The appointment of Chris Barrett to head the Productivity Commission puts its Trade and Assistance Review under the spotlight. While it has become commonplace in recent years to ignore the PC’s regular evisceration of anything that smacks of market intervention, it has this year chosen to target the very policy platform on which the Albanese Continue reading »
Government
“One of the most extraordinary moments in politics in the last five years has been watching Anthony Albanese, notionally from the left of Labour, adopt, without any internal democracy within the Labor Party, without any public investigation of it, adopt wholeheartedly Scott Morrison’s AUKUS plans… It’s perhaps one of the most extraordinary betrayals of the Continue reading »
Can the United States avoid a descent into political violence? Of the 52 cases where countries reached the levels of polarisation which now exist in the US, half had their status as democracies downgraded. The US is the only Western democracy to have sustained such intense polarisation over such an extended period. It really is Continue reading »
Due to the entrenched English class system, research has shown that the strong familial persistence of social status across generations has not changed in the UK across 400 years of accumulated data. With growing inequality and the emergence of ultra-wealthy and privileged classes in Australia – are we following the same path? Over the past Continue reading »
Australia’s climate and energy minister Chris Bowen says the extreme weather events of recent years, and the heatwaves sweeping the globe in this northern summer, show that the world has already failed to prevent a climate emergency. “To be frank, it’s too late to avoid the climate emergency,” Bowen said in a speech to the Continue reading »
If previous defence acquisitions are any guide, the enormous cost of nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy will almost certainly escalate well beyond the estimated but un-itemised initial price of $A368 billion. The record of corruption of the two US submarine builders suggests that the project will also probably suffer from mismanagement. The final Continue reading »
Those Australians watching the findings of the Robodebt Royal Commission might take comfort from the evidence it provides that our justice system has shown itself to have at least some capacity to hold unjust governments to account – eventually. But a justice system is only as good as the laws it has to work with. Continue reading »
It is time for the Australian citizenry and First Nations to resume their rightful ownership and custodianship of the land’s eco-geology. The present inequity between the country’s wealthiest yet internally feuding family and the nation’s struggling working and homeless poor is obscene. As judged by the Gini coefficient, inequity is increasing in Australia and is Continue reading »
In Canberra, Friday is the traditional day for taking out the trash. It is thus not surprising that Aged Care Minister Anika Wells chose Friday 21 July as the day to release the capability review of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. Despite having had the report on her desk since 31 March (16 Continue reading »
Monetary policy operates with a lag. The pain from increased interest rates is only now starting to really bite. However, the substantial increase in interest rates is reducing demand and thus bringing inflation down. While on the other hand, further interest rate increases add to the risk of a recession. It is time therefore to Continue reading »