{
  "feed_info": {
    "title": "Pearls and Irritations - Daily Feed",
    "description": "Daily articles from Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
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    "updated": "2026-04-22T13:03:20+10:00",
    "generated_at": "2026-04-22T13:03:20+10:00",
    "post_count": 14
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    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-a-world-of-bounded-orders-part-2",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-a-world-of-bounded-orders-part-2/",
      "title": "The return of great power relations: a world of bounded orders – Part 2",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn the second part of his piece for the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how China is constructing a competing global order and reshaping the institutions that underpin international relations.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2019, leading realist international relations theorist, John Mearsheimer, suggested that great power rivalry in a multipolar world might resolve into a pattern of ‘bounded orders’. He posited that in such a world, stability might be achieved with states loosely coalescing around two or more leading states with whom they share important affinities.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe was careful, however, to argue that these would not be mutually exclusive blocs which would inevitably lead to conflict between them as security could only be achieved by the defeat of the other. When he initially suggested bounded orders as a theoretical proposition, as an offensive realist he also dismissed the idea quickly and returned to his main proposition that war between great powers was inevitable. At the time, he also did not identify the US and China as leaders of their respective orders. Subsequently, he has done so.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA bounded order is where a group of countries align with a major power with whom they share values and broadly similar or compatible systems of political and social organisation. Importantly, there will be a set of trans-national institutions, rules and norms that underpin respective economic and investment dependencies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike mutually exclusive ‘blocs’, states can and will need to cooperate across orders on some issues affecting the global commons. They also are different to more traditional spheres of influence which are defined primarily by their spatial relationship with the dominant power. Accordingly, they are not restricted to contiguous territories, can be global, and are defined by their mutually supported trans-national institutions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMoreover, states may overlap depending on the degree of convergence with the dominant power’s norms, values and form of political and social organisation. Before the election of Trump, it would have been reasonable to suggest that the more democratic and liberal a state was the more closely it would align itself with US leadership. That may be less so now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing the events of 3 January 2026, many middle powers may begin questioning the extent of their alignment with US values and approaches to international relations. Previously, China’s order may not have been a comfortable place for them, but the institutional arrangements China has been constructing may now start to look more attractive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChina’s institutional entrepreneurship\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina been constructing its order in front of our eyes for over two decades. In the west, there was a myopic, ‘nothing to see here’ attitude as China set about deliberately crafting the institutional arrangements to underpin and give coherence to its order. It is now no longer possible for lesser powers to look away.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTogether with its deep trade and investment flows, China has engaged in a systematic, deliberate process of trans-national institution building. Jointly with Russia, from the early years of this millennium, it led the institutionalisation of Eurasian multinational security cooperation with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSimilarly, while Russia initiated early cooperation among several emerging economies as a forerunner of the BRICS, China has been the main driving force. The BRICS Bank, renamed as the New Development Bank, is headquartered in Shanghai. ‘De-dollarisation’ of international payment settlements has emerged as a priority objective for the BRICS, attracting a great deal of international interest, especially among the Global South.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe highest profile initiative has been the Belt and Road (BRI) which was originally intended to re-cycle China’s massive foreign reserves and excess infrastructure construction capacity. It has since become the principal means by which China orders its foreign trade and investment priorities. The BRI has been pursued on a hitherto unimaginable scale, but it has also been controversial with accusations of ‘debt-trap’ diplomacy, waste and corruption. China also established the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to complement the BRI.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina holds regional neighbours close to itself through a delta of free-trade agreements. The first was with ASEAN in 2003 which, in 2025, was renewed, expanding into new areas, including digital trade and AI. Seeking to take geostrategic advantage from the weakening of Russia’s position in Central Asia post the invasion of Ukraine, China has struck several bilateral security and military arrangements with the Stans, previously the almost exclusive preserve of Russia. In 2023, China convened the first summit of the C+C5 group (China plus the five Stans), with a permanent secretariat established in Xi’an intended to coordinate security issues between them. Russia was excluded.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe international system, therefore, now involves heightened competition between multilateral and a host of plurilateral and mini-lateral institutions. Increasingly, these are aligned with either the US-led or China-led orders.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhither multilateralism?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this world of bounded orders, legacy multilateral institutions associated with the UN and Bretton Woods will still play a role in addressing concerns over the global commons. Climate change and arms control are two obvious areas. Global rules on AI, space and the polar regions might be others. Efforts are also continuing in the WTO to maintain some continuity in global trade rules, despite the US’ open disregard.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe positions states take in multilateral institutions, however, will be increasingly shaped by their respective orders. China still sees advantages for itself in certain parts of the multilateral system as a means of simultaneously advancing its interest while deflecting criticism of its behaviour. China remains a significant participant in the UN system: a major funder of peace keeping and holds many senior positions across the UN’s various organisations. China is well positioned to continue to align its order with its objectives in multilateral institutions, the principal features of which are to preserve territorial integrity and to emphasise economic development over the west’s liberal, humanist concerns.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2024, a report by the Washington based Centre for Strategic and International Studies found that the Global South was increasingly aligning with China in UN bodies, while US influence continued to wane. In the year since Trump moved back to the White House, these trends have become more pronounced. The abrupt abolition of USAID, for example, has been a major factor in weakening the US’ actual and moral authority.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina has successfully sought positions as head of UN specialised agencies to align its activities with BRI objectives and to continue to restrict Taiwan’s involvement in such organisations. In 2025, China held four out of 15 specialised agency heads and nine deputy positions. The African group, with 28 per cent of UN votes, has been a key to expanding China’s representation and influence in the UN. African states have also been substantial BRI participants and beneficiaries.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe future relevance of multilateral institutions is probably more challenged today than at any time since the end of the Second World War. Nevertheless, middle and small powers will continue to look towards multilateralism to provide some restraint on great powers. But in important areas, such as trade and arms control, the multilateral system is in secular decline in terms of its capacity to influence the behaviour of powerful states.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA shift is underway from a hegemonic multilateralism to one which is pluralistic, contested and hence negotiated. This is well advanced within the trade field, where the WTO has been largely marginalised, replaced by a plethora of bilateral, regional and mini-lateral arrangements which set norms and make rules.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChina senses great opportunity at this time of realignment of the international system. As \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/22/xi-tells-putin-of-changes-not-seen-for-100\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eXi Jinping told Vladimir Putin\u003c/a\u003e in March 2023:\n“Right now, there are changes in the world – the likes we have not seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving those changes together”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart 2 of this 4-Part series is republished from \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.globalneighbours.org/en/studies/the-return-of-great-power-relations-what-can-middle-powers-do\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eGlobal Neighbours.org\u003c/a\u003e, 13 February, 2026\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"related-article-card\"\u003e\n  \u003ca href=\"/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-what-can-middle-powers-do-part-1/\" class=\"related-article-card__image\" aria-hidden=\"true\" tabindex=\"-1\"\u003e\n    \u003cimg src=\"https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/President-elect-Donald-Trump-and-Vice-President-elect-JD-Vance-arrive-at-the-60th-Presidential-Inauguration-300x190.jpg\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"\u003e\n  \u003c/a\u003e\n  \u003cdiv class=\"related-article-card__body\"\u003e\n    \u003cp class=\"related-article-card__label\"\u003eRead Part 1 below:\u003c/p\u003e\n    \u003cp class=\"related-article-card__title\"\u003e\n      \u003ca href=\"/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-what-can-middle-powers-do-part-1/\"\u003eThe return of great power relations: What can middle powers do? Part 1\u003c/a\u003e\n    \u003c/p\u003e\n    \u003cp class=\"related-article-card__excerpt\"\u003eAs part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how Trumps shift to great power politics is reshaping the global order and forcing middle powers to rethink their strategy.\u003c/p\u003e\n  \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e",
      "summary": "In the second part of his piece for the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how China is constructing a competing global order and reshaping the institutions that underpin international relations.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T10:30:54+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T10:30:54+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Geoff Raby"}
      ],
      "tags": ["china","politics","usa","world"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "China has spent decades building the institutions of a new global order – and the shift is now impossible to ignore.\n\n\nIn the second part of his piece for our Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby explains what this means.\n\n\n#auspol #ForeignPolicy #China #Geopolitics",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-a-world-of-bounded-orders-part-2/",
        "linkedin_title": "The return of great power relations: a world of bounded orders – Part 2",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "In the second part of his piece for the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how China is constructing a competing global order and reshaping the institutions that underpin international relations.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-a-world-of-bounded-orders-part-2/",
        "facebook_text": "The return of great power relations: a world of bounded orders – Part 2 - In the second part of his piece for the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how China is constructing a competing global order and reshaping the institutions that underpin international …",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/brics-kazan-russia-2.jpg",
        "author_names": "Geoff Raby"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "In the second part of his piece for the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how China is constructing a competing global order and reshaping the institutions that underpin international relations.",
        "authors_string": "Geoff Raby",
        "categories_string": "china, politics, usa, world",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/brics-kazan-russia-2.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/poorly-designed-campaign-finance-laws-weaken-our-democracy",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/poorly-designed-campaign-finance-laws-weaken-our-democracy/",
      "title": "Poorly designed campaign finance laws weaken our democracy",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe High Court’s ruling on Victoria’s electoral laws shows how poorly designed campaign finance rules can undermine both fairness and the reforms they were meant to achieve.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is an unfortunate irony in the High Court striking down Victoria\u0026rsquo;s electoral funding laws, proving the adage, garbage in, garbage out. Legislation that was ostensibly designed to clean up politics has instead left the state in a sort of limbo, where elements of the law that were designed to fix the integrity of elections are now gone because overall the scheme was poorly designed and hastily implemented.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSound familiar? The Federal campaign finance laws were ticked and flicked and concerns about their design ignored in similar fashion. Persistent efforts by the federal crossbench and integrity organisations to engage with the government were spurned. The law was rushed through parliament with unseemly haste.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe federal laws have many flaws, flaws that were raised at the time of drafting, yet the government had zero interest in listening, let alone addressing them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe unanimous ruling in the case brought by independent candidates Paul Hopper and Melissa Lowe that key provisions of the Victorian Electoral Act are unconstitutional is, on one level, a victory.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe court found that the law’s “nominated entity” carve-out, a mechanism that solely benefited major parties, impacted the implied freedom of political communication entrenched in the Constitution. The ruling rightly reaffirmed a core democratic principle, the political playing field cannot be tilted to favour those already in power.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut it is also a cautionary tale. While the law was flawed, even discriminatory, its underlying ambition was not.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBecause the 2018 Victorian rules were a package deal, the court could not strike down the nominated entity carve out alone; they had to strike out an entire section of the legislation, covering not only the major parties’ ‘slush funds’, but also transparency of donations, donations caps and public funding.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHad the Government designed campaign finance and transparency rules that ensured greater integrity and fairness, without the loopholes that entrench incumbency, none of this would have happened as the plaintiffs warned the government in 2024 when they sought a resolution.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn short, this could all have been avoided. But for the government’s intransigence it need never have gone to Court.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI had publicly said many times before, well designed caps are good for democracy – the operative words being “well designed”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAustralians are rightly uneasy about the role of money in politics, and there is broad support for caps, transparency, and public funding models that reduce the risk of policy being shaped by those with the deepest pockets and easiest access.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe problem in Victoria was not the goal. It was the execution.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe laws looked and sounded like incumbency protection. Garbage in.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat design flaw proved fatal. Garbage out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are likely implications for the fairness of other electoral laws across the country. The High Court’s decision sends a clear signal, if these laws are not fairly designed, if they privilege incumbents, limit participation in our democracy or tilt the playing field further in favour of the major parties, they are vulnerable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA separate challenge to federal campaign finance laws, brought by Zoe Daniel and Rex Patrick, is already underway. Climate 200 supported both the Victorian and the Federal challenges.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe deeper issue here is not whether a law is constitutional or not. It is about the legislative process and whether law-makers are designing laws to benefit the public or themselves.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood electoral law is hard. What the Victorian ruling demonstrates is that getting it wrong can produce a raft of unintended consequences, or even a vacuum, with the entire campaign funding and disclosure regime invalidated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd that may be a worse outcome for the public, for politicians and for democracy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA well-designed system of donation caps and public funding can enhance democracy, but it must meet the Constitution\u0026rsquo;s test of fairness as made clear by the High Court in this week’s decision. It can broaden participation, reduce reliance on vested interests, and ensure that elections are contests of ideas rather than bank balances. But those systems must be genuinely fair and constitutionally robust.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey cannot be a protection racket for incumbents and major parties, especially when fewer and fewer Australians are voting for major party candidates.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe temptation for governments, particularly those facing rising electoral competition, is to treat electoral law as just another self-preservation tool. This High Court has put the major parties on notice that they will not wear it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe lesson here is that campaign finance reform must be fair, and designed following a proper process of consultation. Australians deserve well designed laws that strengthen our democracy, built on a genuine commitment to fairness, not just between major parties, but for everyone who participates in the democratic process.\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "The High Court’s ruling on Victoria’s electoral laws shows how poorly designed campaign finance rules can undermine both fairness and the reforms they were meant to achieve.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T10:25:11+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T10:25:11+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Simon Holmes à Court"}
