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Author: Arthur Chesterfield-Evans

06/04/2026

Trump and One Nation

4 April 2026

There has been a lot of interest in One Nation after they got 23% of the primary vote and 4 lower house seats in the South Australian elections of 21 March. It was commented that they had no MPs and no real policies. This is true, and it indicates how unhappy people are with the status quo and the two major parties in particular. They are seen as not being able to solve our problems. So people voted for One Nation because it was a change and because it criticised the status quo. They may have got more seats if there had not been compulsory preferential voting in South Australia- I have not done the analysis.

A vote for One Nation is still largely a protest vote in that the specifics for their policies are vague. It is clear what they are against, but not clear what they would do in most portfolio areas.

Trump was elected with 50% of the 65% of the eligible voters who bothered to vote. That is a bit under 33% of the total voters. The polls and figures in NSW have One Nation with a real chance in the (Federal) Farrer by-election (especially with a lot of money from Gina Rinehart). They also have quite a good chance in some NSW country seats, especially National Party ones, where the Nationals have abandoned farmers for the miners. The ‘optional preferential’ voting system in NSW may also favour them, as it favours parties with big primary votes. 23% would give them 4 of the 21 seats in the NSW Upper House election, as a quota is 4.5%. I did an analysis of the 2023 NSW election and found that if we had had compulsory preferential voting rather than optional preferential Labor would have had an extra 6 seats and there would have been an extra 3 Independents in the lower house. (Amazingly, Labor has not tried to change the system to compulsory preferential).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yri-zkB3w8ZVH44ZLPYAsQ-2ghyXU0j1E55lwuJsBEU/edit?tab=t.0

Compulsory preferential voting tends to disfavour radical parties because it takes account of what people prefer as well as what they want as a primary vote, so it tends to move towards the political centre. Australia is not as different from the USA as we might think. The radical Right protest solution has Trump at 33% and One Nation at 23%. The Australian Electoral Commission, which stops gerrymandering, compulsory voting, and the compulsory preferential system give us some margin of security against the outcome of a protest vote electing a government, but we need to acknowledge our problems and fix them more effectively that we have been doing if we are to stop the progress of protest without solutions.

06/04/2026

Prisons are for Punishment- does this work?

5 April 2026

Prisons are for punishment, so the people most disadvantaged have further pain inflicted on them.

The criminal justice system seems to have only one solution- prison. The only question for the judges is ‘How Long?’ This seems like having a carpenter whose only tool is a hammer, or a doctor who only has one drug. Yet no one even comments on its absurdity.

This is particularly foolish for kids, as they are going to live for many years and eventually they will come out, and if they remain unable to integrate with normal society they will almost certainly re-offend. At Point Puer, which was the children’s section of Port Arthur Prison Colony in Tasmania in 1857, the object was to get the kids back as normal members of society. We seem to have gone backwards in the last 168 years.
Children don’t have computer tablets in their cells, which would allow them access to families or education, which surely would improve their chances of rehabilitation. It costs $1.17million per child per year. You must wonder where the money goes.

Here is a video compiled after the recent NSW Parliamentary Budget Estimates Hearing, as the Minister gives his lame reasons for continuing lack of progress:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_RAhAQIa0wztBnfrrdI09huGe2JQLZQJ/view

10/03/2026

Iran Attack is another step on a bad road.

10 March 2026

(Warning- long and discursive post).

