Category: Uncategorized

DELEGATES at the First Nations Constitutional Convention at Uluru have rejected symbolic constitutional recognition with some justification. In 1999 Australians rejected (55-45) a proposal to insert a preamble in the Constitution which included the words “honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation’s first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country”. Continue reading “Uluru statement requires end to monarchy as well”

IT IS is all very well talking about needs-based funding, but Gonski 2.0 is increasingly looking like the cynic’s view of foreign aid (poor people in rich countries giving to rich people in poor countries). With Gonski 2.0 it looks like: poor parents of government-school students in middle and rich suburbs subsidising rich parents of private-school students in in middle and poor suburbs. Continue reading “Rich getting too much with education funding”

EIGHTY years ago, Hitler had just remilitarised the Rhineland and had his eye on taking Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. Nothing happened after those takeovers but talks, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declaring, “Peace in our time.” Naivety and appeasement. Today we have North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The history is similar. Continue reading “The danger of dialogue and appeasing North Korea”

BUDGET time often shows Australia at its most sectional and selfish, especially if it is a Coalition Budget. This one was certainly no exception. It has been described as a turning away from the meanness of the Abbott Government’s mean approach of the 2014 Budget and turning away from obsession with deficits. But I get the sense that virtually every 2017 Budget measure was done with an eye to voters, but not to voters or society overall, but to particular “sectors” of voters who might change their vote for or against the Government according to how well or badly or unchanged the Budget affected their individual financial position. Continue reading “Budget: season of sectors and selfishness”

LET’S start with some definitions.

Good Investment: spending on things like disadvantaged schools where you get more bang for your bucks rather than elite schools because at disadvantaged schools the extra money goes on teaching. Elite schools already spend enough on education so the extra money goes on diving pools and the like, and do not improve educational outcomes. So that is Bad Investment. Continue reading “Good debt. Bad debt. Good govt. Bad Govt”

IS Malcolm Turnbull determined to lose the 2019 election? His statement this week that the Government could underwrite the rail line for the Adani mine would have increased the anger among small businesses in the six Reef Seats. Continue reading “Electoral consequences of Adani in the Reef Seats should scare PM”

THURSDAY (26 April) will be the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. It is perhaps timely to reflect on it, given the emphasis on bombing in the past couple of weeks: the bombing of Syria “in retaliation” for the use of chemical weapons; the Mother of All Bombs being dropped in Afghanistan; and the threats by North Korea to pre-emptively use nuclear bombs. Continue reading “80 years on, Guernica has lessons about bombing for us”

GOVERNMENTS, at state and federal level, are only looking at a half the “housing affordability” crisis, if that. The missing bit is that we have to go beyond merely discouraging investors from buying more houses to taking action to encourage existing investors to sell and move their money into more productive activity. Continue reading “Government has to get us out of housing mess it created”

THE Government would like us to measure its success on the “jobs and growth” illusion. It points to 103 quarters without a recession (growth). It points to increasing job vacancies and lower unemployment (jobs). And the ministers smile smugly. Continue reading “The “jobs and growth” distorted delusion”

Yesterday (31 March 2016), Australia equalled the Netherlands’ record of 103 consecutive quarters of economic growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product, without a recession. So why aren’t the champagne corks popping? The Netherlands’ boom came with gas in 1982 and ended with the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Continue reading “The GDP delusion – don’t pop the corks just yet”