The Policy Post

Labor on refugees: just as nasty and even more secretive. Refugees in Australia’s detention camps learnt long ago that hope was an illusion. The new Labor government, endorsing the Coalition’s cruelty, has again shown them the bleak wisdom of hopelessness.

Neoliberalism: an obituary. The ideology which ruled the world’s economies for half a century has, after a long illness, finally died. Liz Truss tripped over its decaying corpse on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street.

  After 50 years of cuts, is it now too late to rescue the ABC? For almost half a century, the ABC has been squeezed between two opposing forces – rapidly increasing costs on one hand, savage budget cuts on the other.

Is our unwritten constitution worth the paper it’s not written on?   When it finally became known that Scott Morrison, in darkest secrecy, had made himself the Lord High Everything Else, the solicitor-general said there wasn’t anything illegal about it. But was there?

Could the Greens (one day) govern Australia? Bob Brown is pretty sure about it. “It’s inevitable,” he told me. Bob, and many within the Greens, see environmental policies – on climate change particularly – as being the single decisive issue around which future politics will revolve.

Factions have crippled Tasmania’s ALP. Now the paramedics are here. Factional warfare has cost the Tasmanian ALP its two most popular and credible politicians; its parliamentary leader and state president; a state election; and two federal seats.

The loneliness of the long-distance health reformer: Stephen Duckett on politics, bureaucracies and the pandemic. Anyone who still thinks Australia’s health system is fit for purpose really hasn’t been paying attention.

The Renegade: Greg Barns on law, prisoners, a republic – and fleeing the Liberals. Even now, Greg Barns insists he’s still a liberal. Small l. That’s a bit surprising, when you think about it.

Does the Liberal Party have a future? If these were ordinary times, if it was only about one election result, the question would not need to be asked. These are not ordinary times.

Labor wins friends with cost-free policies. It can't last.   Here’s a list. The Uluru statement. The Biloela family. Corruption commission. Wages. Republic. Arts. Robodebt royal commission. Climate. Support for the ABC.

A nine-year fight against a government’s inhumanity. In 2013, when Hugh de Kretser became CEO of the Human Rights Law Centre, Labor was still in power.

Why Labor failed in Tasmania. Two weeks before the federal election, there was another vote that was little noticed in Tasmania and ignored entirely everywhere else. As omens go, though, this one was a doozy.

Don’t expect Nirvana; or, how to avoid being disappointed by a Labor government.     Whenever a Labor government is elected, its supporters expect the world to change. They are always disappointed.

A colossal all-party health FAIL ! Every element of the Australian health system is in deep dysfunction. Hospitals in every state are in greater disarray than ever before. Emergency department overcrowding alone is killing as many people as the road toll.

There’s only one way to save private hospitals.   Neither party wants to talk about it, but the crisis facing private hospitals – which provide one bed in every three in this country – is a time-bomb waiting to explode under the next government.

Wages from Howard to Morrison (and the $80 billion a year deficit).   Since the Howard government was elected in 1996, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from wage-earners to the owners and managers of capital.

Will an Albanese government fix the mess in health? Or not? Some things we know. We know the whole health system has moved beyond crisis to an apparently permanent state of declining function.

Nuclear submarines. A Labor government. Cherbourg, here we come! When Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton tore up the contract to buy conventional submarines from France, Emmanuel Macron’s wasn’t the only disapproving voice.

Banning Tchaikovsky won’t hurt Putin or help Ukraine. In Wales, the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra had scheduled a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture . Tchaikovsky? He’s Russian, isn’t he? Can’t have that!

WA’s dodgy GST deal looks safe – unless the states finally go to the High Court.   There is now only one way Western Australia’s lucrative GST deal can now be overturned – and that is by the High Court, which has never ruled on the matter.