It is always important to see events in as broad a context as possible.
Prior to the First World War, Germany was rising due the industrialisation of Bismarck, and the US was rising because of its natural advantages. Britain was declining. Britain and France may have been able to defeat Germany, but the US came in at the last minute and affirmed its place as the world’s leading power.
Germany was humiliated, and continued to be shut out of markets, as was the rising Japan. Both became strong and their expansion led to WW2. The US, again remained aloof until the bombing of Pearl Harbour. The US still let the Russians do most of the fighting against Germany (look at the casualty figures if you doubt this), and came in at the end. D-Day was 6 June 1944, but Stalingrad had fallen on 2 February 1943 and the Russians had been advancing ever since.
Between the wars, the League of Nations had been created, which failed to stop German rearming and aggression. After WW2, a meeting a Bretton Woods intended to turn the whole world into one market, so that countries that did well would rise, and those who did not do so well would fall, all without wars. The US, with almost half world GDP would be in a good position, and set up the UN with a veto for the major powers.
The new world order, helped by technological advances in communications and logistics, and some US pressure for free trade treaties have largely turned the world into a market, where the wealthy nations or corporations could buy whatever they wanted. But the legacies of colonialism remained. Many developing g countries had had their resources taken over by colonial countries that were not about to give up those lucrative assets. Diamonds, gold and oil were three commodities where the major Western powers did not want to give up control. A developing country with a government acting for its people would obviously demand that the benefit of its resources would go to its people. The Colonial model was that the foreign power leaned on the government, but left it in place as long as it let the foreign power have the resources. So there was always a tension in the great powers between the rhetoric of freedom and democracy and the reality of making sure that whatever government exists lets the foreign power have the goodies.
How this conflict has played out in the US is documented in the book, ‘The Devil’s Chessboard- Allen Dulles, the CIA and the rise of America’s Secret Government’ by David Talbot. The CIA seems to have continued to get the US to ruthlessly pursue its interests with little care for the consequences for weaker nations. The book chronicles many democratic movements that tried to get a better deal for their people and were ruthless supressed by CIA-backed authoritarian regimes, often with dire consequences for the democratic figures. One of the only examples of the US actually working for democracy seems to have been John F Kennedy, who declined to give US support to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba after the revolution in 1961, saying that the US supported progressive regimes in the belief that it would deal with them in affair and honest trading way. Kennedy sacked the head of the CIA, Allen Dulles after the invasion, and was assassinated shortly thereafter. Talbot does not think that this was a coincidence.
It seems that the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech of 17 January 1961 has come to pass. Because the armaments industry is private in the US, wars are good for considerable sections of the US economy, and whether the US wins or loses does not matter much as long as the US itself is not significantly inconvenienced. It would seem that the CIA world view is dominant in Washington, and that includes supporting US corporate interests overseas as well as defence. The CIA-dominated policy has continued since Dulles. President Obama may have wished to change this; his slogan was ‘Change is possible’. He initially tried a bipartisan approach and then did not have the numbers in Congress. His epitaph might read, ‘Change was not possible’.
The election of Trump might be seen as a protest vote, even a revolution, against a system that seemed to grind on, as the US declined due to its wage structure making it uncompetitive as a manufacturing base, with corporations keen to manufacture offshore. A lack of money for education, an appalling gerrymander and slanted voting eligibility rules contributed to Trump’s victory, as did skilful use of databases and narrowcasting in social media and the paucity of options in a binary system.
Be all that as it may, the election of a basically ignorant and prejudiced man has resulted in an erratic US foreign policy. Simplistic arrogance and hubris have led to a cavalier disregard for the rules-based order that initially allowed the US to prosper, but the concentration of wealth has moved from national borders to corporations and now individuals. The nation states are still the basis of world order, though increasingly Capital in the form of multinational corporations or even individuals tell them what to do. But the nation states still exist and the US is the largest militarily, though it is declining economically. Climate change will soon mean that Russia and China will be able to trade via the North Pole, so the US wants Greenland, and Trump, with the tact he learned as a shock jock does not mind saying so. (The movie, ‘The Apprentice’ about the rise of Trump has a telling ending about the origin and success of his moral values). It may also be that Con men, lacking any real truths or values are more easily conned themselves.
