Australia supports, indeed resources, Ukrainian armed resistance to Russia’s invasion and its attempt to forcibly exert its sovereignty over Ukrainian soil. Very few Australians appear to find fault with this position. For what reason is Israel’s provocative and continuing colonisation of Palestine not seen in the same light? Human convenience is served through words that Continue reading »
Government
There are echoes of Kevin Rudd’s 2009 essay in Jim Chalmers recent tome. Themes of social justice, equity and fairness still resonate. But this time around, Labor needs to think beyond the lofty ideas to confront what it all means for Australia’s schools. Both essays followed crises that exposed and exacerbated inequalities on a domestic Continue reading »
This editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald suggests an independent body should determine which occupations are in shortage for employer sponsored visas rather than using labour market testing. That would be a mistake. It is entirely appropriate labour market testing should be abolished. It has always been a charade. It was why my former colleagues Continue reading »
Where does Albanese stand when it comes to the latest attempts by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald to manufacture a new wave of anti-China hysteria in Australia? Is he amenable to the beating of the drums of war? Or does he have the intelligence to resist this dangerous nonsense? The omens are not Continue reading »
In the latest instance of the Australian media’s deluge of propaganda geared toward manufacturing consent for war with China, Nine Entertainment-owned newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have brought together a panel of “experts” to assess how well-prepared Australia is for a hot war with its primary trading partner. The question of if Continue reading »
The unilateral coercive sanctions Australia and its allies impose on Syria make us complicit in a war on the people of Syria, and arguably complicit in policide, if not genocide. To lift the cruel sanctions, we must come to the realisation that Syrians are human, like us. In 1998, the United Nation’s humanitarian coordinator in Continue reading »
Can we really believe that the power structurers of human societies in 2023 are setting policies and programs that are doing the best for our future? Last year, Australia’s list of serious issues and experiences were acute and costly: major environmental disaster problems, the continuing pandemics, international tensions affecting trade and possible wars, and tense Continue reading »
The comparison between Australia’s response to China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims with India’s treatment of Kashmiris highlights that a commitment to human rights is not the driving force in determining Labor’s position on foreign affairs matters. Last September when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Bali for the G20 Summit he tweeted “So wonderful to see Continue reading »
Hysteria over a supposed immediate China threat is being peddled by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in the first of a series of three reports titled Red Alert. Not since Menzies’s days, have we seen anything like the papers’ dramatic image of an air force fleet emerging from a supersized China to dominate Continue reading »
Last week 4.8 million people contracted Covid-19 and 39,000 died as a result. The pandemic rages on around the world with, globally, cumulative cases of 675,565,574 and 6,873,798 deaths documented. In the USA right wing politicians desperately want wicked China to have created the virus and/or deliberately or carelessly let it loose from a laboratory Continue reading »