Blog

  • TONY KEVIN. Shipwreck tragedy raises broad issues of duty of care in border protection

     

    Last week saw three days of hearings (reported in The Guardian by Ben Doherty),adjourned on Wednesday 28 September until Tuesday 4 October as plaintiffs await key documents from the 2012 WA Coroners’ Court inquest into the disaster which drowned 50 people on 21 December 2010, when a SIEV boat crashed in heavy seas into low jagged cliffs at Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island. Township-dwellers watched horrified from above as Australian Navy and Customs rescue crews in inflatable motor vessels arrived too late to tow the breaking-up boat off the rocks. Despite valiant efforts they were only able to save 39 people from the water. The class action is on behalf of families of dead victims, traumatised survivors and traumatised people involved in the SIEV221 rescue operation. (more…)

  • JOHN FITZGERALD. Beijing’s Guoqing versus Australia’s way of life.

    Beijing’s role in the Chinese community media in Australia is increasingly in conflict with its own demand for respect.

    Beijing is tired of foreign analysts criticising China simply for being what it is. A former Chinese ambassador to Australia, Fu Ying, made thepoint succinctly in her current role as vice–foreign minister: “The West is too arrogant and must stop lecturing us and trying to change China. Unless you can accept China as it is, there is no basis for a relationship.”

    But what is China, exactly? Is it getting its message across overseas? In the case of Australia, what does China’s engagement with Chinese community and social media tell us about the Chinese party-state? If Australians were to take up Fu Ying’s challenge and accept her country for what it is, would China welcome a little more plain-speaking about what it is up to in Australian community media?

    I raise these questions in the hope that a frank conversation about Chinese propaganda operations in Australia will help to build a more solid foundation for Australia–China relations into the future – a relationship that Australians need to get right if they are to ensure their national prosperity, security and way of life over the decades ahead. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Cruelty and evil have become banal

     

    Malcolm Turnbull told the UN that our treatment of refugees is world’s best practice. Only a guilty conscience could allow such self deception.

    In her book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’, published in 1963, Hannah Arendt refers to the ‘banality of evil’. Her thesis was that Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but an extremely stupid person who relied on cliché rather than thinking for himself and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. She says ‘The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil’. (more…)

  • NATALIA NIKOLOVA, ROBYN JOHNS, WALTER JARVIS. We need to change more than pay for executives to do better.

     

    The pay of executives of a company, whether in salary, bonuses or other types of remuneration, is usually justified as an incentive to improve the financial performance of a company. This has led to ever more complex performance packages with increasing percentage of variable, performance-based payments.

    But what is increasingly evident is that this definition of a role of an executive needs to change, as do the incentives, to act not only in the best financial interests of the company but to focus on how it serves the wider community. (more…)

  • JULIE WALKER. Australia should compare CEO and average worker pay like the US and UK.

     

    Australia should follow the lead of the United States in requiring public companies to disclose how much their CEO makes each year directly compared to an “average” rank and file employee. Ballooning executive pay contributes to income inequality and the CEO pay ratio provides a measure of the extent of the pay gap between the top and bottom income levels in the economy.

    US companies will be required to disclose from 1 January 2017 the ratio of pay of a CEO’s annual total remuneration to the median annual total remuneration of all company employees. UK companies are also subject to a variation of the CEO pay ratio rule, with relevant regulation requiring disclosure of the CEO’s remuneration compared to their employees. In Australia companies don’t have to disclose this ratio, although companies do disclose information about remuneration for executives. (more…)

  • GILES PARKINSON. Dumb politics means we may be stuck with an even dumber grid

     

    It was just six years ago when Malcolm Turnbull, then deposed Liberal Party leader, attended the launch of the Beyond Zero Emissions Zero Carbon plan for 2020, which suggested Australia should and could attain 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020.