The simplest reason for the attack on Iran would seem to be that Israel conned him into it. Israel has either subdued countries around it, like Jordan and Egypt or attacked and supressed them, helped by their economic troubles. Israel made deals with the major Middle Eastern economic powers, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, which is why Hamas, seeing the problem of Palestine being ignored, arranged the 7 October 2023 attack. The US and circumstance have neutralised Syria and Iraq, so the only real threat to Israel has been Iran.
Iran is a tragic illustration of CIA-controlled US foreign policy leading to bad outcomes. In 1908 oil was discovered leading to the formation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. In 1925 Reza Khan deposed the nominal monarch and became Shah Pahlavi in 1925. He was nationalist, anti-communist, authoritarian and secularist to the point of being anti-Islam, trying to ban the burqa, which upset the Muslim elements in the country.
In 1941 during the WW2 occupation of Iran by the British and Russians, the Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi took over from his father. In 1951 there was a Democratic revolution and the government of Mohammad Mossadeq nationalised the oil industry. But Mossadeq had his problems with opposition from the Clerics, Communists, as well as the Shah and his army supporters. A CIA assisted coup overthrew the democratic government and re-installed the Shah, the deal being that 50% of the National Iranian Oil Company was controlled by foreign companies, BP, Shell, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, Standard Oil of California and Companie francais des petroles. The CIA supported the Shah and trained his ruthless secret police. As the Shah’s support waned, we wanted to negotiate a better deal for Iran, so he lost US support and was toppled in 1979. But because all democratic movements had been ruthlessly suppressed, the only organised political force were the most fanatical mosques, which the secret police had not been able to penetrate, and the Ayatollah who had been a figurehead, safely in Paris. In 1980 the US persuaded Saddam Hussein to launch the Iran-Iraq war, on the basis that the Clerics’ purge of the army would leave Iran unable to respond. The war went on for 8 years and killed huge numbers, but resulted in a stalemate. The religious regime has survived ever since, trying to get nuclear weapons which would make it ‘safer’, at least from US or Israeli attack.
The US policy has been to support regimes or movements that support it. They supported and trained the Taliban in Pakistan to get rid of the Russians in Afghanistan, then found that the Taliban did not want them either. They allegedly conned Saddam Hussein into thinking that he could have Kuwait as a reward for the Iran-Iraq war, then invaded Iraq in 1991. Hussain was ruthless to those who were politically active, but he was Sunni on a country which was only about 25% Sunni and many of these were Kurds. He was toppled in the second (2003) invasion because of alleged ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ that the UN Weapons Inspector, Hans Bix said were not there. Free elections would have had a Shia majority, who looked to Shia Iran, and the US had no strategy to create stability. They have supported the gaggle of hereditary autocratic regimes in the Gulf States, which are non-democratic, fundamentalism, repressive of women and supported by secret police, but economically supportive of the US. Fundamentalist religious sects like Wahhabism, almost a throwback to medieval times, are tolerated for the same reason. (Sunni and Shia strands of Islam have had antipathy for years because of a fight over who should succeed Muhammad in 634AD, each side believing that the other is illegitimate).
To return to the current war situation, it seems that Israel has been trying to get US backing for an attack on Iran for years, Iran has also anticipated this and has many drones, that are much cheaper and more numerous than the clever weapons that shoot them down. They have targeted US bases, so while they are accused of attacking many countries, they are mainly attacking the US bases, with some key oil facilities thrown in. They have been very successful in targeting US radar facilities, so the US is no longer sure of what they are doing. The Israelis have no qualms, now carpet bombing.
Australia is now a bit-player, with Foreign Minister Penny Wong taking a call from the recently visiting Israeli President Herzog, and now rushing our airborne early warning aircraft to UAE, needed of course because Iran has successfully bombed all the radar bases.
Trump, who started all this is claiming victory, but if oil stays bottled up, petrol prices will rise, and inflation will increase. His Board of Peace looks like a very bad joke.
Prof Clinton Fernandez thinks that shutting off China’s oil is part of a grand strategy, but this is doubtful. It is true however, that China gets most of its oil from Venezuela and Iran so will be most unhappy. Should they choose to take Taiwan, the US would be preoccupied in the Middle East and has also set the precedent that Great Powers can do what they like.
The British commentator, George Galloway says on Instagram that the US is about to drop a nuclear bomb on the Fordow mountain in Iran because there is a nuclear facility under it. He then predicts that Russia will intervene.
The Australian Peace Movement is strangely silent. How bad does it have to get?
Pine Gap and the new US nuclear submarine base in Western Australia are safe for the moment, but Iran may do terror attacks here.
Here is the Oil explanation from Clinton Fernandez in the SMH of 3/3/26.

