Extreme climate impacts are exploding in this year’s Northern Hemisphere summer. We urgently need to understand how climate disruption will affect Australians: their safety and well-being in the face of ever-more-extreme climate events, the viability of public and private infrastructure, communications and logistical systems, challenges to food security, and much more. The Australian Government is Continue reading »
politics
At 3 a.m. on July 26, 2023, the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum in Niamey, the capital of Niger. Troops, led by Brigadier General Abdourahmane Tchiani closed the country’s borders and declared a curfew. The coup d’état was immediately condemned by the Economic Community of West African States, by the African Union, and by the European Union. Both Continue reading »
In the Ukraine War, scholar Serhii Plokhy has his own biases, which can get in the way of his profession’s fidelity to evidence. Are historians, as Serhii Plokhy suggests, really the worst interpreters of current events, except for everyone else? As a historian myself, I would like to believe so. It’s a comforting thought at Continue reading »
CANBERRA 2 August 2023.– One of Australia’s longest-serving senior federal bureaucrats – Andrew Metcalfe – says poor training, insufficient funding and sometimes ‘fragmented and desultory’ efforts by the public service were responsible some of Australia’s greatest public administrations tragedies. Metcalfe also blamed the previous Coalition government for starving Commonwealth departments and agencies of additional staff, Continue reading »
During his recent speech at the Solomon Islands National University, Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy said “strategic competition […] is an unavoidable reality for our region”. July has already seen Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare visit China, French President Emmanuel Macron visit Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia, and United States Secretary of State Continue reading »
Over twenty ALP branches around Australia have now passed anti-AUKUS resolutions and the list is growing by the day. Many of the branches are calling on the Albanese government to withdraw from the pact while others want a parliamentary inquiry into the $368 Billion deal. AWPR supports the call for a full and open inquiry which was Continue reading »
Australia’s environmental protection legislation needs all hands-on deck right now. City centre households have lower emissions than the suburbs. Northern hemisphere summers getting hotter. Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act review Regular readers of my Sunday contributions will be aware that I consider climate change and the loss of biodiversity to be not the Continue reading »
An important one-hour video interview with Ambassador Chas Freeman about the power of the Israeli lobby in the US and the danger of the US policy towards China leading to a nuclear war. Jul 29, 2023 Kim Iversen, independent media channel Charles “Chas” W. Freeman Jr. is an American retired diplomat and writer. He served Continue reading »
The Australian Universities Accord Interim Report shows an echidna on its cover, in keeping, Education Minister Jason Clare acknowledges, with the spikey issues he is attempting to address in the education system. His goal is to reduce inequality in Australian society while improving the quality of education across the system. Clare gets the point that Continue reading »