    Turnbull, by all accounts, was an enthusiastic participant, and was particularly excited by solar towers and molten salt storage. “There is a real opportunity there, with that technology, to generate baseload power from solar energy – something of a holy grail.” (more…)

  • GILES PARKINSON. Uhlmann’s bizarre prediction of “national blackout” if we pursue wind and solar

     

    The ABC is supposed to have a ban on advertising. But even if it was allowed, money couldn’t buy the sort of advocacy the fossil fuel industry and incumbent energy interests are receiving this week from the network’s chief political correspondent, Chris Uhlmann.

    On Thursday, we took Uhlmann to task for the way he reported the blackout event in South Australia, and his suggestion that the state’s large portfolio of wind energy assets were at fault.

    Later that day, Uhlmann doubled down, in an article on the ABC website, and then on a major piece to camera on the flagship 7pm TV news. The result, presented as “analysis” and to the layman as a collection of “facts”, was more than the fossil fuel industry could ever wish for. (more…)

  • Is there finally light at the end of the fibre-optic cable?

    Over the past two weeks we’ve seen what many of us have been longing for – signs the Government has realised its national broadband network strategy is not working out as planned.

    (more…)

  • JOHN AUSTEN. Urban rail projects: property developers should be servants not masters

    There is plenty of advice on how to plug the supposed infrastructure gap in Australia’s big cities. One popular idea is for passenger rail projects to be led and funded by property development. [1]

    The idea has intuitive appeal. The origins of some railways many years ago was land development. Land use has been put as the sine qua non for major rail projects, recently via agglomeration theory. The idea would be a step towards the holy-grail of integrating the yin of land use and the yang of transport planning.

    Yet caution is needed. There were reasons why privately led railways fell out of favour. (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. Malcolm Turnbull – the last straw on climate change and renewables.

     

    Let’s be clear. All the experts tell us that the power blackout in SA had nothing to do with the energy mix – coal, gas, solar or wind. They all tell us that the blackout was due to the collapse of the key distribution towers and lines.

    Yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull blamed the blackout on excessive haste with renewables and called for cuts in renewable energy targets.  It was part of a continuing war  by the coalition against renewable energy with the ABC now joining in. The Victorian Premier called Malcolm Turnbull’s comments ‘ignorant rubbish’.

    With his populist nonsense  Malcolm Turnbull finally and fully embraced the coal lobby. He has taken the final step from a believer in climate change to a sceptic. (more…)

  • China’s deepening engagement in Australian society: is it a concern?

    The PRC government’s influence in domestic Australia – long active but not altogether visible or much remarked – is now emerging as a big, contentious and potentially disruptive issue in the relationship, and a thorny one for policy-makers. In some respects, it may be more challenging and more pressing than other more prominent issues like the South China Sea. Unlike PRC actions in the South China Sea it is difficult to ascertain what precise actions the PRC is taking within Australia and what influence these actions are having. (more…)

  • GILES PARKINSON. Coalition launches fierce attack against wind and solar after blackout.

     

    The Coalition government launched a ferocious attack against wind and solar energy after the major South Australian blackout, even though energy minister Josh Frydenberg and the grid operators admit that the source of energy had nothing to do with catastrophic outage.

    Frydenberg, however, lined up with prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, independent Senator Nick Xenophon and a host of conservative commentators, including Andrew Bolt, Alan Moran, the ABC’s Chris Ullmann, and Fairfax’ Brian Robins to exploit the blackout to question the use of renewable energy.

    Frydenberg used the blackout to continue his persistent campaign against the renewable energy targets of state Labor governments in South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, saying that the blackout was proof that these targets were “unrealistic.” (more…)

  • DYLAN McCONNELL. Was the SA blackout caused by wind or wind turbines?

     

    It has everything to do with wind – because that’s what blew over the transmission lines. But it has nothing to do with South Australia’s wind turbines. Transmission lines are large power lines that take electricity from generators to the smaller distribution lines that bring power to our homes.

