by Peter Westmore Following months of unrest in Hong Kong over the refusal of the Beijing-nominated Government to protect human rights and the rule of law, the communist-controlled National People’s Congress in Beijing has adopted a security law which will be enforced in Hong Kong. This is contrary to the Sino-British Treaty signed in 1984.…
by Patrick J. Byrne Morrison should announce plan for expanding manufacturing expanding to 15% of GDP by 2035: Creating around 1-2 million full-time, well paid jobs. Cith $1 trillion invested by government, new development bank, commercial banks and equity. Securing Australia’s economic and strategic future. Scott Morrison has announced the fast-tracking of around $72 billion…
by Patrick J. Byrne PART ONE OF TWO PARTS (Read the second part here) Covid19 (or SARS-CoV-2) is a new coronavirus related to the common cold that emerged from China in December 2019. It is a separate species of virus from the annual flu virus, or influenza. The Lancet (March 30, 2020) reported an overall…
by Craig Milne PODCAST Chris McCormack talks to executive director of the Australian Productivity Council, Craig Milne about the history of automotive manufacturing in Australia; where we went wrong; and what is needed to revive an industry that would yield huge benefits to the economy and advance technological innovation in general. Listen here. THIS IS…
by Patrick J. Byrne The latest Murray-Darling Basin report has highlighted deep discontent among regional communities over the Basin Plan’s water allocations, the science behind the Plan and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA). The report into the “Impact of lower inflows on state shares under the Murray–Darling Basin Agreement” was conducted by the interim inspector-general…
by Craig Milne PODCAST Listen here to Craig Milne in conversation with the NCC’s Chris McCormack about what will need to be done to revive Australia’s economy in the post-covid19 world, where failed globalist assumptions will no long obtain. THIS IS THE FIRST IN A SERIES BY CRAIG MILNE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY POLICIES FOR…
by Peter Westmore As News Weekly goes to press, the High Court of Australia has unanimously upheld the appeal by Cardinal George Pell against a majority decision of the Victorian Court of Appeal, reversing a terrible injustice suffered by the Cardinal last year. Cardinal Pell, pictured, had been convicted of sexually abusing two choir boys…
by Patrick J. Byrne By the time this editorial goes to print, Australia may be under lockdown, with the Government running a command economy as it has in other crises, like World War II. Covid19 spells the end of globalisation as we have known it. The promise of what economist Dani Rodrik calls “deep globalisation”,…
by Patrick J. Byrne Even if this year’s spring brings major rains, the severe two-year drought in the Murray-Darling Basin has demonstrated that the $13 billion federal Basin Plan is unworkable, putting major rural industries (and government seats) at risk in Australia’s major food bowl. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent appointment of Keith Pitt as…
by Brian Coman Part One of two parts (You can read Part Two here) IN THE FIRST PART OF THIS EXTENDED ESSAY, BRIAN COMAN CLEARS THE GROUND FOR A LATER TOUR OF WHAT MAY COME TO REPLACE THE POLITICAL SETTLEMENT USUALLY DESIGNATED BY ‘LEFT’ AND ‘RIGHT’. HE DOES THIS BY IDENTIFYING THE FRACTURES BETWEEN THEM…
The fact that China’s top virus research institute is located in Wuhan, the same city in which the coronavirus outbreak first appeared, raises questions which require answers. Only a full disclosure of what has been going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research has been carried out into the spread of the coronavirus…
Not surprisingly, most of the media have blamed the terrible wildfires that have caused massive damage in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales on the Morrison Government’s inaction on climate change. A simple question tells us whether this claim is true: if the Morrison Government had pursued the totality of the Greens’ agenda –…
Extinction Rebellion is a highly structured, internationally funded organisation XR’s aim is to bring down democracy worldwide “Climate change” is the vehicle to effect the structural collapse Far from being a grassroots-driven, spontaneous protest against climate change, the Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an internationally funded, highly planned organisation…
The use of children for political purposes is not new. In the last century, it was used by demagogues such as Chairman Mao to launch his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1964, in which an estimated million Chinese people were killed, and earlier by Adolf Hitler, who used the Hitler Youth to terrorise his enemies,…
Saudi oil facility attacks expose Australia’s reliance on imported oil Australia still does not have 90 days of fuel stocks in reserve Experts agree that Australia would be crippled if a serious disruption to oil imports occurred Despite asinine assurances from Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor that our fuel security is sound, the drone…
The Federal Government says its new religious freedoms legislation will protect people such as Israel Folau, but the new statutes are unlikely to protect female rugby players from being expelled from the game should they campaign to stop biological males from playing in the female competition. Selina Soule: Harassed on social media for speaking out…
Boris Johnson, elected overwhelmingly by the grass roots of the British Conservative Party to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister, faces the awesome task of reuniting the British Government to secure Britain’s exit from the European Union, within just three months. Boris Johnson is an unlikely Prime Minister. The 55-year-old former mayor of London…
Deeply disaffected voters have indicated that unless there are new economic policies to restore the suffering middle class, Scott Morrison’s victory is no assurance that his Government will hold office after the next federal election. Morrison’s success may have been unexpected, but it was not a landslide. The Coalition has only a wafer-thin majority…
Can you change your age on official forms? Should a 40-year-old be allowed to identify as 70 and change their age to 70 and claim the age pension? Can a person change their race to the race they identify as and claim benefits enjoyed by persons of that race? Can a person self-identify as disabled…
All other contenders for the ALP leadership inexplicably pulled out of the race against Albo shortly after announcing their intention Tanya Plibersek did not even contest for the deputy leadership, which should have been hers for the taking The unchallenged accession of Anthony (Albo) Albanese to the leadership of…
A Budget in surplus enhances Coalition’s May re-election chances Tinkering with rates gives no joy to families on a single income Energy continues to be both a black hole and a blind spot in so far as no action is proposed to restore electricity reliability The Federal Government’s 2019 Budget was framed with two…
Devastating droughts are nothing new in Australia Fish-kills as we have seen recently, however, are new Production along Murray-Darling worth $19.4 billion a year Some of the dead fish could have been up to 60 years old Was the recent mass fish-kill in the Menindee Lakes along the Darling River…
Since the revelation in March last year that Australia’s national security could be threatened by the fact that the country has fuel reserves of just 43 days’ supply, (see also: “Steam rail backup could get us out of hot water”, News Weekly, July 28, 2018) the Federal Government has dragged its feet on rectifying this…
In secular Australia, Christmas is principally a season of giving, both to our loved ones and to those less fortunate. In this respect, it is radically different from other days of national celebration, which mark unique events in our history, like Australia Day or Anzac Day. One aspect in which it is different is…
“Transphobia has a body count.” So screamed the protesters who disrupted the address in Melbourne of international guest speaker Dr Quentin Van Meter as they were removed from the venue. In Perth the University of Western Australia cancelled the lecture theatre booked for Dr Van Meter’s address because of opposition. Dr Van Meter…
The Australian Greens’ federal party platform needs close scrutiny, especially when outlandish claims and radical ideology form the basis of some truly bizarre policies. Virtue signalling features largely in the Greens’ election platform, for example, “tackling catastrophic global warming”. They plan to “achieve net zero pollution by 2040” with a “Solar Ombudsman” enforcing a…
The Federal Government’s plan to lower the threshold at which university students pay back Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) debts, formerly known as HECS debts, will only exacerbate the cost of living pressures and prevent a large portion of the thus indebted generation from buying a house, getting married and starting a family. Unlike…
In “Green energy push has left us blowin’ in the wind,” (October 7),[1] News Weekly argued that an Australian Lower Energy Prices Policy (ALEPP) was urgently needed to boost Australia’s flagging economy, which is being held back by soaring energy prices – a major contributor to unsustainable rises in the costs of living and doing business.…
Recently, Craig Milne from the Australian Productivity Council (not the Australian Productivity Commission), reflected on the effect of free trade in Australia over the last 40-plus years. The result has been an increase in unemployment from around 2 per cent between 1950 and 1970 to a claimed 5.9 per cent today. Youth unemployment is…
