Pakistan’s rulers face an emboldened and resilient personality in the form of ex-prime minister Imran Khan. With such challenges now cascading upon the country, the greatest threat might yet be a further political crisis as the people abandon the government in the search for stability. Pakistan’s rulers — the army, intelligence services, and that segment Continue reading »
Government
We know little of the views of Teals on foreign and strategic issues. There are some big issues coming, on which they will need to focus. At the 2022 elections for the Australian parliament a new phenomenon was evident. A group of female candidates stood in conservative electorates with core concerns about climate change and Continue reading »
Despite countless Western bossy-boots beavering away in the media and beyond, generating worst-case projections as they strain to create a collective storyboard for “China: The Disaster Movie”, China, exasperatingly, keeps successfully pressing on towards its own clearly considered, affirmative future. The American Plan A for reforming China was firmly in place by the 1990s. The Continue reading »
Government action must lead the way by having 16 and 17 year olds vote at the next national election. Let us copy the “Make it 16” campaign in NZ. As a young person I lived in the UK through some of the terrors of bombing in World War II. Our parents always told us, and Continue reading »
A week or so ago, on a visit to the ICU ward in the Alice Springs hospital, the Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney was shocked to discover that of the 16 beds in the ICU, 14 were occupied by Indigenous women who had been subjected to violent assaults. Alcohol is widely acknowledged to Continue reading »
Katy Gallagher’s recent rejection of an ATO supported pay increase was entirely justified if the Government is to move away from agency-based remuneration to an APS-wide approach. The problem is that achieving an APS-wide approach which delivers the remuneration necessary to attract, develop and retain the skills the APS needs will not be easy and Continue reading »
How might the renown mid-20th century linguist Ludwig Wittgenstein have addressed the current defence strategic review? As the perceptive mid-20th century Cambridge based English/Austrian linguist Ludwig Wittgenstein explained, the answer you get to a question depends on how the question is formed. The same wisdom could have been conveyed to military planners in the past Continue reading »
The Order of Australia system is a bunyip aristocracy that reflects the hierarchies of British society in which the high and mighty get the cream and others are left with the skimmed milk. Just before the country slipped into its raucous celebrations for Australia Day last month, Mr David Hardaker served up in Crikey a Continue reading »
There are very sound strategic reasons to continuously build and maintain heavily automated missile frigates and Air Independent Propulsion conventional submarines in Australia, as an alternative to spending $150B-$200B on unmaintainable AUKUS Nuclear Submarines. “I do not say, my Lords, the French will not come, I only say they will not come by sea” John Continue reading »
Six years ago, John Menadue, Robert Manne, Tim Costello and I agreed that Australia’s refugee and asylum seeker policy was in a complete mess. The trouble started with the 2013 election campaign when Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott tried to outdo each other, pledging that the boats would be stopped and that anyone headed for Continue reading »