    South Australia’s energy generation mix is mixture of wind, gas and some solar, and as of this year, zero coal. The state is connected to the rest of eastern Australia’s electricity market through two inter-connectors, one of which is down for service. (more…)

  • BOB KINNAIRD. The Coalition’s Backpacker tax and work rights package

     

    The Coalition’s backpacker policy announcement yesterday focussed on tax rates but also includes a significant expansion of work rights under Australia’s working holiday maker program (WHM or 417 and 462 visas). …. The Coalition’s main aim is to provide an increased supply of cheap and captive foreign labour to the agricultural sector on a long-term basis. But the new policy applies to WHMs in all sectors. (more…)

  • FRANK BRENNAN SJ. Another win for ‘David’ Timor against ‘Goliath’ Australia

    David Timor has once again scored a win against Goliath Australia in the international legal forum. Last time it was in the International Court of Justice which took strong exception to Australia’s raiding of the office of a lawyer involved in the preparation of Timor Leste’s case, though admittedly Australia’s one ad hoc judge did dissent on key points from the other 15 judges! (more…)

  • MICHAEL KELLY SJ. Winners are grinners – asylum seekers in Bangkok.

     

    In the great race of life, it’s well to savor the few winners you back. Such was my experience last week. For some years, I’ve been helping a small group of asylum seekers survive against the odds in Bangkok.

    The win was a simple one as all the best wins are. After almost four years of waiting, five asylum seekers I’ve been able to help – thanks to the financial support of Australian friends – are making their way to resettlement in Canada. Five down and 28 to go.

    There’s no great virtue in doing what you can for people down on their luck. It used to be part of being Australian and Christian and Jewish. Fortunately I have Australian friends who are Christian or Jewish enough to remember what our religions are about. (more…)

  • JAMES GERRAND. Cambodia Crackdown. Part 2 of 2.

    Part 2   Hun Sen’s Red Brotherhood

    Hanoi cannot be seen to be interfering in Cambodian affairs but the Vietnamese military has cemented close ties with the Hun Sen regime – none closer than with the Prime Minister’s personal Bodyguard Unit (BHQ), their go-to-man being the Deputy Commander Dieng Sarun. General Sarun’s shadowy Senaneak Youth League (read pro-CPP thugs) mounted the street protest that led to the brutal beating of two opposition MPs by several of his BHQ soldiers outside the National Assembly in October last year.   (more…)

  • ANDREW FARRAN. ‘We must get out of Syria’

     

    A comment in support of Richard Woolcott’s blog: “Australia’s Shambolic Policy on Syria – Up Shi’ite Creek Without a Paddle. – We must get out of Syria” 

    Richard Woolcott has stated with clear reasons why we should get out of the Middle East conflict which threatens to broaden and involve us in an expanded war that is not in our interests. One wonders how any times these points need to be made to the government before it acknowledges the folly of its situation in Iraq/Syria.  (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. ‘Faster economic growth demands better chief executives’.

     

    There was a revealing heading in a recent article by Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the SMH, ‘Faster growth demands better chief executives’. He concluded his article by pointing to the need for business leadership to seize the economic opportunities .‘ Our overpaid and underperforming chief executive officers are getting (it) wrong’.

    He says ‘Deloitte Access estimates that if the gap in management quality between Australia and the US were halved today, our productivity would rise to 80% of the US level, up from its present level of 77%. Achieving such an increase today would lead to a 5.3% increase in gross domestic product over its present level. This represents an increase in GDP of about $70 billion, equivalent to about $3,000 a person per year. … Deloitte Access concludes from other research that fast-growing businesses “take an attitude that success is in their hands and nobody else’s.” But so often our business sector keeps running to government for help . The rubric it invariably uses is ‘getting rid of regulation and red tape’.

