Economy
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MACK WILLIAMS. The real shipping choke point for Australia – Sibutu Channel
Neither the Australian government nor the Australian media have informed us about the critical nature of the Sibutu Channel. As mentioned in this blog some time ago. the active political and media discussion in Australia about the South China Sea has continued to ignore the fact that the most critical choke point for Australia’s huge Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Trickle down.
The economic theory known as supply side is better known as trickle down, because it goes something like this. You give large sums of money to those who already have it, because they know the best way to handle it – they will invest it rather than simply trouser the loot. As a result, Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE and IAN McAULEY. The future of globalisation.
Rescuing globalisation from cheer leaders and populists. If we cannot make globalisation work for all, in the end it will work for none. Kofi Annan Last week John Menadue raised the issue of globalisation, welcoming comment from other people in his blog community. As he points out, the rise of Trump in the USA, the Continue reading »
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JENNIFER DOGGETT. Seven Key messages in Health.
This week the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released its Health expenditure Australia 2014–15 report. This document contains a wealth of information about the way in which we allocate resources across our health system. There are many interesting stories in this data which can help us understand how our health system works and what Continue reading »
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ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS. Compulsory Third Party insurance in NSW- a Bad System about to Get Worse?
CTP, Compulsory Third Party insurance (Green Slips) in NSW are looking increasingly like a scam. In theory, if you are injured in a motor vehicle accident that is not your fault, all ‘reasonable and necessary’ treatment is currently paid for by your insurer. People might assume this means good, standard medical practice. This is Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Our Working Holiday Programs have lost their way.
I have been an advocate of Working Holiday Programs (WHPs) for over 40 years. These programs were an excellent opportunity to ‘foster closer ties and cultural exchanges between Australia and partner countries with particular emphasis on young adults.’. The programs were reciprocal. But the nature of WHP’s have changed dramatically in recent years. In Continue reading »
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SUSAN RYAN. Older women – the new homeless.
It is more than timely that focus on increasing inequality in Australia include recognition of a massive contributing factor: the lack of affordable housing, especially for older women. Several groups have been identified as severely disadvantaged by the lack of affordable housing: unemployed young people, single parent families, and low paid workers who need Continue reading »
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STEPHEN DUCKETT. Blood money: pathology cuts can reduce spending without compromising health
In the coming weeks I will be posting articles on the high costs and corporate nature of pathology in Australian. The following article by Stephen Duckett in The Conversation, even though posted in February this year, helps set the scene. John Menadue The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) set the cat among the pathology Continue reading »
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MARK BEESON. Crown: the trials of a tributary state.
Of all the indicators of Australia’s evolving relationship with China, Crown Casino’s current problems are some of the most striking, unexpected and revealing. They present an unflattering but painfully accurate vignette of this country’s increasingly dependent relationship with the People’s Republic. We have all become accustomed to the idea that Australia’s economic future is inextricably Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KEATING. Superannuation Tax Concessions
Almost everyone agrees that Budget repair will only be possible if both the revenue side of the Budget is reviewed as well as the expenditure side. In that context, the tax concessions for superannuation have loomed as a prime target. Indeed, the Treasury Statement of Tax Expenditures shows that the annual cost of the Continue reading »
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DAVID JAMES. It will take more than a royal commission to tame the banks
The recent appearance in parliament of the chief executives of the Big Four banks was notable for its well orchestrated apologies, which were about as convincing as a life insurance ad that promises only to pay out to the immortal. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Privatisation and the hobbling of Newcastle Port.
The downsides of privatisation are becoming clearer. A recent example, which has received little publicity in the mainstream media is the hobbling of Newcastle Port for the benefit of Port Botany. In this blog on 5 September 2016 ‘JOHN AUSTEN. How port privatisation will hobble Newcastle’ John Austen pointed out that in the sales Continue reading »
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LYNDSAY CONNORS. Cometh the hour, cometh the man?
Is the Hon. Simon Birmingham, Federal Minister for Education and Training, the man? In his recent appearance on the ABC’s Q&A, Senator Birmingham announced that there are private schools that are ‘over-funded’. This came as the Turnbull Government is under pressure to commit the Commonwealth to meeting its share of the funding required to Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Cars, submarines –costs and jobs and a likely disaster.
Last week we saw the end of car manufacturing in Australia by Ford. It was a sad day for many people. Toyota and General Motors will be gone next year. Joe Hockey goaded our car manufacturers to leave Australia. He obviously thought Australia would be better off without them. Instead this government which claim’s Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Preferential treatment for private patients in public hospitals in NSW.
See below a poster from NSW Health which is being displayed in public hospitals in NSW. Readers may be interested to comment. Two things interest me. The first is that the advertisement infers that if you have private health insurance you will get superior service in a public hospital. That surely attacks the principle that Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Australia, the White Man’s Media and Donald Trump
This article was first posted on 29 January 2016. The situation has worsened since then! I am usually interested in politics but I am already sick and tired of the US elections and Donald Trump. And we have twelve months to go!. Forget about Indonesia, China, Japan and India. Our media does not think Continue reading »
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MUNGO MacCALLUM. Royal Commissions for Labor prime ministers and trade union officials, but not bankers.
