January 16, 2015

John Menadue. Co-payments and the governments attack on general practice.

You might be interested in this repost.

A strong primary health care system based on general practise is the key to a sustainable health service. Unfortunately the government is doing its best to weaken general practice.

Primary care offers the best prospect of improved quality of care and increased efficiency, particularly through new work practices. The evidence is worldwide that primary care provides

A greater focus on prevention and chronic care for our ageing population.
Care at lower cost e.g. specialist care in Australia is more than double the cost of care by a general practioner.
Faster medical treatment
Consolidated service delivery to overcome fragmentations.
A seamless one-stop approach
Consolidated history with test results
Better access for all.

Primary care reform is the single most important strategy for improving our health and making the health system sustainable This is true for all countries, developed and undeveloped..

December 15, 2019

JASON YOUNG. China in a time of change.

Chinas Environmental Problems, Policies and Prospects

The economic transformation of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has come at a tremendous environmental cost. In the wake of increasing public concern, serious policies have been put forth to revitalise the environment and to introduce a more sustainable economy.

June 4, 2015

Jennifer Doggett. Co-payments in the Australian Health System

Policy Series.

The growing problem of out-of-pocket health care costs in health care is undermining the benefits of Medicare and creating a barrier to increasing fairness, opportunity and security throughout our health system.

Out-of-pocket costs are the direct payments made by consumers for their health care which are not subsidized by any form of public or private insurance (or any other funding source). They include co-payments for care partially subsidized by Medicare and the PBS (for example GP services and prescription medicines), co-payments for goods and services subsidized by private health insurance (for those who have it) and the full cost of unsubsidized and un-funded forms of care, typically non-prescription medicines, allied health services not subsidized by private health insurance, medical aids and appliances.

November 19, 2014

Is capitalism redeemable? Part 9: Restoring a moral voice

It is easy to allocate blame for our apparent entrapment in bad public policy. Tony Abbotts truculence, disregard for reason, inflexibility and broken promises all come to mind. As does the blatant partisan stance of the Murdoch media.

Those who look for more general causes draw attention to dysfunctional party structures, an adversarial parliamentary system and sloppy journalism.

It is useful to go a little deeper than these specific manifestations, and ask why so many of us are indifferent to such problems. Why have we turned our back on Enlightenment values those values which a century ago saw Australia take a world lead in female suffrage, decent wages, pensions and good government generally? In a country that has made such strides in mass education, how come tabloid newspapers still command any readership and how come spiteful shock-jock radio hosts hold their audiences?

October 2, 2015

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 Lloyds 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 assets could be stranded and that the window of opportunity to address climate change is finite and shrinking

January 24, 2017

John Menadue. Democratic Renewal; Vested interests and the subversion of the public interest?

This is a repost from May 13, 2015.

There are many key public issues that we must address such as climate change, growing inequality, tax avoidance, budget repair, an ageing population, lifting our productivity and our treatment of asylum seekers.

But our capacity to address these and other important issues is becoming very difficult because of the power of vested interests with their lobbying power to influence governments in a quite disproportionate way.

September 20, 2015

Michael McKinley. Disorder in the Australian National Security Mind

Strategy is difficulty to practice and even more difficult to master. Its components knowledge leavened by wisdom and imagination cohabit with military science only in the most tense and difficult of relationships. That said, there are three nearly invariable rules that should govern the thinking and acting of a strategic actor nation state or non-state: the first is that the record of the US since its founding ought to be a caution against any involvement in its interventions: In a document compiled by the Congressional Research Service covering the 216 years period 1798 2014, and which excludes the current campaigns in Iraq and Syria and all covert and / or black operations, the following table is revealing:

September 15, 2014

Eric Hodgens. Will the Synod on the family work?

Pope Francis has changed the focus of the Catholic Church from doctrine and rules to care and compassion. If people are at odds with the rules they should be supported and encouraged rather than condemned.

Since many of the rules causing complications in todays society are associated with marriage he has called a special Synod of Bishops to address The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization. This meeting will take place in October 2014. The associated problems are many:

September 30, 2018

DOUG TAYLOR. Uniting Church launches new decriminalisation campaign.