On March 26 the Australian Family Association hosted a talk on assisted suicide/euthanasia by Professor Margaret Somerville. Professor Somerville is Samuel Gale professor of law emerita in the faculty of medicine and founding director emerita of the Centre for Medicine, Law and Ethics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where she taught for more than…
In 1891, at the end of Melbourne’s first property boom, the nation’s original capital was the largest city in Australia with almost half a million inhabitants. Melbourne or bust. It constituted 42 per cent of Victoria’s population and, as Geoffrey Blainey observed, “some economists thought that such a centralising of the people in a capital…
The election had hardly moved off media centre stage than we were bombarded by the pontifications of self-styled “ratings agency” Standard & Poor’s. Actually S&P and its like are less agencies than businesses that in a competitive environment assess the creditworthiness of businesses (and more recently governments). Competition pressures have sometimes resulted in these agencies…
We are told the Safe Schools Coalition Australia (SSCA) program is to prevent bullying of GLBT students. It was certainly sold as an anti-bullying program. Staff from the Australian Research Centre into Sex Health and Society (ARCSHS) at La Trobe University in Melbourne, which produced the Safe Schools program, identified the safety theme (that is,…
Since the Canadian Supreme Court overturned the protections in law that prohibited both assisted suicide and euthanasia in February 2015, Canada has been in free fall. Quebec went on to create its own permissive regime, which was suspended and then re-instated by the courts. No consensus has risen yet on the form of national legislation…
A particularly concerning aspect of the Safe Schools Coalition (SSCA) program is how it can lock parents out of being able to monitor what their children are accessing online. Material that the SSCA program directs students to advises them how to cover their internet browsing history. A consequence is that parents may not know…
-Saudi oil facility attacks expose Australia’s reliance on imported oil
-Australia still does not have 90 days of fuel stocks in reserve
-Experts agree that Australia would be crippled if a serious disruption to oil imports occurred
For Christians, Christmas is more than a festive season, or the occasion for an exchange of gifts. It remains the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the moment when God humbled himself to be born as man, to share our humanity so that we might share his divinity. This mystery is one which has…
The announcement of a royal commission into union-related corruption, particularly in the building industry, marks the fourth such inquiry into this industry. Earlier inquiries in New South Wales and federally had unearthed much illegality, but led to few prosecutions, and their recommendations were reversed when Labor governments later came to power. The response by union…
Australia’s educational standards are dropping, and yet Australians on a median basis are among the wealthiest people in the world (The Australian, October 9, 2013). Is spending more money on education the answer? Or is something else the missing part of the education puzzle? Educational experts in Australia have argued in favour of governments spending…
The world’s central bankers believe that the world faces the prospect of more bubbles, financial crises and currency collapses because of their inability to fix the world trade and global financial systems. The recent meeting of the world’s central bankers in the American city of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, was marked by a fatalistic acceptance that…
At the time of writing, the 94-year-old former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, lay critically ill in hospital, forcing South Africans to contemplate life without the man who changed their country forever. Born in 1918 to the family of minor African royalty in a village in Cape Province, Mandela was a beneficiary of efforts…
A survey of over 600 Australian journalists, conducted by a senior academic from the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, has cast a revealing light on the political beliefs of Australian journalists. It shows that over 40 per cent of ABC journalists support the Greens, over 30 per cent support Labor, and just 15 per…
About 1,100,000 new motor vehicles are currently sold in Australia each year. This is, by any measure, a significant automotive market. And yet the local industry builds, for domestic and export sales, a mere 210,000 units — about the same number that it produced in 1957. At its peak in 1974, the Australian motor industry…
An American computer security company, Mandiant, which was targeted by Chinese cyber-spies, turned the tables on the hackers, infiltrating their systems and documenting the massive degree of computer espionage undertaken by the Chinese regime, through the government’s military force, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Mandiant has been tracking Chinese computer espionage since 2004, on behalf…
Beware the purifiers, those fanatics who are committed absolutely to the purification of the world, at whatever human cost. Such is the urgent message of scholars and commentators who have been watching carefully the resurgence of a massively destructive but very seductive extremist ideology — revolutionary millennarianism. It is a quasi-religious creed that seeks…
The clearest indication of what the federal government thinks about Australia’s defence was highlighted in the recent budget. The government announced that the defence budget over the next four years would be slashed by $5.5 billion, at the same time that the government is putting $10 billion into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to…
Two Melbourne-based ethicists have recently called for the legalisation of infanticide. Dr Alberto Giubilini, of Melbourne’s Monash University, and Dr Francesca Minerva at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, have asserted, in the latest edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics (February 23, 2012), that the newborn are not…
The rapidly changing strategic environment facing Australia for the immediate decades ahead is underscored by the results of the Pentagon strategy review announced in Washington at the end of the first week in January this year. In a unique twist, President Barack Obama took the key role in the announcement, which was clearly driven…
In the last sitting days in the House of Representatives this year, the Prime Minister pushed through the new mineral resources rent tax (MRRT) and expanded petroleum resources rent tax (PRRT) — collectively called the mining tax — which will go to the Senate in the new year. Along with the carbon tax and…
Traditional measures of economic growth routinely ignore the indispensable contribution of healthy intact families to society’s overall well-being. The collapse of the American housing asset bubble, which triggered the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), had much more to do with family breakdown than policy-makers have been prepared to acknowledge, according to Robert W. Patterson…
By winning the balance of power in the Senate at the August 2010 federal election, the Australian Greens have thereby moved from a position close to the margins of Australian politics to its centre. If they were to successfully implement their agenda, they would undermine the economic and social progress of our nation. The…
September 11 this year marked the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC — a day of infamy that has seared itself indelibly on people’s memories. At 08:46;26, Eastern Daylight Time, American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 airliner, with 92…
Around 1,000 political, civic and religious leaders, along with families, gathered in Parliament House, Canberra, on August 16, to send a clear message from mainstream Australia to the nation’s politicians: “Don’t meddle with marriage”. The meeting filled the Great Hall in Parliament House, with people from all states of Australia. It was chaired…
Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States government’s credit rating and the escalating debt crisis in Europe have pushed the financial markets towards Global Financial Crisis Mark II. Political brinkmanship in Washington took the U.S. to with 24 hours of a sovereign debt crisis, at the same time as the sovereign debt crisis…
Sydneyis set to host the seventh World Congress of Families in May 2013, the international secretariat of the World Congress of Families has announced. The WCF is an international network of pro-family organisations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental…
Given that Planned Parenthood is one of the greatest promoters of death around the globe, it is fitting that we may be witnessing the death of this nefarious organisation. We are certainly seeing, if not its death, then its long-overdue meltdown because of widespread adverse reaction to it. On February 18, the US House of…
Recent massive deluges and floods demonstrate that Australia has the periodic rainfall to secure the nation’s growing water needs, if there is the political will to build new dams. The floods across the eastern states have inflicted a terrible loss of life, and major damage to towns, cities, farms, infrastructure and industry. In the wake…
In order to fully comprehend the Greens’ political ideology, it is necessary to understand the historical roots and foundations of both our own Western, liberal democratic culture – and that of the Greens. Kevin Andrews MP While shared to some extent by all liberal democracies, Australia’s values have been adapted to our unique setting, moulded…
