Month: November 2013

OH NO, not the family home. How can the Grattan Institute even dare to mention the sacrosanct family home in the same sentence as tax or means testing? Don’t these people understand anything about Australian “battling” and “doing-it-tough” families? Continue reading “Battlers doing it tough stymie tax reform”

THE text message from the cat breeder to my wife read: “Little Trim is doing well. She wade 1.3kg . . . “. Should we get apoplectic? The breeder is making a living. Her meaning was clear. She wrote the word “weighed” exactly as it sounded. If English spelling was reformed so words were spelt as they were sounded and the great works of literature were read aloud, nothing would be lost. Continue reading “Do we have to spell it out? — Yes”

FIFTY years ago this week, Prime Minister Robert Menzies set in train a policy which still stirs up controversy and division – the clash between private and public education. Menzies did it in his classic understated and politically artful way. The policy was stated in just 78 words, more than 5000 words in to his 7000-word election manifesto for the election to be held on 30 November 1963. Continue reading “Menzies began half a century of educational inequality”

I HAVE enlisted the help of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and the various economists who crafted cost-benefit analysis to help decide what to do about climate change. I hope that you, too, can do the same thing. Kant took a universalist approach. The test for morally commendable action was: what would happen if everyone did this? Mill’s test was the greatest good for the greatest number — utilitarianism. Continue reading “Philosophic approach to solar panel cost-benefit”

A SPLENDID thing is emerging from the US Budget crisis. It is indirectly and slowly forcing the US military to adopt more sensible policy. Instead of being “the policeman of the world” – which only gets everyone’s back up, it is being forced to concentrate on core US interests. Continue reading “US military: Republicans do right deed for wrong reason”