Australias first pill testing trial took place earlier this year in Canberra at a music festival. 128 people attending the festival provided pills for testing and two of these pills were found to contain potentially deadly substances. These pills were then disposed of and the event was fatality-free.

January 3, 2016

Jenny Hocking. Why Didnt They Warn Whitlam?: Where Politics and Ethics Collide

Repost from 16/11/2015

On the 40th anniversary of the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government a remarkable thing happened - a Liberal Prime Minister finally acknowledged that the Governor-General Sir John Kerr was wrong. In a stark break with the coalitions long insistence that Kerr had saved the country by stepping in and appointing Malcolm Fraser Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull repeated his consistently held view that Kerr should not have taken this unprecedented action of removing an elected government without first warning Gough Whitlam.

May 16, 2015

Michael Keating. Fixing the Budget Part 1

Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue.

According to the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, the timetable back to a budget surplus is unchanged from last year. Furthermore, the Government is asking us to believe that unlike the savage and unfair spending cuts in last years budget, now it can all be done with no pain. Indeed restraint has been thrown away, and in pursuit of popularity the Governments policy decisions since the previous 2014-15 budget have actually added as much as $13.4 billion to the cash deficits for the four years 2014-15 to 2017-18[1].

December 18, 2019

MOBO GAO. China finding its place in the world.

China: A Country with Soft and Hard Power

Australians need to understand more about Chinese hard and soft power, given the weight of the Chinese economy in world trade and the role of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in international organisations.

August 20, 2015

Nicholas Reece. How Australia's cartel-like political parties drag own democracy.

In a modern democracy like Australia, political parties are the main delivery mechanism of change. But recent events suggest these vehicles for change have become incapable of changing themselves. For the ALP it is the rejection of internal democratic reform and the failure to modernise the relationship with the union movement. For the Liberal Party it is an entrenched and embarrassing under-representation of women in its senior ranks. Recent attempts at internal reform by the major parties have been miserable flops, as they cling to the economic and social structures of a bygone century. And the Greens are no better. As a result, Australia suffers from the lowest levels of political party membership in the advanced world. Yet the cartel-like structure of our party-based system means they continue as viable entities. The party is over but the music keeps playing, turning Australia into a democracy without the people.

June 14, 2015

John Menadue. Is war in the American DNA?

Current Affairs

In his book Dangerous Allies Malcolm Fraser warned us how we can be drawn into US conflicts that are of no immediate concern to us. We have seen that in recent decades in following the US into wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. He spoke of dangerous strategic dependence

The US has a long history of involvement in wars. In the Washingtonblog.com in May 2014, and which was carried by the SMH, it showed the number of wars that the US had been involved in since its independence in 1776. The data was well documented. According to this report, the US has been at war 93% of the time since 1776. It adds

May 30, 2019

SR MONICA CAVANAGH RSJ. Letter to PM Scott Morrison from CRA President Catholic Religious Australia

Josephite Sister Monica Cavanagh writes on behalf of the members of Australian Religious Institutes to the newly elected Prime Minister, Mr Scott Morrison. He is reminded of his moral and legal obligation to all the people of Australia and to abide by the treaties, conventions and other international agreements Australia has ratified.

April 14, 2019

JOHN TULLOH. The vanishing international interest in the Mideast

How curious that the US fought on the same side as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards last year to defeat ISIS in Syria and then, once the job was done, denounced them as a terrorist organisation and applied sanctions. How curious that the US had been considering all this ‘for months’, but only decided to go ahead on the eve of the Israel general election when Benjamin Netanyahu, whose nemesis is Iran, was fighting for hispolitical life.How curious the US is willing to hold discreet talks with the Taliban, the perpetrator of endless terrorist atrocities, but would recoil at the very idea of such a discussion with Iran. And how curious that Saudi Arabia, the banker of many an atrocity against the West, in Yemen and Shia targets, gets away with what it has, never mind last year’s extra-judicial killing in Istanbul.

December 5, 2019

DAVID WALTON. China finding its place in the world.

