The future is already upon us. The forty-year Intergenerational Report (IGR) is a divertissement. The population, participation, and productivity template of Treasury economists (3Ps framework) is inadequate and unsuited to the already changed world. As is the obsession with growth. How far out does it seem reasonable to project? In terms of climate, Australia is Continue reading »
Economy
Led on by crusading Reserve Bank governors, the nation’s economists are determined to protect us from the scourge of inflation, no matter the cost in jobs lost. But there’s a black hole in their thinking about the causes of inflation, only some of which must be stamped on. Others can be ignored. Meanwhile, here’s another Continue reading »
Australia’s leading financial media platform, the Australian Financial Review, raised the red flag about the future of Timor-Leste this month, with International Editor Professor James Curran’s article, Timor-Leste on brink of failure. Curran sensibly said that Chinese influence in Timor-Leste may be a concern in Canberra, but the big problem is that the small nation Continue reading »
There is a spectre haunting the world. It is the spectre of economic crisis. How the world responds will shape all of our futures. To borrow from Carl Clausewitz; war is the continuation of politics by other means. The famous military theorist might have added that economics is politics which is war by other means. Continue reading »
The accepted norm of Western dominance of the global order is now over. The difficult matter for those in the West to accept is that the mantle of leadership is not being passed from one Anglo-Western power to another of the same ilk, but rather one neither Anglo, nor Western, and dare I say it, Continue reading »
Australian governments are now amongst the biggest users of external consultants on the planet. Our country has seen the privatisation of core government tasks at an extraordinary level over the past decade along with an increase in spending on private service providers that is hard to believe. While decent public sector jobs have languished in Continue reading »
Richard Marles said the quiet bit out loud ahead of the ALP conference AUKUS debate while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seems to have been, er, “economical with the truth”. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Defence Minister had been “urging colleagues to back the statement and prove to Australians that Labor is the better party Continue reading »
I hesitate to stray into the florid world of military strategists, senior public servants, cabinet ministers and assorted think tanks, but what on earth is going on with Australia’s so-called defence policy? The Albo government seems hellbent on turning Australia into a militarised outpost of the US whose ‘pivot’ to the Asia-Pacific region has led Continue reading »
Wellington’s shift in defence policy abandons long-held neutrality, follows US’ anti-China stance. New Zealand has been increasingly bent on asserting a place in the United States-led ranks opposing China in the Asia-Pacific region, following in the footprints of Australia. In recent decades, New Zealand has cultivated a sense of pride in its “independent foreign policy”. Continue reading »
The consultancy-military-industrial complex continues to reveal its sinister nature as serious questions are raised over conflicts of interest in the tender process for KPMG’s $46 million REDSPICE contract with the Australian Signals Directorate. In recent reports, one of the big four consultancy firms has been implicated in a gross conflict of interest in advising and Continue reading »