Australians’ satisfaction with life as a whole is at its lowest level in 21 years, according to the latest Australian Unity Wellbeing Index survey, a collaboration between Deakin University and mutual company Australian Unity.
The Australian Government doesn’t appear to be the body able to do the job
The pressure is on the Government to address a near $1 trillion debt and spiralling cost of living when it presents the Budget on May 9. How different things would be if we had the sense to make multinationals pay properly for the billions they make mining and drilling Australia’s natural resources. Daniel Bleakley reports.
THE VOICE in NINE POINTS and a PREAMBLE By Paul Smith PREAMBLE – Addressed to serving military personnel and veterans Reconciliation with former enemies ought to be prominent in the ethos of the Australian military – serving personnel and veterans alike. What greater example is there of such mutual generosity than the existence of Turkish…
Australians under 40 face an uncertain future and lower living standards than their parents or grandparents enjoyed. To bring us back from the brink, Australia needs to end the neoliberal consensus.
The drums of war are banging as the debate over the AUKUS submarine deal reveals deep divisions about what Australia’s role should be in a US conflict with China. But what does the people of Australia think? And should they have a say? War Powers reform remains just talk but is more urgent than ever, Zacharias Szumer reports.
The deal does nobody any good. It heightens tensions in an already dangerous part of the world.It weakens the Australian economy and places our people at great risk. It consigns millions of Australians to continued waiting lists for basic services because there will be no fat in any budget any time soon.
All this to stave off an enemy that is still to be proven to be anything but a mirage and to prove fealty to the United States.
“Morrison says that to accommodate the AUKUS submarines deal, Australia’s defence budget will need to increase to 2.5 per cent of GDP, and there’s not much doubt he’s right. That’s an extra $10 billion or so per year, on top of a structural deficit of $50 billion a year, already rising to $70 billion. Make that $80 billion. So where is the money coming from? Tax increase or spending cuts?
“This locks us in with the United States for decades to come; is there a risk, as the smaller partner in this deal, we’ll just have to do what the US tells us when it comes to future wartime engagements?” host Patricia Karvelas asked Hockey.
Asking Indigenous peoples to simply elect one of their own democratically to sit in an extra chamber advising future government irrespective of what party wins elections. Isn’t a hard task to ask. I think it would be more productive to have more Indigenous advising State Governments via a Treaty in QLD and nationally through the Voice then having none at all in the room which could only make situations worse and a continual revolving door of post generational trauma that persists for another 235 years. Perhaps we could have a civil discussion about what many call Australia Day then, closing the gap, and improving living standards for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Having a voice might also increase the chances of more First Nations people becoming engaged in politics and see aspire to see perhaps a First Nations State Premier or Prime Minister one day?
Australians must see the culture war distractions for what they are: a protection for a profoundly broken system. It is time we reclaimed our proud social democrat past. Those with the levers of power must look accurately at what neoliberal ideologues have done to the US and Britain, and reject both colonial masters for our own healthier path.
A recent meeting of ministers generated a swag of the usual cliched statements, but also some hope of strengthening our relationship with our closest neighbour. But there are obstacles on both sides of the Timor Sea, reports Duncan Graham from Indonesia.
It’s not just about wasting money, as Defence has so often done in the past. It’s now very much about making sure we can deter conflict, and deal with it if deterrence fails. When it all goes bad you take what you’ve got to the fight, and a handful of contracts with blown schedules and budgets are not much of a weapon.
However, when global alliances are at stake, or global economies are deemed to be at risk, then sides are taken. A very good example is Yemen. The conflict here has absolutely nothing to do with Australia, or Europe, or the United States. Its antecedents are the Arab Spring of 2012. Disquiet about the leadership of President Saleh was the trigger. Continuing disquiet under the presidency of Hadi, the alignment of Saleh with Houthi rebels, all led finally to international intervention and side taking. Because the Houthi rebels are perceived to be aligned with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s enemy, the US and its allies which include Australia has provided Saudi Arabia with armaments. Unleashed from the air these have caused almost unprecedented misery on a people and nation that at one time was a jewel in the Arab world. A Yemeni civilian has nowhere to hide; prevention of humanitarian aid is a weapon of war.