China. Developing Its Border Relations

The twin concerns in Australia about the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), relating to increased economic dependency and tensions over politico/security policy, are common throughout the Asia Pacific region.

August 21, 2019

Conservatives in Australia

_A friend of mine asked me the other day why I seem to only criticise the Liberals. My answer was that they have been in power for six years now, so if anything is conspicuously wrong with the country, it is probably their fault. And also they appear to be generally a callous lot. I remember when Liberals with a social conscience were dubbed wets. That was probably the end of their credibility, when the so-called dries gained the ascendancy.

June 25, 2019

We must not join Trump's cold war (AFR 25.6.2019)

Scott Morrison should spell out Australia’s opposition to Washington’s futile attempts to contain China.

August 31, 2015

Frank Brennan. Bishop Geoffrey Robinson at the Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The royal commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse continues to fill us with dread that we have not yet adequately identified why the incidence of abuse reported in our institutions is higher than in other churches. The divisions amongst our bishops, previously unreported and unknown previously to many of the faithful, are disheartening. Just this week we have heard Bishop Geoffrey Robinson who was an auxiliary bishop to Cardinal Pell when he was archbishop of Sydney telling the royal commission that His Eminence ‘had lost the support of the majority of his priests and that alone made him a most ineffective bishop’. Cardinal Pell is the most promoted Catholic cleric in Australian history. The point is not whether Bishop Robinson is right or wrong. The point is that we are part of a social institution which is suffering an acute loss of institutional coherence when an auxiliary bishop sees a need to make such a public statement about his erstwhile archbishop.

February 22, 2024

Assanges draconian prosecution criminalises journalism and grants the US extraterritorial reach

In an extraordinary barely reported turn of events close to the conclusion of Julian Assanges two day UK High Court Appeal against his extradition, a gaping hole appeared in plans to shunt him onto a plane to the US.

November 24, 2016

Quo vadis - the future of the US-Australian alliance. Part 2.

_Summary. Malcolm Fraser warned us that w_e no longer have an independent capacity to stay out of America’s wars.

June 22, 2015

Peter Hughes. Subsidising foreign investment with visas.

Current Affairs

Visas which give wealthy business people and investors a pathway to permanent residence and Australian citizenship through various forms of investment have been around for many years. The new twist, under the Government’s recently announced ‘complying investments’ for the Significant Investor Visa, is to channel some money out of safe investments and into venture capital and start-ups.

The $5 million worth of investment that a foreign investor must make in Australia to qualify for a visa must now include at least $500,000 in eligible Australian venture capital or private equity funds investing in start-ups and small private companies. The Government expects to increase this to $1 million for new applications within two years. In addition, at least a further $1.5 million of the $5 million total must go into in eligible managed funds or listed companies that invest in emerging firms.

May 31, 2018

MICHAEL LAMBERT: The Superannuation Reform Proposals

A substantial Productivity Commission report, Superannuation: Assessing Efficiency and Competitiveness, was released this week with submissions due by 13 July 2018. It is an important report that reviews the $2.6 trillion industry with 15 million members and provides sensible reform proposals though the handling of the default allocation to My Super accounts does require further consideration.

December 22, 2019

JOCELYN CHEY China: Where To From Here?

A series of posts on this blog in the last two weeks have highlighted aspects of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) that are often overlooked in discussion of the bilateral relationship. We have to get used to living with the Chinese elephant in our neighbourhood.

July 23, 2019

MICHAEL McKINLEY. Reflections on the nuclear dimensions of Hugh Whites 'How To Defend Australia'

Australian strategic thinking, like Draculas Transylvania, is very much troubled by the undead. Research undertaken 50 years ago by Ian Bellany, a nuclear physicist and predecessor of Hugh White in the ANUs Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, wrestled with a remarkably similar Australian defence problematic - namely whether nuclear weapons might be a safeguard against a rising China and concluded that other options (military and diplomatic) were far more preferable. The times have changed, and with them, so it seems, the need to disinter the corpse if only to rebury it.

April 11, 2019

MIKE SCRAFTON. Political leadership and the next war.

