Australia’s most severe China knowledge gap is the virtual collapse of University-level advanced Chinese language study, together with the study of Chinese society, politics and culture. This is the major finding of a report, Australia’s China Knowledge Capability, published in 2023 by the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The main program that provided this expertise Continue reading »
Government
Climate scientists reveal data that earth’s heating is accelerating, heat extremes are increasing and 1.5C has been breached faster than forecast. We are failing to treat climate change as the single greatest threat to humanity. At the same time our government has announced a gas strategy which increases emissions and the earth’s heating. Either we Continue reading »
It’s time we reckoned with what it means to become a corporatocracy. Our governments exist to enact the desires of their corporate masters. Some of these politicians, like Madeleine King, appear to do so with alacrity, while others appear lost in the perceived demands of party and pressure groups. The end result will be an Continue reading »
12½ years ago I wrote, in a column published in the Fairfax (now Nine) mastheads, that “the surest way to gain acceptance for policy proposals that former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry might have called ‘frankly, bad’ is to wrap them in a ‘security’ blanket”. That is, I went on, “if you want a government to Continue reading »
The way that the government has permitted the opposition and the Murdoch media (and even the ABC and Fairfax media) to push it around on issues such as climate and immigration policy raises the question: Does modern Labor have any moral bottom at all? Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is an excellent negotiator. He won’t be Continue reading »
Australians should be clear that the “Future Gas Strategy” released last week is not in the national interest. It represents the greatest capitulation of any Australian government to the demands of the fossil fuel industry. It is the latest form of climate denial which is happening globally as fossil fuel companies and state national energy Continue reading »
The Guardian newspaper reports that history professor Allan Lichtman is known as the Nostradamus of US presidential elections since he has correctly predicted the results of nine of the past ten ballots. And even the one he missed in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore because thousands of black votes got rejected on a Continue reading »
The latest statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics paint a grim picture of a nation becoming more and more entangled in the web of incarceration. During 2022-23, the total number of people behind bars surged by three percent, accompanied by a one percent rise in the imprisonment rate. These figures not only reflect a Continue reading »
With a couple of minutes Googling, your favourite Martian could be well informed on the role of government in the Australian economy from the moment of the arrival of the British colonialists. It’s been big. Colonial and other governments have not only provided legal and economic frameworks within which private organisations can work, they’ve done Continue reading »
Even good minds can get criminal justice wrong, but usually for only so long. Several years ago, a veteran magistrate was speaking over lunch with a bunch of us criminal-law practitioners. Inevitably, the judicial colleagues came in for some free and frank character analysis, but the most telling comment was about a relatively recent arrival Continue reading »