Economy
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The NACC and the economics of corruption
When corruption really gets into the bones of a society the damage it does to institutions can take generations to heal. Continue reading »
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US urged to own up to causing Afghan misery by illegitimate war
Two years after the heart-breaking Kabul Moment that saw the withdrawal of US-led Western troops from their illegal invasion and occupation, the United States has been urged to assume liability for humanitarian sufferings of Afghanistan people. Continue reading »
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Muddled on the Middle Kingdom
Anthony Albanese needs to see for himself what the Chinese economic miracle looks like close up. Continue reading »
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Fatal mistake: Intergenerational report misleads on climate risks
The Australian Government’s public analysis of climate risk, our greatest threat, is dangerously misleading. The Intergenerational Report 2023 (IGR) is a prime example. By dumbing down the implications of climate change with simplified economic models, the IGR and similar reports are institutionalising the global failure to face climate reality. Continue reading »
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Climate and housing left on the 2063 agenda
The Albanese government is tiptoeing as if it has all the time in the world. Continue reading »
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Rise of the Global South: Saudi Arabia, Iran join BRICS
With the increase in the number of BRICS countries, this emerging international order dominated by the countries of the Global South will ultimately become the primary international order in the world, gradually replacing the fading international order dominated by the US and the West. Continue reading »
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The intergenerational report – a climate fairy tale
The future is already upon us. The forty-year Intergenerational Report (IGR) is a divertissement. Continue reading »
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Home insurance bills are soaring as climate risks grow. The government should step in
The Actuaries Institute of Australia has just confirmed what many Australian households already know – home insurance is increasingly unaffordable. Continue reading »
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US economic policy and a great march backwards
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 »
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Growing concern at Gusmão’s direction for Timor-Leste
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. Continue reading »
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We won’t fix inflation while economists stay in denial about causes
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. Continue reading »
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Marles coughs up the sad truth about AUKUS
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”. Continue reading »
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The Big 4, government procurement and the rivers of gold
Australian governments are now amongst the biggest users of external consultants on the planet. Continue reading »
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A refusal to see: Blindness to the global order
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 »
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Time to grow up? Australia is becoming a militarised US outpost
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 »
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Australia’s biggest AUKUS risk? America, our dangerous ally
The biggest enemy of AUKUS is not the resistance of ALP branches and unions but its own over-engineered grandiosity, its naive ambition. Continue reading »
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The edifice of the consultancy-military-industrial complex is crumbling
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. Continue reading »
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New Zealand risks perilous pivot
Wellington’s shift in defence policy abandons long-held neutrality, follows US’ anti-China stance. Continue reading »
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AUKUS a cover for the Coalition’s nuclear power agenda
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.” Continue reading »
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AUKUS and the star-spangled kangaroo
How ever did it come to this! Continue reading »
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Reconstruction of war-torn Afghanistan, Ukraine will enrich China and US
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 »
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Housing crisis, what housing crisis?
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. Continue reading »
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Containment of China will only lead to US being isolated in the world: Kishore Mahbubani
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. Continue reading »
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ASPI’s call for a militia – a step to military madness
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 »
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Australian foreign policy is traditionally hitched to the US – but the rise of China requires a middle path for a middle power
Few nation-states have been shaped by their underlying physical geography and location in the world quite as much as Australia. Continue reading »
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AEMO slams Murdoch media campaign that claims renewables are not low cost
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.” Continue reading »
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Mirror, mirror on the wall…a better and fairer school system
In the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children’. The Review set up by the Albanese government to inform a better and fairer education system is an occasion for some serious soul-searching by Australians. Continue reading »
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Our minerals are ripe for the plucking by the US
US-driven fast-track negotiations to develop secure strategic critical minerals supply chains from Australia risk jeopardising our mining industry links with China, and locking down our own industrial development based on our critical minerals. Continue reading »
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Beijing and Canberra should go with the grain of their improving relations
Based on its review of “the changes in the Chinese barley market” that it started in April this year, the Commerce Ministry on Saturday lifted the anti-dumping and countervailing duties it levied on imported Australian barley from May 2020. Continue reading »
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Australian Universities Accord lost in a mire of confusion about equity
The Australian Universities Accord Interim Report shows an echidna on its cover, in keeping, Education Minister Jason Clare acknowledges, with the spikey issues he is attempting to address in the education system. His goal is to reduce inequality in Australian society while improving the quality of education across the system. Continue reading »