THE political equation is clear. On one hand, every year nearly everyone pays rego and third-party and mentally puts it down as a government-imposed charge. On the other hand, only a few hundred in the ACT and a few thousand nationally are injured seriously enough in road crashes to warrant a compensation claim. And thus, to dilute the blame for the former, the rights of the latter are made expendable. It is happening in the ACT. It has already happened in other jurisdictions. [click to continue…]
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THE revelations of the banking Royal Commission are just another example of what has gone wrong in so many countries since the false dawn of the fall of communism. The rise of unbridled predatory financial conduct and the rise of exploitative populism were not supposed to be the fruits of Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall, Mr Gorbachev” speech. But that is the result. 
THE Treasury-Home Affairs report on immigration seems to have based its evidence and reasoning upon its conclusion that high immigration is a “good thing”. On the report’s own figures, present high immigration will produce an extra 1.1 per cent of total GDP. Given that 190,000 immigrants year is just a tad under 1 per cent, that does not make for very much increase in GDP per person. And that is on Treasury’s optimistic and economics-only view. 
THE Treasurer and others might well look to behavioural psychology and behavioural economics when framing the Budget, but we would be better off if they ignored them. It took several decades for mainstream economists to accept that the economists’ view of the world was essentially flawed. 
INTERNATIONAL competitiveness has had a bad week, whereas with a little enlightened government it could be the beginning of something really worthwhile.
OVER the past week we have seen, yet again, the depressingly deficient way our political parties are dealing with what amounts to about half of their job – raising revenue. It was yet another jack-in-a-box policy. Out of the box suddenly and noisily popped Bill Shorten and Chris Bowen. They blurted out a line-item proposal to change to Australia’s complicated tax system. There appeared to be no consultation with even the partyroom, let alone the wider public which contains deep academic, industry and think-tank knowledge. 