If there is any consensus among commentators on geopolitics and strategic policy, it is that the world is entering into uncertain and dangerous times. In the term of the next Australian government political leadership could confront grave situations requiring decisions about war and peace. Few of Australias leaders, if any, have seen combat let alone managed existential questions at the national strategic level.

October 5, 2018

GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND

A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts covered in other media.

July 28, 2015

John Menadue. Our health system is sustainable.

To justify an increase in the GST, Premier Baird has joined the long list of conservatives who keep telling us that our health system is unsustainable. Earlier the Treasurer, Ministers for Health and the Commission of Audit warned us in one way or another that the Australian health service is unsustainable, particularly with an ageing population.

The fact is that it is sustainable. .

We need to keep modernising Medicare but by almost any international comparison we have one of the best and most sustainable health services in the world. We need to keep our problems in perspective.

July 24, 2015

Richard Letts. George Brandis' hobby.

George Brandiss day job is as Commonwealth Attorney-General. He is also Arts Minister, which on the evidence he treats as a sort of hobby. He has been responsible now for two annual arts budgets. In the 2014 budget, there was a cut to arts funding but he quarantined from the cut the 28 major performing arts organisations funded through the Australia Council; these are the main orchestras, opera companies, theatre companies, dance/ballet companies, Musica Viva and Circus Oz. They were quarantined again in 2015, not from an overall funding cut to the arts, but from a raid by Brandis himself on the funds of the Australia Council.

January 12, 2015

Walter Hamilton. Crunch Time for Abenomics

Is it time to declare Abenomics, the recession-busting strategy of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a failure? If so, was the recent Japanese election purely an exercise for Shinzo Abe to protect himself and the ruling coalition from a half-awake electorate before the deluge?

Launched with much fanfare in 2012, Abenomics promised to cure deflation, revive economic growth, break down structural rigidities in the economy, unlock the talents of women in the workplace and salvage the nations deficit-drowned budget. In two years, it has achieved none of these objectives; nor, arguably, has it brought any of them within reach.

December 11, 2019

JAMES LAURENCESON. China in a time of change.

China and the Technology Race

To deliver rising living standards to its citizens, China needs to move up the production value chain. Technological progress and innovation are at the heart of this. That is why US measures to restrict Chinas access to technology are viewed by Beijing as far more serious than tariffs: the former is tantamount to an attempt at containment. China spends nearly the same amount the US does on research and development (R&D), closing in on $US500 billion every year.

June 30, 2015

Ian McAuley. The ABC and a second chance.

Current Affairs

Most reasonable people would be fully behind Mark Scotts spirited defence of the ABC as a public broadcaster, not a state broadcaster, reminding us that at times, free speech principles mean giving platforms to those with whom we fundamentally disagree.

Tony Abbotts reaction to Zaky Mallahs remarks on Q&A is comparable to the religious fundamentalists hysterical reaction to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. When Abbott said heads should roll, he was undoubtedly speaking metaphorically, but such language spurs hotheads to extreme violence. Its a chilling reminder that journalists have been beheaded for upsetting the delicate sensitivities of religious bigots.

May 19, 2015

John Menadue. Making the Federation work better.

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue.

State governments spend about 25% of their budgets on health and another 25% on education. A cooperative arrangement between the commonwealth and state governments in one of these areas would greatly improve the operation of our federation. This article will focus on possible cooperation in health.

A State handover of health services to the Commonwealth, as suggested by Tony Abbott many years ago, would be one way to overcome the waste and buck-passing between the Commonwealth and State governments in health. Kevin Rudd suggested that his government might take over state hospitals. Opinion polls suggested that the public would support this approach. But Kevin Rudd backed away. In passing it should be noted that the Commonwealth has no recent experience in running hospitals. It is not an easy task.

December 12, 2019

HAIQING YU. China in a Time of Change

The social credit system of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has attracted worldwide attention.

July 8, 2019

TOM ENGLELHARDT. Were Not the Good Guys Why Is American Aggression Missing in Action?(TomDispatch.com 2.7.2019)

Headlined U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War, the article wastucked awayon page A9 of a recent_New York Times_. Still, it caught my attention. Here’s the first paragraph:

American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, pushed by the White House to develop new options that could help deter Tehran without escalating tensions into a full-out conventional war, according to current and former officials.

