years. The statistics were horrifying. (more…)
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Resource Gaps Between Advantaged & Disadvantaged Schools Among the Largest in the World
Disadvantaged students in Australia are being denied equal opportunities to learn because they have less access to qualified teachers and material resources than advantaged students. The gaps in access to education resources between advantaged and disadvantaged schools in Australia are among the largest in the world. (more…)
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CAVAN HOGUE. Australia did say no to the US on Vietnam in 1954.
“Australia’s destiny was not so completely wrapped up with the United States as to support them in action which Australia regarded as wrong”. (R.G.Casey)
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PETER GIBILISCO. Where are the public intellectuals like Hugh Stretton.
“The worst kind of bad social science, Stretton argues, purports to select the things to be explained, and the ways of explaining them, without resort to values and valuation” (more…)
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PETER PHIBBS and NICOLE GURRAN. Why housing supply shouldn’t be the only policy tool politicians cling to.
If politicians were serious about the affordability crisis, they would be trying to support the important but underfunded affordable housing sector. Better targeting tax breaks towards new and affordable rental housing, rather than fuelling demand for existing homes, would also help. But until our politicians can see past supply slogans we can expect very little policy change. (more…)
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WALTER HAMILTON. Fake news triumphant
Japan’s Shinzo Abe, US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have a great deal in common, particularly their aversion to being exposed to a free press. (more…)
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STEVE GEORGAKIS and JADE WARD. The first week in February 2017: A Landmark for Women’s Football Codes
Histories are silent on any real influence that women have had on their respective sport. This is because involvement in these sports have historically emerged from the connotations that such sports were about providing opportunities for men to develop a masculine character. (more…)