Bundaberg is experiencing a flurry of exploratory drilling for coal deposits. The local mining sector is buzzing, and its investors are trumpeting the region as Queensland’s newest coal centre.  They promise jobs, money, and a shiny white rabbit from under their hard hat! The Bundaberg community isn’t convinced.  They fear the coal mine expansion will

If Barry O’Farrell was serious about reducing alcohol-fuelled violence on Sydney streets there are solutions. He could regulate opening hours, increase the price of alcohol sold late at night or even set a maximum blood alcohol level for people in public places and empower the police to undertake random breath testing on our streets and

Sooner or later, the Abbott government will have to stimulate the economy using fiscal policy – just like the Rudd government did in response to the global financial crisis and the Howard government did in 2001. That was the key message to come from the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), released by treasurer Joe

Children who use the “but everyone else was doing it” defence don’t usually get very far. I remember my mother retorting: “If everyone else was sticking their head in an oven, would you do that too?” But while sharing risks may not be a great idea for kids, it is, it seems, the most popular way

I think that politicians work hard. I still think that even after Tony Abbott announced that the House of Representatives will sit for only 72 days next year. But the issue isn’t whether they work hard, it’s what they work hard on. Click below to read more of this article published in The Canberra Times.

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. 

Do you think cars are better than planes? What about apples? Are apples better than sandwiches? It is hard to answer some questions because they don’t make much sense. Take our political debate about climate change, for example.

Peter Reith, Paul Howes and Innes Willox think lifting the ban on fracking in Victoria will stop gas prices from rising. Sorry guys, but you’re wrong. To think that more gas is going to stop the price going up misunderstands why the gas price is rising.

While capitalism was built on the notion that new companies and industries would destroy old ones, the modern version of capitalism is far more clubby, far more polite and far less innovative. Innovative branding and marketing strategies are okay, but it seems the emergence of whole new industries would be going a bit too far.

Tax is the price we pay to live in a civilised society. It is what funds our health system, our education system and our public transport infrastructure. Tony Abbott has just asked the head of the Business Council of Australia to advise him on how much we should spend on those things. Not surprisingly, the

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

Despite decades of debate, many economists can’t agree with each other about fundamental issues. We can’t agree what causes unemployment, we can’t agree what fixes it and we can’t agree whether we should run deficits when the economy slows down. Careers could be made on the length of some unresolved disputes with colleagues. Lawyers, on

If you believe the recent media reports about the composition of the Senate from July 1 next year, you’d think we were facing three years of the Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party (PUP) “bloc” holding the Abbott government to ransom. But there are two important reasons to view such reports with scepticism…

While the Coalition is yet to turn around a boat carrying asylum seekers, it has already made a stunning turnaround on the issue of government debt. Having raged against the ALP’s high-taxing, high-spending ways for the past six years Joe Hockey now wants us to be a bit more sophisticated in our approach to public finance. After spending years

Earlier this month the Greens lost more than 500,000 of the 1.6 million voters who supported them in 2010. Earlier this week Greens leader Christine Milne lost six of her most senior staff, including her chief of staff who cited fundamental strategy differences as the reason for his departure. Senator Milne, on the other hand,

The carbon price has become the ultimate political symbol. But has this helped or harmed the cause for those who support it? For many progressives this symbol was so potent that they ran a “say yes” campaign for it even before they knew what it would entail. Regardless of the emission reduction targets or the generosity

A common response from progressive Australians to electoral defeat is to threaten to move to New Zealand.  Just what moving to a country with a weaker economy, worse weather and a conservative government is supposed to achieve is typically left unsaid.  There is no doubt that if he sticks to his word there will be

Australia has listened, it has voted and it has decided. Australia wants political arrangements ‘other’ than what the major parties intended. It’s not what Sophie Mirabella expected before being ‘outgunned’ by the independent forces of Cathy McGowan and Tony Windsor. It’s not what ALP faceless man, Don Farrell, expected when he gave up his number

Small reforms to Senate preference voting could deliver a better and more stable system for everyone. A simple solution would be to ensure that parties which polled below a threshold, say 2 per cent, could disburse but not receive preferential votes. Such an approach would ensure no votes were “wasted” but at the same time

When Ford announced it would close its Melbourne plant at a cost of about 1200 jobs, the nation went into shock. But where is that shock now as Tony Abbott promises to shed at least 12,000 more public-sector jobs than Labor? What’s worse is that he’s making this pledge in the middle of an election

If tax is the price we pay to live in a civilised society it seems that neither of the major parties have high hopes for the communities they say they want to build in northern Australia. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is suggesting that companies based in the Northern Territory should face a reduced company tax

The word productivity will be used countless times in this election campaign but the issue of our investment in science will be lucky to get its 24-hour news cycle in the sun. And while business groups are often critical of governments for being focused on the short term, they are not calling for increased funding

With polls showing we may be on track for another minority government, suddenly we seem surrounded by cries of “not another hung parliament”. And segments of the media and business are again raising exaggerated fears about the “risk and uncertainty” or “instability and short-termism” that will accompany such an outcome. But the fact is that

When politicians lie, make things up or simply get important things wrong, we take for granted that it is the role of their political opponents to highlight such errors. Our politicians are so focused on each other’s words that a mere slip of the tongue can become a news story for days. This isn’t so for

Australian universities have been reaping the benefits from taking international students for years. But is that the way it will always be? What if the countries those students come from turn the tables on the cash strapped western universities and ask them to bid for the work?

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s announcement that the carbon price is now a quarter of what was forecast is good news; the question is, for whom? Rather than crippling, the impact of the carbon price is barely even irritating for most polluters. Compared with the impact of the high exchange rate since 2007, the carbon price

Is economics a science? When we teach economics students, we usually tell them that they are learning about “the science of the efficient allocation of scarce resources”. But when we listen to public debate, often economists don’t sound very scientific. While it is often said that science can’t proceed without failure, it’s rare to hear an

When it comes to future generations it seems that we can never be too generous. But is this generosity coming at the expense of current generations? In Canberra, when it comes to job losses, it seems the answer is ”yes”. Consider the Australian National University’s approach to its finances. The ANU is owned by taxpayers

The mining industry is in the middle of an expensive new campaign to convince Australians that the growth of mining will not come at the expense of farming. In late 2011 Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott talked about respecting the rights of farmers and about protecting arable land from mining, but rejected calls to stop

Last week, the newly installed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd challenged Tony Abbott to a debate about public sector debts and deficits. If it goes ahead, it would likely be a rare respite from the slogans that have haunted Australian public debate for the past few years. But the debate that we should be watching is