The latest Audit Office report documenting mismanagement by the Morrison government of a grants program – in this case the Community Health and Hospitals Program – has generated outrage. At a time when the health system is under great pressure, over a billion dollars in grants were allocated on the basis of a dodgy process. Continue reading »
Government
I am in complete sympathy with Jennifer Bush Pearls and Irritations 5, June 2023 in resigning from the Labor Party because of Prime Minister Albanese’s congratulations to Israel despite its government’s disgraceful treatment of Palestinian people. Brand Loyalty. That indescribable loyalty, we feel towards our own country, our own football team, our own political party. Continue reading »
When former NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane was vilified, his home raided and false claims made by a journalist who wanted to promote himself, no apology was given, no restoration made. Instead, the victim became the guilty party, punished for something he did not do. Sounds familiar? These practices occurred between April 2020 and November Continue reading »
A few days after coming to power in 1972 Gough Whitlam declared that ‘Australia’s real test as far as the rest of the world is concerned is the role we create for our own Aborigines’. More than foreign aid programmes, more than any role the country plays in agreements or alliances, treatment of the Aborigines Continue reading »
Why are Australian political leaders so insecure about our capacity to be independent and create a peacebuilding role for our nation when so many Australian military and police personnel have already demonstrated their capacity for strong leadership as peacekeepers? On 27th May in Brisbane’s Anzac Square, I joined with military, police and civic leaders to Continue reading »
News that the FBI continues its investigation into the case around Assange appears to have taken both supporters and the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus by surprise. On 1 June 2023, Foreign Affairs and National Security correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, Matthew Knott, quoted from a letter received by Andrew O’Hagen, novelist and Assange’s ghostwriter, on Continue reading »
Don’t believe anyone – not even a governor of the Reserve Bank – trying to tell you the Fair Work Commission’s decision to increase minimum award wages by 5.75 per cent is anything other than good news for the lowest-paid quarter of wage earners. Because they are so low-paid, and mainly part-time, these people account Continue reading »
When a government proposes a policy to improve our diet, it can trigger a gag reflex. Some people feel that deciding what to eat is purely a personal choice, and the ‘nanny state’ should stay out of the way. No-one wants to be lectured, shamed, or forced to eat their greens. Perhaps it goes all Continue reading »
I do hope that the Catholic Church remains closely involved in providing health care to Canberra citizens, particularly the poorer ones, after the takeover by the government of Calvary public hospital. Indeed I suspect it could be making for itself, and Canberra citizens, greater treasure in heaven if it got entirely out of the provision Continue reading »
Interpretations are being offered about prime minister Albanese’s speech to the so-called Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore. This sounds like an Asian event but is hosted each year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London, an august and AUKUSian institution of such eminence that I was once invited to join. I declined. Life Continue reading »