Andrew Bolt clings to the IPA like a leech for their intellectual narratives
For the IPA, the history of settlement and dispossession, however lamentable, forms no part of the referendum proposition on the table. For them, the present disadvantage of Indigenous Australians, again however lamentable, owes more to the way that Indigenous Australians have allowed themselves to become pauperised and impoverished by welfare systems, and encouraged to think of themselves as helpless victims rather than actors in their own personal advancement. They want to persuade people that rights and assistance should be stripped away, arguing, that “woke” policies and government interventions, however well intentioned, have not improved their situation and generally have made it worse. For them, only policies based on personal responsibility, providing individual rather than collective rights and rewards for work, will create the wealth, human, social and economic capital, and incentives to lift people from their misery. The inequality, and material and spiritual poverty of the US is a testament to the truth of their gospel. Depriving the IPA and their sponsors of their special privileges and advantages, and their access to the power they enjoy should be one of the more com
A research report published in the US this week cites numerous concerns with Adani’s business structure, accounting practices and its lofty valuation. Echoing Enron – one of the most spectacular corporate failures in recent history – the report even questions how Adani makes money, if at all. What’s the scam?
Hollywood blockbusters Fall Guy and Planet of the Apes are filming in Sydney, and sci-fi remake Metropolis in Melbourne – all at high public expense, subsidised by state and federal governments. Is it worth paying for Americans telling American stories? Or would the money be better spent on Australians telling Australian stories? Michael West follows the money.
The US-Australia Force Posture Agreement has opened the gate for the US to set up Australia as a launching pad for its next war against China. The Albanese government must invoke Article XXI to terminate it and reclaim sovereignty.
Australia has developed a habit over the years of offering a glimpse into the political future for other Western nations. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating served up a governing blueprint for Tony Blair’s New Labour. John Howard’s focus at the start of the century on border security foreshadowed how the politics of fear and the “othering” of immigrants would become a dominant theme of the populist right, as evidenced by the Brexit referendum and the victory of Donald Trump.
“The AUKUS nuclear submarine project will bleed the Australian Defence Force white”, on top of the billions in annual Defence spending waste
Costly failure after failure
Defence procurement is a shambles and national expenditure disgrace. Project after project blows out in cost and schedule, with some projects being cancelled all together.
Every year the Auditor-General releases a Major Projects Report into Defence’s major projects. The most recent report covered 21 projects worth $58 billion dollars. Across those 21 projects, there had been $18.5 billion in cost increases – that’s 18,500 million dollars for those that can’t easily grapple with the large amounts of money with which Defence plays.
Across those 21 projects the schedule slippage was 405 months – 34 years. A number of projects, excluding the future submarine project for the moment, have either been binned or did not meet capability requirements. They are:
The Multiple-Role Helicopter program – $3.8 billion wasted.
The Sky Guardian medium altitude long endurance attack drone program – $1.3 billion wasted.
The Army’s Battle Management system – a billion wasted.
The Spartan battlefield airlift aircraft – $1.4 billion wasted.
The Tiger helicopter program – another billion wasted.
That’s eight and a half billion dollars of taxpayers’ money just thrown away. That’s eight billion dollars of new capability our brave front-line Defence Force members don’t have.
From the day Abbott came to power Murdoch and Abbott played China with a two-faced and double hand. Abbott took credit for the ALP’s economic gains which he could ill afford to let slip by. While Murdoch bad-mouthed China with a well-intended Culture war for his own personal revenge for having been kicked out. What was once a solid relationship between two, we saw wither for politics, and an individual’s personal hate which exacerbated and amplified after 2016 when Trump entered the scene.
During the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told journalists on Nov. 15 his country “seeks a stable relationship with China.”
This is because, as Albanese pointed out, China is “Australia’s largest trading partner … worth more than Japan, the United States, and the Republic of Korea… combined.” Since 2009, China has been Australia’s largest destination for exports as well as the largest single source of Australia’s imports.
For the past six years, China has largely ignored Australia’s requests for meetings due to the latter’s close military alignment with the U.S. But in Bali, China’s President Xi Jinping made it clear that the Chinese-Australian relationship is one to be “cherished.”
America believes that it should run the world unchallenged in all dimensions of statehood.
Known as AUSMIN, the high-level talks between the United States and Australia are now underway in Washington on foreign policy and defence. Held annually since 1985 they are the cement which binds this habit of our being allies.
It is time to talk frankly about the big picture behind these talks and understand that our independence is no longer welcome within them. Friends need to be candid.
Flooding, cyclones and even a Japanese encephalitis outbreak are among the risks facing Australians this summer as a leading climate body warns of a rise in “unnatural disasters”.