Trump’s attacks are not about Iran. He’s after a much bigger fish

Prof Clinton Fernandes, Academic and former intelligence officer
3 March 2026 SMH

Behind the turbulence that characterises US President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran lies a shrewd geopolitical strategy. In the short term, he wants to demonstrate leverage over China when he meets President Xi Jinping at a pivotal summit next month. In the long term, he wants a politically submissive Middle East.
China, the world’s largest refiner of oil, purchases about 14 per cent of its seaborne crude from Iran. The true figure is probably higher, disguised as shipments from Oman, the UAE and Malaysia to get around US sanctions. Independent low-margin Chinese refiners in Shandong province, known as teapots, also import high-sulphur fuel oil from Iran. Taken as a whole, China’s enormous plastics sector relies on Iran for almost a quarter of its liquefied petroleum gas. Control over what Iran can export and to whom allows the US to retaliate if China restricts rare earth mineral supplies to the United States.

Trump’s abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January was driven in part by a similar logic; Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and its Merey grade is also high in sulphur, well suited for China’s teapot refineries. Trump wants indirect but politically critical leverage over China through control over Iran and Venezuela.
The key word here is “control”. Control of oil rather than access to oil is the foundation of the United States’ Middle East policy. “Access to oil” implies that the United States simply wishes to buy oil like any other country; that it wants oil at a reasonable price. But the US already has access to oil. Its East Coast oil refiners (PBF Energy, Phillips 66 and Monroe Energy) have no trouble buying oil from West African suppliers. Thanks to its domestic shale revolution, the US is already self-sufficient. It is a major contributor to the global oil supply network.
Control is a very different beast. Control of oil means, among other things, controlling the terms on which its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia can access their oil. After World War II, the reconstruction of Japan required abundant supplies of energy. The United States obtained what it called “veto power” over Japan by controlling its access to these supplies. A price increase can harm the dollar reserves of heavily oil-dependent economies, ensuring they act in accordance with US objectives. Sometimes, a US-induced price rise can help its diplomacy. In 1986, the US requested Saudi Arabia to cut production to drive crude oil prices higher – to improve US relations with none other than Iran, which needed higher prices.
Control also means ensuring that oil-rich Gulf states pour some of their revenues into US Treasury securities, banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has bought $US150 billion ($211 billion) in US Treasury holdings. Kuwait, another family dictatorship, has bought $US66 billion.
These oil-rich states buy US Treasury bonds, make deposits in US banks and otherwise ensure that some of the dollars they earn from oil sales will flow back to US corporations. They also buy advanced US weapons systems. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the largest buyers of advanced US weapons systems.
Qatar, a monarchy with the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world, hosts the forward headquarters of US Central Command at Al-Udeid Air Base, which it built at a cost of over $US1 billion. It will spend many more billions to expand it from an expeditionary to a permanent base for more than 15,000 personnel and their aircraft. Its sovereign wealth fund has committed over $US45 billion in investments in US corporations. Qatar Airways is a major buyer of US commercial aircraft.
An Iran with a government more amenable to US influence can be expected to do something similar. This is why Trump says that the war against Iran could take weeks. He isn’t merely interested in ending its uranium enrichment. After all, Iran obtained its original nuclear reactor as well the highly enriched uranium fuel to run it from the US, under former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program in 1957, when the two countries were friendly.
In the long term, a politically submissive Middle East would likely see a network of states with authoritarian regimes that comply with US objectives. These include rolling back Iran’s membership of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and weakening the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. If the US can’t change the Islamic Republic itself, then keeping it weak, divided and preoccupied with its internal affairs is good enough.
Control, not access, is what Trump is after. It is the same strategy Britain had 100 years ago, when Walter Hume Long, the first lord of the admiralty, said that “if we secure the supplies of oil now available in the world, we can do what we like”.

Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.

05/03/2026

Coles and ‘The Market’

5 March 2026

Currently the ACCC is suing Coles over misleading advertising as their promotion logo ‘Down, Down’ was to show customers cheap goods, but some of these had previously had big rises, so that overall they had not fallen, or not fallen much.

When I did Economics 101 a long time ago, the first chapter of the book was about the perfect market, modelled on a European medieval village where each Saturday all the farmers came to the square and sold their produce to the villagers. The farmers all competed with each other, and could not really take their produce home. The villagers had just enough money, so chose wisely which products to buy. The farmers could not raise their prices more than the other farmers and knew roughly how much to bring, and the villagers had complete knowledge of the products that they were buying.

All the other chapters in the book were about how the market was distorted by cartels, oligopolies, innovation, scarcity, lack of knowledge, regulation and doubtless a few other factors that I have forgotten.

In the simple medieval world, people spent all their money on necessities and made rational decisions. Now, a huge percentage of our expenditure is discretionary. Some people are battling to afford food, clothes, services and rent, particularly the last two, which have been badly affected by poor government policies over many years.

But the main area of interest to marketers is the people with discretionary income. Will they buy a branded product, believing it is better or more prestigious? The ‘science’ of marketing at an individual level is a branch of psychology- working out motivations. A marketer told me that people make decisions with their emotions, then justify them intellectually afterwards. This is true and it follows that the model of the rational villager is simply not what happens.

Big decisions, like moving to a more expensive suburb, buying a prestigious brand car taking an expensive holiday, or upgrading to a more expensive seat class, are a combination of emotional and rational; you want this and you can afford that.

