Economy
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John Menadue. The unfairness and waste in health. Private Health Insurance is the real culprit.
Medibank Pte has been in dispute with the Calvary Hospital Group and now with UnitingCare over performance in their hospitals. At last our largest private health insurance company, MBP has come to understand that the private providers, hospitals and doctors, are really in control. These private providers determine the quality of care and its cost. Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Malcolm Turnbull and the NBN mess
As Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull had two major responsibilities. They were the public broadcasters, ABC and SBS, and the NBN. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the ABC needs rebuilding after the harsh budget cuts and termination of the Australian Network contract while Malcolm Turnbull was the minister. The plight of the Continue reading »
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Mark Gregory. The new PM and the NBN. ‘An expensive lemon’
The National Broadband Network (NBN) is now delayed by between five and ten years and will cost significantly more over a 20 year lifetime due to the government’s decision to shift from a Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) fixed access network to the Multi-Technology Mix (MTM) approach that includes Fibre to the Node (FTTN) and Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Turnbull Government’s Response to the Financial System Inquiry
The Government has adopted 43 of the 44 recommendations of the Financial System Inquiry (FSI). These recommendations had received wide support, and as I said in an earlier blog (21 January), ‘they should be relatively easy for the Government to adopt’. Indeed, the surprise would have been if the Government had not been supportive (whoever Continue reading »
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Chris Bonnor. Educational opportunity in Australia.
Educational opportunity in Australia – who succeeds and who misses out? This critical question about our schools is the title of a new report commissioned by the Mitchell Institute. It is a thorough, timely and outstanding contribution to our understanding of disadvantage in schooling. The report, produced by Victoria University’s Centre for International Research Continue reading »
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Marie Coleman. The FTB cuts have been softened, but they’re still a con
The Turnbull Government might be trying to scale back the size of its planned Family Tax Benefit cuts, but the fact is they still hit the poor hardest and ask them to foot the budget repair bill, writes Marie Coleman. After a year of the Senate blocking its radical changes to parental benefits, the Government Continue reading »
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Robert Brown Two concerns about the government’s response to the financial system inquiry.
It’s been a big week for the Australian financial services industry. Firstly, there was the unusual decision by the big banks to raise mortgage interest rates in an economic environment which would normally result in no change or even a drop in rates, claiming with some justification that new capital adequacy requirements ‘forced’ them to Continue reading »
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Jon Stanford. Australia’s New Submarine: What is its Mission?
Recent papers published in Pearls and Irritations by Jon Stanford and Rear-Admiral Ian Richards have suggested respectively that: the case for providing significant financial support to the naval shipbuilding industry is flawed, both on defence policy and industry policy grounds there are unacceptable risks involved in building Australia’s proposed new fleet of submarines locally. In Continue reading »
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Ian Richards. The Submarine Menace
Way back in the 1980s, then Defence Minister Kim Beasley gave birth to the greatest industrial White Elephant in the history of our nation – the establishment of the submarine construction facility in Adelaide,South Australia. So much has been written and said about the Collins Class submarine construction project that I do not need to Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Coal is good for humanity! The Tony Abbott story continues.
The messenger may have changed, but apparently not the message. Only this week our new Prime Minister said ‘Can I simply say, the government’s policies are unchanged’ An obvious example of this unchanged policy is that Malcolm Turnbull has agreed to the go-ahead of the $16 b. Carmichael Coal Project in central Queensland. This is Continue reading »
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Luke Fraser. Rail and roads: a reform blueprint to match Turnbull’s boldness and innovation
Australia’s new Prime Minister demands boldness and innovative action. Amen. To date road and rail reform has proven too dry and monolithic for most Prime Ministers. But failure to act is now accruing several billion dollars in road debt annually. Transport consumes over $30 billion of taxpayer treasure annually. Boldness and innovation here can bankroll Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Is Malcolm Turnbull sacrificing his principles?
The polls show most Australian voters have welcomed Malcolm Turnbull’s election as Prime Minister. I did. It is very early days, but I am concerned by signs that he is bowing very much to the right wing of his own party and former Abbott supporters rather than spelling out clearly his own policies that we Continue reading »
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Nicholas Reece. Falling behind in the innovation stakes
Malcolm Turnbull has promised a new innovation policy for Australia by Christmas. Bill Shorten has pledged to be a “jobs prime minister for the new economy”. For the first time in a long while, the political rhetoric matches a genuinely huge national policy challenge. In the past 15 years, there have been more than 60 Continue reading »
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Luke Fraser. Shorten, Infrastructure Australia and boldness.
Infrastructure Australia (IA) has truly become something to conjure with; it has even spawned a comedy series. Where is it headed? Last week Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten outlined Labor’s vision. This involved: a new $10 billion IA financing facility to encourage spending; putting trillions of Australian superannuant money to work in infrastructure investments; IA Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The infrastructure mess and wasteful road spending.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott said that he planned to be the infrastructure prime minister. There was little to show for it apart from wasteful spending on roads. He said that the Commonwealth should ‘stick to its knitting’ and not get involved in funding public infrastructure. His focus was on roads. Our new prime minister, Continue reading »
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Bob Kinnaird. 750,000 temporary residents with work rights.