      ],
      "tags": ["politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Victoria’s electoral laws were meant to clean up politics – instead they collapsed under their own design flaws.\n\n\nWhen laws favour incumbents, they risk failing altogether, Simon Holmes à Court writes.\n\n\n#auspol #Democracy #ElectoralReform #Politics",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/poorly-designed-campaign-finance-laws-weaken-our-democracy/",
        "linkedin_title": "Poorly designed campaign finance laws weaken our democracy",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "The High Court’s ruling on Victoria’s electoral laws shows how poorly designed campaign finance rules can undermine both fairness and the reforms they were meant to achieve.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/poorly-designed-campaign-finance-laws-weaken-our-democracy/",
        "facebook_text": "Poorly designed campaign finance laws weaken our democracy - The High Court’s ruling on Victoria’s electoral laws shows how poorly designed campaign finance rules can undermine both fairness and the reforms they were meant to achieve.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/paul-hopper-and-meli.jpg",
        "author_names": "Simon Holmes à Court"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "The High Court’s ruling on Victoria’s electoral laws shows how poorly designed campaign finance rules can undermine both fairness and the reforms they were meant to achieve.",
        "authors_string": "Simon Holmes à Court",
        "categories_string": "politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/paul-hopper-and-meli.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/australias-military-occupation-of-new-guinea-1914-1921",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/australias-military-occupation-of-new-guinea-1914-1921/",
      "title": "The forgotten war Australia would rather not remember",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMichael Piggott\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;New Feller Master: Beyond the Trenches Australia’s Neglected WWI Story\u0026rsquo;, details Australia’s occupation of New Guinea and challenges familiar national narratives – confronting uncomfortable truths about power, race and legacy.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo days after it declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, Britain asked the Australian government if it would mind, awfully, taking over the Germany colony in New Guinea on the understanding that any territory gained would “be at the disposal of the Imperial Government for purposes of an ultimate settlement at conclusion of the war.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf course, the Australian government obliged. In smart time the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) was formed and soon troops were on board the converted P\u0026amp;O liner, \u003cem\u003eBerrima\u003c/em\u003e, and headed north in the company of a naval force of a dozen ships.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWithin a couple of days of the ANMEF’s arrival in New Guinea on 11 September 1914, the main German garrisons had been captured. Thirty New Guineans, six Australians and a German were killed in the action. The terms of capitulation were agreed with the Germans on 17 September and the ANMEF occupation of New Guinea – a territory about the size of Victoria with a population of around 400,000 – began. It endured until May 1921.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"figure size-full wp-image-465730 alignleft\"\u003e\n    \u003cimg src=\"https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/piggott-cover.png\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\"\u003e\n    \n\u003c/figure\u003e The story of the ANMEF has now been retold in a splendid, sparkling book by the librarian, archivist and historian Michael Piggott, titled \u003cem\u003eNew Feller Master: Beyond the Trenches Australia’s Neglected WWI Story\u003c/em\u003e. Piggott explains that the title derives from the proclamation announcing the ANMEF, the Pidgin version of which repeatedly referred to the new regime as “new feller master”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePiggott says his book is “not a conventional battle history” as “there was so little actual fighting, the occupation so long and the aftermath even longer”. Rather its focus is on the “backgrounds, attitudes, ideas, behaviour, and self image” of the Australians involved, how they approached their tasks and the trailing effects of their experiences for themselves and their families. Equally the book deals, often with startling explicitness, with the effects of the occupation on New Guineans and the German colonists. It touches on the inheritance of the ruthless mining of phosphate in the now independent country of Nauru.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePiggott’s book is no casually tossed off military potboiler. It is a thorough, scrupulous sociological consideration of Australia’s occupation of New Guinea developed over many years of study. And it avoids the migraine-inducing jargon of those prepared to own up to be being sociologists. Indeed, the book is a model of clarity enlivened by wryness and occasional whimsicality.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe author has combed through official records, public reporting and, he says, “microhistories of themes, incidents, campaigns and mini-biographies.\u0026quot;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNothing seems to have been left to chance and the book takes the trouble gently to correct big and small slips in earlier histories. For example, Charles Bean is chided for titling his 1946 summary volume of Australia and WWI as \u003cem\u003eAnzac to Amiens\u003c/em\u003e, “an alliterative title” Piggott says “which dishonestly started too late and ended too early. Still ‘ANMEF to Rabaul’ would never have worked.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Australians who occupied German New Guinea “were neither equipped, qualified nor experienced for their role” Piggott says, notwithstanding that on their journey to it the troops were given “lectures on personal hygiene, international law and bayoneting”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe various leaders of the ANMEF had, in Piggott’s judgment “a quality of inertia about them.” That’s not all. When in the early stages of the occupation, a German medical practitioner and several German plantation owners caned an Australian Methodist missionary they suspected of being a spy, the ANMEF commander, Colonel William Holmes, arranged for a reciprocal public flogging of the German floggers. Matters may not have much improved when Holmes was replaced by Colonel Samuel Pethebridge KCMG who was moonlighting as Secretary of the Department of Defence.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePerhaps the most bracing chapters in \u003cem\u003eNew Feller Master\u003c/em\u003e are those dealing with the Australian occupiers’ relations with New Guineans. The chapter headings give the flavour - “Being Racist”, “Being White”, “Looting Like a Soldier” and “Looting Like a Coloniser”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePiggott says Australian “attitudes towards New Guineans were almost entirely negative, if occasionally qualified” and that they reacted towards the locals with “disgust, exploitation, corporal punishment and rape.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen it came to looting, Pethebridge saw the Australians as “champions” and when he ordered the baggage of some returning troops to be searched, he said he was threatened with mutiny and that some officers “considered their personal honour was impugned.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter studying soldiers’ “native curio collecting”, Piggott cites Christine Winter’s conclusion that “New Guinea was Australia’s greatest war trophy.” Piggott claims that “for sheer self-interest the calculated plundering of New Guinea has few parallels. And thinking of phosphate, nothing comes close.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf the consequences for the families of the occupiers “back home” few may be as tragically poignant as those for Eva Moffatt. Her son, Able Seaman Robert Moffatt was shot in the spine in an attack on a German wireless station on 11 September 1914. He died and was buried at sea. Eva, who was widowed, had had ten children two of whom had died. Then she got the telegram about Robert. Through a long period of devastation, Eva walked Sydney streets at night, slashed her wrists and in 1918 was found drowned in a disused quarry.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“So often” Piggott writes “the cruelties of war continue in peacetime and leave one lost as to know how to respond. Even so we might puzzle over the unsettling link between Moffatt’s burial at sea and Eva’s name being Ophelia recalling a Shakespearean fictional suicide by drowning.” Hamlet had a lot to answer for.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn a sense Piggott’s history of the ANMEF takeover and long occupation of New Guinea is a narrow story that’s been drowned out by, especially, the furies of attention given to the ANZACs at Gallipoli, a strategic and military disaster that even an historian of Hew Strachan’s standing believes, Lord save us, “forged” Australia’s “national identity”. By contrast and in a real sense the ANMEF story is as wide as a mile and full of contemporary meaning in many senses, including, for good or ill, about enduring aspects of the character of Australians.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePiggott’s telling of this story is masterful and engaging. It’s a gem that deserves lots of readers\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMichael Piggott – \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.bigskypublishing.com.au/new-feller-master/?srsltid=AfmBOopm8hZhqj9ze7Dqfs6YFBxEaI1tLxSibVyFryesREQvkm6bKVeP\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003e_New Feller Master: Beyond the Trenches Australia’s Neglected WWI Story_.\u003c/a\u003e Big Sky Publishing 2026\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "Michael Piggott's 'New Feller Master: Beyond the Trenches Australia’s Neglected WWI Story', details Australia’s occupation of New Guinea and challenges familiar national narratives – confronting uncomfortable truths about power, race and legacy.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T10:10:56+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T10:10:56+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Paddy Gourley"}
      ],
      "tags": ["review","politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Australia’s WWI story isn’t just Gallipoli.\n\n\nA new history of the New Guinea occupation reveals a more complex and troubling legacy – one that still resonates today, Paddy Gourley writes.\n\n\n#auspol #History #WWI #Australia #ANZAC",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/australias-military-occupation-of-new-guinea-1914-1921/",
        "linkedin_title": "The forgotten war Australia would rather not remember",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "Michael Piggott's 'New Feller Master: Beyond the Trenches Australia’s Neglected WWI Story', details Australia’s occupation of New Guinea and challenges familiar national narratives – confronting uncomfortable truths about power, race and legacy.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/australias-military-occupation-of-new-guinea-1914-1921/",
        "facebook_text": "The forgotten war Australia would rather not remember - Michael Piggott's 'New Feller Master: Beyond the Trenches Australia’s Neglected WWI Story', details Australia’s occupation of New Guinea and challenges familiar national narratives – confronting …",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/machine-gunners-and.jpg",
        "author_names": "Paddy Gourley"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "Michael Piggott's 'New Feller Master: Beyond the Trenches Australia’s Neglected WWI Story', details Australia’s occupation of New Guinea and challenges familiar national narratives – confronting uncomfortable truths about power, race and legacy.",
        "authors_string": "Paddy Gourley",
        "categories_string": "review, politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/machine-gunners-and.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/lovin-democracy-youre-probably-doing-all-right-then",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/lovin-democracy-youre-probably-doing-all-right-then/",
      "title": "Lovin’ democracy? You’re probably doing all right, then",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAustralia remains one of the world’s stronger democracies, but rising economic stress and inequality are shaping how people feel about it.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJournalists realised long ago that people find bad news more interesting than good news. I think this is because we search our environment for threats to our wellbeing so we can do something about them. Fortunately for the news media, it’s rarely hard to find something new to worry about.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut you can have too much of a bad thing. Unless we leaven the bad news with something nice, we risk having our customers wonder why they’re paying to be depressed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe good souls at the \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://grattan.edu.au/report/for-the-people-future-proofing-australias-democracy/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eGrattan Institute\u003c/a\u003e have been researching the state of our democracy, but the best I can do is report that the news is mixed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first bit of news is bad: the number of democracies had been growing in the last decades of the 20th century, but since then, the number’s been declining. According to America’s \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.v-dem.net/publications/democracy-reports/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eV-Dem Institute\u003c/a\u003e, by last year the world was down to only 31 liberal democracies out of the 179 countries assessed, with almost three-quarters of the world’s population living in autocracies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe figures aren’t helped by the United States – soon to be renamed the Kingdom of Donald. The status of what used to be the poster child for democracy has been lowered from “liberal democracy” to “electoral democracy” thanks mainly to the way Trump has been gathering power to the presidency, weakening America’s much-lauded “checks and balances”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe good news, however, is that our status as a liberal democracy remains unchanged. According to Grattan we are “one of the world’s leading democracies, consistently ranking highly on international measures of democratic health, as well as on a suite of economic and social measures – including life expectancy, human development, employment and [national income per person].”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you’re wondering why an economic commentator like me is writing about democracy, it’s because although we tend to keep our democracy in a separate box to our economy, the two are interrelated. It’s no coincidence that most of the rich countries are democracies and most of the liberal democracies are rich.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA key issue is social trust. The more we trust each other to keep our promises and live up to the claims we make, the more smoothly and less expensively an economy grows and prosperity increases.