Angry farmers in Griffith, New South Wales, have burned copies of the Murray-Darling Basin draft water plan that would destroy their towns and to protest the Basin plan’s consultation and planning process. Front-cover photo is courtesy of The Land, Fairfax Media, NSW. It was just one of a series of angry confrontations between farmers and…
The financing of global terrorism has been transformed over the past two decades; so the publication by the Australian Institute of Criminology of its report, Financing of Terrorism: Risks for Australia, by Russell G. Smith, Rob McCusker and Julie Walters, is to be welcomed. There are three main reasons for this transformation. First, the end…
Regardless of the federal election outcome, Australia needs policies for industry and finance to handle the risks posed by the ongoing global financial crisis and from Australia’s “two-speed” economy. Failure to confront these problems today, while it can still reap the benefits of the mining boom, risks Australia, in a fit of absent-mindedness, being drawn…
It took over four months for the Rudd Government to respond to the report of its tax review panel, headed by Treasury Secretary Dr Ken Henry. The Government will impose a 40 per cent Resource Super Profits Tax on mining companies from July 1, 2012. This is the centrepiece of the Government’s response, and will…
Many years ago, economist Richard M. Weaver wrote a book with a title both prosaic and profound, Ideas Have Consequences. Those three words hold the key to understanding all of the social trends and political movements that confound us. Nothing happens in a vacuum. In human experience, nothing occurs spontaneously or haphazardly. For every effect…
As a result of increasing public concern over the impact on children of sexually-explicit material in the media, magazines and the internet, last year the British Home Office’s Violent Crimes Unit commissioned an inquiry into the sexualisation of children, conducted by one of Britain’s leading child psychologists, Dr Linda Papadopoulos. The introduction to her alarming…
Over a year after the tragic bushfires which took 173 lives on “Black Saturday”, February 7, 2009, the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission has heard compelling evidence about the necessity for fuel-reduction burning, an issue which prompted the largest number of submissions to the Royal Commission. The interim report of the Royal Commission last August made…
Lord Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, is a leading critic of the theory of man-made global warming and of the recent Copenhagen Summit on climate change. In Adelaide, on February 4, during his recent Australian tour, he delivered a lecture to a sell-out crowd of more than 600 people at the Intercontinental…
As News Weekly goes to press, one of Britain’s leading critics of global warming and of the recent Copenhagen Summit on climate change, Lord Christopher Monckton, is conducting a speaking tour of most capital cities around Australia with Australia’s Professor Ian Plimer, author of the widely-reviewed critique of human-induced global warming, Heaven and Earth. The…
On November 7, 2009, Brian Mullins who had been Queensland state president of the National Civic Council (NCC) from 1960 to 2000, entered eternal life. Brian Mullins (1925-2009) Brian was born in Home Hill, North Queensland, on October 3, 1925. His initial education was at the Osborne State School near Home Hill. His early life…
Accompanied by leaders of the Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian and Pentecostal churches, and with the strong support of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Dr George Pell, went to Canberra on October 23 to inform both Government and Opposition of widespread church concern about and opposition to the proposed…
The Rudd Government’s attempt to soften the Howard Government’s policy of offshore detention of boat-people by abolishing the “Pacific Solution”, has been followed by a sudden upsurge in the number of boats arriving at Ashmore Reef off the north-west coast of Australia, the detention in Indonesia of a boatload of 255 people originally from Sri…
The Federal Government announcement that it wants the voluntary separation of Telstra’s infrastructure from its retail operations will bring to an end many years of recriminations in the telecommunications industry, and inaugurate an era in which the focus is on improved services for users, rather than on profits. The announcement was part of the Government’s…
The Australian Farm Institute has become the first leading Australian farm organisation to conclude that there is virtually no chance of achieving world free trade in agriculture. Opening up the US, EU and Japanese markets to free trade in agriculture has been the cornerstone of Australia’s agricultural policy, as pursued by the National Farmers Federation,…
Hundreds of Australians gathered at Parliament House, Canberra, recently to celebrate National Marriage Day. However, few members of the public were even aware that this was happening, because the media, including the Canberra Times and The Australian, simply refused to report the event. Anthony Barich reports. Over 500 people from around Australia gathered to stand up…
On August 4 this year, probably the most dramatic of Australian counter-terrorist operations took place in the Melbourne suburbs and in the western Victorian country town of Colac. It was a multi-force operation, involving the Australian Federal Police, the Victorian Police and ASIO. It made the late editions of morning papers and, of course, television…
Despite the economic bounce, there are no economies capable of pulling the world out of the current crisis. Unless fundamentally flawed economic systems are reformed, the crisis may persist for years, writes Patrick J. Byrne. Today’s recovery has been the result of low interest rates (which can’t go much lower) and massive stimulus packages (which…
The urban protests and violence in Iran – triggered by allegations of vote-rigging in the presidential election which saw the return of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – are not simply a contest between the moderate former Prime Minister, Mir Hosein Mousavi, and the extremist President Ahmadinejad. Both Mr Mousavi and President Ahmadinejad were personally “vetted” by…
This is the address given by former Canadian Government Minister, the Hon. David Kilgour, at the Forum on Human Rights in China, held in the Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, Canada on May 27, 2009. As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre and 10 full years since the merciless persecution of Falun Gong began,…
Australia’s food security is threatened less by the drought than by long-term falling farm profits. Patrick J. Byrne reports. Around the year 2000, Queensland University of Technology economist, Dr Mark McGovern, presented to farmer forums figures showing the declining value of net farm production, i.e., the total sum of all the profits of Australian farmers.…
It appears unlikely that Peter Costello is planning to retire from parliament in the foreseeable future. If Peter Costello is indeed planning an imminent retirement from federal politics, he is doing an excellent job of disguising his true intentions. Australia’s longest serving Treasurer has spent recent weeks vigorously defending his record and that of the…
Renowned US author and founder of the World Congress of Families Dr Allan Carlson has long advocated establishing an economy based on the family and on widespread ownership of property. He recently visited Australia as guest of the Australian Family Association. News Weekly editor John Ballantyne interviewed him when he was in Melbourne. Dr Allan Carlson…
Prime Minister Rudd has told the nation to continue to spend, spend, spend, as if there were no tomorrow. Kevin Rudd has decided to stake his Government’s credibility by directly challenging the economic crisis which has engulfed the world. After months of languishing amidst reviews and reports and bureaucratic malaise, Mr Rudd appears to have…
Malcolm Turnbull’s libertarian views may not go down well with the great mass of voters who are socially conservative. Malcolm Turnbull’s first words after being elected federal leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party were deliberately designed to stress his humble beginnings. After narrowly defeating the unlucky Dr Brendan Nelson, whose 10 months as leader were…
Australia’s current situation requires a strong America willing to stand up to emerging powers such as China and Russia, as well as to Islamic extremism. With the conclusion of the Democratic and Republican party conventions, the choice facing American voters is now clear: between a war hero who has served as a long-time Republican senator,…
Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918 — August 3, 2008), Soviet dissident and Nobel prize-winning writer. Obituary written by John Ballantyne. AlexanderSolzhenitsyn Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer and former Soviet dissident, has died aged 89. He was born in Kislovodsk in 1918, within weeks of the establishment of the Soviet slave labour camps (the…
The presence of hundreds of thousands of young people from around the world for World Youth Day should have an important and beneficial effect on Australia. The real impact of World Youth Day in Sydney will undoubtedly be on the lives of the hundreds of thousands of young people from around the world who participated…
Australians are waking up to the dangerous and harmful effects of sexualised marketing on children writes Catherine Sheehan. The Senate committee on environment, communications and the arts has failed our children miserably by not responding to urgent community concerns regarding the sexualisation of children. In its report on the sexualisation of children, tabled on June…
