Like buying a house, it’s easy to get a free trade agreement if you don’t care what you get or how much you pay. Since coming to office, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has closed a number of free trade agreements in record time, and it shows.  The so-called free trade agreement with Japan ensures Australia

Would you support a trade agreement that prevented the Australian Government from requiring genetically modified foods to be clearly labelled? According to a recent survey by The Australia Institute, 73 per cent of South Australians would not. How about a trade agreement that allowed Australian television stations to show fewer Australian-made TV programs? According to

It’s an election year in Indonesia and, like some Australian politicians, there are Indonesian politicians who are willing to put a surge in the polls ahead of sound policy. And like some of their counterparts in Australia, there are Indonesian politicians who think the easiest way to get a surge in the polls is to

Free trade is overrated and collective ownership is underrated. It’s not the lefties and the greenies saying that, that’s what the Coalition government and some of the biggest businesses in Australia are saying. While most people pretend to support free trade “in principle”, in practice most of them lose their enthusiasm. 

At the moment the Abbott government’s position on foreign investment is being put to the test. GrainCorp is subject to a takeover bid by American company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).  This bid has received approval from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and we now await the decision of Treasurer, Joe Hockey.

The issues of coal seam gas and free trade are combining to create a perfect storm for the National Party, and in turn, the Coalition government. Tony Abbott obviously saw the clouds on the horizon before the election and responded by declaring that a Liberal would hold the Trade portfolio for the first time since

Australia used to have very high protection rates for its manufacturing industries. Historically tariff quotas on motor vehicles meant that Australian car prices were double the prices for equivalents overseas. Many other manufactured goods were sold at multiples of the prices in overseas markets. Australia like many other countries imposed very high tariffs on most

The faith of Australian policymakers and business leaders in communist China to keep delivering record growth is touching. Just as they assume the sun will rise tomorrow, so too do they believe those responsible for setting China’s exchange rate, making five-year plans and running their vast state-owned enterprises will keep doing a great job. When

The Nationals are worried about Chinese farm ownership yet it’s European mine ownership that’s harmed farmers Australians, it seems, don’t like selling off the farm. And the National Party really doesn’t seem to like selling them to the Chinese. But while the Nationals have a long, if not always proud, history in Australia it is

The federal government spent $374 billion last year providing services to its citizens, but it’s amazing what the government doesn’t know about those citizens. It is only every five years that we accurately measure the population through the census, and it’s only every six years that we get an accurate indication of what households spend

The Rio+20 gathering in Brazil last week was little more than a self-indulgent festival of environmental inaction. The idea of holding a summit to mark the 20 years since the world leaders last pledged to save the planet is like holding a lavish anniversary party to celebrate a failed marriage.

The standard excuse for why Australians pay far higher prices than Americans for clothes, consumer goods and cars is to highlight the high transport costs associated with the tyranny of distance. So what is their excuse for more expensive music and software downloads? Dearer data costs due to longer cables? You might assume that because

THE mining boom in Queensland might be big but it certainly isn’t broad. While the mining industry tries to suggest otherwise, the simple fact is millions of Queenslanders bear the pain of the mining boom without receiving any of the gain. Yes, the mining industry employs people and yes, they spend some of their money

Australian politicians have spent more than 20 years thinking up reasons not to tackle climate change, but the latest from Tony Abbott really must take the cake. According to the Opposition Leader, it now seems that until Communist China introduces a market-based mechanism to reduce their emissions, Australia shouldn’t either. That should buy us some

The Defence establishment must find it pretty hard not to chuckle when they hear people talking about climate change policy. Climate change has been described as a fundamental challenge to democratic decision making. The problem, we are told, is that while the costs are up front the benefits are both uncertain and will arise in

Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s decision to give U.S. President Barack Obama an iPod of Australian music speaks volumes about the ongoing evolution of the strong relationship between Australia and the United States. While successive leaders have demonstrated their warm commitment to the international relationship, it is hard to imagine John Howard, or even Kevin Rudd,

The Government wants to allow meat from countries with Mad Cow disease into Australia. And our loose labelling rules mean you won’t know the difference, writes Hilary Bambrick.

The Senate debate about the CPRS is getting close, and with views as diverse as those of Steve Fielding and Bob Brown it’s likely to be a cracker. Unfortunately, while there might be plenty of heat in the debate, whether the CPRS gets up or not will make no difference to global temperatures.

The science is becoming more alarming by the month, and so are the impacts of global warming itself. The demand for decisive action can only intensify over the next three years; it will require far-sighted policies to bring about a wholesale transformation of the nation’s energy economy, a structural change on a par with that

Green consumerism such as that advocated by Tim Flannery privatises responsibility for environmental decline, shifting blame from elected governments and industry onto the shoulders of individual citizens. The cause of climate change becomes the responsibility of “all of us”, which, in effect, means nobody. It is obvious why a government that wants to do nothing

In the last minutes of the 1997 Kyoto conference on climate change, Australia extracted a vital concession by insisting that countries be allowed to include emissions from land clearing in their greenhouse accounting. The Government knew that land clearing had declined sharply since the accepted base year of 1990, so even before the ink was