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor instance, have you ever noticed that people pick up their bag from an airport luggage carousel without any official there to check they haven’t pinched someone else’s bag? The knowledge that almost all of us can be trusted speeds up the process and saves the airlines – and their customers – money.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe ability to trust people to do the right thing reduces an economy’s “transaction costs” – the cost of buying or selling something – leading to more transactions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd it’s a fair bet that people who live in democracies rather than autocracies find it easier to trust each other and “the system”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrattan’s report takes stock of the health of our democracy. “The good news,” it says, “is that Australians’ support for democracy has been consistently strong – even growing over time. Only a small share of the population is discontent or disengaged with the system, and the data [does] not suggest either has been spreading.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo what’s the bad news? It’s that people who aren’t doing well in the economy are less likely to be happy with the way our democracy is treating them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSurveys conducted by economists at the \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://politicsir.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/erosion-hope-social-and-financial-wellbeing-and-relationship-political\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eAustralian National University\u003c/a\u003e show that Australians are increasingly pessimistic about the future, with declining trust in government and institutions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough official economic indicators were good, a survey conducted early last year showed that people’s satisfaction with their life had fallen to levels last seen during the pandemic. More than a third of Australians reported experiencing financial stress.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Economic perceptions are strongly associated with political attitudes,” the academics conclude. “We find that national economic assessments in particular are stronger predictors of confidence in government, satisfaction with democracy, and populist sentiment.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Those who perceive the national economy worsening are significantly less satisfied with democracy, more distrustful of government institutions, and more receptive to populist narratives,” they find.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAustralians who believe life was better 50 years ago and will worsen over the next 50 years showed lower trust in government and stronger populist attitudes. But although younger Australians expressed greater optimism, they remained less politically engaged.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOf all the survey’s participants, only a third expressed confidence in the federal government, down from more than half in 2023. Half the respondents believed life would be worse in 50 years, while only 16 per cent believed it would improve.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDissatisfaction with housing, rising prices and Australia’s environmental policy are all central to explaining the public’s pessimism about the future.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eElsewhere, the academics discovered a very strong relationship between people’s views on income inequality in Australia and their views on democracy. Only half of those who thought the distribution of income was very unfair were satisfied with democracy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe authors of the Grattan study say we face three big risks to confidence in our democracy. First, the rise of online social media is “fragmenting our fact base, and making misinformation and extreme views more salient in people’s daily lives”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSecond, global political tensions and the rise of anti-democratic forces overseas are testing Australia’s social cohesion at home.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd third, the heightened probability of economic, social and environmental shocks increases the challenge democratic governments face in delivering better outcomes to their people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood point. The fact is that the nation’s smarties are expecting tough times ahead. The climate is expected to continue changing, which will bring, among other things, more extreme weather events. There could be hiccups in our transition from fossil fuels to renewables.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd the latest “shock” to our economy, from the ill-judged Iran war, is unlikely to be the last to come our way. Let’s hope our democracy can survive the challenge.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRepublished from the \u003cem\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/lovin-democracy-you-re-probably-doing-all-right-then-20260421-p5zps8.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eSydney Morning Herald\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/em\u003e, 22 April 2026\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "Australia remains one of the world’s stronger democracies, but rising economic stress and inequality are shaping how people feel about it.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T10:05:03+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T10:05:03+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Ross Gittins"}
      ],
      "tags": ["politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Lovin’ democracy? You’re probably doing all right.\n\n\nNew research shows Australians who feel economically secure are far more likely to trust institutions – while pessimism is fuelling disengagement, Ross Gittins writes.\n\n\n#auspol #Democracy #Economy #Trust",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/lovin-democracy-youre-probably-doing-all-right-then/",
        "linkedin_title": "Lovin’ democracy? You’re probably doing all right, then",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "Australia remains one of the world’s stronger democracies, but rising economic stress and inequality are shaping how people feel about it.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/lovin-democracy-youre-probably-doing-all-right-then/",
        "facebook_text": "Lovin’ democracy? You’re probably doing all right, then - Australia remains one of the world’s stronger democracies, but rising economic stress and inequality are shaping how people feel about it.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/This-is-the-Australian-Parliament-House-in-Canberra.-Which-was-the-worlds-most-expensive-building-when-it-was-completed-in-1988.jpg",
        "author_names": "Ross Gittins"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "Australia remains one of the world’s stronger democracies, but rising economic stress and inequality are shaping how people feel about it.",
        "authors_string": "Ross Gittins",
        "categories_string": "politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/This-is-the-Australian-Parliament-House-in-Canberra.-Which-was-the-worlds-most-expensive-building-when-it-was-completed-in-1988.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/tune-in-turn-on-and-drop-out-the-case-for-legalising-psychedelics-is-stronger-than-ever",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/tune-in-turn-on-and-drop-out-the-case-for-legalising-psychedelics-is-stronger-than-ever/",
      "title": "Tune in, turn on, and drop out: the case for legalising psychedelics is stronger than ever",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDecades of prohibition have failed to stop psychedelic drug use while blocking research and treatment options, raising questions about the basis of current laws.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Tune in, turn on, and drop out.\u0026rdquo; Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist and champion of psychedelic drugs, first uttered that iconic phrase 60 years ago. A year later California became the first jurisdiction to prohibit LSD. But last Saturday, President Donald Trump (of all people) directed that his administration move quicker to review certain psychedelic drugs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe global push to criminalise psilocybins, LSD and other similar drugs from the late 1960s onwards was, and still is, based not on public health grounds, but ignorance, prejudice and fear by law makers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs we now know, Timothy Leary was right. His research at Harvard, with his colleague Richard Alpert that commenced in 1960 was called the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Psilocybin is a hallucinogen found in some species of mushrooms (LSD is a chemical formulation).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHarvard University’s biography of Leary – that they have anything on him is to their credit given US President Richard Nixon called him the \u0026ldquo;most dangerous man in America\u0026rdquo; – says the project was seeking to document the effects of psilocybin ‘on human consciousness by administering it to volunteer subjects and recording their real-time descriptions of the experience.’\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeary and Alpert came under fire for sloppy research ethics but they were onto something.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd Leary was blamed for what was said to be a booming drugs culture in the US and elsewhere (including Australia) in the 1960s. Leary was no angel. He was narcissistic by many accounts and took on the guru role with devoted followers. He veered away from serious academic work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut Dr Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies takes the sort of nuanced view of Leary that the record supports. Doblin, in an interview with \u003cem\u003eWired\u003c/em\u003e said that he thinks “the crackdown on psychedelics happened because psychedelics were going right. They motivated people to get involved in social justice activities, protests. And Tim did a lot of good work generating people to have those kinds of experiences. I think, on balance, he did way more good than harm. Though I fault him for twisting the data in his studies.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe consequence of the criminalising of LSD, pscilocybins, ketamine and MDMA has, of course, not been to stop people using it, but to handing over the market to the colour black.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore importantly, though, is instead of governments allowing researchers to follow up Leary’s work – and therefore potentially to benefit millions of patients who suffer from mental illness, including veterans of wars who have lived with chronic PTSD often with tragic consequences – the law has been used to treat users of these drugs as criminals.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs we now know these drugs, along with ketamine and MDMA ‘are now being systematically evaluated for their capacity to address treatment-resistant depression, substance use disorders, PTSD, and existential distress’, a recently published article in \u003cem\u003eProgress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology \u0026amp; Biological Psychiatry\u003c/em\u003e observes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo Australia’s credit the Therapeutic Goods Administration in 2023 approved the use of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression and MDMA for PTSD. A step in the right direction.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese are not the only drugs which have been irrationally banned over the years and which are now being discovered to be of real value in treatment of health conditions. Cannabis is another.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAgain, imagine if lawmakers and their friends in the media, religion and the medical profession had seen cannabis for what it was and is – an alleviator of pain and a very pleasurable drug that reduces anxiety. Instead of responding to it in a crazed and utterly irrational manner until recent years (albeit in Australia most politicians still bizarrely buy the ‘gateway drug’ nonsense about cannabis) societies could have been permitting its use through a regulated and taxed market for consumers, as they have been over the past two decades in the US, Canada, Uruguay and elsewhere.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGovernments and international bodies misuse the law to enshrine prejudice and because they pander to misplaced fears. There is also the fact that they refuse to respect bodily integrity and privacy in the shape of people being able to have access to mind experiences that enhance their lives.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd what of LSD and pscilocybins as a recreational drug? According to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, 12.2 per cent of Australians aged 14 years and over have used psychedelics one or more times in their life. That’s around four million people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy not legalise then? As the economist David Henderson, a research fellow at the US think tank, the Hoover Institution, argued back in 1991, “Most of the problems that people think of as being caused by drugs are not caused by drugs per se. Rather, they are caused by drug laws.” Regulated access to LSD and pscilocybins for non-medical uses reduces health and crime risks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut to return to Leary. He once said; \u0026ldquo;The moment you stop questioning is the moment somebody else starts answering for you.\u0026rdquo; Amen to that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe author has previously advised advice to Mind Medicine Australia – a body advocating for use of psilocybins and other drugs.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "Decades of prohibition have failed to stop psychedelic drug use while blocking research and treatment options, raising questions about the basis of current laws.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T10:00:07+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T10:00:07+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Greg Barns"}
      ],
      "tags": ["health","policy","politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Psychedelics were banned on fear, not evidence.\n\n\nDecades later, research is revealing their potential for treating depression, PTSD and more, Greg Barns writes.\n\n\n#auspol #Health #DrugPolicy #MentalHealth",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/tune-in-turn-on-and-drop-out-the-case-for-legalising-psychedelics-is-stronger-than-ever/",
        "linkedin_title": "Tune in, turn on, and drop out: the case for legalising psychedelics is stronger than ever",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "Decades of prohibition have failed to stop psychedelic drug use while blocking research and treatment options, raising questions about the basis of current laws.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/tune-in-turn-on-and-drop-out-the-case-for-legalising-psychedelics-is-stronger-than-ever/",
        "facebook_text": "Tune in, turn on, and drop out: the case for legalising psychedelics is stronger than ever - Decades of prohibition have failed to stop psychedelic drug use while blocking research and treatment options, raising questions about the basis of current laws.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/mushroom-and-psilocy.jpg",
        "author_names": "Greg Barns"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "Decades of prohibition have failed to stop psychedelic drug use while blocking research and treatment options, raising questions about the basis of current laws.",
        "authors_string": "Greg Barns",
        "categories_string": "health, policy, politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/mushroom-and-psilocy.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/non-discrimination-is-a-core-australian-value-we-must-defend-it",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/non-discrimination-is-a-core-australian-value-we-must-defend-it/",