    In this blog I have often remarked that some business people and particularly the Business Council of Australia spend a great deal of time lobbying governments to advance their business interests rather than running their businesses, or ‘sticking to their knitting’. (more…)

  • JAMES GERRAND. Cambodia Crackdown – part 1 of 2

     

    Part 1 ‘Kill a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys’

    Around my regular haunts in Phnom Penh are daily reminders of Cambodia’s enduring capacity for political violence: in Kabko market my favourite street restaurant was the scene where political adviser Om Radsady was shot dead in 2003; in a similarly blatant daylight execution, trade union leader Chea Vichea was gunned down in 2004 among the news stands at the end of my street where I buy the Cambodia Daily each morning; and now whenever my tuktuk driver pulls in to the Caltex station on the corner of Mao Tsetung Boulevard, I suppose I’ll be forever reminded of Dr. Kem Ley’s body sprawled dead on the floor of the Caltex convenience store. (more…)

  • LINDA JAKOBSON. Beware the China alarmists out there

     

    The quandary over what to do about People’s Republic of China government influence in Australia has burst on to the political scene. For the past months there has been ongoing media commentary about the consequences of political donations by businessmen with Chinese connections; and a piece in The Australian Financial Review claimed that hundreds, if not thousands, of Chinese citizens in Australia are gathering information for Chinese authorities.

    These are contentious issues, ones that cause unease within the government, among public servants and citizens at large. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. World’s best practice – the Gulags on Manus and Nauru.

     

    At a sparsely attended audience well past prime time at the United Nations General Assembly, Malcolm Turnbull used his pulpit to proclaim that Australia’s border security was the world’s best.

    And it is – up to a point. Not since the demolition of the Berlin Wall has there been such ruthless sealing of our frontiers. The boats may not have stopped entirely, but they have been very effectively repelled from our shores.

    We have, as even Peter Dutton, Turnbull’s hanger on in New York, admitted, something of a natural boundary; the country is, as our national anthem notes, girt by sea. No other major nation on earth has such an advantage. (more…)

  • ALISON BROINOWSKI. Your laptop is watching you: ‘Snowden’ the movie.

     

    Before Snowden comes on, there’s a short film of Oliver Stone, the director, warning cinema audiences that they can be surveilled, so please turn off their devices. Even as a humourless joke for geeks, it sets the sombre tone of the movie to follow. This is a feature version of Linda Poitras’ Citizenfour (2014), that adds political and personal narratives to the story of the young intelligence employee who exposed America’s mass surveillance of the world’s communications. (more…)

  • RICHARD WOOLCOTT. Australia’s Shambolic Policy on Syria – Up Shi’ite Creek Without a Paddle.

     

    We must get out of Syria.

    The war in Syria is extraordinarily complex. It really began in 2011 with the failures of the so-called Arab Spring.

    Now the core conflict is between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and the rebel groups which oppose him. Both sides have split into several militias, which have attracted foreign fighters, including a number of Australians. (more…)

  • CHRIS BONNOR. Institutionalised farce: funding Australia’s schools.

     

    The nation’s education ministers have just had a day together to sort out school funding. There was considerable posturing but little agreement. And they managed to sidestep real problems and urgent solutions. They do have some awareness of the institutionalised inequality created, in part, by school funding – but no real will to fix it.

    In a new report Bernie Shepherd and I outline the problem, starting with the contrasts between the schools in Albury and Wodonga, two of our most prominent border towns. One school on the NSW side is Albury Public School. Across the Murray is Wodonga Primary School with students who are less advantaged. After all the talk about equity you’d expect the strugglers at Wodonga to be better supported. Quite the opposite: while NSW annually provides over $8000 for each of the students at Albury Public, those in the Victorian school make do with $2000 less. (more…)

  • GREG DODDS. Australian sacrifice in Vietnam, it’s time to rethink the way we memorialise

    Mines are terrible weapons. They can still blow the leg off an innocent trespasser years after a conflict has ended. Dan Tehan, the Minister for Veterans Affairs demonstrated that, figuratively speaking, last month when he snarled at the Vietnamese that their cancelling the 50th anniversary service for the battle of Long Tan was “no way to treat mates”.

