The election of the Albanese Labor government was met with a strong sense of optimism among people who had been lobbying for aged care reform for years. Finally, a government prepared to address the systemic issues that had plagued the sector since the Howard government neo-liberal reforms decades before. Alas, it was not to be. Continue reading »
Government
Détente would be good. Dialogue and diplomacy would be better. An end to US-led covert actions and cold wars would be better still. And what about an enduring peace that balances interests of all concerned? Such a peace, surely, is the end to which the détente statement, led by former Foreign Ministers Carr and Evans Continue reading »
Waiting for the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland (NI) has been like watching the grass grow as the paint dries on a slow boat to China. But I am pleased to report that the wait is now over, though my backyard resembles a jungle and the paint on the boat is cracking again. Continue reading »
Onshore student visa policy gets relatively little attention as it deals with people who are already in Australia, but it is critical to how the overseas student program operates. The new migration strategy released late last year says the Government will: “restrict onshore visa hopping that undermines system integrity and drives ‘permanent temporariness’…the Government will Continue reading »
John Menadue has had a long and distinguished career in both the public and private sectors. These days he’s an active blogger – holding and advocating strong views on a range of issues. In this conversation he discusses Australia in 2016 which he says is a far better place than the one he grew up Continue reading »
A Syrian friend in Damascus was commissioned to translate Bridge of Clay, a tender, beautiful novel by Australian author Markus Zusak. As it is not an easy novel for a Syrian who has never lived in Australia to translate, my friend and I have had quite a few WhatsApp calls to discuss tricky bits in Continue reading »
Indonesia, Australia’s largest neighbour, will go to the polls on 14 February 2024 to elect a new President. Some 160 million eligible voters are expected to turn out in the largest single-day contest. Under Indonesian law, the candidates must secure more than fifty per cent of the votes to avoid a run-off, scheduled on 26 Continue reading »
International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, was recently quoted in the Guardian (Tuesday 16/1/24) saying that “in most scenarios artificial intelligence (AI) would probably worsen overall inequality across the global economy and could stoke social tensions without political intervention”. Australia’s vulnerability to such AI-induced inequality would appear to be high, while our chances Continue reading »
Forty years ago, Medicare as we know it today was born. It was the reincarnation of the Whitlam government’s Medibank, introduced in 1975 but dismantled in stages by the Fraser Liberal government. Medibank was developed in the 1960s by health economists Dick Scotton and John Deeble,, when disease prevalence was different and the politics of Continue reading »
By 2021 it was apparent that we were witnessing the accelerating but creeping collapse of the American Empire. That collapse has passed an inflection point – the Empire is now in free fall. Thomas Homer-Dixon, in his brilliant book The Upside of Down, noted that the Roman empire eventually reached the point where “the empire Continue reading »