      "title": "Non-discrimination is a core Australian value. We must defend it",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePolicies which link migration to “values” undermine a fundamental principle of Australia’s immigration system – fairness without discrimination.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLast week, as Angus Taylor announced the Coalition’s new migration plan I was reminded of a time sitting in Parliament House with Sarya, \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.afr.com/technology/the-refugees-who-could-solve-australia-s-tech-skills-crisis-20211105-p596bu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003ea Syrian software engineer who had just settled in Australia through a visa pilot program run by Talent Beyond Boundaries.\u003c/a\u003e We were watching Question Time from the public gallery, and I glanced over expecting to share a chuckle at the political theatrics playing out below. I was shocked to see her clearly moved, with tears welling in her eyes. When I quietly asked if she was okay, she whispered: \u0026ldquo;we are above them, if only we had this in Syria”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSarya meant it literally and figuratively. In Australia’s Parliament, the public gallery sits above the House Chamber. But more than architecture, she explained to me later that she was moved to see democracy in action, and the simple fact that leaders must answer questions and defend their positions under public scrutiny. Sarya knew from lived experience that this does not happen everywhere, and she wasn’t taking it for granted.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have spent 20 years working with refugees and migrants settling in Australia. I now run a program with universities across the country supporting refugee students to study and build new lives here. Sarya\u0026rsquo;s reaction that day is not unusual. In my experience, the people most committed to democratic values of equality and rule of law are very often those who have lost them, or come close to losing them, and made the agonising decision to leave their home country because of it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe central thesis of the Coalition’s newly announced immigration policy is that Australia should discriminate against migrants based on their purported values. Angus Taylor argues there are good migrants who adopt Australian values, and bad migrants who don’t – and good migrants are more likely to come from liberal democracies rather than those \u0026ldquo;ruled by fundamentalists, extremists, and dictators”. On this basis, Taylor singles out 1700 Gazans currently in Australia on visas as a \u0026ldquo;high-risk cohort\u0026rdquo;, requiring a retraumatising “reassessment”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is wrong. Country of origin does not predict commitment to democratic values. It is also a contradictory argument. Non-discrimination is a core Australian value. Permanent visa applicants must sign a values statement committing to the ‘fair go’, defined as embracing ‘mutual respect, tolerance, compassion for those in need and equality of opportunity for all’. Demonising and projecting nefarious intentions onto whole groups of migrants based on their country of origin is the antithesis of this.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is not an immigration policy guided by values. It is a racial and religious profiling dressed up in the language of values.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt has been heartening to see government ministers step up to defend Australia\u0026rsquo;s migrant and refugee communities and reassert the importance of a non-discriminatory immigration program. They are right to do so.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNon-discrimination is the cornerstone of Australia\u0026rsquo;s modern immigration system. The case for it is practical, as well as moral. We need diverse international talent to fuel productivity. We need more young working-age migrants to support an ageing population. And we know what a discriminatory immigration system costs us. The White Australia Policy restricted our labour supply, isolated us from growing regional markets, and subjected migrants to humiliating tests at the border. It was a policy that hurt Australia as much as it hurt migrants.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut if government leaders are going to defend non-discrimination, they need to demonstrate the commitment in practice. Last month, the Albanese Government banned Iranian nationals holding visitor visas from travelling to Australia. Whatever the justification, a blanket restriction targeting the nationals of a single country with no individual assessment is by definition discriminatory.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn my experience, migrants and refugees often have a sharper perspective on what this country stands for than those of us born here. Australian born nationals often take it for granted. Refugees generally do not.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVolunteers in the program I run know it is a privilege to meet and learn from people from different backgrounds and welcome them to our shores. That is the Australia most of us recognise. We must all defend the non-discriminatory basis of our immigration system.\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "Policies which link migration to “values” undermine a fundamental principle of Australia’s immigration system – fairness without discrimination.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T09:45:42+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T09:45:42+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Steph Cousins"}
      ],
      "tags": ["immigration","policy","politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Non-discrimination isn’t optional – it’s a core Australian value.\n\n\nEfforts to tie migration to “values” risk replacing fairness with profiling, and weakening the system they claim to protect, Steph Cousins writes.\n\n\n#auspol #Immigration #Refugees #Democracy",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/non-discrimination-is-a-core-australian-value-we-must-defend-it/",
        "linkedin_title": "Non-discrimination is a core Australian value. We must defend it",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "Policies which link migration to “values” undermine a fundamental principle of Australia’s immigration system – fairness without discrimination.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/non-discrimination-is-a-core-australian-value-we-must-defend-it/",
        "facebook_text": "Non-discrimination is a core Australian value. We must defend it - Policies which link migration to “values” undermine a fundamental principle of Australia’s immigration system – fairness without discrimination.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/mulitcultual-group.jpg",
        "author_names": "Steph Cousins"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "Policies which link migration to “values” undermine a fundamental principle of Australia’s immigration system – fairness without discrimination.",
        "authors_string": "Steph Cousins",
        "categories_string": "immigration, policy, politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/mulitcultual-group.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/tehran-demands-hundreds-of-billions-in-reparations-who-will-pay",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/tehran-demands-hundreds-of-billions-in-reparations-who-will-pay/",
      "title": "Tehran demands hundreds of billions in reparations. Guess who will pay?",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIf Iran succeeds in extracting reparations for the US–Israeli war, it would mark an historic shift in how power and accountability operate in the international system.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf Iran succeeds in extracting reparations for the damage done to it in the US-Israeli war, it will be a world historic moment.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIran may be bloodied but it remains unbowed and is \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://en.irna.ir/news/86127330/Iran-demands-compensation-from-five-regional-countries-over-war\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eseeking compensation from Arab states\u003c/a\u003e over ‘direct involvement’ in the US-Israeli war of aggression. Iran sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this month outlining its claim against Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. They also intend to apply a transit toll on the Strait of Hormuz as an instrument of restorative justice.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnder international law – if anyone still pays attention such things  – the Iranians have a strong case. What will determine if justice is done, however, is victory over the aggressors.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOver 100 US-based international law experts, professors, and practitioners have released a letter stating that the \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.justsecurity.org/135423/professors-letter-international-law-iran-war/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eUnited States and Israel violated the UN Charter\u003c/a\u003e by launching strikes on Iran on 28 February.  The signatories include leaders of prominent international law associations and former Judge Advocates General – the top legal advisors to the US armed forces. They cite the complete lack of evidence of an imminent Iranian threat that could support a self-defence claim.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnder international law the aggressor is responsible for all the destruction that follows. The white-dominated western countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand should stop banging on about the illegality of Iran taking control of the Strait and address the root causes of why it did so.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo what is the case against the Arab states? In the early days of the war, radar systems operating from these countries were fully engaged in the war. Thousands of US troops were operating from 14 US bases in their territories. Attack planes, refuelling planes and aerial surveillance planes all operated from bases like Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd Air Base, as reported by \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-and-uae-inch-closer-to-us-israeli-war-on-iran#:~:text=Earlier%20this%20month%2C%20Elbridge%20Colby,US%2DIsraeli%20war%20on%20Iran.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003e_ Middle East Eye_\u003c/a\u003e. Major western outlets such as the \u003cem\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c/em\u003e and the \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c/em\u003e documented missile launches and multiple other ways Jordan and the Gulf States were directly involved in the war despite the mainstream media portraying them as innocent bystanders and victims of Iranian aggression. Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have both described the Gulf States as fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with the US and Israel. In filing their letter with the UN the Iranians have also provided satellite and other data to support their claim.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIran argues that the Arab states, under international law, are co-belligerents. The UN’s International Law Commission \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/commentaries/9_6_2001.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eArticles on State Responsibility\u003c/a\u003e (2001) defines the concept of \u0026ldquo;Aid or Assistance\u0026rdquo; in the commission of an internationally wrongful act. It is not hard for Iran to prove that these states did not maintain neutrality.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn reality, for Iran to get justice, deterrence and reparations, there is no international body or court to turn to; it must win by making a continuation too painful for the aggressors. There are signs it might just succeed. Iran has achieved something few on the western side anticipated: the \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-military-bases-gulf-useless-after-iranian-strikes-experts-say\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003edestruction of most of the US bases\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMark Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University told \u003cem\u003eMiddle East Eye:\u003c/em\u003e “The bases around the region are suffering real damage, and I think it\u0026rsquo;s very unlikely that we\u0026rsquo;re ever going to go back and put our Fifth Fleet back in Bahrain. It\u0026rsquo;s too vulnerable. This is the physical architecture of American primacy, and Iran has essentially rendered it useless in the span of a month.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe war on Iran is a long way from finished. Even if the ceasefire holds, the Israelis and Americans will see this only as a stage in their multi-decade project to wreck Iran as a major regional competitor.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the end of imperial wars, the victims are traditionally made to pay. In the 19th Century, the British fought the Chinese over the latter’s resistance to the British government’s lucrative opium trade into China. The imperialists won and imposed the infamous Unequal Treaties on China, including awarding to Britain the island of Hong Kong. Queen Victoria even shamelessly named a stolen Pekingese dog “Lootie” after the British sacking of Beijing’s Summer Palace, one of the great cultural crimes of history.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen the US war on Vietnam ended, decades of harsh US sanctions on their victims began. As the US moved towards accepting it had lost the war, Nixon promised $3.3 billion in reconstruction aid under the Paris Peace Accords (1973). The Americans never paid a cent. The US also pressured the IMF, World Bank, and UN agencies to block Hanoi\u0026rsquo;s applications for loans, seriously retarding reconstruction.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen the slave revolt in Hispaniola (present day-Haiti) drove out the French, the western powers returned in force a few years later and imposed harsh “reparations” for being dispossessed of their stolen land and humans.  From 1825, Haiti was forced to pay 150 million francs to France to compensate former slaveholders for their \u0026ldquo;lost property.\u0026rdquo; This debt was only fully paid off in 1947, permanently crippling the nation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe US-Israeli war on Iran is something different. Iran, like the Vietnamese, the Algerians and the Indians may have what it takes to prevail over imperial aggression. Iran may have something different: the power to impose reparations on the aggressor.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcross the west we are subjected to the astonishing chutzpah of leaders decrying the “illegality” of Iran’s declaration of sovereignty over the Hormuz Strait in response to the war launched against them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese same leaders stood silent and complicit and lifted no more than an eyebrow as hundreds of Iranian schoolchildren were killed, hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure destroyed, and leader after leader were assassinated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCowards, all of them, they at best offered whispered rebukes when Trump threatened the destruction of Iranian civilisation in a single night. But tax a barrel of oil and “Oh my god, this is intolerable!”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIran has every right to insist on reparations but they will only come about if Iran succeeds in imposing its position on the belligerents. The Israelis and Americans are unlikely to face justice at the ICC or ICJ, so reparations must be extracted from the other enabling states like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and France. It is an elegant solution.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne thing the Iranians will hopefully recover soon is their stolen money. Experts estimate more than $100 billion remains blocked in foreign banks (including in the US, Qatar, South Korea, and Iraq).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe should remember that since 1979 the western world has grievously damaged Iran’s economy via sanctions and the weaponisation of international trading systems, as well as blocking its integration within the community of nations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf Iran succeeds in extracting reparations, it will be a world historic moment. It will be an achievement that will benefit countries around the globe which are assailed by major powers. Nuclear powers like the US and Israel should respect the territorial integrity of non-nuclear states. They have done the opposite – and should face consequences.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor these reasons and more, I hope the Iranian government succeeds in its historic mission to preserve the territorial integrity of the sovereign state of Iran and that they can receive just compensation for the terrible crimes committed against them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI will give the last word to Mohaddeseh Fallahat, a mother who spoke to the UN Human Rights Council this month about \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/3/27/grieving-iranian-mother-tells-un-about-children-before-school-attack#flips-6391880391112:0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003elosing her daughter to a US airstrike at Minab\u003c/a\u003e at the very start of the US-Israeli war on Iran:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“As they walked out the door, they simply said, Mum, come pick us up after school. That simple sentence now repeats in my mind a thousand times. Each time my heart burns with pain. No mother ever thinks she will send her child off to school with a smile, only to be met with silence.”\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "If Iran succeeds in extracting reparations for the US–Israeli war, it would mark an historic shift in how power and accountability operate in the international system.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T09:30:09+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T09:30:09+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Eugene Doyle"}
      ],
      "tags": ["politics","usa","world"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "What if the aggressors had to pay?\n\n\nIf Iran succeeds in extracting reparations from the US–Israeli war, it could mark an historic shift in global power and accountability, Eugene Doyle writes.\n\n\n#auspol #Geopolitics #Iran #InternationalLaw",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/tehran-demands-hundreds-of-billions-in-reparations-who-will-pay/",
        "linkedin_title": "Tehran demands hundreds of billions in reparations. Guess who will pay?",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "If Iran succeeds in extracting reparations for the US–Israeli war, it would mark an historic shift in how power and accountability operate in the international system.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/tehran-demands-hundreds-of-billions-in-reparations-who-will-pay/",
        "facebook_text": "Tehran demands hundreds of billions in reparations. Guess who will pay? - If Iran succeeds in extracting reparations for the US–Israeli war, it would mark an historic shift in how power and accountability operate in the international system.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/un71135206-260407-me.jpg",
