Pearls and Irritations

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Has the Government’s economic strategy really changed, and what can we expect in future?

The Government’s new focus on unemployment as the key target for budget policy is welcome. But it will need to spend more and therefore tax more, if Australia is to achieve its full economic potential and jobs growth. (more…)

May 5, 2021
Tudge fudges school results and funding

The Minister for Education, Alan Tudge, was fudging figures to denigrate Australia’s school performance at the The Age education summit last week. He claimed the UK as the new benchmark for education performance, but ignored serious flaws in the reporting of its results. He also fudged data on school funding and student results in Australia. (more…)

May 5, 2021
WTO and climate change – a clash of treaties

The emission reduction measures proposed by governments to meet their Paris Climate Agreement commitments will violate their legally binding WTO obligations. This clash of treaties will have deleterious consequences for both. (more…)

May 5, 2021
Covid-19 Vaccines: Australia on the side of wealthy countries and Big Pharma

The Covid-19 vaccination program is becoming an ethical discussion of the difference between national vs global, private vs public, and whether to co-operate or to compete. It is also about who pays and who benefits.
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May 3, 2021
Why the Hawke-Keating government remains the gold standard

You don’t have to be partisan or nostalgic to lament the quality of political leadership in Australia. The mediocrity of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison coalition governments, the chronic underperformance of the manifestly more talented Rudd-Gillard Labor governments, and the inability of either side of politics to achieve anything like the creativity and sustained effectiveness of the Hawke-Keating governments of 1983-96, is there for all to see. (more…)

May 3, 2021
Childcare and the federal budget: what about the childcare workforce?

Changes to childcare in its role as a workforce support are expected to be made in the next federal budget. Childcare is more than workforce support and without reforming the present market-driven system it is unlikely recommended changes will deliver anything except minimal short-term relief to an ailing system.
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May 3, 2021
Capitalism, COVID, and Climate

The pandemic alliance between Big Pharma and governments foreshadows how the market-based capitalist system will fail to address global warming. Just finding low emissions technology is not an answer.

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May 2, 2021
‘We are still here’: responding to Ageism in our society

Ageism is an attitude toward the aged in our midst that marks them out as a specific group demanding special recognition for their shortcomings and their demands. Old age is experienced individually; ageism removes that sense of individuality by insisting that the aged as a cohort are burdensome, costly, and politically awkward.

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May 2, 2021
What will Frydenberg forecast for the budget in the 2021 Intergenerational Report?

Australia’s first four Intergenerational Reports made very different long-term forecasts of Australia’s budget balance and level of government debt driven largely by different assumptions of the real rate of economic growth. What will Josh Frydenberg forecast in his 2021 Intergenerational Report after forecasting budgetary nirvana in his 2019 ten year budget plan?

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Apr 30, 2021
Why is Australia prioritising trade with Israel?

The department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is currently calling for submissions to a “feasibility study on strengthening trade and investment with Israel”. Later this year DFAT is reported to be undertaking similar studies with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

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Apr 30, 2021
All-fibre, publicly owned, NBN must top the list of Post-Covid infrastructure investment

On December 24 2020, our Christmas stocking had a surprise gift from Santa in the form of Communications Minister, Paul Fletcher. He announced a fully operational NBN. The long-overdue baby had finally been delivered. (more…)

Apr 29, 2021
What have our governments done to tackle rates of Indigenous custody?

From one perspective one could see the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd as a triumph of the American justice system – a proof, somehow, that American police are accountable to the law, that bad police practice, having its roots in racism will be found out, and that the jury system will get things right. (more…)

Apr 28, 2021
Another own goal in Australia’s relations with China

The Federal Government is not providing a strategic narrative about its position towards China. Is it too cynical to suggest that is because a very large number of Australians now view China in such negative terms that “pushing back”, irrespective of the cost, is seen positively?

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Apr 25, 2021
The repeated lie that Abbott and Morrison stopped the boats has become a ‘fact’. It is just not true.

Our corporate media will not acknowledge that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison did not stop the boats. Despite clear evidence, the Canberra Press Gallery fell for the spin. With a tame media and cooperation by the military, the big lie was repeated time and time again and became accepted as fact. This was all before Donald Trump and his big lies.

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Apr 22, 2021
Out of this war, ready for the next?

