politics

Created
Wed, 24/05/2023 - 04:53
In his opening statement to the recent Senate Estimates hearing, Department of Home Affairs (DHA) Secretary Mike Pezzullo again proved he does not understand immigration policy or administration. At the hearing, he said: “I wish to advise the Committee that the average visa refusal rate for the six-year period from 2001-02 to 2006-07 was 1.8 Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 24/05/2023 - 04:56
The cancellation of Joe Biden’s visit to PNG is a gift. A gift of more time to step back from a precipice. The brutal choice, Mr. Prime Minister, is now between your nation’s finest hour and its flip side, its darkest, its recolonisation, this time, as an American client state, a pawn in America’s plans Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 24/05/2023 - 04:57
When US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met face-to-face with Mr Antony Blinken’s China counterpart Mr Wang Yi for eight hours in Vienna on May 10-11, a meeting both sides described as “constructive”, where was America’s top diplomat, Mr Blinken? The Sullivan-Wang meeting not only makes US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s long-awaited China visit a Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 24/05/2023 - 04:59
We the undersigned are scholars of the humanities and social sciences and other disciplines with expertise in the following issues. We write this open letter to express our concerns regarding the Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) trilateral security agreement. Specifically, our concerns relate to pillar one of the agreement, the joint development with the Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 23/05/2023 - 04:50
It’d be fair to say that there are two competing entities on the world stage right now. One composed of the G7, and the other a less structured group of countries that were once exploited by the G7.  I left Wuhan on Wednesday morning this week, on a train which terminated at Xi’an but was Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 23/05/2023 - 04:53
Back in 2008, I had a book contract to describe the obvious failings in Australian health care. It was planned to challenge the national myth that our system was ‘exceptional’, literally ‘best in the world’. I didn’t persist as Prime Minister Rudd was promising sweeping national reforms and there was genuine community enthusiasm for a Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 23/05/2023 - 04:54
The crisis in which PricewaterhouseCoopers finds itself is a useful illustration that the problem of politicians and bureaucrats becoming lobbyists, and of the revolving door syndrome are far from the only ones besetting integrity in public administration. The widespread use of supposedly independent consultants, many with deep and intractable conflicts of interest, is undermining good Continue reading »