        "author_names": "Eugene Doyle"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "If Iran succeeds in extracting reparations for the US–Israeli war, it would mark an historic shift in how power and accountability operate in the international system.",
        "authors_string": "Eugene Doyle",
        "categories_string": "politics, usa, world",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/un71135206-260407-me.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-what-can-middle-powers-do-part-1",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-what-can-middle-powers-do-part-1/",
      "title": "The return of great power relations: What can middle powers do? Part 1",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAs part of the \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://johnmenadue.com/series/foreign-policy-rethink/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eForeign Policy Rethink\u003c/a\u003e series, Geoff Raby examines how Trump’s shift to great power politics is reshaping the global order and forcing middle powers to rethink their strategy.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the inauguration of President Trump in January 2025, US foreign and strategic policy shifted abruptly. It was not just a return to the policies of Trump 1.0 of treating the US’s traditional allies and alliances casually, sometimes disdainfully, and tolerating some of the world’s despots. Instead, it was a profound shift which absolutely prioritised great power relations over alliances, emphasised homeland security over external threats to US interests, although these still matter, and returned the western hemisphere to the centre of US foreign policy concerns. At the same time, the long-standing priority previously given to Europe was downgraded together with a reallocation of strategic attention and resources towards the Indo-Pacific.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe US intervention in Venezuela on 3 January 2026, the extraordinary rendition of President Maduro to the US, and subsequent more assertive demands on Denmark to concede the territory of Greenland to the US are most recent manifestations of this profound shift in world affairs. Understanding the implications for middle powers has become even more urgent.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrump is now signalling a clearer, at times more brutal, definition of ‘America First’. This should come as no surprise for Trump has largely done what he said he would do. Through the twists and turns of his policies, and the so-called TACO (‘Trump always chickens out’), a clear and consistent direction emerges: relationships are transactional. It is a zero-sum world in which the ‘art of the deal’ must always be to the benefit of the US. This is the agenda of Trump’s political base, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe sentiments driving this movement have a number of dimensions: globalisation is treated suspiciously and autarchy favoured; multilateral institutions are disregarded, ignored, de-emphasised, undermined and disrupted; tariffs and financial policies are instruments for forcing certain behaviour on other countries; bilateral deals are pressed on others, such as the US-Russia proposed peace plan for Ukraine or in Gaza, with the EU effectively relegated to the role of bystanders; and the ‘art of the deal’ crowds out traditional liberal concerns in international relations, such as human rights, freedom of belief and religion, just treatment of minorities, and respect for territorial integrity.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow middle powers position themselves in the new multipolar order has become a pressing issue for foreign and security policy. The diplomatic challenges for middle power diplomacy are substantial and differ between countries and regions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI argue that middle powers now find themselves having to balance between a stridently unilateralist US, which places much less weight on alliances, and a revisionist China that is well advanced in shaping an international order that reflects its own priorities as the ascendency of Trump 2.0 has accelerated changes to the global order, and hence the need for middle powers to position themselves in ways which protect and advance their interests.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis series outlines an agenda for activist middle power diplomacy in a multipolar world, while recognising the constraints.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e**Is MAGA here to stay?\n**\nSome analysts, still hankering after the fast-receding international liberal order, nurture hopes that it will return when Trump is no longer in power.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn view of the disruption to the world order in Trump’s first year in office, one can hardly imagine what changes will occur in the next three years. Absent Trump, it is most unlikely that the international order will simply default back to Trump ex-ante. Trump’s disruption arises from deep, socio-economic stresses in the US, and as such are structural. In any event, with China’s continued rise and growing weight in global affairs, the world system, with or without Trump, would have looked very different in 2029 than it did in 2025.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe three drivers of the MAGA movement are: Trump himself, immigration, and America First in every domain, but especially the economic. While Trump is indeed a dominating, and the dominant force, others, such as Vice President JD Vance or Trump family members, could perpetuate his influence beyond his personal leadership.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConcerns over immigration may abate if the current administration’s policies are successful, but fear of ‘the other’ is always at hand to channel the politics of grievance. A consequence of this deeply-rooted America First movement prevailing over US domestic politics is a return to an international order based on great power relations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e**G2 World\n**\nEarly signs of Trump’s reordering of US security and foreign policy priorities towards the western hemisphere and great power relations were dramatically displayed when, having flown across the Pacific to South Korea to have a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping, he flew back to Washington immediately after that meeting, turning his back on all the other regional leaders gathered there to attend the APEC Leader’s Summit.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd in case there was any doubt about the change in the world order after Trump turned his back on APEC, Trump declared on his social media post that he had a ‘G2’ meeting with Xi Jinping. Before the meeting, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform ‘the G2-meeting was convening shortly’ with President Xi. Afterwards \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://insidestory.org.au/and-then-there-were-two/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003ehe posted\u003c/a\u003e, ‘My G2-meeting with President Xi of China was a great one for both countries’.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA G2 was first proposed by US economist Fred Bergsten in 2005, as a way of managing the international economy. At the time, China rejected the concept. As a developing country, it did not want to assume responsibility for providing global public goods, preferring to work through multilateral agencies, such as the WTO or UN. Moreover, it felt that it would be locked into an unequal relationship with the US as a junior partner, when it sought equality, if not pre-eminence. It was also \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://thediplomat.com/2025/11/why-china-is-still-not-interested-in-the-offer-of-a-g2/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003econcerned about attracting negative reactions\u003c/a\u003e, especially among the developing world, or Global South.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough China has still not officially endorsed Trump’s G2, following the Trump-Xi meeting the official position has been to stress Beijing’s willingness to work cooperatively and constructively together on a range of issues affecting their bilateral relations without formally distancing itself from the G2 concept. Analysts in China tend to point to Trump’s statement as being significant for shifting the \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11/us-china-power-shift-a-g2-world-asian-media-report/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003erelationship with China\u003c/a\u003efrom one of competition and possible conflict to one of cooperation and treating China as an equal in global affairs.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInternational relations expert, \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://thediplomat.com/2025/11/trumps-g2-moment-dawn-of-a-new-world-order/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eMuktedar Khan wrote\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The Trump-Xi meeting in Busan is laden with structural consequences . . . By casting this meeting as a G2-Summit, Trump has effectively re-defined the global order”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile this may well overstate the longer-term significance of Trump’s resurrection of the G2 concept, its immediate and enduring significance is that China is being recognised as an equal with the United States in leading the global order.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e**The ‘Donroe’ Doctrine\n**\nReflecting this shift in US strategic thinking, the\n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eUS National Security Strategy (NSS)\u003c/a\u003e published in November 2025 provided a comprehensive statement of US security priorities and how the Administration viewed the world. It was a sharp break from that of previous US Administrations, including Trump 2017.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt its core, it elevates the western hemisphere to the US’ top security priority. This so-called ‘Donroe’ Doctrine channels the early nineteenth century Monroe Doctrine. Essentially, it seeks to exclude other powers from the western hemisphere and demands that states within the region do whatever they can to roll back foreign influence, as has happened with the pressure for China-linked investors to divest in the Panama Canal and related port infrastructure.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, large regional powers, particularly Brazil, can be expected to continue to push back against US economic and political pressures to restrict Chinese economic and strategic influence. Still, Trump did not hesitate to interfere in \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62gd8e1e5do\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eBrazil’s internal affairs\u003c/a\u003e when he (unsuccessfully) sought to prevent former Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, from being imprisoned.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn early January 2026, US actions in Venezuela taken against the basic precepts of international law will have put all countries in the region on notice that the rules of the game have been changed in the US’ favour. At the same time, it has sharply divided the region. Argentina’s President, Javier Milei, has strongly backed Trump’s actions while Brazil’s President, Lula da Silva, has condemned them in equally strong terms.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe NSS also states that the US will remain ‘engaged with Asia’, saying it will seek to maintain a favourable balance of power over China, rebalance trade, and support Taiwan given that its geographical location is important for maintaining open shipping lanes and access to the South China Sea. Gone, however, are the usual US concerns about defending democracy in Taiwan, and no mention is made of human rights or minorities such as those in Xinjiang and Tibet.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe NSS sets out clearly the philosophy that will guide US foreign and security policies – ‘flexible realism’. In a break with the past century of US foreign policy thinking, the paper states that the US seeks good relations with others and does not intend to ‘impose on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.’\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the starkest statement yet that the US has given up its long-standing belief in US exceptionalism and its mission to remake the world in its own image, the NSS states that ‘the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.’ Moreover, the paper clearly prioritises the nation state ‘against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organisations’.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor middle powers, especially US allies, the demands are now unmistakable. They are expected to do more to defend themselves and their regions. European states are said to be at risk of becoming ‘unreliable allies’. The US wants to settle the Ukraine conflict without the involvement of Europe and seeks to end ‘perceptions of NATO as a continually expanding alliance’.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Kremlin will be delighted with all of this. It seems there is also a convergence between the White House and the Kremlin’s view that Europe is in ‘civilisation decline’, although for Trump and his advisers this is predominantly an issue of immigration. The European populist right could have hardly wished for more encouragement from the White House. The strategy sums up the choice for middle and small powers in the bluntest of terms:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“. . . all countries should [decide] whether they want to live in an American-led world . . . or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis demonstrates clearly that the US now regards the world order as being bipolar.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart 1 of this 4-Part series is republished from \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.globalneighbours.org/en/studies/the-return-of-great-power-relations-what-can-middle-powers-do\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eGlobal Neighbours.org\u003c/a\u003e, 13 February, 2026\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "As part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how Trump’s shift to great power politics is reshaping the global order and forcing middle powers to rethink their strategy.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T00:59:37+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T00:59:37+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Geoff Raby"}
      ],
      "tags": ["politics","usa","world"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "In the third of our Rethinking Foreign Policy series, Geoff Raby argues middle powers now face a stark choice in a world shaped by US unilateralism and China’s rise.\nHow should countries like Australia respond?\n#auspol #ForeignPolicy #Geopolitics #China #USA",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-what-can-middle-powers-do-part-1/",
        "linkedin_title": "The return of great power relations: What can middle powers do? Part 1",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "As part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how Trump’s shift to great power politics is reshaping the global order and forcing middle powers to rethink their strategy.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-return-of-great-power-relations-what-can-middle-powers-do-part-1/",
        "facebook_text": "The return of great power relations: What can middle powers do? Part 1 - As part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how Trump’s shift to great power politics is reshaping the global order and forcing middle powers to rethink their strategy.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/President-elect-Donald-Trump-and-Vice-President-elect-JD-Vance-arrive-at-the-60th-Presidential-Inauguration.jpg",
        "author_names": "Geoff Raby"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "As part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how Trump’s shift to great power politics is reshaping the global order and forcing middle powers to rethink their strategy.",
        "authors_string": "Geoff Raby",
        "categories_string": "politics, usa, world",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/President-elect-Donald-Trump-and-Vice-President-elect-JD-Vance-arrive-at-the-60th-Presidential-Inauguration.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/a-prime-time-hit-job-on-renewables-falls-apart-under-basic-facts",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/a-prime-time-hit-job-on-renewables-falls-apart-under-basic-facts/",