So euphoric are Western businessmen and political leaders at the prospects of conducting lucrative trade with China that they downplay or ignore Beijing’s repressive police-state apparatus and corrupt business practices. Joseph Poprzeczny reports. Westerners are in danger of ignoring what is really happening in China because of endless media reports and political commentary that focus…
Last month, British MPs helped make H.G. Wells’s 1896 horror story, The Island of Dr Moreau, become reality. Tim Cannon reports. In his 1896 classic, The Island of Dr Moreau, H.G. Wells artfully blends science-fiction and horror, weaving a cautionary tale of a doctor hell-bent on creating human-animal hybrids. Today, the science and the horror…
Treasurer Wayne Swan has embarked on a fundamental review of the welfare system in Australia. Wayne Swan’s first Budget contained three central planks — fighting inflation, delivering on election commitments and rethinking the welfare system in Australia. All are admirable goals, but two are contradictory and all are fraught with risk. Mr Swan’s first Budget…
The Rudd Government seems set to weaken laws designed to outlaw predatory pricing by large retailers. If ever a front-page headline got it completely wrong, it was The Australian’s “Rudd to rein in business bullies”, announcing new changes to the Trade Practices Act. The Australian article (April 28) claimed that the Rudd Labor Government was…
In 2006, Islamic fanatics planned to set off a series of coordinated and deadly explosions aboard seven aircraft flying between London and North America, sending terrified passengers and crew plummeting to their deaths. Their plot, however, was successfully foiled, just before it was due to be carried out. Now, eight suspected accomplices have appeared before…
Both Labor and the Coalition are at serious risk of being manipulated by China to further its geostrategic and political ambitions, warns Joseph Poprzeczny. Chinese-born Professor Dong Li suggests that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should be reminded of a common Chinese saying: “Chi renjia de, zui ruan; na renjia de, shou duan. -If you eat…
Contrary to recent optimistic media claims, based on the latest census, that Australia could be heading towards a “baby-boom”, a close and considered analysis of the data by a Melbourne academic demonstrates that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Catherine Sheehan reports. Overall fertility rates in Australia are continuing to decline, and current cultural…
Debt and luck have kept the economy growing over recent years, while key sectors have been hollowed out, leaving the Australian economy a “house of cards”, writes Patrick J. Byrne. Last week, the international credit crisis caused ripples in Australia when the ANZ Bank chief Mike Smith announced that the ANZ’s bad debts charge could…
Victoria’s run-down regional rail infrastructure risks collapsing within five years, former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer has warned. An inquiry, recently completed by Mr Fischer into the shortcomings of Victoria’s railways, attracted submissions from all around Australia, and has raised serious questions about the impact on railway services of deregulation and National Competition Policy. Antony…
The Federal Government’s misguided water plan could wipe $28 billion off the Australian economy. Recently, over 400 farmers protested in Canberra over the federal water plan, which could wipe $28 billion off the Murray-Darling Basin’s economy following the drought. “The plan is set to induce a man-made disaster across the Basin, which will force up…
Kevin Rudd has been so fearful of losing votes that he has turned Labor into a policy copycat party, at least until election day, writes Joseph Poprzeczny. With polls consistently showing Labor under Kevin Rudd leading the Coalition by 10 points, the election looks to have a landslide in store for us, like the 1975…
Regardless of whether or not man-made carbon emissions cause global warming, Australia still urgently needs to examine alternative energy sources, argues marine scientist, Dr Walter Starck. Over the past century, carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere may have increased from around 3/100ths of 1 per cent to about 4/100ths of 1 per cent, and average global temperature…
To the four traditional domains of war – land, sea, air and outer space – has now been added a fifth domain: cyberspace, writes Peter Coates. Wars have long been fought on land and sea. In the last 100 years most countries have also fought in the air, and some (such as the US, Russia and,…
Too few people today are prepared to mourn the victims of communism, writes Dr Christopher J. Ward. Did you miss it? On June 12, President George W. Bush addressed some 400-500 people who had gathered in Washington DC to dedicate the Victims of Communism Memorial. President George W. Bushspeaks at the dedication. None of this was reported in…
Australia has so far not experienced a terrorist attack on home soil. However, policing at our airports is running at only a third of capacity owing to national staff shortages. John Miller, a former senior intelligence officer, reports. I fear that the Australian public will not take the terrorist threat seriously until, one day, they…
It is going to be tough for John Howard to win a fifth term in government. With up to six months until the election, John Howard looks to be facing his toughest election since winning power in 1996. Behind in the opinion polls, having brought down a Budget which has failed to produce a bounce…
Anzac Day has become the nation’s choice as its pre-eminent national day, writes Mark Lopez. Children at Anzac Day dawn service,Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne,April 25, 2007. (Photo by Mark Lopez). When the last post sounded in the pre-dawn darkness, I discreetly looked around me. I saw solemn faces, and heads respectfully bowed. Family groups huddled…
China is positioning itself to become a key long-term player in East Timor’s political, economic and perhaps even military affairs, according to an Australian academic who specialises in researching Chinese foreign policy. Joseph Poprzeczny reports. International affairs expert and Chinese linguist, Kate Reid-Smith, of the Northern Territory’s Charles Darwin University, says the budding Sino-East Timorese relationship…
Failure by governments, both federal and state, to come to grips with the complex nature of water risks putting the best regions of Australia’s agriculture in permanent drought, writes Patrick J. Byrne. Even after the rains come and the drought breaks, many farmers will face permanent drought, a man-made drought because of the water-trading policies…
The last couple of years have seen a dramatic deterioration in our local region as Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomons have become trouble-spots. When obscure Victorian Labor MP, Bob Sercombe, was appointed shadow minister for Pacific Island Affairs in October 2004, it was widely seen as something of a cosy sinecure…
Following release of the Stern Report which foreshadowed a range of new taxes to deal with what were said to be the inevitable effects of climate change, a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Nigel Lawson, gave a lecture challenging alarmist predictions about climate change, and calling for governments to adopt sensible policies. Lord Lawson This is…
A major dispute has arisen between the WA Government and Canberra over plans by the WA State Premier, Alan Carpenter, to reserve 20 per cent of the state’s natural gas output for use in Western Australia. The Federal Government, which writes export permits, wants the natural gas to be sold overseas. The battle centres upon…
BlueScope Steel CEO Kirby Adams tells Canberra to drop ideology and stand up for Australian manufacturing. The chief executive of Australia’s largest manufacturer of steel products, BlueScope Steel, has called for a reversal of Australia’s pursuit of free market ideology to save Australian manufacturing industry. Kirby Adams Kirby Adams, American by birth but Australian by…
Is a law-and-order crackdown sufficient, on its own, to overcome the problems of remote Aboriginal communities? State and Northern Territory Government ministers were right to walk away from the recent Canberra summit aimed at solving the problems of remote Aboriginal communities. Hastily convened, poorly thought out and conceived as a knee-jerk reaction to a spate…
Australia imports $1.8 billion in seafood because government-sanctioned radical environmentalism is shutting down our fishing industry, writes Pat Byrne. Professor Walter Starck, one of the world’s leading reef ecology experts, has roundly criticised the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) for its persistence in shutting down more and more of the Great Barrier Reef…
So far, the Howard Government has more or less escaped the blame for the AWB’s behaviour in the UN oil-for-food program. The Howard Government’s problems with AWB have not gone away, despite senior figures apparently successfully withstanding cross-examination by the Cole Inquiry into the United Nations oil-for-food program. Following the appearances of Trade Minister Mark…
Australia has missed a rare opportunity to influence communist China on the issues of human rights and China’s aggressive foreign policy, writes Peter Westmore. Australia has missed a rare opportunity to influence China on the issues of human rights and China’s aggressive foreign policy, by signing a uranium export agreement with China. At the same…
Cyclone Larry has inflicted untold damage on North Queensland’s vital infrastructure and farms. As North Queensland counts the cost of the devastation caused by Cyclone Larry, there are important lessons to be learned from the cyclone’s impact on vital infrastructure such as electricity, telecommunications, roads, bridges and railway links. Only immediate federal disaster relief will…