December 30, 2015

John Menadue and Peter Hughes. Slogans vs Facts on Boat Arrivals, Part 2

Reposted from 23/09/2015

Tony Abbott did not stop the boats

In this blog yesterday (22 September2015) we pointed out that Tony Abbott kept the door open for tens of thousands of boat arrivals by opposing legislation that would have enabled implementation of the Malaysia Arrangement in September 2011. By this action, he helped turn on the green light for people smugglers.

Moreover, the data just does not support the claim that, after coming to power in September 2013, Tony Abbott “stopped the boats”. The media uncritically accepted the Coalitions line in the confused period of the changeover of governments and in the context of drama and secrecy surrounding a small number of boat turn-backs.

May 24, 2015

Peter Hughes, Arja Keski-Nummi and John Menadue. Part 1. Immigration Policy and Administration.

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue.

Overview

This paper sets out a broad design for Australia’s immigration, refugee and settlement policies for the coming decades.

The issues are covered in three parts:

Immigration Policy and Administration
Refugee Policy
Migrant Settlement and Citizenship Policy

Part 1: Immigration Policy and Administration

1.1 Guiding Principles

Australia’s planned immigration program has played a major role in Australia’s development over the last 70 years directly adding 7 million people, including 800,000 humanitarian entrants, to Australia’s population and dramatically diversifying Australia from a predominantly Anglo-Celtic community to a multicultural society with more than 270 ancestries.

September 7, 2018

WANNING SUN. Reasons aplenty for China's ban of the ABC.

As a form of symbolism, banning a website works much more effectively than conventional expressions of official displeasure such as flexing military muscles, cancelling a trade deal, recalling a countrys ambassador or refusing a foreign correspondents visa.

July 5, 2017

CAVAN HOGUE. Crisis In Korea: can the irresistible force and the immovable object co-exist?

The launch of an ICBM by the DPRK may yet bring a positive result if it gets China, Russia and the USA all working together to find a solution involving carrot and stick. Any solution will need to make the DPRK feel secure form foreign attack and its neighbours secure from DPRK attack which means negotiations that the US has so far refused. However, the kind of wider peace treaty idea put forward by Russia and China could work; it is hard to see any other practical solution.. Kim Jong Un is not, as some claim, inconsistent but knows exactly what he is doing. Can we say the same for Donald Trump?

August 17, 2015

David Holmes. Australia's climate politics on a high wire.

(or - Murdoch and Abbott in climate dial duet)

While the politicisation of climate change has transformed climate reporting into something of a circus, the Coalitions announcement of a 26% emissions reduction target on 2005 levels for Australia by 2030 has surely placed its climate policy on a dangerous high wire.

The high wire is not that the target has been set too high. It is that trying to balance this defeatist target is going to lead to the collapse of Direct Action, and will impair the ability of the Coalition-News Corp publicity machine to defend fossil fuels.

June 29, 2015

Ross Kerridge. GP Remuneration.

Current Affairs

I understand that at the recent National Conference of the AMA there was general support for a move to help funding systems other than just fee-for-service. Ross Kerridge examines this issue below. John Menadue

Healthcare Heroes. How to reward GPs for what they do best: a hospital specialists proposal

There is an old saying in healthcare: - If the GP is good, a specialist may be able to help. If the GP is bad, nothing will help."

June 23, 2015

Brad Chilcott. Refugees, possibility before protest.

Current Affairs.

As founder and national director of Welcome to Australia my dream is that many thousands of refugees and other migrants arrive safely in Australia every year to be welcomed into a fair, diverse and inclusive society where they will live free from vilification, fear and prejudice.

For asylum seekers and refugees themselves, the greatest risk of Labors upcoming National Conference is not the danger of an imperfect chapter in the Platform. It is the danger of Labor failing to deliver real and practical outcomes to help ease their plight, while causing them to endure the real-world impact of re-energising the politics of fear and vilification of the worlds most vulnerable.