      "title": "A prime-time hit job on renewables falls apart under basic facts",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSpotlight\u0026rsquo;s TV report on renewables and EVs collapses under basic fact-checking, highlighting how misinformation is shaping Australia’s energy debate.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe recent Senate inquiry into climate and energy misinformation and disinformation unveiled some shocking evidence about the nature of attacks against climate science, renewable energy, EVs and other green technologies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://reneweconomy.com.au/indefensible-fossil-fuel-lies-have-crippled-climate-action-so-why-did-senate-inquiry-have-to-pull-its-punches/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eAnne Delaney wrote last month, \u003c/a\u003emultiple submissions detailed coordinated “astroturfing” campaigns, including fake social media accounts impersonating real Australians to manufacture opposition to renewable energy projects, alongside widespread use of misleading political advertising.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExperts told the inquiry that digital platforms are amplifying false and distorted claims through opaque algorithms, while the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is accelerating an explosion of deceptive content.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDisturbingly, such campaigns have also become a feature of some mainstream media, and it seems our major TV networks are no exception.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSpotlight\u003c/em\u003e, the so-called flagship current affairs program on the 7 network, dedicated more than an hour on Sunday evening on a report into the supply chains feeding into the renewables and EV industries, with a particular focus on cobalt mines in the Congo, and also activities in Australia. It was amplified on Murdoch and social media.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt fell over at the very first fact-check. “Every battery, every electric vehicle, every piece of so-called clean energy technology today” uses cobalt, reporter Liam Bartlett claimed at the start of the program.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWrong.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNearly every big battery installed in Australia these days uses (LFP) lithium iron phosphate chemistry, which means no cobalt, and no nickel (that’s relevant because Bartlett did a similar hit job on the nickel industry last year, using that as a platform to attack EVs and renewables).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTesla, the biggest supplier to big batteries in Australia, now uses only LFP batteries for grid scale batteries. No cobalt. The two big batteries at Liddell and Tomago being built for AGL Energy by Fluence are LFP. No cobalt. A spokesperson for Fluence said all its batteries in Australia use LFP. “We don’t use cobalt.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinland-based Wartsila, which is building the country’s biggest grid battery at Eraring for Origin Energy, also uses only LFP for its battery projects in Australia. No cobalt.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a similar story with EVs. Tesla, for instance, uses only LFP chemistry for most of the variants of its best selling Model Y and the Model 3. No cobalt. It uses NMC chemistry (which does include cobalt) only in “performance” variants, which amounts to about 10 per cent of sales.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHome batteries, which are now being installed at record rates in Australia, are the same. New market leader Sigenergy uses only LFP chemistry, so no cobalt, as does another market leader Sungrow, and most others.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBartlett claims to be appalled by the conditions in some cobalt mines in the Congo, and the nickel mine in Indonesia. And so he should be. So should everyone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the inconvenient truth is that these mines have been operating for decades, and cobalt has been used widely in many industries.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe mineral is essential for the iPhone that Bartlett presumably uses, for the laptop he writes his stories on, for the jet engines that flew him from Australia to Africa, and for widespread use in medicine (hip and knee replacements), the petroleum industry, the manufacture of tools, for construction, for cosmetics, and even ceramics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe use of cobalt in EV and grid batteries is relatively new, and is already moving on. Where it is used, most EV makers are at pains to point out that the mineral does not come from such mines, and they produce blockchain style tracking reports to underline their claims.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut Bartlett did not seem particularly interested in balance, or inconvenient detail. His story had three major themes – he doesn’t like the Chinese, he doesn’t like renewables and EVs, and he doesn’t like federal Energy and Climate Minister Chris Bowen.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Bowen’s fanatical approach, aided and abetted by a conga line of true believers and latte-sipping Teal supporters is now set to send the country into bankruptcy,” Bartlett wrote in an op-ed also published on 7’s website.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe appeared to have former Greens leader Bob Brown on his side when discussing the Rosebery zinc, copper and lead mine in Tasmania, which had been seeking approval to pipe waste across the Pieman River into a new tailings dam they wanted to build in the Tarkine (also known as Takayna).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrown and his eponymous foundation have been leading calls to have the Tarkine declared a national park, and given World Heritage status, such is the value of its ancient forests and fauna. Brown has been appalled by the incursions already made by the mining industry into the area.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe problem is that Rosebery has been operating for nearly a century (it was opened in 1936), long before renewables and EVs were a thing. And the good news is that – since the interview with Brown in front of a giant Myrtle tree in the Tarkine forest – the mine owner MMG has changed its plans.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt now proposes a new tailings dam on its side of the Pieman River, out of the Tarkine wilderness area. It was a massive victory for the Bob Brown Foundation, whose blockades of MMG machinery drew more than 2,000 forest defenders and led to more than 100 arrests since 2021.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe change was \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-22/tailings-dam-new-approach-from-mmg/106372128\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eannounced in February,\u003c/a\u003e two months before the program went to air. There was no mention of that development when the program went to air on Sunday, although MMG did confirm this in a statement to the program that was published on the \u003cem\u003eSpotlight\u003c/em\u003e website.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBartlett also interviewed Steve Nowakowski, once a senior office holder at the now disbanded Rainforest Reserves, a lobby group that advocated nuclear power and was the subject of searing criticism in the Senate inquiry.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNowakowski, a cartographer, has been widely amplified in the Murdoch media and has been accused of grossly exaggerting the impact of wind and solar farms on the Australian landscape. A map published by Rainforests Australia included wind farms that did not in fact exist.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe real target of Bartlett, however, was Bowen. Bartlett wrote on the \u003cem\u003eSpotlight\u003c/em\u003e website that “the myopic green dream of energy minister Chris Bowen and his co-cabinet ideologues has left us all exposed.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe wondered:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“If the war with Iran has done nothing else, it’s given us all a real-world, real-time lesson in what truly runs our lives.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“A brutal reminder of which fuels actually matter and what government must do to protect the chain of supply and hence the livelihoods of its people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“But why do we need reminding at all? How can it be that such an energy-rich nation manages to find itself vulnerable in an energy crisis?”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe answer to that last question is simple. Australia needs to decrease its reliance on fossil fuels, not increase it. And if the environment is in any way important – which it is – then the transition must happen as quickly as it can.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBartlett – who was global head of TV, creative visual at oil giant Shell in London from 2013-2015 – is clearly an environmentalist at heart. But perhaps his anger and his outrage should be vented towards the industries that benefit most from these appalling mining conditions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the case of the Indonesian nickel mine, it was the steel industry, in the case of the Congo cobalt mines, it is just about everything else. Perhaps he should join the Bob Brown Foundation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRepublished from \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://reneweconomy.com.au/wild-attack-on-batteries-and-renewables-by-7s-spotlight-program-falls-over-at-the-first-fact-check/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eRenew Economy,\u003c/a\u003e 21 April 2026\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "Spotlight's TV report on renewables and EVs collapses under basic fact-checking, highlighting how misinformation is shaping Australia’s energy debate.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T00:54:23+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T00:54:23+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Giles Parkinson"}
      ],
      "tags": ["climate","media","politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "A prime-time TV report on renewables and EVs fell apart at the first fact-check.\nMisinformation is distorting Australia’s energy debate – and being amplified in mainstream media, Giles Parkinson writes.\n#auspol #Energy #Climate #Renewables #Media",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/a-prime-time-hit-job-on-renewables-falls-apart-under-basic-facts/",
        "linkedin_title": "A prime-time hit job on renewables falls apart under basic facts",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "Spotlight's TV report on renewables and EVs collapses under basic fact-checking, highlighting how misinformation is shaping Australia’s energy debate.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/a-prime-time-hit-job-on-renewables-falls-apart-under-basic-facts/",
        "facebook_text": "A prime-time hit job on renewables falls apart under basic facts - Spotlight's TV report on renewables and EVs collapses under basic fact-checking, highlighting how misinformation is shaping Australia’s energy debate.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/solar-and-battery-facility.2WWKPBH.jpg",
        "author_names": "Giles Parkinson"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "Spotlight's TV report on renewables and EVs collapses under basic fact-checking, highlighting how misinformation is shaping Australia’s energy debate.",
        "authors_string": "Giles Parkinson",
        "categories_string": "climate, media, politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/solar-and-battery-facility.2WWKPBH.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-diesel-shock-shows-why-government-must-help-freight-electrify",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-diesel-shock-shows-why-government-must-help-freight-electrify/",
      "title": "The diesel shock shows why government must help freight electrify",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAs diesel prices surge, freight operators face mounting pressure, highlighting the urgent need for immediate support and a longer-term shift to electrified transport.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVoters may not blame Anthony Albanese for Donald Trump’s foolish decision to whack their access to fuel. But they do expect him to fix it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe trucking sector is right to be frustrated at the time it is taking for promised government support to be delivered to freight operators with urgency when their diesel bills now hitting their inboxes have doubled in a month.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan, members of a government which bent over backwards to sabotage electrification, are being deliberately and dangerously disingenuous when they dangle suggestions before truckers that economically viable reserves of oil would be available if only we would start drilling.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe fact is that Canavan, when he was Resources Minister, issued exploration licences for the Great Australian Bight. But the licences were handed back because the companies found it geologically too difficult and too expensive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEqually, exploitation of the Bowen Basin would already have proceeded had promoters and investors thought it economically viable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe fact is that China, having absorbed the lessons of the supply shock of the Global Financial Crisis, now nearly two decades ago, kickstarted electrification of its transport sector.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuch is the success that last year alone China put 250,000 electric trucks on the road, double the size of Australia’s entire truck fleet.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBack here, the government’s ad campaign is asking consumers to “play their part” to reduce their fuel use. Unfortunately, 80 per cent of passenger transport runs on petrol, which is not interchangeable with the diesel our road freight operators depend on.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEven among the minority who drive diesel cars, a 10 per cent reduction in driving would free up less than 1 per cent of national diesel demand.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEven in good times, freight operators run on incredibly tight 1-2 per cent average margins. They are the archetypal small businesses which politicians love to invoke. Ninety eight per cent employ fewer than 20 people. Seventy per cent own only a single truck.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd these are not good times. Insolvency rates were already up 40 per cent year on year in November last year. One in 12 freight businesses closed their doors. And now that the price of diesel has almost doubled we need to get serious both about supporting trucking companies through this crisis and helping them avoid the next one.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are powerful levers within the government’s reach to strengthen our energy sovereignty and reduce our dependence on imported diesel. The most important of which is helping freight operators afford the switch to electric.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eElectric trucks are 1.5-2.5 times more expensive to buy, but much cheaper to run – up to 85 per cent cheaper under real world conditions. Over the operating life of the truck those savings outweigh the higher purchase cost.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo help small-and-medium businesses climb over the upfront cost hurdle the Prime Minister could mobilise existing funding within the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. It’s off budget so deploying it won’t worsen the deficit, or crowd out more immediate support options.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve already seen this work with lower interest loans and residual value support at the centre of a landmark $70m CEFC deal with Volvo in December. But it needs to be scaled up to higher levels of support and made accessible to the smaller fleet operators who need it most.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt scale, this type of support would be sufficient to get enough electric trucks on the road so that by 2030 we could be saving one billion litres of diesel a year. That\u0026rsquo;s almost half the diesel used by our entire farming sector.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt this moment everyone has a stake in it. Because every litre of diesel saved by someone who can go electric, is a litre left over for someone who can’t.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs we get asked to think about the small steps we as individuals can take to preserve fuel in this crisis, remember this: far bigger pay offs are at the Prime Minister’s finger tips if he takes up the mantle.\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "As diesel prices surge, freight operators face mounting pressure, highlighting the urgent need for immediate support and a longer-term shift to electrified transport.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T00:49:11+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T00:49:11+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Bruce Hardy"}
      ],
      "tags": ["politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Diesel prices are surging – and freight operators are being squeezed.\nShort-term support is critical, but the real solution lies in electrifying transport, Bruce Hardy writes.\n#auspol #Energy #Transport #CostOfLiving",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-diesel-shock-shows-why-government-must-help-freight-electrify/",
        "linkedin_title": "The diesel shock shows why government must help freight electrify",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "As diesel prices surge, freight operators face mounting pressure, highlighting the urgent need for immediate support and a longer-term shift to electrified transport.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/the-diesel-shock-shows-why-government-must-help-freight-electrify/",
        "facebook_text": "The diesel shock shows why government must help freight electrify - As diesel prices surge, freight operators face mounting pressure, highlighting the urgent need for immediate support and a longer-term shift to electrified transport.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/electric-trucks.jpg",
        "author_names": "Bruce Hardy"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "As diesel prices surge, freight operators face mounting pressure, highlighting the urgent need for immediate support and a longer-term shift to electrified transport.",
        "authors_string": "Bruce Hardy",
        "categories_string": "politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/electric-trucks.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/louise-adler-on-howard-jacobsons-howl-a-novel-overtaken-by-ideology",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/louise-adler-on-howard-jacobsons-howl-a-novel-overtaken-by-ideology/",