A single selling-desk is necessary for Australian farmers to "punch above their weight" in global markets, writes Pat Byrne. The mood at meetings of thousands of wheat-growers has been one of suspicion that the Federal Government has not come clean on its role in the Iraq bribes scandal. There is a deep fear that the…
During last November’s police raids on terrorist suspects, the identities of people who had confidentially provided information to the authorities were leaked to the media. This betrayal will make people think twice before volunteering their services, warns John Miller, a former senior intelligence officer. He says that the cause of countering terror in Australia has…
The Government should not escape taking some responsibility for the AWB fiasco. The Howard Government has been strangely and dangerously complacent about the political fallout from the AWB affair. All last year senior ministers from the Prime Minister down staunchly defended AWB executives and backed its claims that no bribes were paid and that the…
In 1937, the 21-year-old B.A. (“Bob”) Santamaria took a prominent role in Melbourne University’s famous debate on the Spanish Civil War. He created pandemonium when he uttered the rallying cry, “Long live Christ the King!” What historical events and religious convictions prompted B.A. Santamaria to take this extraordinary and controversial stand? His son Joseph…
Students at Melbourne University may be required to complete a general arts/science undergraduate degree before they can commence studying for professional or specialist qualifications, writes Colin Teese. This radical proposal will inevitably result in a decline in student enrolments, but may be necessary to prevent a threatened decline in the university’s reputation for education excellence.…
The Labor Party has deep, intractable problems, according to seasoned Labor figure, NSW Senator John Faulkner. The optimists inside the federal parliamentary Labor Party believe that a stint on the Treasury benches will fix all the current problems besetting the party. Factional warring will cease; the spoils of office will be distributed to frustrated MPs…
Islamic terrorism has struck not only countries such as Britain, which have participated in the Iraq War, but also Muslim countries which have not, such as Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia. Dr Sharif Shuja examines the origins of Islamic extremism and the possible strategies for curbing it. The July bombings in the London Underground tubes and…
The strongest political opposition to the Howard Government comes not from the Labor opposition, but from the new intake of senators. The resumption of Federal Parliament has been dominated by the fact that, for the first time in a generation, the Coalition parties have a majority in the Senate and can therefore expect to secure…
Brazil’s governing Workers’ Party (PT), under its leader President Lula da Silva, makes no secret of its communist sympathies, writes Augusto Zimmermann. Since the early 1990s, the party has openly declared its contempt for elections and the rule of law, and has declared its preparedness to use violence in the pursuit of its political objectives.…
What form could an Islamist terrorist attack on Australia take? This imaginary scenario, written by Terence Hankey, has been prepared as a professional research task for the purpose of educating people in counter-terrorism. Yousef al Khamal eased his red truck carefully out of the driveway of his modest weatherboard cottage in Gage Street, Lakemba, New…
With each successive federal election, increasing numbers of working-class and rural voters have been deserting Labor. It is the proverbial sign of madness to repeat the same mistakes expecting different results. But that appears to be what the federal parliamentary Labor Party is doing in its now decade-long but fruitless search for the magic pill…
Australia’s mishandling of the recent Chinese defections raises a number of urgent questions about the personnel and competence of ASIO and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The news during the past few weeks that three Chinese officials under diplomatic cover in Australia wished to defect produced a pantomime which, if it were not…
Europe will continue to be a force in world politics, despite the recent referendum outcomes in France and the Netherlands, writes Colin Teese. We all know that for more than a week the media helped generate an unhealthy preoccupation with the events surrounding the conviction and sentencing of a young Australian woman for attempting to…
The celebrated Corby trial has distracted attention away from a growing illicit drugs crisis closer to home. The Schapelle Corby drug trial aroused massive interest in Australia, with some Australians visiting Bali to hear the verdict, and a direct telecast of proceedings back to Australia. Widespread sympathy for Miss Corby in Australia arises in part…
The Reserve Bank has recently been trying to dampen spending. If it decides that the Federal Treasurer’s latest tax cuts risk over-stimulating spending and re-igniting inflation, it may decide to jack up interest rates. A cynic might suggest Treasurer Peter Costello has just spent $22 billion of taxpayers’ money in an attempt to win popularity…
How far did secret agents working for the former Soviet Union succeed in penetrating Australia’s intelligence agencies during the Cold War? This was the question put by ABC Television’s Four Corners in a documentary broadcast on November 1 last year. The program, entitled Trust and Betrayal, failed to provide much new information on this question.…
No recent event has surpassed the funeral of John Paul II. Peter Westmore looks at the Pope’s role as a religious leader without equal, and as the moral conscience of the world. The extraordinary outpouring of respect for Pope John Paul II, following his death on April 2, has been unprecedented in recent history. Over…
The visit to Australia next month by Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono affords Australia an opportunity to forge closer ties with the leader of a great regional power, and an important partner in South-East Asia with which Australia has had troubled relations in the past. Indonesia is crucial to Australia’s security. It is the gateway…
What has happened to Australia’s media? Journalists have all but abandoned diligent and impartial reporting and become unelected and unaccountable participants in the political process, argues former head of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, Professor David Flint. The following article is taken from Flint’s newly-released book, Malice in Medialand (Melbourne: Freedom Publishing Co.). During the Second…
It is a measure of the topsy-turvy nature of national politics that concern over the accidental incarceration of a deranged foreign-speaking Australian citizen completely overshadows the meek handing over of the nation’s last great mining house, Western Mining Corporation, to foreign interests. The detention of Cornelia Rau is clearly a regrettable mishap or series of…
Kim Beazley appears to have slipped back easily into the role he is very familiar with as his exhausted federal Labor Party colleagues take a rest from the acrimonious infighting and character assassination that has marred the party since the election. Already he has articulated a different position from Mark Latham on the Iraq question,…
Australians’ magnificent response to the victims of the Asian tsunami has obscured other facets of this crisis, particularly the need for far quicker emergency response to such disasters, and better means of identification of victims. COVER PICTURE: Australian Army Private Anthony Dawson prepares an antibiotic injection for an Indonesian patient at the TNI Army Hospital…
What causes free societies to lose their capacity to defend themselves? The distinguished French writer André Maurois was a close observer of the events which led to France’s surprise defeat by Germany in May-June 1940. He concluded that the reasons behind France’s sudden collapse were not primarily military, but moral, and enunciated nine principles essential…
Four years ago, after George W. Bush was elected President, he nominated Colin Powell as his Secretary of State. Powell was the first black American to occupy such a senior post in the US, and was frequently spoken about as a possible Presidential candidate in 2004. But after four years of controversy, Colin Powell handed…
The battle lines have finally been drawn in what is shaping up as one of the closest elections in recent memory, with interest rates, trustworthiness and government services to be the dominant election deciders. John Howard has gone to the polls in full knowledge he may well no longer be Prime Minister after October 9,…
Four years after Sydney hosted the most successful Olympic Games in recent history, the international sporting spectacular returned to Athens, the home of the modern Olympic Games in 1896. The occasion provides an opportunity to discuss what has happened to the ideals of goodwill between nations, sporting excellence and good sportsmanship which the Olympic Games…
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, launched Paul Gray’s new title, The Nightmare of the Prophet (Freedom Publishing), at a gathering of 100 guests at the Thomas More Centre in Melbourne on July 28. The book argues that militant Islamism threatens to become the communism of the 21st century, and that international terrorism is not simply…
The Federal and State governments recently agreed, through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), to a national water strategy. Neil Eagle, a long-time water activist and citrus-grower on the Murray River, evaluates the proposal. The COAG agreement, which only Western Australia and Tasmania refused to sign, does provide a degree of security to the water…
As News Weekly goes to press, the NZ Labour Government has rushed legislation into Parliament which will effectively legislate for gay marriage, through what are called “civil unions”. The bill was tabled in Parliament on June 21, and MPs were expected to vote on it on July 23 or July 24. The bill creates a…
