The biggest enemy of AUKUS is not the resistance of ALP branches and unions but its own over-engineered grandiosity, its naive ambition. A vote wrung from a conference doesn’t deliver the cash for what is the biggest transfer of wealth outside this country in its history. The government places the cost between $268 billion and $368 Continue reading »
Economy
How ever did it come to this! It is familiar to all that Scott Morrison, Prime Minister and Minister for Everything at the time, pulled the AUKUS rabbit out of his Akubra as a wedge issue for the forthcoming 2022 Federal Election. It appears that he did so with only a small inner circle in Continue reading »
The federal Coalition’s dissenting report on a Senate inquiry into nuclear power claims that Australia’s “national security” would be put at risk by retaining federal legislation banning nuclear power and that the “decision to purchase nuclear submarines makes it imperative for Australia to drop its ban on nuclear energy.” The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Continue reading »
At this moment in the economic cycle the Chinese economy is stalling whilst the US is experiencing a buoyant phase. However, there is another angle to their strategic rivalry that is more important than ephemeral shifts. Viewed through a longer lens both China and the US have economic aces up their sleeve. Both possess a Continue reading »
There have been growing concerns among regulators about the potential misuse of sustainability-linked loans
Newspapers decry it; yet market-led inflation more broadly is tut-tutted away as a ‘sacred mystery’ central to a free and working capitalist system. Government mandated inflation however, which society must pay to maintain a balanced economy, does not please anyone. As more and more social and economic ‘data’ is captured in society, details of trends Continue reading »
The main contest between the US and China will play out in the economic arena. At the end of the day, the winner will be seen to be the country with a bigger economy. Editor’s Note: In his book, The Asian 21st Century, Kishore Mahbubani (Mahbubani), a former diplomat who served as Singapore’s permanent representative to Continue reading »
The Australian economy is increasingly becoming a war economy. The PM talks of the economic benefits of weapons manufacture, and of how the military and a growing military-industrial-complex is almost a job creation scheme. The media works diligently to build and sustain a sense of fear. But even so, the warmongers of the Australian Strategic Continue reading »
Few nation-states have been shaped by their underlying physical geography and location in the world quite as much as Australia. Since notional foreign policy independence was uneasily embraced during the second world war, Australia’s policymaking elites have had trouble deciding whether it was a curse or a blessing to be in possession of an entire Continue reading »
The Australian Energy Market Operator has made a rare foray into the mainstream media debate around the green energy transition, saying claims that its cost assessment of renewables does not include transmission and storage are “wrong.” Conservative media, led by the Murdoch press but also including others, has been seeking to suggest that AEMO’s 30-year Continue reading »