It’s often said that the only certain things in life are death and taxes. In reality, of course, if you’re willing to pay lawyers and accountants enough, you might be able to avoid taxes. But no matter how much you spend on doctors, the best you can do is prolong your mortality. And for some,

Climate change and food security are among the biggest problems facing the world today, and the fact that an increase in the former means a lot less of the latter simply makes both problems even more urgent. While the overlap in the consequences of these two problems might be obvious, what is less clear is

Contrary to the speeches made by many politicians, national economies are not like households. Indeed, the household management analogies that politicians often use to explain their approach to budgetary policy are rarely useful or appropriate. The way the Coalition is using the analogy is simply bizarre; they seem to have confused micro-economics and macro-economics. While

Regardless of the result of the next election, the ALP will hold an inquiry into what went wrong. How on earth, they will ask, could a government presiding over low unemployment, low inflation, low levels of public debt and a triple A credit rating be seen as poor economic managers at a time when the

Confusion lies at the heart of Treasurer Wayne Swan’s sixth budget. Does he want to be a big spender or a low taxer? Is he a Keynesian who is relaxed about the budget deficit, or is he a fiscal conservative determined to rein in public spending? Who can say?

My fantasy budget would be one that attempted to match the government’s spending to the public’s priorities and one in which taxing and spending policies, otherwise known as fiscal policy, was based on a close reading of simple economic theory rather than a quick skim of what’s trending on Twitter. Australia has one of the

NOBODY could have predicted that the might of Rio Tinto would be challenged by Bulga, a tiny NSW town of 300. Certainly, nobody could have predicted that Bulga would win. But when the Land and Environment Court overturned the NSW government’s approval for the expansion of Rio Tinto’s Warkworth coal mine, citing that the project’s

What is the corporate equivalent of a dole bludger? For all the talk about class warfare in Australia it is interesting that the conservatives have a pejorative name for individuals who need support from the state but progressives don’t even have a term for the foreign companies that make huge profits but still have their

In New Zealand, cabinet documents are routinely released soon after cabinet has made a decision. In fact, the New Zealand guide for accessing cabinet documents states explicitly that the need for public servants to provide “frank and fearless” advice is not a reason to keep cabinet submissions secret. Where many Australian public servants might react

Labor’s problem is not so much what it stands for but what does it stand against. Tony Abbott is against the carbon tax, the Greens are against the big mining companies and Nick Xenophon is against pokies but Labor is against, drum roll please, the Liberals. I know, I know, the ALP has passed lots

Tony Abbott’s Direct Action Plan has been ridiculed by many as expensive and unworkable. One of the primary objections has been that the centrepiece of the policy, the Emissions Reduction Fund, is a baseline-and-credit scheme that will require counterfactual baselines to be set for every participating polluter. The baseline for a given polluter will be

A cabinet reshuffle provides the perfect opportunity for a prime minister to clarify the role of incoming ministers. From his deeds, it’s pretty clear Martin Ferguson interpreted his job as representing the interests of those who profit from extracting our resources rather than the citizens who own those resources. And given their praise on his

Although the new water trigger law, recently introduced by the Government was cheered by the rural independents, Greens and environmental groups, the proposal is illogical, runs counter to existing policy structures and is unlikely to improve environmental outcomes. The government has unilaterally introduced this water trigger in breach of the 1997 Council of Australian Governments

Last week, CSR closed a Sydney factory and made 150 people redundant. This was not caused by the carbon price, the mining tax or our industrial relations laws. The simple fact is that the high exchange rate that accompanies our mining boom has made many manufacturers uncompetitive. How much income support should they receive? How

Over the past century thousands of generous Australians have died and left some or all of their estate in a “perpetual trust” to be used for philanthropic goals. But most of the “perpetual trustees” have not been as long-lived as the funds they were managing and many funds were bought up by larger financial institutions

