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 »
Government
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 »
Among the world’s many pressing needs, the most urgent of all is a plan for human survival. And Australia should be the country to lead its creation. At present no country or international body has one. What we currently have is a chaotic road to avoidable disaster, driven by ten vast, interconnected threats which are Continue reading »
This is war protest month, with more to follow. Will efforts against the Iraq war, that failed twenty years ago this week, succeed in heading off the next one? On Sunday 19 February thousands protested at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC against US militarism, proxy warfare, and the threat of nuclear conflict. The ANSWER Continue reading »
Opening up access to permanent residence for long stay refugees on temporary visas is right and inevitable. The decision will not set off a major new surge of maritime asylum seekers. The Coalition and their supporters have selective memories. Temporary protection visas were never a deterrent anyway. The government’s decision to allow access to permanent Continue reading »
But is the Arab country’s pioneering gender parity laws and the ‘State Feminism’ introduced in the 1950s by Habib Bourguiba under threat from President Kaîs Saïed’s new electoral law? The new Tunisian electoral law drops parity in a disastrous political and economic situation. While the old electoral law enshrined gender parity among candidates by obliging Continue reading »
The child’s face in the Smith Family ad sums up all that is wrong with Australia. In this rich, first world nation, the Smith Family call us to sponsor a child so that she might go to school. A basic human right is being denied and in that denial our state and government stands condemned. Continue reading »
This article discusses suicide. It was 10 years ago that then Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Morrison AO gave his famous speech in support of service women, (written mostly by Catherine McGregor AM). Around this time, there were five concurrent inquiries into Defence culture, including the prominent Broderick Report on the treatment of women. All of this led to Continue reading »
If war is the last resort, why doesn’t our governance system enforce that condition? Will our War Powers be reformed in 2023? A Joint Standing Committee of the parliament is currently inquiring into our “international armed conflict decision making”. There have been over a hundred submissions, and one day of public hearings (on 9 December Continue reading »
The AUKUS alliance is increasingly adopting a nuclear tone. First came the promise to furnish Australia with nuclear powered submarines, absent nuclear weapons, a point that did not dissuade critics such as Indonesia. Then came the announcement to deploy six B-52 bombers to the Northern Territory’s Tindal airbase, south of Darwin, an exercise underwritten by Continue reading »