Amidst the more pressing events of the war in Iraq, the oil price spiral and forthcoming American and Australian elections, the death of Ronald Reagan on June 4 is an occasion to reflect on how one man can change the course of history. Ronald Reagan, who as Republican candidate was widely derided as a B-grade…
Nobody yet seems to know quite what will happen next with the Mitsubishi motor vehicle manufacturing plant in South Australia, but the signs are not good. In any case the company’s future seems out of local hands – unless, that is, the government decides to step in. And therein lies a tale. So far the…
The merits of having a so-called free trade agreement with the United States (AUSFTA) have been well-debated in strictly trade advantage terms. And as far as these advantages are concerned, the arguments in favour of AUSFTA are by no means compelling. Nevertheless, we can assume that the Government majority in the House of Representatives will…
There are those who have been blinded by the continuing rhetoric of many of our State politicians, the official position of the Federal Opposition and the extreme ‘Greens’ that the Murray River is in decline and dying. The rhetoric is being peddled, in defiance of the facts, by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), World Wildlife…
Plans to commit an extra 500 gigalitres of water for environmental flows in the Murray River should be postponed, a House of Representatives Committee has recommended. Committee chair Kay Elson said the Committee had received a “considerable amount of evidence” questioning the science underpinning the Living Murray initiative of the Murray Darling Basin Commission (MDBC).…
Despite the apparent prosperity of the 1990s, a growing underclass of single low income males (SLIMS), not in full-time work and lacking the economic resources to hold a family together, is the major reason for the decline in the marriage and fertility rate since the mid-1980s. This is the key finding of a major study,…
Less than two weeks after both the Queensland election and the announcement of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US, the Federal Agriculture Department released three Biosecurity Australia reports recommending imports of New Zealand apples, Philippines bananas and foreign pork. The immediate question raised by agricultural groups is whether Biosecurity Australia and/or the Federal…
As a middle-sized trading nation which is dependent on its export industries to maintain Australians’ standard of living, blind opposition to international trade agreements is clearly against Australia’s national interests. Equally, however, a policy which endorses the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement – or any other international agreement – without a careful cost-benefit analysis is foolish.…
At the time of writing, the final outcome of the negotiations between the US and Australia was still uncertain; even though the deadline for negotiations had passed. Such a situation is perfectly normal in trade negotiations. Indeed, critical, stand or fall issues are rarely discussed until after the nominal deadline has passed. If that were…
Victor Sirl reports that the Queensland election is full of uncertainties and surprises, while the ALP has squandered some of its massive lead in the polls. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie caught everybody by surprise when he called an election for February 7, allowing only three weeks for campaigning. An early election was expected, but not…
Michael Gilchrist’s revised and updated biography Daniel Mannix: Wit and Wisdom, with a Foreword by Cardinal George Pell, will be released by Freedom Publishing early in 2004.This is the final chapter and postscript. The Archbishop celebrated his 99th birthday at Portsea where he was reported to be in excellent health as the usual flood of…
There is at least one good thing to be said in favour of the brave majority members of the Labor Caucus who voted to install Mark Latham as their new leader. As a collective it has to be conceded they have placed their political aspirations ahead of their short-term political careers. No one can accuse…
Colin Teese responds to Professor Max Corden’s address. Many News Weekly readers will be unfamiliar with the name Max Corden. In economic circles, however, Professor Corden is well known. He is, in fact, the crown prince of what Australians have chosen to call economic rationalism. Until recently, he had long been away from the limelight.…
Professor Max Corden, a member of the Productivity Commission, recently delivered the inaugural Richard Snape Lecture on Australia’s immigration policy. This is an abridged version of his address, to which Colin Teese replies here: RESPONSE: No immigration policy without industry policy. Australia’s total fertility rate (number of births per woman in her lifetime) has been…
While fierce desert winds, drought and arson have been blamed for the wildfires which took 20 lives and destroyed over 2000 homes in southern California last month, the underlying causes – the failure to conduct fuel-reduction burns, under pressure from American greenie groups such as the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society – have received…
For decades, environmentalists have been shouting that the world is overpopulated, and will soon run out of food, oil, and other necessities on which modern societies depend. Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, published in 1968, set the scene for the adoption of “zero population growth” policies in most Western countries, as well as some in…
The recent visit to Australia of Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish statistics professor and author of the bestseller, The Skeptical Environmentalist, has predictably been met with fierce criticism. Labor’s Shadow Minister for the Environment, Kelvin Thompson, was given time on the ABC to criticise the visit. “I believe that [Lomborg’s visit] is because neither the Institute…
The photos of the Murray River at the Swan Hill bridge (below) show the river in 2003 during the worst drought in 100 years, and the river during the drought of 1914. The difference is stark. The dams, locks and weirs that were built over the past 80 years mean that today the river is…
Articles in the local Gippsland press highlighting the legitimate and genuine concerns of property owners about the proposal to build 100 metre high wind turbines in the area are just the start of many more such stories if the Bracks Victorian Labor Government continues with its folly of using taxpayers money to fund wind farms.…
To many Australians, Hong Kong is a distant reality, with little or no significance other than as a tourist destination. The recent visit to Australia by Democratic Party leader, Martin Lee, highlighted the fact that the struggle currently underway between the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and its China-installed chief executive, Tung Chee Hwa, has…
In the libertine world of the Web, pornography is an equal citizen with every other information resource, lying one Google, two clicks and not much else from access. Unlike the real world, where classifications restrict access, the Web is on for young and old. With the phenomenon of spam spiralling out of control, Senator Richard…
As the world marks the 25th birthday of the first “test tube” baby, scientists have identified a significant increase in the number of major and minor birth defects in children conceived by IVF technology. As Bill Muehlenberg explains, its seems human reproduction is more intricate and subtle than many IVF pioneers understood. Twenty five years…
Deputy Prime Minister and National Party leader John Anderson had one message to the millions of people who live outside the privileged coastal cities of Australia: “Trust us”. It is a big ask in anyone’s language and one from a party that at best has blurred the ideological lines between it and its long-time Coalition…
March 5 2003 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest mass-murderers of all time – the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Probably as many Soviet people were killed during his reign of terror as perished during World War II at the hands of the Nazis. Yet many today still fail to…
Next month Freedom Publishing is releasing The Twilight of the Elites by Professor David Flint. As the following extract makes clear, the book deals with the ‘alternative’ agenda for Australia promoted by the so-called elite against the wishes of the electorate. John Howard remains the elite’s bête noire, his record support in the polls notwithstanding.…
Media stories have created a public perception that ethanol is damaging to car engines. Last December, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story about a motorist who paid $746.90 in repairs to a damaged engine due to cheaper petrol being laced with ethanol. Subsequently, the mechanic who repaired the car told the paper’s Paul Sheehan…
The Federal Labor Caucus’ apparent desire to switch leaders well before the next election, possibly within weeks, will do little to fix one of the fundamental problems facing the party – denial. Recent reports suggest there could be a challenge against Crean within weeks, with Caucus members backgrounding journalists that Crean’s days in the top…
Just three weeks after Coalition forces entered Iraq from Kuwait, US soldiers are occupying Saddam’s headquarters in Baghdad, and the end of his evil regime is now in sight. Before turning to the future of the country, comment should be made on how the war was conducted, on both sides. The strongest argument against the…
