Earlier this year, I wrote on the potential risks of the new Pacific Engagement Visa (PEV) that will provide a lottery-based pathway to permanent residence for nationals of Pacific Islands and Timor Leste. With the visa starting on 1 July 2023, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), which has policy responsibility for the Continue reading »
politics
A Lowy Institute survey issued in April this year showed that the balance of Chinese-American influence in Southeast Asia had shifted in China’s favour over the last few years. Specifically, in overall diplomatic, defence, economic and cultural influence, the balance was 52 to 48 in China’s favour in 2018 but its lead increased to 54 Continue reading »
An open invitation to the Fremantle launch ...
Today the global trade system faces three systemic challenges. None are new, but strategic competition between China and the United States has brought a dangerous edge to each of them. The first is the dramatic shift in the composition of international economic interaction. When the Bretton Woods system was first set up, global trade was Continue reading »
There is rising wrath, out there in Elderland. The Elders, it seems, are no longer happy to look on as a bunch of corporates and their political stooges pillage the planet and lay waste their grandchildren’s future. With growing resolve, resources and organisation, older people are fighting back. Rather than sitting meekly in their retirement Continue reading »
Documents publicly available make it clear that Saudi Arabian government officials assisted the two 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar, who crashed an airliner into the Pentagon. Newly released testimonies further reveal that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was aware of the activities of the two hijackers before the 9/11 attacks and suggest that Continue reading »
Even without Chat-bot assistance, it is fun to look up quotations and their origins online and then discover, for example, this quote reportedly from Winston Churchill: “The only statistics you can trust are the ones you have falsified yourself.” And an earlier British prime minister from the 19th century, Benjamin Disraeli, allegedly said there were Continue reading »
Australia is fast approaching a reckoning with its past, its present and the state of the nation’s soul. And if the last month is any indication to go by, we will be found wanting. A hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud wrote a paper called, Mourning and Melancholia. In it he mapped the divergent paths of Continue reading »
As a Hong Kong based columnist for much of his writing career Nury Vittachi was known for his persistent anti-Beijing slant. But no longer. What changed his mind was the mainstream media – the BBC in particular – coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong riots. Praised as democracy seekers, these riots for the most part Continue reading »
The judgement on Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case delivered a heavily damning summary of conduct. That would have come as little surprise to many; rumour abounded for a decade or more. Not only has Roberts-Smith been severely impacted. The ordure is spread widely but not thinly. It will stick perniciously to individuals (Roberts-Smith being just one), Continue reading »