Airlines and some accommodations are interesting. If you try to buy an airline ticket online and fall off, when you go back a few minutes later, the fare you had is no longer there. Did it really get sold in that moment, or did the airline find out who you were and up the fare? Fares can vary wildly. I tried to catch a train from Stockholm to a northern Swedish city and the price varied almost tenfold depending on what time I wanted to travel. Were they just trying to even the load, or was there some gross profiteering there?

Some supermarkets charge more in richer suburbs than poorer ones. The products are the same. Presumably the rents in the expensive suburbs are more, but how much is that per item? When Aldi came, I was amazed that the total cost of groceries was about 30% lower than the Coles/Woolworths duopoly. The range of products is less, but it is a big gap. The duopoly lowered their prices on things that are easy to remember like milk and bread and made a great play of the fact that these were price-competitive, but frankly, most of the rest of the wasn’t and isn’t.

At least some good folk have kept a record of what was actually charged and when and it seems in Coles ‘Down, Down’ sometimes means ‘Up, Up’.

Years ago in the BUGA UP days (early 1980s) when they had an ‘Advertising Standards Council’ and you complained to it, absurd claims were dismissed as ‘puffery’ that no one believed, so of course it was OK to make them. When the heat from BUGA UP and the consumers went off, the Advertising Standards Council simply disappeared and the nonsense continues unabated, (not that it ever was abated). The ACCC (Aust. Consumers and Competition Commission) seems either to have collected the data or has had it collected for them, so is able to take action at last.

It might be noted that government-owned Sydney Markets at Flemington had cheap stalls and most retailers and the public went there to buy their groceries. Liberal Premier Nick Greiner privatised the markets, putting the stalls up for sale based on their turnover. This created a huge overhead for the stallholders, who naturally had to buy their spaces for large sums. All the market prices naturally had to rise, and the big supermarkets by-passed the markets, buying direct from the farmers and squeezing their prices down. This was a significant move from the previous free market, done so that the NSW government could flog off as asset. The duopoply and buying power of the supermarkets further distort the price structures.

Allan Fels was a former head of the ACCC and has written the piece below in the SMH of 4/3/26. Late in the article he mentions one of the technologies that already exists, which is people simply visiting supermarkets, picking what they want and leaving, having been identified by face recognition and charged as per their card on a database. An idea that he foreshadows is digital pricing, where the goods do not have a price, but the price can be set for each individual customer, presumably based on their profile. Currently, there are loyalty schemes that collect our appearances, personal details, locations, shopping habits, and credit details. Free apps want access to our contacts lists and photos, so our friends are all linked together, and now technology companies listen to our conversations and can scan our emails. All this data is saleable for marketing, security or anything else. Presumably, as we come out of our future supermarkets with no prices on the goods, no checkout and no dockets but the bill visible on our phones, we can compare what we paid with strangers in the street, and see what their prices were compared to our own. Then a bevy of lawyers can make a fortune arguing with the supermarkets who will allege that were not ripping some customers off, they were subsidising the poor ones.

It’s a Brave New World.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/our-supermarket-duopoly-needs-to-tell-not-just-the-truth-but-the-whole-truth-20260303-p5o6yk.html

04/03/2026

Politicians Property Ownership- a Big Obstruction to Tax Reform

23 February 20265

It is important not to see this as just a Liberal v Labor issue. Tax deductible property has been a no- brainer way to make money in Australia for 50 years and has distorted the national investments and directed most of our capital into non-productive static assets. We need major tax reform, and what this shows is how difficult it will be to get the politicians to vote against their personal financial interests.

Histogram coming!!!

04/03/2026

Tax Reform at Last?

23 February 2026

At last, a significant financial commentator has stated the need for major tax reform to improve inter-generational equity.

Death duties are a major way to achieve this. Stopping negative gearing, abolishing the Howard discount of capital gains tax, and taxing static wealth, so that the family home cannot be a tax haven, no matter how huge it is.

Whether Prime Minister Albanese has the balls to do any of it is the question, and whether Tim Wilson, Liberal Opposition Treasurer who says he is for inter-generational equity will support a bipartisan approach rather than opposing all tax cuts is even more uncertain.

Two big tax holes are perpetuating Australia's wealth inequality

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-23/reducing-inequality-means-taxing-capital-more/106369480

04/03/2026

Protest Against Visit of Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, in Sydney 9 February 2026

9 Feb 2026.

I was at the protest against the visit of Israeli President, Isaac Hertzog, at Sydney Town Hall and would like belatedly to share some thoughts.