New data revealing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are much higher than reported means pressure is on the Federal Government to go beyond current commitments toward global climate action, writes professor Jeremy Moss.
The Liberal Party in Victoria is caught in a trap. It pitches itself as the moderate old party of its forebears. Unfortunately, too many of the moderates who ran it or voted for it are disenchanted both by shambolic efforts in the state, and by its damaged federal reflection.
Around the state, branches are under siege by extremist religious groups, mostly Pentecostal but also Mormon. The state’s governing body is also gradually filling with these members.
Longer fire seasons, more intense tropical cyclones and oceans riddled with acidity are all signs of rising global temperatures, a new report has found.
Australia has experienced its hottest year on record, its most intense flooding and an unprecedented coral bleaching — all in the last few years — as the climate warms, says a new report.
Why aren’t the backbone of the 50k untenured lowly-paid university lecturers, tutors and researchers striking here in Australia? Universities in Australia are paying administrators millions to turn our Universities into Corporate businesses for profit on the backs of false promises while fleecing and driving the next generations into debt for certificates of little or no use. One degree no longer guarantees anything. Two are a risk. MBAs are now commonplace and we now have the most educated but too few tradies on the planet.
Doing courses in introduction to the right people clubs and social networks would lead to greater opportunity than any degree. Apprenticeships guaranteeing the right match, far better than any degree, when it comes to social mobility. Assistance in crossing social barriers would be far more useful than the current promise of education that leads to Uber driving.
Part-time faculty at the New School and Parsons School of Design in New York City went on strike last week. Jacobin spoke with striking workers about their demands for job security and wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.
Australia is warned that bringing nuclear submarines into service will be a massive challenge for the country
Brian Schmidt says it will require the creation of “an entirely new sector of the economy”
He says AUKUS partners will also expect Australia to “pull its own weight”
Australia is warned the AUKUS submarine deal will be a huge undertaking that will involve “one of the biggest training and workforce development challenges Australia has faced”.
Cutting the umbilical cord doesn’t mean we want to be American or French. We want a Head of State not obliged to a King but obliged to the Australian people.
With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Australia is once again considering the republican question. For a country that saw its last reforming prime minister thrown out of office by the queen’s representative, breaking with the royal family is a necessary task.
Households will be hit by a 56 per cent surge in energy bills in the coming two years according to our Treasurer – this cost impact does not include the petrol or diesel for our vehicles but relates solely to the energy used in our homes and businesses. On most of mainland Australia we still…
Today, the right to abortion is secure across Australia. It wasn’t won by parliamentary means, however, but by militant campaigning and union solidarity.
Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison have similarly ransacked our national wealth for nine years. They have weakened Medicare, lowered taxes on the rich, stolen taxpayers’ funds to fund obscenely rich private schools at the expense of public schools, and gutted our universities.
They also spent billions adding to the fossil fuel companies’ ill-gotten gains, hamstrung climate change mitigation for a decade, and attacked our national cohesion with deliberate trashing of our international treaty obligations, especially regarding refugees, dog-whistling attacks on minorities, started an unnecessary war of words with China, and essentially destroyed our biodiversity so that land clearing can proceed.
But, I hear you say, we threw them out on their ear. We elected a reformist government, in whose DNA flows liberty, equality and fraternity.
We did change governments, but we are still on track to lower taxes to our richest minority. We still subsidise fossil fuel companies. We will not tax them for their ill-gotten gains, and we won’t even consider increasing the welfare payments of the poor.
Even though we know that it causes Australian children to go to bed hungry, and a recent finding that the average rent increase for the last year was $3000. That is, on average, $60 a week in rent alone. Then factor in energy cost rises, higher food costs due to shortages caused by floods, and you have a perfect recipe for a human disaster.
So there have been changes for the better, but this government is seemingly intent on ‘doing a Truss’, and going ahead with stage 3 tax cuts. Spare me from inhumane governments. They need to wake up as to why they exist, at all.
It is possible. So this is not just the “time to listen to the Voice and act”. It is the time to tell the powers-that-be what sort of Australia we want. We all have a lot to lose if we shirk this referendum and politicians and dissenters should be held to account if they intercede to prevent the emergence of a constitutionally enshrined Voice.
Victoria has dethroned Tasmania as Australia’s best-performing state or territory, with its economy leading the nation for the first time since April 2020.