      "title": "Louise Adler on Howard Jacobson’s Howl – a novel overtaken by ideology",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe review that the mainstream media would not run – Louise Adler on Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson\u0026rsquo;s latest novel Howl.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.penguin.com.au/books/howl-9781787336452\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003e_Howl_\u003c/a\u003e is a jeremiad, a 300-page essay on the immutability and inevitability of antisemitism thinly disguised as a novel.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHoward Jacobson admits to being half-mad after Oct 7th, but empathy, reason and fact have been swept aside in this, his 18th novel. It is sad that this myopia, a condition of collective narcissism, has blinkered one of Britain’s finest contemporary satirists. But it was Jacobson who once observed that Jews are smitten with our own tragedy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA line from Allan Ginsberg ‘s 1960’s poem \u003cem\u003eHowl\u003c/em\u003e provides the novel’s epigraph “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”. Set in suburban London, Jacobson’s protagonist, Dr Ferdinand Draxler, is the headmaster of a primary school. With a predilection for grammar, he has a lot to contend with – his deputy is a recent convert to Judaism who sports an ostentatiously oversized yarmulka, his brother – once a follower of the Haredi sect – has become an atheist, his Oxford educated daughter, Zoe, now specialises in antizionism, and his formidable Mutti survived Belsen.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"figure wp-image-465650 size-medium alignright\"\u003e\n    \u003cimg src=\"https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/howl-cover-187x300.jpg\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid\" alt=\"\" width=\"187\"\u003e\n    \n\u003c/figure\u003e Draxler is undone when he sees Zoe at a pro-Palestine march, a \u0026ldquo;Carnival of Gore”, tearing down a poster of an Israeli hostage. He is affronted by students and staff confused that their headmaster sees Oct 7th as a pogrom devoid of context or history. That atrocity simply confirms his enduring expectation that the Holocaust was never going to be the end of antisemitism. His Mutti, a tough survivor, is less sentimental, less prone to fatalism while Draxler, the “keeper of the flame”, insists that the Holocaust is his and his daughter’s inherited legacy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe narrative, frequently alluding to actual events, is fuelled by half-truths and myths. It is surprising to read a writer of Jacobson’s fierce intelligence so determined on prosecuting the case that Jews are exceptional, so bound by moral laws that he can’t untangle facts from propaganda.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn an article criticising the BBC’s “anti-Israel bias“ \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/03/charging-jews-with-genocide-declare-them-guilty-precisely-what-was-done-to-them-middle-east\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003ehe argued that\u003c/a\u003e “genocides don’t leaflet the population they want to destroy with warnings to stay out of harm’s way”. One can only wonder whether the Palestinian parents of 20,000 murdered children agree. Jacobson and his protagonist are so preoccupied with antisemitism that they are inured to atrocities committed in their name.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJacobson was never one for the cool calmness of perspective – writers who have a talent for the riff rarely are. He has lost much of his sense of humour; but then he would say that this is not a time for jokes and he’s right. We are all now at the mercy of autocrats, grifters and hacks, and in these dark times \u003cem\u003eHowl\u003c/em\u003e offers readers a polemic disguised as a novel.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI thought Jacobson’s subject was men but I was wrong – his subject has always been Jews and Jewish identity with masculinity as an entertaining side order. As he pointed out in his Booker prize winning novel, \u003cem\u003eFinkler\u003c/em\u003e, \u0026ldquo;talking Jewishly about being Jewish was being Jewish”. I don’t begrudge Jacobson his obsession, indeed I am susceptible to it too. However, in \u003cem\u003eHowl\u003c/em\u003e his vision is so severely circumscribed as to create a world where justice and humanity succumb to collective self-absorption.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJonathan Swift wrote to Alexander Pope \u0026ldquo;the chief end of my labours is to vex the world rather than divert it”. Jacobson is as vexed as the world he inhabits. He is beside himself, but as Danny Kaye would say, it’s his favourite position.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDraxler, channelling Jacobson, is arguing for uncertainty, viewing the demonstrators as dogmatists easily led by lefty academics who have taken over the grove of academe, “ ignorant armies (who) pitched their encampments of know-nothingness across the lawns of learning”.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to Jacobson our people were chosen “to be standard bearers of ethical refinement, discrimination, reason and law”. It is hard not to give a hollow laugh, when reminded of the Star of David being carved into a Palestinian face and Tik Tok memes of IDF soldiers looting Gazan homes or torturing Palestinians in Sde Teiman prison.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the past Jacobson has written about holocaust porn, a catalogue of wildly inaccurate, often obscene fictionalised narratives about concentration camp life – the dressmakers, the librarians, the musicians and the tattooists. \u003cem\u003eHowl’s\u003c/em\u003e protagonist prodding his resistant Mutti about her time making cakes for the Beast of Belsen veers uncomfortably close to voyeurism, caressing the horrors of the past in the service of a political project.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDraxler sees antisemitic graffiti everywhere, hears people shouting gas the Jews, reading Roald Dahl on the tube. Yes, antisemitism has flourished since Oct 7th. Some explain it as an eternal hatred, others as a 19th century phenomenon, the result of Catholic teachings, or the consequence of diaspora Jews almost universal allegiance to the Zionist project.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe novel is a disturbing testament to the effect of Zionist identification on the minds of those afflicted by this allegiance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJacobson has produced a narrative that wouldn’t be out of place among the submissions to the royal commission, where, in similarly harrowing accounts, narrator-victims describe the experience of total psychic decompensation resulting from the mere sight of a Palestinian flag on a university campus. This is histrionics in the service of political propaganda. Stories like these of “victimhood” are disturbing, certainly; but they don’t make for compelling literature.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJacobson says \u003cem\u003eHowl\u003c/em\u003e is a novel, not a march. It is, in reality, a march in prose.\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "The review that the mainstream media would not run – Louise Adler on Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson's latest novel Howl.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T00:44:16+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T00:44:16+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Louise Adler"}
      ],
      "tags": ["review","israel-palestine"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Howard Jacobson’s latest novel Howl is less fiction than polemic, driven by ideology and anger in the wake of October 7, Louise Adler writes.\n#Books #Literature #Politics #Israel #Gaza",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/louise-adler-on-howard-jacobsons-howl-a-novel-overtaken-by-ideology/",
        "linkedin_title": "Louise Adler on Howard Jacobson’s Howl – a novel overtaken by ideology",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "The review that the mainstream media would not run – Louise Adler on Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson's latest novel Howl.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/louise-adler-on-howard-jacobsons-howl-a-novel-overtaken-by-ideology/",
        "facebook_text": "Louise Adler on Howard Jacobson’s Howl – a novel overtaken by ideology - The review that the mainstream media would not run – Louise Adler on Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson's latest novel Howl.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/howard-jacobson-c.jpg",
        "author_names": "Louise Adler"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "The review that the mainstream media would not run – Louise Adler on Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson's latest novel Howl.",
        "authors_string": "Louise Adler",
        "categories_string": "review, israel-palestine",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/howard-jacobson-c.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/study-warns-of-terrifying-atlantic-ocean-current-collapse",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/study-warns-of-terrifying-atlantic-ocean-current-collapse/",
      "title": "Study warns of terrifying Atlantic Ocean current collapse",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNew research shows a critical Atlantic Ocean current system is weakening faster than expected, raising the risk of irreversible climate disruption.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe global climate crisis is causing a critical Atlantic Ocean current system to weaken much sooner than previously predicted, according to a study published on Thursday. If it stops, scientists say it could pose catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa, and the Americas.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is one of the most important current systems in the world for maintaining the delicate balance of the global climate. It helps to keep colder regions like Europe and the Arctic mild by moving warm water northward and pushes large amounts of carbon deep into the ocean, keeping it out of the atmosphere.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScientists have feared AMOC’s decline for some time. Previous studies have \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/11/critical-gulf-stream-current-weakest-for-1600-years-research-finds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eshown\u003c/a\u003e it to be at its weakest point in 1,600 years. But research published this month suggests that a collapse may come much sooner than anticipated.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne study, \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx4298#sec-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003epublished\u003c/a\u003e Thursday in the journal \u003cem\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.commondreams.org/tag/science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eScience\u003c/a\u003e Advances\u003c/em\u003e, used climate models and current data to predict the decline in the coming decades.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eResearchers found that the system is on course to slow by more than 50 per cent by the end of the century and could pass a significant tipping point by mid-century, at which point its decline would become irreversible.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“We found that the AMOC is declining faster than predicted by the average of all climate models,” said lead researcher Valentin Portmann, of the Inria Research Center of Bordeaux South-West. “This means we are closer to a tipping point than previously thought.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA major driver of its slowdown has been the rapid melting of Greenland’s freshwater ice sheet into the Atlantic, which has diluted denser saltwater, making it harder to transfer northward.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe explained: “The more rapidly Greenland melts, the more freshwater floods the North Atlantic. This disrupts the sinking process, effectively applying the brakes to the entire system.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis research followed another study \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz7738#sec-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003epublished\u003c/a\u003e last week by scientists at the University of Miami, which found that AMOC has been weakening at four latitudes in the Atlantic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProfessor Stefan Rahmstorf, a leading AMOC researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who was not involved in either study, called it “an important and deeply concerning result” that “confirms that the ‘pessimistic’ climate models – those projecting a severe weakening of the AMOC by 2100 – are the most accurate.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The most dramatic and drastic climate changes we see in the last 100,000 years of Earth history have been when the AMOC switched to a different state,” Rahmstorf explained.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA shutdown of the current system poses what Canadian climate activist and marine conservationist Paul Watson \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://captainpaulwatson.substack.com/p/a-climatic-shift-that-could-plunge\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003edescribed\u003c/a\u003e as a “domino effect of climatic upheavals.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScientists have projected that temperatures in northern Europe could \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.carbonbrief.org/ocean-current-collapse-could-trigger-profound-cooling-in-northern-europe-even-with-global-warming/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eplummet\u003c/a\u003e dramatically, with winters in London sometimes reaching below -20°C (-4°F) and those in Norway reaching -48°C (-54°F). It also threatens to dramatically \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://research.liveable.world/p/issue-7-tipping-points-what-happens-when-the-world-s-weather-engine-seizes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eshorten\u003c/a\u003e growing seasons, putting food security in peril for hundreds of millions of people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTropical storms in the North Atlantic would also become more severe. As the current slows, \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/study-finds-amoc-increases-flood-risk-along-the-us-southeastern-coast/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003esea levels\u003c/a\u003e are expected to rise, and the greater temperature difference between cooling Europe and the warming tropics can fuel more \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01377-8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eintense hurricanes\u003c/a\u003e and increase the risk of flooding in major coastal cities.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“We must avoid this collapse at all costs,” Rahmstorf said. “The stakes are too high; this isn’t just about Europe’s climate, but the stability of the entire planet.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuch a dramatic change in the flow of global heat could scramble temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide, putting some areas at greater risk of drought and disrupting the monsoon season that fuels agriculture in many regions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt also risks becoming self-perpetuating, as the large amounts of carbon \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://phys.org/news/2026-04-amoc-collapse-southern-ocean-carbon.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003ereleased\u003c/a\u003e from the ocean could further accelerate AMOC’s collapse. Research \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://phys.org/news/2026-04-amoc-collapse-southern-ocean-carbon.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003epublished\u003c/a\u003e last week found that carbon emissions from the Southern Ocean alone could increase global temperature by about 0.2°C.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The science is clear: The AMOC is teetering on the edge of collapse, and the window to act is closing,” Watson said. “Yet global leaders remain paralysed by short-term politics and denial.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe conclusion of the most recent United Nations climate summit, COP30, has been \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/cop30-corporate-power\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003edescribed\u003c/a\u003e as woefully insufficient to address the mounting climate emergency. The roadmap for action released by the host nation, Brazil, \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.commondreams.org/news/cop30-fossil-fuel-phaseout\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eexcluded\u003c/a\u003e any mention of the phrase “fossil fuels” after the conference was overrun by industry lobbyists.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The time for half-measures is over,” Watson said. “The choices we make in the next decade will determine whether future generations inherit a manageable climate or a world plunged into chaos.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRepublished from \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"http://commondreams.org/news/amoc-collapse-study\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eCommon Dreams\u003c/a\u003e, 16 April 2026\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "New research shows a critical Atlantic Ocean current system is weakening faster than expected, raising the risk of irreversible climate disruption.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T00:39:11+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T00:39:11+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Stephen Prager"}
      ],