The recent Fairfax/ABC Four Corners reports exposing widespread exploitation and wage abuse of overseas students and other visa workers in 7-11 stores, horticulture and other sectors have been justly applauded as outstanding examples of investigative journalism. Their impact has been immediate, forcing 7-11 to set up an independent investigation panel chaired by Alan Fels and Continue reading »
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Wasteful costs in health.
Following the ABC Four Corners program on health costs in Australia, there have been a number of very good follow up articles. The first, in The Conversation on 29 September is by Ray Moynihan ‘Costly and harmful: we need to tame the tsunami of too much medicine’. https://theconversation.com/costly-and-harmful-we-need-to-tame-the-tsunami-of-too-much-medicine-48239 The second, in the AFR on 5 Continue reading »
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Mark Carney and climate change – an historic speech
The following are extracts from a speech given by Mark Carney, The Governor of the Bank of England at a Lloyd’s of London dinner on 29 September 2015 He outlines how climate change is a huge financial risk, particularly for investments in unburnable fossil fuel assets. He points out that the vast majority of these Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Austerity, the Greek Economy and Grexit
Faced with an unenviable choice between more austerity and a Grexit from the Euro the Greek Government after six months of resistance caved in and reluctantly opted for more austerity. Two weeks ago in the recent elections the Greek people endorsed that choice, although the record low voter turn-out suggests with little enthusiasm and much Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The government just does not get it on Free Trade Agreements.
I hope readers are not getting tired that I have said many times that the government continues to exaggerate the benefits of bilateral FTAs, most recently with Japan, Korea and China. With so little to show after two wasted years – increased debt, increased deficits, and not ‘stopping the boats’ despite telling us of success Continue reading »
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Why the Rich are so much Richer in the US
Nobel Prizewinner Joseph E. Stiglitz has been at the forefront of the debate in the US and elsewhere about growing inequality. In a recent review in the New York Review of Books, James Surowiecki comments on three recent books by Stiglitz. He says: “The numbers are, at this point, woefully familiar: the top 1% of Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Economic Management, Lobbyists and the Coalition Government.
On Abbott’s political departure David Marr wrote in The Guardian “Within days of his fall he’s looking like a prime minister Australia once had a long time ago”. Most people and organisations who have given him unwavering support ever since his narrow win as Opposition Leader in 2009 were remarkably quick in endorsing Turnbull’s judgement Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The smoko continues.
I have posted many blogs on this subject – how we have failed to equip Australia for our future in Asia. We just do not have the Asian literacy and skills we need for our future in the region. See blogs. The smoko continues (3 December 2014) and Will the new Colombo Plan work? (12 Continue reading »
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David Charles. Innovation, Disruption, Growth and Jobs of the Future
What a difference a day makes to so many things including innovation. Immediately prior to the replacement of Tony Abbott by Malcolm Turnbull the Commonwealth Government barely had innovation, to say nothing of digital disruption and start ups, on its radar. Its major achievements in the area of funding for innovation were mostly notable for Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Fiscal Repair – both Revenue and Expenditure.
With Federal Budget deficits projected to continue indefinitely, the one thing that is generally agreed is that fiscal repair and consolidation is absolutely necessary. Where there is debate, however, is about how much of the repair job must be achieved by expenditure savings and how much by increasing revenue. In this regard, the new Treasurer Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Transfield, Manus and Nauru
Transfield and its subcontractors are profiteering from lucrative contracts to run detention centres on behalf of the Australian government on Manus and Nauru. All the indications are that there is widespread abuse and oppression particularly on Nauru. It is a disgrace. Present policies on Manus and Nauru are unsustainable yet Minister Dutton remains as Minister Continue reading »
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Dean Ashenden. Could Turnbull give a Gonski?
Until last week, Gonski’s last hope – and an increasingly promising one – was a Labor victory in 2016. Now, that hope has dimmed, but another has appeared. It would make political, ideological and policy sense for the Turnbull government and its new education minister, Simon Birmingham, to go back to Gonski. The story so Continue reading »
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Bob Kinnaird. China FTA and a diplomatic appointment.
As the government’s exaggerated claims of economic benefit and job creation from ChAFTA are increasingly exposed, the lead DFAT negotiator on the China FTA is set to be appointed the next Australian Ambassador to China. According to reports in the Australian Financial Review and Crikey, Ms Jan Adams DFAT Deputy Secretary was nominated before the Continue reading »
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Harold Levien. Solving our Housing Problem.
The new Turnbull Coalition has the opportunity to rewrite the economic policy, or lack of it, of the previous Abbott-Hockey Government. This greatly exacerbated Australia’s housing problem and was pushing Australia into recession. The Reserve Bank’s Governor Stevens recently explained that repeated interest rate reductions were attempting to stimulate the depressed economy. He suggested the Continue reading »
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Lynne Strong. Climate change and farming.
Farming in partnership with nature. I live in a very special part of the world. The view from my front verandah has rolling green hills to the left, the ocean to the right and in front of me – the ocean. You can understand why I call it paradise. Our family has been farming in this region Continue reading »