Australia is the paying receiver of product that will not be delivered. The cost will be substandard subs not delivered on time, cash, in the form of capital and rent and the forgoing of sovereignty.
From the Australian Strategic Policy Institute to the US Studies Centre, we are meant to celebrate the prospect of Australia as a military annexe to US power in the Asia-Pacific, its sovereignty status subsumed under the ghastly guff of freedom lovers supposedly facing oriental barbarians. The analysis is then crowned by the praise of former US defence and security officials who ingratiatingly speak of Australian potential as they would mineral deposits. The lie, packaged and ribboned, is duly sold for public consumption. Australian sovereign capability becomes the supreme fiction, while its subservience is hidden, only to be exposed by heretics.
About 100 of Australia’s unique land mammals face extinction. Of the many threats contributing to the crisis, certain fire regimes are among the most pervasive.
In a new paper, we reveal how “inappropriate” fire patterns put 88% of Australia’s threatened land mammals at greater risk of extinction – from ground-dwelling bandicoots to tree-climbing possums and high-flying microbats.
Our research also identifies what type of fires are most damaging to threatened mammals, and shows some mammals are suffering due to a lack of fire.
Australia is at a crossroads. The decade of Coalition government showed how vulnerable our rights and freedoms could be in the face of a political party radicalised by anti-democratic and illiberal ideas. The Republican Party in America is displaying how quickly rights can be destroyed, even after it was removed from government; we need to protect vulnerable groups within our nation from copycat attacks.
Compared with other OECD countries Australia has been a free for all when it comes to housing. Architects aren’t required. So, hit with climate change the reality of our low standards of housing compared with other nations is staring us in the face, and revealing why we are pp the world’s biggest domestic emitters of CO2.
Our national building standards need to be overhauled to fight climate change and energy poverty – and improve our lives
Scott Morrison is gone. Although he isn’t dead, something is gone all the same.
He’s alive, but he is gone. Gone from our television screens. Gone to pack the barbecued barramundi lifestyle of Kirribilli House he lived in at our expense. Gone from our news cycle. Gone from the front pages of his fawning tabloids. Gone from our mouths.
Gone from the Australian government. Gone from the Prime Minister’s plane that will never carry his swindling, lying, masquerading bulk again. Gone from our conscience. Gone from our lives, from our daily grind. Gone from our souls. Gone.
A greater fraud and malcontent never disgraced the mantle of Prime Minister. That he was disliked throughout Australia goes without saying. That he was despised as well is truly extraordinary.
Watch Dutton keep the divide he and Morrison created between Aus and NZ
International and regional concerns will be on the agenda as NZ’s Jacinda Ardern becomes the first world leader to visit Anthony Albanese as Australian PM.
Should the Australian government cede ground, they can expect a fiery pushback from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who as immigration and home affairs minister oversaw increased deportations.
“It was right to deport them and we’re safer because of having done so,” he told Sydney radio station 2GB on Thursday.
“I don’t want to see the Albanese government walk it back.”
Another major shift is that climate change is back on the agenda, with senior NZ government figures telling AAP the issue was declared a no-go zone under the previous coalition government.
“It’s a huge relief,” one source said. “It hasn’t caused problems in the relationship per se, but it’s just been such an anomaly in that Australia hasn’t been interested.”
The Australian election saw historic defeats for the Right and its backers in the Murdoch media. But the Labor Party can’t change the country without fighting for a robust, progressive economic agenda.
Observers as far away as Europe and the US have their eyes on seats like Kooyong and Wentworth. But unlike Australia’s two prime ministerial candidates, the world also has its eye on our role in addressing climate change. Here are the key takeaways from what the rest of the world thinks about our election.
Australia Day honours will be announced this week, and, if recent announcements are any indication, they are likely to generate considerable public debate. In 2014, there was the re-establishment of knighthoods and damehoods in the Order of Australia under then prime minister Tony Abbott. The next year, Prince Philip was infamously awarded one of the revived titles. The past decade has seen increasing scrutiny of the gender balance in the awards, while individual honours, such as those given to writer Bettina Arndt and tennis champion Margaret Court, have also drawn criticism. This is not necessarily out of keeping with the longer history of the honours system.
There are three ways to approach climate change – one, do nothing and hope; two, dig in, and go slow, because it’s ‘the economy, stupid’; or three, step into the change and maximise the opportunities it presents.
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