The war in Iraq has entered its third phase. The first – the attempted decapitating strike to take out President Saddam Hussein and the top Baath leadership – was made after the US CIA reported the probable presence of Saddam in a particular military facility in Baghdad. CIA Director, George Tenet, alerted President Bush about…
Due to printing deadlines, this comment was prepared on March 11, before the UN Security Council was to vote on a resolution – jointly moved by the United States, the UK and Spain – which stated that unless Saddam Hussein fully complied with UN Security Council Resolution 1441 to disarm immediately, he would be disarmed…
As the United Nations Security Council moves towards a further resolution of the Iraq crisis, the argument against American intervention is largely based of the effectiveness of UN weapons inspectors in finding chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the only reason why Saddam has offered any level of…
Reg Little agrees with the assessment of Japan by some Japan-resident economic analysts. Its banks might be languishing, but its productive economy is getting stronger by the day. Patrick Buchanan, one time US Presidential candidate, wrote for the WorldNet Daily on 27 January 2003 the following lament under the heading ‘Is the global economy about…
Old-growth forests and wildfires The appalling bushfires which have devastated Canberra, south east NSW, Tasmania and parts of Victoria over recent weeks have been aggravated by the policies of state governments which have locked up large areas of the country’s eucalypt forests from timber harvesting, and consistently failed to perform adequate fuel reduction burning, making…
Of late there has been much overblown rhetoric about Australia’s possible response to a range of defence contingencies. These have ranged from putting a non-existent armoured brigade into Iraq, to intervening with ground troops in various regional trouble spots. Fierce arguments have been mounted in support of particular responses and equally fierce arguments stated against…
Last month, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, released her 277 page report, A time to value, in which she proposed a government-funded 14 week paid maternity leave scheme, for women in the paid workforce. The problem with this is: what happens after 14 weeks? The unspoken assumption is that the mother simply returns to…
Behind the hype and headlines surrounding the re-election of the Bracks Labor Government in Victoria, some important facts have been largely ignored. In terms of seats won, the election result is accurately described as a landslide. But in terms of votes received, the ALP vote increased only 2.8 per cent on its vote in 1999,…
It’s official! Or so our newspapers tell us. The US and Australia are to start talks on so-called “free trade”. And the process is to be “fast tracked” – talks will begin within 90 days. When they will be concluded, and to what purpose, is another matter. Some of the commentators – especially those with…
Following the Bali bombing, the Federal Government has apparently discovered that there might be al Qaeda cells operating within Australia, opening up the real possibility that acts of terrorism could occur on Australian soil. Clearly the source of such organisation is Islamic fundamentalism based in Indonesia. If Indonesia is to successfully track down those responsible…
The barbaric and cowardly killing of predominantly Australian tourists in Bali on October 12 raises a number of important questions for both Indonesia and Australia. The bombing took place at about 11.30 pm on a Saturday night, in a resort frequented by foreigners who were both defenceless and unsuspecting. The earlier vague upgrade in security…
A year after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, President George Bush has unveiled a new strategic doctrine which foreshadows a first-strike strategy against terrorist organisations and “rogue states” such as Irak and North Korea. It gives the strongest possible indication that the Bush Administration is…
With the establishment of a new inquiry into telecommunications services to rural Australia, the Federal Government is clearly hoping for a favourable report which will facilitate the sell-off of the remaining 50.1 per cent of Telstra which remains in government hands. One problem with such a sell-off is that of increased foreign ownership, attracted by…
The Iraq question has become an agent of momentous change in global politics, with particular emphasis bearing upon Europe, the Middle East and major international institutions such as the UN, NATO, and possibly the EU. There is also a fierce battle going on for the “soul” of America – one in which George W. Bush…
Was it wrong to send troops to Vietnam? No, says Kenneth Gee, despite public reconsiderations by some of those involved. General Cosgrove, who fought in Vietnam, now doubts whether Australia should have been there. Malcolm Fraser also now believes that the Vietnam War had been misguided. This is understandable, since the United States, in its bungled…
Within days, Federal Parliament will commence debate on the contentious Research Involving Embryos and Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002, which will set the ethical and medical ground rules for research on human subjects for years to come. While many of the issues of principle – in particular destructive research on human embryos, and the…
The resignation of former Australian Democrats leader, Senator Meg Lees, and the trenchant attack on current leader, Natasha Stott Despoja, by Senator Andrew Murray as he resigned from the Democrats’ front bench, raises immediate questions about the Democrats’ survival as a political force, and more fundamental questions about why the party is disintegrating. Looking back…
The Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir has been a flashpoint for hostility between India and Pakistan for more than half a century. The former princely state includes the Hindu-majority plains of Jammu, the mainly Muslim Kashmir Valley and the mainly Buddhist Ladakh area. About 12 million people live in Kashmir, of whom about 70…
Last week’s deterioration in Australia’s trade performance – described as the worst monthly result since August 2000 – will put more pressure on Australia’s soaring national debt, with uncertain implications for the future of the national economy. The strength of the Australian economy over recent years has been largely based on government policies which have…
Appalling revelations of sexual misconduct by some Catholic clergy in the United States and Australia have caused embarrassment and shame to many Catholics, and prompted fierce attacks in the media on the Church’s moral teachings, its leadership, and its credibility as a moral force within society. Channel 9’s 60 Minutes program has been in the…
Speculation about the full privatisation of Telstra has been fuelled by former National Party leader, Tim Fischer, and leader of the National Party in the Senate, Senator Ron Boswell, both of whom have praised the improved standard of Telstra’s services to rural and regional Australia. An ALP report, Reforming Telstra, released last month, rejected privatisation.…
In a speech in the Senate, the leader of the National Party in the Senate, Senator Ron Boswell, has raised the question as to whether public moneys, made available for stem cell research, might generate private profits. He said, “Imagine debating a bill that could make a select group millionaires but not identifying who those…
While Australia continues to pursue the policies of deregulation and free trade, US President Bush has declared that US agriculture is a strategic industry. His statement was made to justify the latest, massive $200 billion Farm Bill for the next six years. President Bush announced in January that US self-sufficiency in food is a “national…
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been the only nation capable of exercising global military power. The US continues to exercise a stabilising influence over a number of potential flash-points around the world, including the Taiwan Straits, the Persian Gulf and in parts of South America. US military power –…
The Prime Minister’s decision, taken in conjunction with State Premiers, to permit human embryo experimentation while banning human cloning, takes Australia down the slippery slope by permitting destructive experimentation on the most defenceless of human beings. It is instructive to look at the history of government attempts to regulate the medical scientists over the past…
In the run-up to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting on April 5, the biotechnology industry has undertaken a major campaign to win public support for both destructive human embryo experimentation and embryonic stem cell research. The attraction of stem cells is that they develop into other cell types (e.g. nerve, heart, liver), and…
The decision of the American President, George Bush, to impose a 30 per cent tariff on imports of flat steel products, and a range of lesser tariffs on other steels, led to anger from two opposing groups: apologists of free market economics, to whom the US has always been the model to which other nations…
The opening of the NZ government-backed Kiwibank last week, and the Labour Government’s decision to start backing new industries for the country, marks the end of economic rationalism as the country’s ruling economic ideology. These new policies represent the beginning of an attempt to rescue the nation’s ailing economy, before New Zealand slips into Second…
The statement of one of Australia’s leading businessmen, Richard Pratt, that he would be willing to set aside $100 million to assist the development of a national policy to expand substantially Australia’s available water resources, puts the focus firmly back on the need for Australia to complete major infrastructure projects if it is to meet…