June 20, 2015

Robert Manne. Papal Encyclical and Cardinal Pell

Current Affairs

In The Monthly on 31 October 2011, Robert Manne recalled the efforts of Cardinal George Pell to discredit the case of those who were concerned about climate change. Cardinal Pell said that Robert Manne was following fashionable opinion on the subject. Extracts from Robert Mannes article follow below. John Menadue.

In the_Sydney Morning Heraldof October 28, Eugene Robinson, a columnist with the_Washington Post, reported the findings ofthe most comprehensive study of the Earths temperature ever undertaken. The study had been conducted by the Professor of Physics at University of California, Berkeley, Richard Muller. His team had collated 1.6 billion temperature readings. Interestingly, Muller had begun his study as a climate change sceptic, mocking Michael Manns hockey stick graph; sympathetic to those responsible for hacking the University of East Anglia Climategate emails. The denialists were confident that Mullers study would produce results favourable to their cause. Muller even received a grant of $150,000 from the great sponsors of US denialism, the fossil fuel industry-based Koch brothers. As it turned out, however, the studyconfirmed earlier findings. Since the 1950s the Earths temperature has indeed risen by about 1C. Muller argued in theWall Street Journal: When we began our study, we felt that sceptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didnt know what wed find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. He concluded: You should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer. Of course these results were immediately contested. Muller was once a climate change sceptic. His new enemies are climate change denialists. Nothing illustrates the distinction between climate change scepticism and denialism more neatly than the differences that are presently opening up between Muller and his critics.

June 11, 2015

Jon Stanford. Policy Approach to Climate Change

Policy Series

Given that the substantial threat brought about by anthropogenic climate change has been recognised for a quarter of a century, it is remarkable that global policy makers have been so dilatory in responding to it. Voluminous scientific and economic studies have been produced, Ministers have met annually to discuss and negotiate a global policy response and yet in terms of outcomes nothing much has happened. This year, however, the annual conference of the parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to be held in Paris will be of unusual importance. The parties will be required to commit to making reductions in greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2020 in pursuit of their agreed objective of limiting the future rise in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius.

November 8, 2017

JOHN WARHURST. The Coalition's special disrespect for unions.

The raid on the offices of the Australian Workers Union by the Australian Federal Police demonstrates a disrespect for trade unions contrary to the Catholic tradition. Since the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, Catholic Social Teaching has recognised the right of workers to join together collectively in unions as an important element of the search for the common good in a market economy. The political theatre indulged in by the Employment Minister Michaelia Cash and the Registered Organisations Commission is especially worrying for the deeper attitudes it reveals.

December 15, 2015

The end of the NBN - missed opportunity for the innovation agenda?

In BuddeBlog, Paul Budde again outlines the major problems that the NBN faces. In this article he draws attention to reports that the government may be considering selling the NBN. He points out that it was remarkable that the NBN did not feature in Malcolm Turnbull’s Innovation Statement.

See link to BuddeBlog below.

http://www.buddeblog.com.au/frompaulsdesk/the-end-of-the-nbn-missed-opportunity-for-the-innovation-agenda/

October 20, 2015

Dean Ashenden. What is to be done about Australian schooling?

Dealing with high and rising social and cultural segregation is the real challenge of school reform.

Over the past two or three months alone, no fewer than five prominent individuals and organisations have tried to answer an increasingly vexing question: what is to be done about Australian schooling?

Australia, these various commentators agree, is among the school reform dunces of the Western world. While other countries forge ahead (the argument goes) we are stuck. Some schools and school systems government, independent or Catholic and some curriculum areas have done better than others, but since around the turn of the century none has done much more than flatline, despite strenuous reform efforts by state and federal governments.

June 24, 2015

David Charles. Innovation in Australia.

Policy Series.

Australia is currently facing a challenging situation in which the economy needs to transform from one very largely driven by investments in the minerals and energy sector to one which has a wider spread of investment drivers. The overall economic growth rate, while still reasonably strong by OECD standards, is below the long term rate of about 3 to 3 and one half per cent per annum.

The famous three Ps productivity, population and participation - all need to play their part if Australia is to get back to its long term growth path.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal