Purely personal reflections on the state of politics.

Actions by our governments are the opposite to what we require from them on climate change

The US is now a rogue state. One example is the conduct of the US Health Secretary who has been working to destroy the scientific basis for health care since his appointment last year but exceeded his own hubris when he told a podcast on February 12, 2026 that “I’m not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.” This topped his statements about measles vaccination, nutritional design, and vaccination in general. I know it is real and serious but it is so outlandishly ignorant that it seems like a daily parody, as do the statements of the President, the Attorney-General and the rest of the cast. But I know it is serious. The most recent outrage is the decision to reverse the ‘endangerment finding’ that the Obama Administration used to justify its environmental legislation and regulative system. It is hard to understate the vandalism embodied by this decision and the ramifications extend across multiple sectors. The automobile manufacturing industry, for example, will now be free to produce more polluting cars and greenhouse gases. Cheaper, dirtier cars for Americans, and, goodbye to American cars (thank god) for the export market. But it is the rejection of the scientific research knowledge that is most astounding. As part of my degrowth project, I have been reading several recently published scientific reports on the topic of climate change. These are credible contributions to human knowledge, which are significantly at odds with the way in which the US is heading these days. I wonder when the Americans are going to realise their federal government has abandoned reason and is now posing as a terminal threat to their well-being.

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Australian government aids and abets the view of a person implicated for inciting genocide

The Australian government has made an extraordinary decision to deeply divide the Australian community under the guise of advancing social cohesion and bringing us all together. How such a patently stupid political decision could be made by educated adults is beyond comprehension. Once again this is not one of my typical blog posts where I write as a professional (academic) macroeconomist. I am writing this as an active author that is now facing suppression of my capacity for self-expression by an increasingly authoritarian government machine (at both federal and state levels) that has been, it seems, captured by a particular lobby group that exercises its influence and power in the most pernicious and robust fashion. What is the issue? The Australian government has invited the Israeli President Isaac Herzog to visit Australia as their guest and is tipped to make a formal address to our federal parliament. The decision is wrong on so many levels and the subsequent responses of the governments (state and federal) to what they now realise is a mass groundswell of opposition among the community to the decision is even worse.

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Japan goes to an election accompanied by a very confused economic debate

These notes will serve as part of a briefing document that I will send off to some interested parties in Japan. Japan is about to go to the poll for a snap national election on February 8. The recently installed Prime Minister, Ms Takaichi is betting that her recent solid showing in the polls will allow her to capture more seats in the Diet and reduce or even eliminate her dependency on the ‘uncomfortable’ coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) aka Ishin. That coalition was formed after Mr Ishiba, the previous PM, also bet on a snap election result, which saw the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) go backwards (losing 68 seats) and the coalition partner Komeito also lose seats. Together the ruling coalition lost its majority in the National Diet (for the first time since 2009) and Shigeru Ishiba’s popularity began to evaporate. The background to that loss was a major political funding scandal among the Cabinet ministers and the election result signalled that the Japanese people had seemingly had enough of the corruption at the top. Ms Takaichi took over after Mr Ishiba could no longer sustain his position as PM. The old coalition between the LDP and Komeito fell apart because the Buddhist Komeito could no longer stomach the new PMs imperialist ideology nor her unwillingness to deal with he insidious corruption in her party. This forced Ms Takaichi to forge a new coalition – hence the rather unlikely pairing with Ishin, which is a right wing populist party espousing neoliberal economic policies. The government is proposing a major fiscal expansion but the debate during the campaign that is now underway is very confused. The confusion arises because all the main players keep wheeling out mainstream economic arguments that tie them up into nonsensical policy proposals.

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Curbing the freedom of writers will not advance human rights

Today’s blog post is a little different to my usual posts because I am writing it as a writer rather than as an economist. I write tens of thousands of words every year and have done so for many years. People have asked me whether I enjoy spending my time in that way, given that it would seem to be quite a discipline. It is. But it is also my freedom. My freedom to express an alternative viewpoint. My freedom to publish the results of my research, framed in my own particular way. Many people hate what I write and I get a lot of hate E-mails telling me that. Anytime I mention Palestine, the hate mail floods in. I am told to delete the posts and/or die. Anytime I criticise the US, the hate comes in. I am surprised, frankly, that people have that much time on their hands, and, moreover, think that I will somehow crumple in a heap when accused of being an anti-Semite, when all I have ever done in that space, is to criticise the indecent, genocidal and illegal policies and actions of the Israeli government acting out their Zionist ideology. There is zero anti-Semite intention in that despite the way the current debate has successfully conflated the two. From one perspective, I have known ‘cancel culture’ my entire career. The dominant and destructive Groupthink in my profession has always tried to sideline my point of view. But I sense at this period of history that we are in a time where authoritarian viewpoints are once again becoming dominant in the wider society and as a writer I see the danger in that for individuals and our posterity.

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The US attack on Europe misses the point entirely

The other day I was asked whether I was happy that the US President was finally saying things that I have been noting for years. The reference to Trump was, on interrogation, based on the US government analysis of Europe that appeared in the so-called – National Security Strategy of the United States of America – November 2025 (hereafter NSS) – which was released to the public on December 4, 2025. When I finally got around to reading the document, it was clear that the person who put that proposition to me didn’t understood Trump’s position and certainly didn’t understand my position. While the Trump Administration is critical of the European Union, as I am, the respective bases for those criticisms couldn’t be farther apart.

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The so-called ‘land of the free’ is now a failed state and heading towards totalitarianism

Last Friday (August 1, 2025), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published their latest – Employment Situation Summary – for July 2025. What followed was somewhat extraordinary. The data and the revisions to the previous two months data releases (which is standard practice) showed that the US labour market is in decline. It starkly runs counter to the official Trump narrative that the US is booming. While we don’t have enough evidence to really establish causality – it is likely (based on theoretical conjecture) that the highly volatile policy regime that Trump runs and his tariff flip flops is undermining the confidence in the economy. We need a few more months of data yet before we can be sure. But the BLS results certainly support the view that Trump’s economic policies are not working to advantage the American public. The extraordinary thing was that Trump then sacked the BLS head and signalled a further descent towards totalitarianism.

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The report of the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in Australia should be categorically rejected by government

In July 2024, as a knee jerk reaction to pressure being put on it by powerful lobby groups in Australia, the Federal Government created a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism. After it was pointed out that this seemed an odd creation, especially given that Australia has relatively strong racial discrimination and laws that protect freedom of religion, and that other definable ethnic/religious groups were also regularly in the firing line of abuse (for example, Muslims and First Nations peoples), the Government then (with a lag of a few months) created a Special Enjoy to Combat Islamophobia. Both creations are poor policy. On July 10, 2025, the Antisemitism Envoy delivered a major report, which, if the recommendations are implemented will become a major threat to academic and artistic freedom and do nothing to advance world peace and harmony. Quite the opposite. I have been reluctant to discuss the atrocity that is now entrenched in the Middle East as a result of the actions of the Israel government. But the release of this Report and subsequent news coverage that I saw in Doha recently (while transiting) of the starvation of people (especially little children) has led me to this blog post. If the Report’s recommendations are implemented by the Government, such a blog post will probably open me to prosecution as an anti-Semite, which would be a preposterous accusation, and just shows how flawed the path we are taking to these issues has become.

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The neoliberal destruction of Australia’s higher education system

Today, I am fully engaged in work commitments and so we have a guest blogger in the guise of Dr Scott Baum, who will soon be joining us at the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) at the University of Newcastle as a senior research fellow. Scott has been one of my regular research colleagues over a long period of time and we currently hold ARC grant funding together to explore regional disparities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Scott indicated that he would like to contribute occasionally and that provides some diversity of voice although the focus remains on advancing our understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its applications. Today he provides analysis of how lost the Australian tertiary education system has become in this neoliberal period. While focused on the Australian situation, the analysis unfortunately has relevance to higher education systems in most countries.

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I wonder how progressives are viewing the fact that they gave credence to a key Trump operative

It’s a big data week for me and today’s post is more of a news information offering rather than a deeper analysis of a topic, which is my usual pattern. However, I discuss in some detail recent appointments to the US Health Administration, some of which were prominent during the early COVID years and received considerable promotion from so-called Left progressives. One of the leading characters in the attack on government restrictions is now Trump’s appointment to the major national health research funding agency and he has vowed to defund any institution that doesn’t follow the ‘freedom’ dictates of the authoritarian regime that Trump is running. I wonder how these progressives are viewing the fact they gave credence to a key Trump operative.

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