Afghanistan has joined Australia’s list of lost wars, and it’s our longest. The Prime Minister’s tears on announcing it may have been for that, or for Australia’s 41 dead, 249 wounded, estimated 500 veteran suicides, and innumerable cases of PTSD, at a cost of A$10 billion. (more…)

Apr 19, 2021
COVID-19 Vaccines: Risks, Benefits, and Indemnity

The Morrison government has provided Indemnity for vaccine manufacturers but not Australians at risk of the exceedingly rare, but sometimes fatal, blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. (more…)

Apr 19, 2021
Myanmar steps back into darkness

Since the February 1 coup, the Tatmadaw – the official name of Myanmar’s armed forces – has escalated its crackdown on citizens protesting against the military takeover that ousted Myanmar’s democratically elected government. (more…)

Apr 19, 2021
Education shouldn’t be about contribution to the economy

The Coalition’s education policy deals only with schools, ignores the critical early years of life and the nature of learning and wrongly asserts a link between student education achievement and economic growth. Funding has produced gross inequity and no educational gain.

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Apr 18, 2021
The role of the ADF and its core business model

The core business of the ADF “will always be the application of lethal violence in the defence of our values, sovereignty and interests”, according to the newly installed Assistant Defence Minister, Andrew Hastie, speaking to military personnel. This statement is dangerous and wrong. The only person whose core business is the application of lethal violence is an executioner; a hangman. Thankfully, we don’t have hangmen anymore. (more…)

Apr 16, 2021
War footing groupthink; subsidies and socialism; glasshouses and stones

Upside down, inside out and black is white. Journalists fall over themselves to paint Scott Morrison as a courageous leader, the Financial Review lauds the “very affordable” housing market, in defiance of just about every expert in the country, and Tax Office attacks from an employee of Murdoch’s News Australia, whose approach to tax surely needs little explanation.

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Apr 16, 2021
Housing affordability is a problem. Here’s why super-for-housing isn’t a solution

The idea that young Australians should be able to dip into their super to help buy their first home keeps going round and round. The most recent iteration put forward by the Coalition’s Tim Wilson and a clutch of other backbenchers has the catchy slogan Home First, Super Second.

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Apr 14, 2021
Response to Brendan Coates on Retirement Income System

While Brendan Coates makes some valid criticisms of Paul Keating’s recent claims about Australia’s retirement income system, his own claims and assumptions (and those of the Retirement Income Review) are also open to question. (more…)

Apr 14, 2021
When will Australian political parties professionalise their preselection processes?

The shocking ongoing revelations about men behaving badly in the Australian Parliament has exposed a number of individuals for their misogyny and antiquated attitudes to women generally and their female colleagues in particular. They are discredited dinosaurs who do not belong in any modern workplace ,let alone in the national forum for charting best practice in public policy development . (more…)

Apr 12, 2021
Is Australia’s retirement income system delivering on its potential?

‘The Australian retirement income system is effective, sound and its costs are broadly sustainable’ according to the Retirement Income Review chaired by Mike Callaghan.

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Apr 8, 2021
Aged care – where sexism and ageism walk hand in hand

Double jeopardy: being female and being old.

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Apr 7, 2021
21st century democracy: blurring the lines

President Biden, at his first press conference, said this:

“Look, I predict to you, your children and grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy? Because that is what is at stake, not just with China”. (more…)

Apr 7, 2021
To Halt ’30-Year Race to the Bottom,’ Yellen Calls for Global Minimum Tax on Corporations

“A high global minimum tax can change the face of globalization—by making its main winners (multinational companies) pay more in taxes, instead of them paying less and less.”

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Apr 7, 2021
What is the risk of a housing price bubble?

Home ownership is a cornerstone of the Australian way of life. But it is becoming less affordable. This article discusses the risks of a housing price bubble and what can be done.

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Apr 6, 2021
The usual suspects and mates, making a killing from vaccinations

Australia has the right to whinge about Europe’s withholding of solid vaccines orders. We have done that, even as we have accepted the decision with reasonably good grace. We have to, more or less, because there is no immediate hope of reversing the decision through law courts or military invasion, and because our moral, as opposed to our legal right, is not the greatest. (more…)

Apr 6, 2021
Anything goes, in Canberra

‘Share your truth. It is your power’ Grace Tame, Australian of the Year 2021.

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Apr 5, 2021