    The Vietnamese were ruthless, competent and game enemies but we’re now all mates? (more…)

  • LUKE FRASER. Roads: Minister Fletcher will need a good nose for bullshit to deliver genuine reform a la Paul Keating.

     

    Both the Grattan Institute [i] and Ross Gittins [ii] have lauded Minister for Urban Infrastructure Paul Fletcher for his hard talk on road reform. Gittins compared him to Paul Keating.

    Fletcher is setting out with a reformer’s zeal. Like Keating, he shows a willingness to level with the public about big problems and the costs of inaction.

    It would be a pity if poor advice sees Fletcher telling us about the wrong problem. If he is to approach comparison with Keating, he must be alert to policy furphies. (more…)

  • IAN McAULEY. The Mounting Case For A Royal Commission Into Banks And Insurance Companies

    An overwhelming majority of Australians support a Royal Commission into the finance sector. Ian McAuley explains why.

    We’re paying too much for a bloated financial service sector.A prominent example is Australia’s largest health insurer, Medibank Private, which in the last financial year absorbed just over a billion dollars of contributors’ premiums in management overheads and profits – $511 million as profit and $516 million as management expenses. Spread over its 1.9 million policies that’s $540 per policy holder.

    Using a combination of subsidies and penalties (most notably the Medicare Levy Surcharge) successive governments have bludgeoned Australians into holding private health insurance, even though it has proven to be a woefully ineffective and high-cost mechanism of doing what Medicare can do so much better.

    Out of every dollar that contributors spend on private health insurers, only 83 cents comes back as claims paid. By comparison, of every dollar that passes through Medicare and the Australian Tax Office, 95 cents is spent on health services.

    It’s no wonder people are annoyed with private health insurers: in a recent survey 78 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposition that “private health insurers put profits before patients”. And it’s no wonder that the government’s stealthy moves to displace Medicare with private insurance met with so much resistance in the recent election.

    When it comes to general insurance – the insurance that covers cars, houses and business assets – the industry’s performance is even worse. Health insurers, it turns out, are the leanest among a well-fattened lot. (more…)

  • TRAVERS McLEOD, PETER HUGHES, SRIPRAPHA PETCHARAMESREE, STEVEN WONG, TRI NUKE PUDJIASTUTI. Developing a regional refugee framework.

    September has seen a surge of international summits. First came the G20 in Hangzhou, then ASEAN and the East Asia Summit in Vientiane, plus the Pacific Islands Forum in Pohnpei.

    And, on consecutive days this week, the United Nations in New York hosted a summit on refugees and migrants, followed by US President Barack Obama’s special leaders’ summit on refugees. Representatives from government, business and civil society gathered to decide how best to move the dial on unprecedented mass displacement.

    It’s easy to be sceptical of talkfests, but the New York summits carried special significance. They show that forced migration has become a matter of high politics. And unless managed more effectively, forced migration will have permanent and intensifying negative impacts on countries across the globe. (more…)

  • JON STANFORD. Business welfare under the Coalition: two case studies (2)

    This is the second of two articles by Jon Stanford on the Coalition’s approach to industry protection and ‘business welfare’. Part 1 (Motor Cars) can be found at Jon Stanford. Business welfare under the Coalition: two case studies.

    Naval shipbuilding

    At the outset, we need to understand that there are no significant defence reasons for building naval platforms in Australia. Self-reliance means that Australia must be capable of maintaining its defence platforms and systems to a high standard and returning damaged assets to full availability as quickly as possible. Australia does not produce a single missile or weapons system that is employed on its ships, not even a 5-inch gun. Apart from the excellent CEA Technologies naval radars, almost every defence system in the ADF comes from overseas. We do not build any fixed wing platforms for the RAAF, nor do we make the Abrams tank. A sensible acquisition policy should focus on value for money, with local procurement only occurring when it represents an efficient use of resources. (more…)