It has been over a year and half since girls’ secondary education was banned by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and recently, they banned women from studying at universities too – which led the future of many women and girls to darkness. Missing Perspectives reporter Roya Musawi speaks with young women in Kabul defying the education Continue reading »
Government
The discussion on TikTok and Hikvision infiltration in Australian government departments has centred inarticulately and dogmatically on the country of origin. But there are other more realistic and probable security threats lurking in plain sight. The possibility of the Chinese government accessing Australia’s sensitive and national security information has been in the headlines again in Continue reading »
Election night TV coverages blur into one big indigestible mass as the years go by. Yet every now and again a few stand out. For progressives it was the sinking feeling as Scott Morrison won in 2019 and the clear early indication from Penny Wong’s body language. For Victorians it was probably the sight of Continue reading »
Brian Toohey (Pearls and Irritations, 14 February 2023) makes a number of criticisms of the recent four-part series on national security by Michael Keating and myself that was published in Pearls and Irritations earlier this month. He contends that we have made “assertions that should not go unchallenged”, particularly in regard to our support for Continue reading »
Last Thursday, the Australian government condemned Israel for planting more settlements on the occupied West Bank: 10,000 extra units. It’s a big step to criticise Israel because in Australia its organised friends are a powerful lobby. But this was a huge breach of international law. And, as Penny Wong pointed out, a deliberate blow to Continue reading »
Greg Sheridan, in his opinion piece of Tuesday 21 February, provides yet another display of his spiteful, vacuous journalism – his erroneous claims that I am not the progenitor of the APEC Leaders’ Meeting, and that my views on Australian strategic policy are eccentric and at odds with the US alliance. PJ Keating reply to Continue reading »
While Governments often promote consensus views that disguise racism, domination of the less fortunate and an ages old acceptance that violence can sustain dominant interests, recent articles in P&I have begun to challenge this conformity. A history of social theory records distinct ways of encouraging citizens to think, either by endorsing consensus views of how Continue reading »
Many government reviews or reports are leaked in part for reasons of bureaucratic politics and the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) is no exception. Given the probability that these emanations are accurate, two reactions are also highly likely. The first is that knowledgeable and engaged citizens are likely to suffer from hypoxia in the realisation that Continue reading »
When he was Treasurer Paul Keating complained that the resident galah in every pet shop across Australia was talking about microeconomic reform. Over the last few months the galahs have learned a new script: health reform. After years of largely benign neglect, it is now apparent that Medicare is failing to provide affordable access to Continue reading »
The Government’s response to the ‘independent’ review of Infrastructure Australia involves a surprise attack on public policy which should be rebuffed. A grim outlook? Picture this: pork-barrelling encouraged while important projects languish; proponents assessing their own proposals; Premiers trashing the Commonwealth via national cabinet saying it should obey their experts; a Minister facing condemnation by Continue reading »