My weekly Guardian column: It’s a good time to be in the weapons business. Three of the leading US defence contractors, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, are all making unprecedented profits. In December, Northrop will host an event at the Australian War Memorial to mark the company’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific region. It…
Showing all posts in June 2019
Making money from Ebola misery
My weekly Guardian column: The horror of ebola in West Africa has taken thousands of lives and spread fear around the world. This fact, coupled with ignorance and misinformation, has created the perfect storm. The risk is real, but you wouldn’t know the full picture from watching last weekend’s American 60 Minutes. Lara Logan’s report…
Serco bleeding but helped by Australian immigration contract
My article appears today in The Guardian: British multinational Serco is in trouble. After years as the favoured outsourcer for public services in Britain and countless countries around the world, the latest figures show a financial crash of unprecedented proportions. The firm announced it is writing down its business value by nearly AU $3bn with…
Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything advocates serious climate change action
My following book review appears in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age: THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: Capitalism vs the Climate by NAOMI KLEIN ALLEN LANE, $29.99 “If the news that in the past 40 years the world has lost over 50 per cent of its vertebrate wildlife fails to tell us there is something wrong…
Gough Whitlam was a giant but Timor is a shameful blindspot
My weekly Guardian column: After yesterday’s state memorial service, the beatification of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam is complete. His domestic policies were rightly praised for dragging the country into a more enlightened age (although the project is far from complete) but since his death in October there’s been curiously little written about his foreign…