So the great inquisition is over, and the tycoons have laughed all the way back to their respective banks. As the gleeful business spruikers pointed out, the politicians did not lay a glove on them – they were lashed with a feather, flogged with a limp lettuce leaf. But did anyone seriously expect that Continue reading »
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LAURIE PATTON. Essentially, our NBN is just not good enough (but please don’t say so!)
… And don’t tell Malcolm Turnbull, who was Minister in charge of the NBN. This week’s Essential poll found that dissatisfaction with the National Broadband Network is both widespread and pretty even across the political spectrum. Only 22 percent of respondents believe the NBN will adequately meet our future Internet requirements [http://www.essentialvision.com.au/future-internet-requirements]. For those of Continue reading »
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ROSS GARNAUT. The economics of the future energy system.
How can we provide a high degree of energy security in Australia at the lowest possible cost, while contributing our fair share to the global effort to contain the costs of climate change? I take as my starting point Prime Minister Turnbull’s admonition that we put ideology aside as we seek answers to this Continue reading »
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DAVID CHARLES. Venture Capital and Start Ups – Is Berlin an example for Australian capital cities?
During a visit to Berlin in mid September this year I was struck by the way the venture capital and start up scene in Berlin had shifted from being something of an exotic hothouse flower to one of the leading places for new business creation in Germany and indeed Europe. Ernst and Young in Continue reading »
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GILES PARKINSON. Coalition’s stunning hypocrisy – and ignorance – on renewable energy.
The Coalition appears to have abandoned all pretence that it supports renewable energy, now contradicting assurances by the grid owner and market operator – and now the biggest generator in the country – that the source of energy was not at fault for the massive blackout in South Australia last week. After Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Continue reading »
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The French submarine boondoggle
Is DCNS’s imaginary Shortfin Barracuda submarine Australia’s biggest defence blunder? The Turnbull government’s decision on the future submarine (FSM) represents bad policy. It is bad for the Navy, bad for the taxpayer and bad for the future defence of Australia. Given the key role the FSM is meant to play in the future of the Continue reading »
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NATALIA NIKOLOVA, ROBYN JOHNS, WALTER JARVIS. We need to change more than pay for executives to do better.
The pay of executives of a company, whether in salary, bonuses or other types of remuneration, is usually justified as an incentive to improve the financial performance of a company. This has led to ever more complex performance packages with increasing percentage of variable, performance-based payments. But what is increasingly evident is that this Continue reading »
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JULIE WALKER. Australia should compare CEO and average worker pay like the US and UK.
Australia should follow the lead of the United States in requiring public companies to disclose how much their CEO makes each year directly compared to an “average” rank and file employee. Ballooning executive pay contributes to income inequality and the CEO pay ratio provides a measure of the extent of the pay gap between Continue reading »
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GILES PARKINSON. Dumb politics means we may be stuck with an even dumber grid
It was just six years ago when Malcolm Turnbull, then deposed Liberal Party leader, attended the launch of the Beyond Zero Emissions Zero Carbon plan for 2020, which suggested Australia should and could attain 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020. Turnbull, by all accounts, was an enthusiastic participant, and was particularly excited by solar towers Continue reading »
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GILES PARKINSON. Uhlmann’s bizarre prediction of “national blackout” if we pursue wind and solar
The ABC is supposed to have a ban on advertising. But even if it was allowed, money couldn’t buy the sort of advocacy the fossil fuel industry and incumbent energy interests are receiving this week from the network’s chief political correspondent, Chris Uhlmann. On Thursday, we took Uhlmann to task for the way he reported the Continue reading »
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Is there finally light at the end of the fibre-optic cable?
Over the past two weeks we’ve seen what many of us have been longing for – signs the Government has realised its national broadband network strategy is not working out as planned. Continue reading »
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JOHN AUSTEN. Urban rail projects: property developers should be servants not masters
There is plenty of advice on how to plug the supposed infrastructure gap in Australia’s big cities. One popular idea is for passenger rail projects to be led and funded by property development. [1] The idea has intuitive appeal. The origins of some railways many years ago was land development. Land use has been put Continue reading »
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GILES PARKINSON. Coalition launches fierce attack against wind and solar after blackout.
The Coalition government launched a ferocious attack against wind and solar energy after the major South Australian blackout, even though energy minister Josh Frydenberg and the grid operators admit that the source of energy had nothing to do with catastrophic outage. Frydenberg, however, lined up with prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, Continue reading »
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DYLAN McCONNELL. Was the SA blackout caused by wind or wind turbines?
It has everything to do with wind – because that’s what blew over the transmission lines. But it has nothing to do with South Australia’s wind turbines. Transmission lines are large power lines that take electricity from generators to the smaller distribution lines that bring power to our homes. South Australia’s energy generation mix Continue reading »