The fact that Gina Rinehart inherited billions of dollars apparently means that people earning $150,000 a year are entitled to feel average. The average income for an employed person in Australia is $58,375.20 a year. The median is $50,076. $150,000 a year is a lot of money. It is not average, it is not middle,

The government’s obsession with speeding up the mining boom has delivered an exchange rate and a shortage of skilled labour that is devastating the manufacturing industry. Rather than take its foot off the mining boom accelerator or admit that the miners’ boom means a bust for manufacturers, the government is trying to buy itself some

It’s very difficult to determine what the right rate of population growth should be, but it’s very easy to determine the wrong one. If there are no spare seats on the trains, no spare beds in the hospitals and no room on the roads then we aren’t ready for the anticipated net migration of 1

Conservative politicians usually work hard to ensure they are seen as “tough on law and order”. Respect for the law is obviously essential in a democracy and there is usually no shortage of politicians lining up to call for more police and tougher sentences to discourage or punish those who transgress. But this enthusiasm for

Traditional retailers are happy to pay a premium for high visibility locations and the same is true online. In the online marketplace, high visibility means featuring prominently in search engine results. Google is by far the most used search engine in the world with more than 85 per cent of global search engine revenue. It’s

‘Mums and dads’ seem to be replacing ‘working families’ as the focus of political concern in Australia. The biggest problem with last week’s hoax media release about Whitehaven Coal, many argued, was its impact on ”mum and dad investors”. The language of mum and dad investors is as widely used as it is meaningless. Gina

The native forest and forest product industries contribute a miniscule amount to the Australian economy (in the order of 0.15% to 0.20% of GDP). Despite this, it has dominated the minds and energies of many politicians and environmental policy makers for decades. Among other things, it helped spark the emergence of the environmental movement in

The Climate Change Authority’s final report on the renewable energy target, which was released yesterday, contains a number of controversial conclusions and recommendations. A standout amongst these is the recommendation that the federal government explore whether making native forest wood waste eligible to participate in the large-scale RET (LRET) would increase the rate of harvesting

Our two-speed economy has a two-tiered tax system, with capital-intensive mining companies paying among the lowest rates of corporate tax and the labour-intensive service sector paying among the highest. All companies face the same nominal 30 per cent tax on income but the existence of accelerated depreciation and other tax concessions deliver disproportionately for the

Economic growth is a very strange thing. In 1949 when our gross domestic product was about a tenth of what it is today, Australia set out to build 145 kilometres of tunnels, 16 major dams and nine power stations as part of the Snowy Hydro scheme. But 60 years later, when GDP is $1.3 trillion

The newly-inked Tasmanian Forest Agreement has been hailed by many as a historic breakthrough that provides Tasmania with an opportunity to end the divisive “forest wars” and remake the state’s ailing economy. In truth, it is a case study in how not to make policy. By handing over the responsibility for resolving the dispute to

Conservative politicians used to bemoan the way Australia’s youth mindlessly imported American culture, but you don’t hear so much of that these days. Maybe it’s because many conservative politicians have become so comfortable importing their political talking points from their US counterparts. Like Republicans in the US, many in the Coalition seem alarmed about debt,

Imagine if we could increase the number of car parking spots in the Canberra CBD by 20 per cent. Now imagine we could do so at no cost to government, business or individuals and with no disruption. Would you support it? I imagine you would. So, what’s the catch? The catch is that most street-side

According to Rene Hidding, Tasmania’s Liberal spokesman for forestry, it is “insulting” to Tasmanians to inform them about the tiny contribution the forestry and logging industries make to that state’s employment. Presumably he thinks it would be better to deceive the people? For all of the analysis about what the collapse of the state’s forest

Job ads and corporate websites are often littered with claims that particular companies are “employers of choice” or committed to the wellbeing of staff. But according to a recent survey by the Australia Institute, around one third of the workforce reports experiencing stress and anxiety as a result of their work. About 2.2 million workers