Ford goes – and how much does it matter?
To the surprise of almost noone, Ford has announced that it’s planning to shut down Australian production in 2016. Ford has been the weakest of the local manufacturers for some time. Nick Gruen – who worked with Hawke government industry [...]
What is Abbott up to?
Max Gillies Smith thought the Abbott budget reply a series of stumbles. These include the promise that peoples “fortnightly budgets will be under less pressure as electricity prices fall and gas prices fall and the carbon tax no longer cascades [...]
Raising the GST
In a sane world, Labor would also be contemplating the possibility of raising the GST. It seems that Joe Hockey, who circle-squaring challenge seems to get greater every time Tony Abbott opens his mouth, is at least broaching the idea, [...]
The best place in the world to be a mother
It’s not Australia, although we came 10th. Finland, of course! And, we are told, the scores of the top ten are closely clustered, so we are right up there. Every year the Save the Children put out a State of [...]
Budget expectations 2013
I’ve gathered together some links to show what some commentators have been saying about the Swan song budget to be delivered tonight. Starting with Laura Tingle and Alan Kohler we find that Swan’s credibility is shot and it doesn’t much [...]
The Royal Mail to be sold off
Australian governments of the left and right have privatized any number of formerly state-owned enterprises. Politically, the process has seen responses between grudging public acceptance to vehement opposition; the outcomes have been similarly mixed. But while everything from the Commonwealth [...]
The Costello Commission redux
Newspoll continues, with sad predictability, to suggest that Coalition are heading towards a thumping victory. While I continue to hope for a turnaround by election day, it remains very likely that September 14th will result in Tony Abbott becoming Prime [...]
Sexualising Keynes: Not just about Niall Ferguson
British historian Niall Ferguson recently made some very stupid claims about Maynard Keynes: that Keynes’ sexuality and childlessness led him to ignore the long-run consequences of deficit spending. Ferguson, who started off as a historian of finance but who has [...]
Austerity Australia?
Julia Gillard is seeking to make a virtue of “sharing the budget pain” as she prepares us all for a horror budget. Treasury has apparently discovered its previous predictions of revenue were way off, and we’re now told that everything [...]
Tipping point for climate action?
Recently the Climate Commission issued a report in its The Critical Decade series on Extreme Weather looking at the issues of Heat Bushfires Rainfall Drought, and Sea level rise. At Radio National’s The World Today Professor Lesley Hughes, a Macquarie [...]
Let’s talk about superannuation
“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing” That, I believe, came from Jean Baptiste Colbet French economist and minister of finance [...]
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