The first thing to be said about the new film The Fellowship of the Ring is that it will not satisfy Tolkien purists. Those fans, however, who are a little lenient, taking into consideration the rubrics of making such an ambitious movie, will find this offering by director Peter Jackson a sheer delight, as the…
Eyewitness in East Timor In early November, Peter Westmore spent 10 days in East Timor, to evaluate the conditions in the country which will become independent in May this year. Since the East Timorese people voted for independence from Indonesia in August 1999, and the subsequent terror which ended only when Australian troops, under UN…
The sudden collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, against the publicly expressed expectations of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and almost all international observers, is a remarkable tribute to US tactical doctrine, its effectiveness in deploying military power on the other side of the world, and the striking power of its computer-guided missiles…
During the election campaign widespread support emerged for the call by former ANZ Chief, Will Bailey, for the major parties to support a public inquiry into the effects of bank deregulation after 16 years, and into the feasibility of establishing a new government-backed development bank. Despite political pundits saying the issue would get buried in…
One of the worst-case scenarios for the post-September 11 world is that Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, and others like him, will continue to convince enough Muslims around the world that the Anglo-American-led war against terrorism is a crusade against Islam, and must be opposed to the death as a religious duty. Military action…
The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has responded to the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon by invoking the Anzus Treaty, and resolving to support US military action against Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network, and those countries which have given it aid and comfort. In doing this, Australia is…
The sudden collapse of Ansett Airlines has been followed by the inevitable recriminations against Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, the NZ Government, and anyone else who had a hand in the company’s fall. The real blame lies closer to home: with successive Australian governments which have approved foreign takeovers of companies like Ansett; and which…
The sudden arrival of hundreds of "boat people" on remote Ashmore Reef and Christmas Island, and the stand-off regarding the future of some 400 "boat people" rescued by a Norwegian container ship near Indonesia, have raised the question of Australia’s treatment of refugees and illegal immigrants, but more fundamentally, of the inadequacy of Australia’s maritime…
About 70 years ago in Brave New World, Aldous Huxley predicted that scientists would clone human beings. His was a nightmarish vision of a future society in which human beings were designed by genetic engineering, mass produced artificially, and controlled with mind-altering drugs and a manipulated media. In 1997, just four years ago, scientists in…
The Federal Government’s decision to appoint a Royal Commission into the culture of corrupt and intimidatory practices in the building industry is an overdue attempt to restore confidence to an industry which for decades has been marred by violence and standover tactics. The building industry’s culture of violence came to the fore with the Builders’…
The latest revelation that American scientists have created the first babies carrying DNA from a man and two different women, through manipulating a woman’s ova, has caused the alarm bells to ring – momentarily – around the world. The practice, used to boost the low success rate in IVF by introducing exoplasmic material from a…
The Federal National Party leadership has been in a state of denial over vitally important research that shows it and other key institutions have grossly underestimated the value of the domestic market to our farmers. It shows that two decades of free-market policies eroded farmers’ access to the vital domestic market, this being a major…
The spread of foot and mouth to Britain stands as a salutary lesson to those inside and outside the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) who have been pressing for a relaxation of our strict quarantine regime. It raises serious questions about the AQIS decision to allow uncooked Danish pork into Australia, some of which…
Thomas Bradley believes the Queensland Nationals had surrendered to One Nation before an electoral shot was fired. Their equivocation weakened their position and helped to create a bridge over which a large number of Coalition voters moved – not to One Nation, but to the ALP. The recent Queensland State Election involved a number of…
The state of California, which deregulated its power industry using a model remarkably similar to that implemented by the Kennett Government in Victoria, has been left with both a power crisis and the bankruptcy of its power utilities, which could seriously damage the US economy. California’s Governor, Gray Davis, was forced to declare a state…
The inauguration of George W. Bush as US President marks the return of the Republican Party to the White House after the eight year Clinton interlude which history will judge to be the years when a ’60s Generation playboy ran the most powerful country in the world. While President Bush’s critics point to the fact…
Colin Teese, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Trade, warns against moves to overturn our stringent quarantine regulations in the name of free trade. Matters associated with quarantine are in the news, in particular, the circumstances under which imports are permitted of plants, animals and fish from countries where such items carry transmissible diseases,…
Colin Teese, formerly Deputy Secretary of the Department of Trade, believes governments are being disingenuous when criticising OPEC for rising oil prices. All it takes is a good old fashioned crisis, or perceived crisis, to shift the focus of world leaders. When the G7 (the regular get-together of the world’s seven largest economies) meets this…
Bob Browning recently visited Singapore and found a country that, having achieved remarkable material success, is trying to redirect itself for the next stage of its development. It seems inevitable that some of the centralised direction of the economy and the polity will be relaxed. Singapore’s Central Provident Fund (CPF) is the state-run personal savings…
Colin Teese, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Trade, examines the agenda of the World Economic Forum which will meet this month in Melbourne and discovers that, even for conclaves such as the WEF, reality is beginning to bite. T he World Economic Forum begins its meeting in Australia on September 11 wrapped in…
The Federal Court has rejected the claim for damages against the Commonwealth by two members of the “Stolen Generation” of part-Aboriginal Australians. In a detailed judgement, Justice O’Loughlin said that evidence was not available to sustain the claims — it was either absent or worked against the plaintiffs by demonstrating parental approval for the relocation…
Prime Minister John Howard has announced that his Government will move to amend the Sex Discrimination Act following its use to strike down Victoria’s restrictions on access to In Vitro Fertilisation. Such an amendment may have a difficult passage through the Senate given that the Federal ALP has indicated that a woman’s right to such…
Anna Krohn looks at the moral dilemmas thrown up by the latest genetic breakthrough. Late in June, a carefully orchestrated, internationally linked media mega-event was hosted by the President of the United States to launch the news that 85% of the first stage in the vast project of creating an atlas of the genetic code…
When the incoming Aboriginal chairman of the Indigenous Land Corporation queried the high price paid for a Kimberley cattle station, all hell broke loose. Darwin-based journalist Dennis Schulz explains what is going on. When Mary Manolis heard that the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) bought Roebuck Plains station, she thought her life-long dream had been fulfilled.…
The book is available from News Weekly Books A new and important book, Drugs Dilemma: A Way Forward, was launched by Mrs Inga Peulich, State Member for Bentleigh, at Victoria’s Parliament House on Tuesday, June 6. Other prominent speakers at the launch included Mr Paul Gray, a high-profile columnist from the Herald Sun and Major…
The Queensland National Party’s decision to oppose the full privatisation of Telstra will focus attention on the Federal Government’s Telecommunications Service Inquiry. Currently, Telstra is 50.1 per cent government-owned. The Inquiry has advertised in metropolitan and regional newspapers, seeking submissions on Telstra’s service delivery. The sale of Telstra depends on the outcome of this inquiry,…
Max Teichmann believes that the media frenzy around the Riverside Nursing Home has somehow failed to identify the key issues in the aged care debate. The Riverside Nursing Home drama, quickly converted into melodrama by the media and the Labor Parties, Federal and State, seems to be slowly limping to an undignified close. Yet again,…
There has been a dramatic escalation in the number of boat people arriving in Australia over the last twelve months. Of the 7,500 boat people to be taken into detention since 1989 over 3,000 have arrived since June 1999. The national origin of the boat people has also changed over the years from 1989. In…
Since the beginning of the year, major industrial disputes – of a type not seen in Australia for about 20 years – have erupted, causing widespread fears that Australia is returning to the ‘bad old days’ of the 1970s, when industrial warfare was a feature of Australian life, causing damage to many industries. Many people,…