Over the last few weeks we have been bombarded with a number of assertions, advanced firstly as mere mantra, but then appearing as axioms, or self-evident truths. Israel has a right to defend itself; and Israel has a right to exist. I wish to question whether these two statements are as axiomatic as our Prime Continue reading »
politics
There will be no end to the occupation and death until there is a political settlement with justice for both Palestinians and Israelis. Continue reading »
“Your visit can be described as carrying on the past and opening up the future,” Chinese President Xi Jinping told visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Beijing on Monday afternoon, citing the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the trip made by Gough Whitlam, the first Australian leader to visit China. Continue reading »
Fifty years’ ago, the grainy black and white image of Whitlam with his ear pressed against the listening wall at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, led to the joke: What is being said to Gough? Answer: ‘Mei you!’ The ubiquities response then by Chinese service staff in restaurants and stores in those day, loosely, ‘don’t have Continue reading »
An older man, grey-haired but quite firm in his manner as he spoke to the ABC TV reporter on Palestine’s West Bank. He was an Israeli, he said, and he was claiming the building site because, ‘God gave us this land.’ He fingered what seemed to be a real estate contract tucked under his left Continue reading »
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Advisory Committee (MRAC) has been tasked with supporting “a continuous review framework that ensures the MBS is contemporary, sustainable, evidence- based, and supports universal access to high value care for all Australians. Good about time. Action to address the inequity relating Continue reading »
Former Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb, in an exclusive interview with People’s Daily Online, said he viewed the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to China as another step toward normalising political relations. Albanese is scheduled to visit China from November 4 to 7, 2023, during which he will participate in the sixth China Continue reading »
The UN is calling the Israel-Hamas war a ‘graveyard of children’…. an adult conflict, in which the young are suffering most. What we see on our TV screens every night is impossible to watch. Did Netanyahu see the young lad who had just carried the decapitated body of his friend from the rubble. If so, Continue reading »
The system of fixed term contracts for department heads is not in itself the cause of the recent debacles of Robodebt and Home Affairs. Restoring permanent appointments for departmental heads is unthinkable, not least because the former system rested upon powerful public service boards, now abolished everywhere. We could not restore such bodies even if Continue reading »
Israel’s strategic choices, as Israelis see it, are rather like those sometimes argued for Australia. It wants powerful friends but cannot take them for granted. Ultimately it must depend on itself, if needs be alone. Surrounded by deadly enemies, it must make the cost of conquest so high, and so uncertain, that invaders are deterred. Continue reading »