Australia’s main Active Labor Market Program, the Duttonesque sounding “Workforce Australia”, is the latest iteration of a long line of models for Employment Services inflicted on the unemployed since the demise of the CES 25 years ago. It’s yet another Morrison government turd that the Albanese government should have flushed away the minute the ink Continue reading »
Economy
Australia’s existing relationships and collaborations with China give Australian Industry and consumers a head start in the cost-effective use of some of the most important technologies of the future, including those vital to achieving net zero emissions. Most countries would give anything to be at the forefront of such developments, but Australian University researchers are Continue reading »
What do you think of when you think of Vienna? Probably not a model for affordable housing in Australia. More likely cafes, waltzes, music, art, the Ringstrasse, Lipizzaner stallions, spies and Harry Lime or the brilliance of post-war Austrian foreign policy in convincing the world that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian? Yet, Continue reading »
Strategic ambiguity is the greatest oral weapon of mass destruction that the Western world has ever invented. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “ambiguity” as “…the fact of something having more than one possible meaning and therefore possibly causing confusion…” The fact that the West’s strategic ambiguity has such a large following among its members is that, Continue reading »
A new US investigative report has excoriated the controversial Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program which included the USS Canberra – commissioned in very unusual circumstances with great fanfare by the US Navy recently in Sydney. Should its revelations about the manifest failures in the USN’s procurement performance – with former officers describing the LCS class Continue reading »
“War is good for business.” So reads a quote from an arms industry executive in a recent Reuters article titled “At London arms fair, global war fears are good for business” about Europe’s biggest arms show, the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International. You will probably be unsurprised to learn that Reuters does not name Continue reading »
Two significant reports concerning people with disabilities are due be released. First will be the Independent Review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and second, the findings of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. Underpinning both inquiries is Australia’s commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights Continue reading »
Indonesia and Australia have more to gain from energy transition – and more to lose from inaction – than any two countries in the world. But the Indonesian government must navigate significant policy challenges to attract the capital it needs for a swift, just and orderly transition. When Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited Australia recently Continue reading »
There is no more important issue in Australian taxation reform than replacing current arrangements by efficient mineral rent taxation. That requires large analytic effort and effective political leadership. Success would bring high rewards to the Australian polity, and I expect electoral rewards to the Government that is seen as being responsible for a good outcome. Continue reading »
This summer saw the hottest average global temperatures in the last 125,000 years. Europe is embroiled in war, with other conflicts raging around the world. The global economy is still reeling from the impacts of the first global pandemic since 1919. Experts are warning against the threat posed by our most advanced technological creation–artificial intelligence (AI). Continue reading »