The Jewish lobby has always been very strong in Anglo politics and it is a brave politician that opposes them, given their economic clout.

The Sydney Peace Foundation had supported the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and in 2003 awarded the Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi. She was a Palestinian Christian, academic, poet and member of Parliament who had worked in Education for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, but later left it due to objecting to its corruption. The then CEO, Prof Stuart Rees had checked with the Foundation’s sponsors that they would continue to back the Foundation if a Palestinian were given the Prize. They assured him, Yes, but the Jewish lobby protested loudly and demanded that he withdraw the Prize. He declined to do so, saying that the Sydney Peace Foundation would have no credibility if it withdrew an announced prize. But almost all the corporate sponsors who had promised to continue their sponsorship withdrew. That is power.

Jewish schools get the tax deductibility of all religious schools and raise the Israeli flag. The official organs have been very silent throughout the Gaza genocide, and are keen to talk about centuries old antisemitism, while ignoring the genocide and the opprobrium associated with it. It remains the ‘elephant in the room’.

Meanwhile the number of Middle Eastern Muslims has been rising, and some significant politicians in Western Sydney are depended on the Muslim vote for their seats. Australian Muslim leaders are contributors to our multicultural society, but we might wonder what they think of the Israeli flag being raised. One might also wonder what would happen if an Islamic private school raised the Palestinian flag and sang their anthem. Since the time of ISIS recruitment some radical preachers have been quietly doing harm. (I saw a film made about this, but I have not been able to find it anywhere online now. It alluded to a certain preacher, but did not name him. It was briefly in Australian cinemas).

The Bondi Terror attack was a tragic demonstration of the extent to which radical forces build up, unnoticed by existing law enforcement organs. It was a failure of both Australia’s gun laws and its intelligence services, so Anthony Albanese wanted to have an Inquiry into these failures, done by a retired security chief.

The Jewish lobby was outraged and demanded a Royal Commission, blaming Albanese for the terror attack. They had been smarting from Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian State and pressured him to hold a Royal Commission on anti-Semitism, rather than the shorter and more practical security inquiry. They then invited the Israeli President to Australia. This invitation was then taken up by Albanese. Apparently it is common practice for groups to invite prestigious people, and then the Government takes over the invitation. Labor for Palestine, a group within the Labor party claimed that there was a picture of Hertzog signing a bomb to be dropped on Gaza in December 2023. Herzog had been elected President in 2021. His father had also been President and he had been head of the Labor Party in the Knesset. The Israeli President is separated from the government and is in a similar role to Australia’s Governor-General. Hertzog had been in Opposition to Netanyahu in party politics, but as President naturally supported him as the Prime Minister of Israel . When the International Criminal Court (ICC) cited Netanyahu and his Defence Minister for genocide, Herzog criticised the ICC. Herzog spent a lot of time maintaining ties with the Jewish diaspora world-wide, frowned on marriages with non-Jews, and worked to improve relations between Israel and other countries, notably Turkey, the US and the UAE (United Arab Emirates).

After the Bondi terrorist attack NSW Premier Chris Minns was quick to announce a State Inquiry and to pass the ‘Terrorism (Police Powers) Act 2026 that empowered Police to act with impunity at demonstrations.

Herzog was to address Australian Jewry at the International Convention Centre (ironically also I.C.C.), at Darling Harbour on 9 February.

Last July, the Palestinian Action Network had been banned by the Police from holding a March across the Harbour Bridge, but appealed the Police decision in the Supreme Court, had a significant victory in August 2025, and held a major ‘March for Humanity’ on a very wet and windy day, 3/8/25 which was attended in huge numbers.

They similarly applied for permission to hold a rally outside the Sydney Town Hall at 5.30pm on 9 February and to march to NSW Parliament. The Police banned the March, and the PAN again appealed to the Supreme Court. This time they lost, but the decision was not handed down until 5pm, just before the rally was about to start.