      "tags": ["climate","politics","world"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "A critical Atlantic Ocean current is weakening faster than expected – and could reach a tipping point within decades.\nThe consequences would be global, Stephen Prager writes.\n#Climate #ClimateCrisis #AMOC #GlobalWarming",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/study-warns-of-terrifying-atlantic-ocean-current-collapse/",
        "linkedin_title": "Study warns of terrifying Atlantic Ocean current collapse",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "New research shows a critical Atlantic Ocean current system is weakening faster than expected, raising the risk of irreversible climate disruption.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/study-warns-of-terrifying-atlantic-ocean-current-collapse/",
        "facebook_text": "Study warns of terrifying Atlantic Ocean current collapse - New research shows a critical Atlantic Ocean current system is weakening faster than expected, raising the risk of irreversible climate disruption.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/atlantic-ocean-curre.jpg",
        "author_names": "Stephen Prager"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "New research shows a critical Atlantic Ocean current system is weakening faster than expected, raising the risk of irreversible climate disruption.",
        "authors_string": "Stephen Prager",
        "categories_string": "climate, politics, world",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/atlantic-ocean-curre.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/on-immigration-weve-heard-this-before-and-we-were-wrong-then-too",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/on-immigration-weve-heard-this-before-and-we-were-wrong-then-too/",
      "title": "On immigration, we’ve heard this before – and we were wrong then too",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWarnings about immigration echo almost word for word the fears once directed at post-war arrivals – fears history has already discredited.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNewspapers and politicians say the current wave of immigration is “testing our assimilative powers”. The government must adopt a “more selective intake”. Recent arrivals are incapable of adopting our values. Some are “uncivilized”; “like animals.” The vast majority, at least according to one journalist, speak no English. They are a security risk, an economic liability, and a threat to our way of life. The “massive influx” must stop.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut of course this is not Australia in the 2020s. This was Australia in the 1940s, and the animus was directed at southern Europeans, and Jews. We wanted “more Australian babies” (sound familiar?) and more British migrants. At a pinch, the ‘Balts’ would do – at least they were blonde-haired and blue-eyed. As for the rest: too many, too foreign, and not white enough.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe know what happened next. Displaced persons, refugees, and immigrants were the catalyst that allowed Australia to emerge from its long cocoon. They became leaders in research, in the sciences, in the arts. They helped design the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and then they built it with their bare hands. Along the way, and in their less than lavish free time, they were instrumental in developing Australia’s ski-fields, including setting up the first tow-bars and the first ski lodges.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s a tiny thing, granted, but worth dwelling on because it shows that the flow-on benefits of immigration go well beyond the expected return on investment. For additional examples, consider the zucchini, the laksa, and the flat white.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo in his latest intervention on the subject of immigration, Angus Taylor is 100 per cent right to remind us of the achievements of his grandfather, William Hudson, first commissioner of the Snowy Mountains scheme. With technical staff in short supply, Hudson found the workers he needed in the refugee camps of Europe and brought them to Australia. Two-thirds of all the workers on the Snowy came from overseas. He looked after them and ensured that they were treated with care and compassion. The results of that care and compassion are everywhere around us.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTaylor cites this as an example of good immigration policy, which it was, but he ignores the fact that the grandfather’s workforce was subject to exactly the same fear campaigns that the grandson is seeking to stoke now.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany of the men and women who arrived in Australia after the war were highly educated – though this did not prevent them suffering all manner of racial abuse. On the other hand, many did not speak English; for some of them it remained a struggle throughout their lives. That was not out of wilful hostility. Coming to Australia, where they didn’t know the language or the culture, was a sacrifice they made in order to give themselves and more importantly their children the opportunity of a better and a safer life. This sacrifice was painful but necessary for the betterment of the next generation – not just their children, but the next generation of Australians, too. It still is.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen Angus Taylor chooses to recycle the anxieties of the 1940s, he is not celebrating his grandfather’s legacy. He is betraying it. Sir William was capable of looking past the stereotypes and the neuroses of an insular society, and to understand the long-term potential that immigrants offered this country. Taylor refuses to do so. More than that, he is insulting millions of Australians whose own parents’ and grandparents’ struggles deserve more than this casual dismissal.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e(Quotes about post-war Australian immigration policy drawn from the pages of Smith’s Weekly, 1947-48.)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "Warnings about immigration echo almost word for word the fears once directed at post-war arrivals – fears history has already discredited.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T00:34:31+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T00:34:31+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Desmond Manderson"}
      ],
      "tags": ["history","immigration","politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Australia’s immigration debate is echoing the same fears heard in the 1940s.\nHistory shows how wrong those claims were then – and why they matter now, Desmond Manderson writes.\n#auspol #Immigration #Australia #Politics",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/on-immigration-weve-heard-this-before-and-we-were-wrong-then-too/",
        "linkedin_title": "On immigration, we’ve heard this before – and we were wrong then too",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "Warnings about immigration echo almost word for word the fears once directed at post-war arrivals – fears history has already discredited.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/on-immigration-weve-heard-this-before-and-we-were-wrong-then-too/",
        "facebook_text": "On immigration, we’ve heard this before – and we were wrong then too - Warnings about immigration echo almost word for word the fears once directed at post-war arrivals – fears history has already discredited.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/william-hudson-plaqu.jpg",
        "author_names": "Desmond Manderson"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "Warnings about immigration echo almost word for word the fears once directed at post-war arrivals – fears history has already discredited.",
        "authors_string": "Desmond Manderson",
        "categories_string": "history, immigration, politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/william-hudson-plaqu.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/when-prisons-expand-policy-has-already-failed",
      "url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/when-prisons-expand-policy-has-already-failed/",
      "title": "When prisons expand, policy has already failed",
      "content_html": "\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePlans to convert a Covid quarantine facility into a prison reflect a justice system responding to pressure with infrastructure instead of addressing the drivers of incarceration.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen quarantine camps become prisons, something has already gone wrong.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Western Australian Government’s consideration of converting the Bullsbrook Covid quarantine facility into a prison reveals a justice system now operating beyond planning and into improvisation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen governments begin repurposing unused pandemic infrastructure as prisons, it is no longer reforming. It is reacting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe proposal comes in the context of custodial infrastructure under acute pressure. The state’s prison population has experienced rapid and “\n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.oics.wa.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/00.3-Media-Release-Annual-Report-2024-25-EMBARGOED.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003eunsustainable\u003c/a\u003e” growth over the past two years, ballooning by more than 1,000 prisoners in just two years. Facilities are overcrowded, people are sleeping on floors, staff are stretched. By \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/01/penal-populism-and-the-unravelling-of-justice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003ethe admission\u003c/a\u003e of those working within it, capacity is approaching its limits.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd so the response is to look for more beds.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut this is precisely the problem.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe logic is deceptively simple: more prisoners require more capacity. Yet this logic treats imprisonment as a fixed demand rather than a policy outcome. It assumes that rising prison numbers are inevitable, rather than produced; shaped by bail laws, policing practices, sentencing settings, and political choices.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe result is a reinforcing cycle: overcrowding drives emergency expansion, and expansion normalises higher imprisonment. And so it continues.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Bullsbrook proposal sits squarely within this pattern. Built at significant public expense as a quarantine facility during the pandemic, the site now stands largely unused. Faced with prison overcrowding, government has turned to this idle asset as a potential solution.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe key pressure in Western Australia’s prisons, however, is not simply a lack of beds. It is the rapid growth of remand populations (people held in custody awaiting trial). Many are there due to tightening bail conditions and risk-averse decision-making, often in response to family and domestic violence.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis matters because remand populations are not easily accommodated in repurposed, low-security facilities. As the prison officers’ union has pointed out, the Bullsbrook site would require substantial modification to function as a prison at all, and even then, it may not meet the needs of this rapidly growing cohort.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn other words, the proposed solution does not match the problem. Rather, it reflects an inherent policy failure: the tendency to respond to pressures within current justice settings through infrastructure rather than strategy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBuilding or repurposing custodial facilities is politically tangible. It demonstrates action. It reassures the public that something is being done. But it does not address the drivers of incarceration. It does not reduce inflow. And it does not make communities safer in any sustained way.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf anything, it entrenches the very dynamics that produced the crisis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis pattern is not unique to Western Australia. Justice systems have become increasingly reliant on custodial responses, even as evidence accumulates that imprisonment is a blunt and often counterproductive tool for addressing complex social harms.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNowhere is this more evident than in the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody. Despite decades of policy commitments, including Closing the Gap, incarceration rates continue to rise. Custodial responses are expanding in precisely the areas where it is already failing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe conversion of Bullsbrook into a prison would sit within this trajectory. It would add capacity without reducing demand. It would absorb pressure without resolving it. And it would risk further normalising a level of incarceration that should, by any reasonable measure, be unacceptable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is another path.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInstead of asking how to increase prison capacity, government could ask a different question: how do we decrease the number of people entering custody in the first place?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe task is obvious: reduce demand.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis means examining the upstream decisions that drive remand numbers. It requires reforming bail settings, bolstering diversion, implementing \n\n\n\n\n\u003ca href=\"https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/02/punishment-control-and-the-suppression-of-restorative-justice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" class=\"m_no_class\" \u003ecommunity-based restorative justice\u003c/a\u003e, and investing in housing, employment and community stability.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese are not abstract ideas. They are practical, evidence-informed strategies that have been implemented in various forms across jurisdictions. What is often lacking is not knowledge, but political will.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe temptation, particularly in a climate of “tough on crime” rhetoric, is to prioritise visible, immediate responses. A prison can be announced, funded, and built. Its impact is measurable in beds. Demand reduction, by contrast, is slower, less visible, and requires coordination across portfolios.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the long-term outcomes are vastly different.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA policy approach that invests in reducing demand can stabilise and eventually reduce prison populations. Whereas an approach that focuses only on expanding capacity will find itself, repeatedly, in crisis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Bullsbrook proposal is therefore more than a site-specific decision. It is a fork in the road.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne path leads to continued expansion: more beds, more pressure, more normalisation of incarceration. The other leads to reform: a deliberate effort to understand and reduce the drivers of imprisonment, and to build a justice system that is both more effective and more just.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf a quarantine camp becomes a prison, it will not be the result of careful planning. It will be the outcome of a policy approach that has run out of options and has yet to recognise that the solution lies not in expanding custody capacity, but in changing course.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe warning is already there. The question is whether government changes course or builds its way deeper into the problem.\u003c/p\u003e",
      "summary": "Plans to convert a Covid quarantine facility into a prison reflect a justice system responding to pressure with infrastructure instead of addressing the drivers of incarceration.",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T00:29:17+10:00",
      "date_modified": "2026-04-22T00:29:17+10:00",
      "authors": [{"name": "Jane Anderson"}
      ],
      "tags": ["politics"],
      "_social_media": {
        "tweet_text": "Turning a quarantine facility into a prison won’t solve overcrowding.\nThe real issue is a justice system driving rising incarceration – and failing to address its causes, Jane Anderson writes.\n#auspol #Justice #Prisons #CriminalJustice",
        "tweet_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/when-prisons-expand-policy-has-already-failed/",
        "linkedin_title": "When prisons expand, policy has already failed",
        "linkedin_excerpt": "Plans to convert a Covid quarantine facility into a prison reflect a justice system responding to pressure with infrastructure instead of addressing the drivers of incarceration.",
        "linkedin_url": "https://preview.johnmenadue.com/post/2026/04/when-prisons-expand-policy-has-already-failed/",
        "facebook_text": "When prisons expand, policy has already failed - Plans to convert a Covid quarantine facility into a prison reflect a justice system responding to pressure with infrastructure instead of addressing the drivers of incarceration.",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/bullsbrook-covid-qua.jpeg",
        "author_names": "Jane Anderson"
      },
      "_mailchimp": {
        "excerpt": "Plans to convert a Covid quarantine facility into a prison reflect a justice system responding to pressure with infrastructure instead of addressing the drivers of incarceration.",
        "authors_string": "Jane Anderson",
        "categories_string": "politics",
        "pub_date_formatted": "Wednesday, April 22, 2026",
        "cover_image": "https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/bullsbrook-covid-qua.jpeg"
      }
    }
  ]
}