Crispin Hull

On health and population

Gosh, fertility in Australia is down. Should we be concerned? No. Should Australian Governments be moved to spend vast amounts of scarce health money on IVF programs to turn the trend around? No.

Last week, the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand rang the alarm bells at its annual conference in Perth.

Wherefore art thou Albo?

Last week’s national accounts figures suggest that we are now midway through Act IV and it may be too late to save King Albo from his Shakespearean fate.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has, but for one crucial back-firing moment (the Voice), always been looking over his shoulder fearful and worrying about how what he proposes to do or not do could be used by his opposition (both political and in the media) to be played against him.

CFMEU and the rule of law

What would have been the reaction if the Federal Government had responded to the banking and child-sexual-abuse royal commissions by legislating to put the offending banks and churches into administration?

After all, the allegations against the banks and churches were of similar seriousness as those against the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union.

Breaking the ice with China

The icebreakers illustrate the story. This month China sent its third icebreaker, the new Ji Di, into the Arctic, following Xue Long (pictured) and Zhong Shan. One of them is in waters north of Alaska.

Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy abandoned its Arctic mission after an electrical fire and limped home on one engine to Seattle. The only other US Coast Guard sea-going icebreaker, the 55-year-old Polar Star, is undergoing a refit.

Bad report card on education is in

The national report card came in last week and it is not good. Indeed, if your child brought it home, you would have to seriously consider taking the child out of school.

Indeed, metaphorically, that would be a good solution.

Harris and waning populism

Are we seeing the end of the rise of populism as Kamala Harris takes the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and stops Republican Donald Trump’s return to the White House?

Bringing the corporates to heel

Far too many economists, commentators (me included), policy advisers, politicians of all stripes, and voters were taken in by the intellectual appeal of economic rationalism in the 1980s and 1990s.

We failed to see how the selfish, the charlatans, and the opportunists in the corporate world would grasp the whole Thatcher-Reagan (and in Australia Hawke, Keating and Hewson) philosophy and turn it into a massive enterprise to grab public money and stuff it into their private pockets.

Medicare needs some CPR

Medicare is in urgent need of some CPR. Not just the pulmonary and cardio, but a resuscitation of every part of the human body and the medical procedures that can be applied to it.

The death by a thousand cuts of Australia’s once proud universal free medical insurance scheme continued unabated this month.

Security: the new political fault line

Last Friday’s cyber meltdown that affected everything from supermarkets to banks was an instructive event.

Like many, I have been trying to understand the recent tectonic shifting of political alignments.

How did hitherto business-supporting conservative political parties become not only champions of the working class but that the working class is increasingly supporting them? Donald Trump’s realigned Republican Party in the US and the Coalition in Australia are good examples.

Australia should measure up

Hello, how are you?”

Reply: “Not so good. The balance in the mortgage offset account has gone down to near zero because of rising interest rates. I got the house insurance bill this week. It was horrendous. The super balance isn’t too bad, but that doesn’t help much because I can’t get at it. The tax cut and cost-of-living bonus barely made a dint.” And so on.

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