I went to the rally, entering from Bathurst St behind the cathedral. The Police were very aggressive, forming a cordon and certainly giving the impression that they were sparring for a fight. Town Hall Square was very full and the sound system was not good, so it was hard to hear some of the speeches. Grace Tame spoke extremely well and very clearly. Perhaps she used the microphone more skilfully. People around me also could not hear, judging by the way they joined in on the chants, but were otherwise silent. Chants were ‘Free, Free Palestine, ‘Arrest Herzog’ and ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Shall be Free’. (It was interesting that this last chant is to be considered to be a terrorist slogan with an appropriate penalty while the Israeli government merely implements it for their settlers with no slogan at all). The Cathedral rang its bells so frequently without apparent reason throughout the rally, which made it seem a deliberate strategy. There was a mood that we were going to march, as we had not come merely to hear speeches. The speeches went on too long and seemed repetitive , though not hearing well it was hard to be sure about this last. At about 7pm, after an hour and a half Josh Lees, the chief rally organiser said that there were ‘conversations’ ongoing about whether we were marching. I presumed that he meant conversations with the demonstrators, but this was not so. He was apparently referring to conversations with the Police. Presumably the speeches were continuing to allow the negotiations.

I concluded that the Police had won, that there would not be a march and left at about 7.10pm, so I missed the confrontation, which happened at about 7.25pm

It seems that the Police strategy was to keep the rally within the precinct of the Town Hall until the Jewish rally was over so that there was no possibility of the rally participants meeting the Jewish rally.

The Jewish meeting was told by a uniformed policeman to sit down for half an hour so that the protest rally could be cleared, so it seems clear whose side they were on. The Police had tried to stop the late arrivals even entering the protest rally, which had led to chants of ‘Let them in.’

The Police then said that here would not be a march, and everyone had to leave from behind the Cathedral via Bathurst St and were not allowed to go via George St. This seems to have been the catalyst for resistance as the Police tried to clear the Square.

The Police had been sparring for a fight, arrested 17 people and pushed other to the ground and on the ground. They used pepper spray and horses. I was shocked when a patient, a 70 year old woman came to me as a patient the next day and said that she had stood up on a plantar box to see what was going on and was thrown to the ground. She had grazes on her hand and arm and bruising of her chest wall. Below is some footage of the confrontation. A 2 hour comprehensive film of the rally is available at ConsortiumNews.

There has been a lot of discussion about Police powers since the rally, but it’s certainly frightening to know that there are considerable elements of the NSW Police that are willing to attack citizens with immunity from prosecution, very similar to ICE in the USA. It seems that the ‘Riot Squad’ see themselves as an elite in this role.

Time to renew subscriptions to the Council for Civil Liberties!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1BZa27XAw

04/03/2026

Aged Care- An Opinion

4 March 2026

I work as a GP and have some interest in aged care.
Much of the accommodation in the aged care sector is driven by real estate development in a corporate model. You sell your house. We sell you a broom cupboard for roughly the same price and promise a dodgy nursing home thereafter and some of the money going to your offspring when you die.

Now there is huge amount of ‘bed block’ in public hospitals because the families who will inherit the houses do not want this deal, so the house is not sold and the oldie in hospital has nowhere to go- hence the bed block. A geriatrician told me about this problem, which of course leads on to ambulance ramping at the other end. It is also a Federal-State issue as the services outside hospitals are mostly Federally funded, while the public hospitals are State funded.

The latest problem is the Federal government’s effort to shift costs back to the patients. It is part of the major problem in the whole health system in Australia, each player, Federal govt, State Govts, Insurers and patients try to shift the costs to someone else, without caring about the total cost.
Clearly home help is needed with a lot of different levels of needs and services. Corporates have moved in and the services tend to be very expensive. Some years ago I knew a man down the street, now deceased, who wanted a couple of hours cleaning a week. The company told him he had to have a minimum of 4hrs per week at $60 an hour. The lady who actually did it was paid $21 per hour.

In 2000, Kevin Rudd asked for submissions for a thing called ‘Vision 2020’,which was an ‘ideas workshop’. I wrote a submission saying that a government registration and insurance system was needed so that individuals could find other individuals to offer services without the middleman. I never even got a reply from Rudd.

Andrew Leigh is Minister for Competition, but it seems that the government is following the Howard line of opening up the disability sector to ‘for profit’ providers. AirTasker seems one of the few groups trying to link service providers with those who need services. Obviously there needs to be websites where people are rated, as happens for restaurants or accommodation.

If the government were pushed to have a registration website where people could put the services that they offer and their CVs, and pay a registration and insurance fee, it would be the basis for service delivery. Naturally there would be some crooks exploiting it, who would have to be identified when they were rated and then excluded by some sort of regulatory body, but overall most people would do the right thing, and the huge margins that some providers are charging would be non-competitive and would cease. The corporate providers say that they are needed for quality control, rostering etc, but their costs are often profiteering. ‘The market’ will fill any gap, but this is really a welfare issue that needs a cooperative approach, which tends to be lacking in Australian health planning.

