Economy
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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 »
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BOB KINNAIRD. The Coalition’s Backpacker tax and work rights package
The Coalition’s backpacker policy announcement yesterday focussed on tax rates but also includes a significant expansion of work rights under Australia’s working holiday maker program (WHM or 417 and 462 visas). …. The Coalition’s main aim is to provide an increased supply of cheap and captive foreign labour to the agricultural sector on a Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. ‘Faster economic growth demands better chief executives’.
There was a revealing heading in a recent article by Ross Gittins, the economics editor of the SMH, ‘Faster growth demands better chief executives’. He concluded his article by pointing to the need for business leadership to seize the economic opportunities .‘ Our overpaid and underperforming chief executive officers are getting (it) wrong’. He Continue reading »
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LUKE FRASER. Roads: Minister Fletcher will need a good nose for bullshit to deliver genuine reform a la Paul Keating.
Both the Grattan Institute [i] and Ross Gittins [ii] have lauded Minister for Urban Infrastructure Paul Fletcher for his hard talk on road reform. Gittins compared him to Paul Keating. Fletcher is setting out with a reformer’s zeal. Like Keating, he shows a willingness to level with the public about big problems and the Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. The Mounting Case For A Royal Commission Into Banks And Insurance Companies
An overwhelming majority of Australians support a Royal Commission into the finance sector. Ian McAuley explains why. We’re paying too much for a bloated financial service sector.A prominent example is Australia’s largest health insurer, Medibank Private, which in the last financial year absorbed just over a billion dollars of contributors’ premiums in management overheads and Continue reading »
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JON STANFORD. Business welfare under the Coalition: two case studies (2)
This is the second of two articles by Jon Stanford on the Coalition’s approach to industry protection and ‘business welfare’. Part 1 (Motor Cars) can be found at Jon Stanford. Business welfare under the Coalition: two case studies. Naval shipbuilding At the outset, we need to understand that there are no significant defence reasons for Continue reading »
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PETER WHITEFORD. The $4.8 trillion dollar question: will an ‘investment approach’ to welfare help the most disadvantaged?
Social Services Minister Christian Porter on Tuesday released a report on the lifetime costs of the social security system for the Australian population, putting it at close to A$4.8 trillion. The report was an initiative of the 2015-16 budget, when the government allocated A$33.7 million to establish an Australian Priority Investment Approach to Welfare Continue reading »
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JON STANFORD. Business welfare under the Coalition: two case studies (1)
The Abbott government came to power with a Treasurer who announced that the “age of entitlement” was dead and that he had no time for “business welfare”. In these two articles, Jon Stanford examines how this philosophy has been applied since 2013 to two manufacturing industries, passenger motor vehicles (PMV) and naval shipbuilding. Continue reading »
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PETER WHITEFORD & DANIEL NETHERY. Where to for welfare?
The Coalition’s proposed budget cuts would have a disproportionate impact on low-income groups, write Peter Whiteford and Daniel Nethery in this detailed analysis for Inside Story. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. The new compradors in the China Australia relationship.
In this blog on 14 October last year I wrote. Compradors are sometimes described as those who help a foreign country exploit their own. I was reminded of this when I read that the ALP Caucus had compromised its concerns over jobs for Australians and was prepared to waive the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement Continue reading »
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JOHN AUSTEN. How port privatisation will hobble Newcastle
Commonwealth action is necessary to undo potential penalties on Newcastle Port. While the infrastructure conversation focusses on major projects like electricity grids it can ignore more significant matters. One such matter in NSW that deserves immediate attention is port privatisations. A deal included in the sales of Botany (2013) and Newcastle (2014) impedes the development Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Medicare, Private Health Insurance and the ALP
In my article, ‘Down a different path in Melbourne: how Medibank was conceived’ written in 2000 for the Medical Journal of Australia (see link below), I described the history from 1967 to 1975 which led to Medibank/Medicare. In that article, I highlighted one issue that drove Gough Whitlam’s determination to establish Medibank/Medicare. His concern was Continue reading »
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BRUCE DUNCAN. Don’t blame welfare for budget woes
Prime Minister Turnbull promised us more centrist and fairer policies, but the Treasurer Mr Morrison appears to be playing a politics of resentment against people on income supports. On 25 August he declared: ‘There is a new divide – the taxed and the taxed-nots.’ This sounds suspiciously like ‘lifters’ versus ‘leaners’, and implicitly blames Continue reading »
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PAUL BUDDE. The financial future of NBN?
By late 2016 – seven years after the launch of the NBN – over two million premises were able to connect to the NBN. So far three-quarters have access to FttH (fibre to the home), the remainder to wireless and satellite networks. The revised rollout of the so-called MTM (multi-technology mix) based on FttN and Continue reading »
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Anti-global backlash is realigning politics across the West.
In the WorldPost, Nouriel Roubini writes “Across the West establishment parties of the Right and the Left are being disrupted – if not destroyed from the inside. Within such parties, the losers from globalisation are finding champions of anti-globalisation that are challenging the formal mainstream orthodoxy.” Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KEATING. The Future Outlook for Economic Reform
In a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Ross Gittins pronounced that we are ‘staring at the end of the era of economic reform. It has ended because it is seen by many voters as no more than a cover for advancing the interests of the rich and powerful at their expense.’ Gittins Continue reading »
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GEOFF HISCOCK. Long-awaited tax change raises tantalising prospect for Indian economy
The tantalising prospect of a 10% growth rate is on India’s economic horizon in the next few years, now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won legislative backing for the long-awaited goods and services tax. On August 3, India’s upper house approved a bill to bring in a nationwide GST, creating a much simpler Continue reading »
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LUKE FRASER. Infrastructure – a partner in our labours.
The Senate must be permitted to help avoid major infrastructure debacles. Many recent posts in Pearls and Irritations have focussed on democratic renewal. Some have decried a lack of trust and competence in our political class. At the same time our retiring Reserve Bank governor advises government should spend more on productive infrastructure. Given Continue reading »
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JEFF WATERS. ABC journalists and business.
Yeah, sure, let’s ’embed’ ABC journalists in businesses, but don’t forget the unions, or Nauru. The recent review of ABC business coverage may have come down in favour of the National Broadcaster, but, as has been suggested in the media, any move to “job swap” or “embed” ABC journalists within private corporations is nonsensical. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL KEATING. Taxation Reform
Taxation reform is a continuing and topical issue. With a new government and the need for budget repair I am reposting below an earlier article in the policy series by Michael Keating. John Menadue Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great American jurist, is reputed to have said, ‘I like to pay taxes. In this way Continue reading »