It’s to be hoped that as much as possible can be squeezed from the Robodebt disaster not only to avoid a repeat but more generally to improve the working of the Australian government and its public service. The Holmes Royal Commission report is boundlessly useful but the Government would letting the country down if it Continue reading »
Government
Around a week ago the Financial Review confirmed what many observers had taken for granted: the US offered nuclear propulsion technology to Australia under the AUKUS arrangements in order to lock it into the anti-China coalition. Reporting on comments made at a public forum by White House strategic adviser Kurt Campbell, the article highlights his Continue reading »
How many times does Australia need to be told that national actions by all stakeholders across industries or sectors are urgently needed to address climate change challenges and to avoid the destructive impacts of GHG emissions? The challenges and the impacts have been so thoroughly identified in so many reports and significantly the IPCC reports. Continue reading »
Against the background of reconciliatory legal and political gestures from Canberra over the past 30 years, and in view of the Voice being proposed as an organic instrument ‘from the heart’ of Aboriginal Australia (rather than a top-down ‘advice’ – device of bureaucratic convenience), it may well be the game-changer everyone yearns for. I was Continue reading »
Governments around the world are promoting and subsidising carbon capture and storage (CCUS) to facilitate an increase in fossil gas mining. This will dash any hope of controlling world emissions at a time when there are deep concerns for climate change becoming uncontrollable. Yet the Australian government and the fossil gas industry are driving huge Continue reading »
The Robodebt scandal reflects badly on the Australian Public Service generally, and not just on those immediately responsible. The main focus of the Report by the Royal Commission into Robodebt and subsequent publicity and comment has been on the illegality of the scheme. But as has been observed by some Liberals, the illegality could readily Continue reading »
When will Australians realise, as Paul Keating has been unerringly consistent in arguing, that they are part of the cosmopolitanism and complexity of Asia, and not a Western imagined community presided over by a fast declining America? During the maligned years of the Morrison-Turnbull-Abbott governments, Australia’s international reputation fell on a number of significant measures Continue reading »
While both Donald Trump Junior and Novak Djokovic were granted visas to enter Australia, the stark difference in how the two cases were managed highlight the difference in approaches of the Albanese and Morrison Governments to controversial visitors. Australia’s immigration system has long used the Movement Alert List (MAL) to manage controversial visitors. By listing Continue reading »
The world has just spent two decades paralysed by fear. Ever since 11 September 2001, the ‘war on terror’ has changed the lives of most people for the worse. Millions have been killed, either by terrorists or by militarists fighting them. Fearing violence, many people have fled their homelands as refugees. Others have absorbed repeated Continue reading »
Eight Hong Kong dissidents now living abroad are subject to arrest warrants, including Kevin Yam, a Melbourne-based lawyer, and Ted Hui, a former politician who now lives in Adelaide. This is profoundly depressing news. It is certainly not the “rose garden” of wide-ranging freedom and autonomy that some over-optimistically anticipated. The Hong Kong government has Continue reading »