12/10/2025

Vehicle to Grid electric power is being discussed at last!

12 October 2025

Those following EV sales figures may be cheered up by a recent article stating that Hyundia, Kia, BYD and other EV manufacturers are exploring how EV batteries can be used to store electricity and top up the grid at peak times, earning power bill credits for their owners.

This has been possible for a long time, and one can only wonder if the existing big players in the electricity market have been delaying progress to keep prices high and let them develop their own batteries. Note that the energy companies are now doing deals with the car companies- I guess that was the reason for the delay- they want some of the money. They are pontificating on what was obvious years ago, as if they are Santa Claus.

Whether this article in the SMH on 25/9/25 means that there has been real progress remains ot be seen, but another recent article n Carsguide of 11/10/25 says that BYD is overtaking Tesla in sales and may bring new cheaper models including the Seagull (Atto 3), which might sell for as little as $25,000 before on-road costs. I had read in the financial pages that the Seagull costs as little as $US10,000 (which is about $A15,500) overseas so we can only wait to see what price we get.

Turning your EV into a giant battery is a step closer

By Nick Toscano SMH 25 September

Hyundai, Kia, BYD and other major automakers are exploring how batteries in electric vehicles can be used to store surplus renewable energy and top up Australia’s electrical grid at critical times, earning power bill credits for their owners.

In one of the biggest trials of its kind in Australia so far, power supplier AGL has begun working with car manufacturers to test technologies that could turn plugged-in electric vehicles into “two-way energy sources”, ready to inject rapid discharges to keep the grid stable and smooth out swings in supply and demand.

Connecting an electric car to a bidirectional charger, so its battery can feed the grid in peak periods, could be a powerful tool to support decarbonisation of Australia’s electricity system as it shifts from coal to less predictable sources such as wind and solar, energy companies say.

It could also make it more appealing for Australians to make the switch to electric vehicles by giving owners the ability to earn money from selling power in their batteries back to the grid, offsetting their higher upfront cost compared with traditional petrol cars.

The Climate Change Authority calculates that every second light vehicle sold over the next decade must be electric for the Albanese government to meet its new 2035 emissions-reduction target. However, achieving that goal may prove difficult due to a recent slowdown in electric car sales and persistent worries about the cost of living.

To unlock electric vehicles’ full potential, their owners should think about them not just as cars, but as “home batteries on wheels”, said Renae Gasmier, AGL’s head of innovation and strategy.

Electric car batteries, typically several times larger than household batteries, can store enough energy to comfortably power the average home for around three days, she said. But adding vehicle-to-grid functionality could deliver even greater benefits, enabling the battery to be charged when electricity prices are low and renewable energy is plentiful, and using that energy to power the owner’s home or export surplus power back to the grid.

AGL said its trial, launched in Melbourne on Wednesday, would bring together electricity distribution and network service providers, electric vehicle equipment suppliers and carmakers including Hyundai, Kia, BYD and Zeekr. Other automakers are in talks with AGL about the program but are yet to sign on.

The trial will assess the level of potential savings consumers could expect from using vehicle-to-grid functionality and seek to ease concerns that bidirectional charging may wear on car batteries, causing them to degrade more quickly.

Kia Australia chief executive Damien Meredith said bidirectional electric vehicle charging was a “game-changer”.

“Amid cost-of-living pressures, this unlocks the potential for Kia EV owners to transform their cars into mobile energy assets,” Meredith said.

Other energy companies are also pursuing similar initiatives. Amber Electric, a retailer that enables customers to buy and sell electricity at wholesale prices, launched a vehicle-to-grid trial last year with funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Some participants in the trial were said to have earned hundreds of dollars in credits a month after feeding power back to the grid at times when prices were spiking.

Origin Energy, the largest Australian power and gas retailer, is building its own new retail offering around vehicle-to-grid technology.

The company this week said it had teamed up with BYD and StarCharge for a trial in which participants would receive a BYD Atto 3 subscription, a vehicle-to-grid bidirectional charger and access to a free charging tariff.

09/10/2025

Presentation to the NSW Workers Compensation Inquiry

I presented to the NSW Law and Justice Committee into Workers Compensation on Tuesday 7 October.

The Inquiry is a result of the NSW Government’s efforts to reduce the cost of psychological injury by cutting eligibility. They could not get it through the Upper House, hence it was sent to the inquiry.

It is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocavXF-Kd0U

My swearing in is at 6.28 and evidence at 6.33 and following.