While the speechless unite, in a silent accord. Australia’s Geopolitical Present and Future: Bethlehem through Poetry and Literature. An incomplete – very incomplete – snapshot of the current season of Advent: Internally the US is divided and its global leadership is crumbling; the Middle East, and Ukraine play insolent, obscene court jesters to kings, nobles, Continue reading »
politics
Since coming to office in 2022, the Albanese Governments foreign policy has been dominated by its enthusiastic embrace of the AUKUS agreement with old allies, the United States and the United Kingdom. However these nations are totally out of step with global opinion about gross breaches of international law by the Netanyahu regime and neither Continue reading »
As Australia’s expands its support to the NATO proxy war against Russia it is critical that the Parliament plays a role in determining when we become involved in overseas conflicts. In January of this year, I posed the question is Australia currently at war? The evidence available at that time led to the conclusion that Continue reading »
Why Gaza urgently needs a plan B. War will drag on… It’s now clear that the Gaza War is far from over. Hamas refuses to surrender. Israel has rejected the UN General Assembly’s call for a cease fire and American pressure to lower the intensity of the war because it says Hamas would regroup and Continue reading »
Talks in public forums of saving Australia from China are disappointingly unrealistic. It is quite understandable that a world hitherto dominated by Western hegemony feels insecure in the light of China’s meteoric economic rise. However, such insecurity if not checked can lead to fear that compromises a person’s ability to make rational judgements. Fear arises Continue reading »
Juries seem either to love forensic scientists or just be baffled by them (or by the spin put on their findings by cunning counsel). Some judicial officers have been somewhat slower to embrace them – with potentially disastrous consequences, not just in judge-alone trials, but when evidence is ruled inadmissible and does not go to Continue reading »
The government’s new migration strategy is a commendable attempt to restore some shape to immigration policy and to deal with pressing short, medium and long-term policy problems. A massive implementation effort is needed to make it work. It comes at a time of a pathetic level of public discourse on immigration issues. Institutional change is Continue reading »
Israel is a nation not greatly given to following advice, even from its great and powerful friends and guarantors, unless and to the extent it accords with its own judgment of where its national interest lies. That’s partly because it sees itself as being surrounded by enemies, ever in a desperate position, and bound to Continue reading »
Recently, on American television, political commentator, Anand Giridharadas, talked about the dangerous divide in American politics. To a more or less extent, a similar cultural divide exists in every part of the world. Giridharadas saw one side of the divide as the aggrieved 40% or so of American voters that stand with Donald Trump. Despite Continue reading »
Up to 100,000 people — most of whom derive their professional status and income from climate-related politics, advocacy and business — flew into Dubai for the COP28 annual global climate policy-making event, the Conference of the Parties under the United Nations’ climate convention. And the result? An unmitigated disaster. Indigenous people, frontline communities and climate Continue reading »