“For me, indigenous recognition won’t be changing our constitution so much as completing it.” – Tony Abbot, 2015. When on the 7th of February 1788 the British claimed the eastern half of Australia they left us with two abiding problems. They assumed that the First Nations were not in actual possession of their own homelands Continue reading »
Government
Australian governments are now amongst the biggest users of external consultants on the planet. Our country has seen the privatisation of core government tasks at an extraordinary level over the past decade along with an increase in spending on private service providers that is hard to believe. While decent public sector jobs have languished in Continue reading »
I hesitate to stray into the florid world of military strategists, senior public servants, cabinet ministers and assorted think tanks, but what on earth is going on with Australia’s so-called defence policy? The Albo government seems hellbent on turning Australia into a militarised outpost of the US whose ‘pivot’ to the Asia-Pacific region has led Continue reading »
Government ministers and senior officials are conditioning Australians to become frightened, very frightened. The Home Affairs minister Clare O’Neil warns they face a “dystopian future” from cyber-crime, foreign interference and threats to our democracy. What she didn’t say is that Australia can no longer be called a liberal democracy because it has numerous harsh laws Continue reading »
There are solid grounds for suspecting that the appointment of Ms Kathryn Campbell, of Robodebt notoriety, to the Department of Defence’s AUKUS division did not meet the normal standards required for other appointments in the public service. Those responsible for the appointment of Ms Campbell and the suspension of her salary have got little to Continue reading »
Since the Robodebt saga there have been many calls for a more independent public service that can be trusted to provide competent advice frankly and fearlessly. In that case a key issue is how departmental secretaries are appointed and dismissed. The Robodebt saga has prompted numerous articles discussing the need for an independent Australian Public Continue reading »
The Yes for the Voice campaign must work harder on a multicultural education campaign in the last weeks leading up to the referendum. The Chinese-Australian community is still uninformed about the issues and open to rumours and disinformation. The outcome could well depend on achieving understanding and consensus between disparate ethnic communities. Chinese Australians constitute Continue reading »
A good many people who worked hard for a Labor government are now astonished at its lack of ambition. More nagging for those who have dreamed of Labor in action has been the complete refusal to countenance any shift in national security policy, in human rights law, in planning aggression against China, and in a Continue reading »
There never was a chance of overturning the AUKUS folly at the Labor conference. As unpalatable as it might be, the only possibility of extracting Australia from America’s war planning now lies in the bizarre milieu of American politics. And it’s not forlorn. Labor’s leadership was determined to plug a political hole created by the Continue reading »
The biggest enemy of AUKUS is not the resistance of ALP branches and unions but its own over-engineered grandiosity, its naive ambition. A vote wrung from a conference doesn’t deliver the cash for what is the biggest transfer of wealth outside this country in its history. The government places the cost between $268 billion and $368 Continue reading »