Category: Uncategorized

MOST economists regard hypothecation as a Bad Thing. In the financial (as distinct from the legal) world, hypothecation is where a government agrees to apply all the money raised by a particular tax to a particular area of spending. Continue reading “Fuel and health taxes the next do-nothing inequities”

The Great Barrier Reef belongs to all humanity. A Hamburg newspaper picked up last week’s column

AS OUR agile, innovative, laissez-faire, small-government Prime Minister grapples with the contradictions of regulating gas exports and propping up the dying coal industry with public money, people might ponder anew the question of who has been the worse Coalition Prime Minister in recent history. Malcolm Turnbull himself? Tony Abbott? Billy McMahon? Continue reading “And the prize for worst Coalition PM goes to?”

THIS is not a crime against humanity. This is a crime by humanity. We have sentenced to death the largest living thing on the planet – the Great Barrier Reef. The sentence is being carried out slowly and painfully before our eyes. Continue reading “Great Barrier Reef now under irreversible death sentence”

HARDLY a week goes by without the publication of some well-thought-out, evidence-based paper recommending solutions to some of Australia’s pressing economic and social problems – tax, education, health, defence, energy and so on. But very few of them come out of our Parliament. And if they do, they come out of parliamentary committees which are usually not evidence-based but rather dependent on submissions by usually self-serving interest groups. Continue reading “Parliament fails; think tanks go to top of class”

YOU have to go back to 1829 to find the beginning of a presidential term as chaotic as the one this year. In 1829 Andrew Jackson entered the White House after a handsome electoral victory. He thereupon removed 919 government officials – about 10 per cent of the administration – so he could fulfill numerous promises made to people during the election campaign. And so began the “spoils” or patronage system in US politics which has ebbed and flowed ever since and is now flowing “bigly”. Continue reading “Isolationism the historic force in US politics”

IN THE past fortnight I have been reminded of Comical Ali, Iraq’s former information minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahhaf , whose broadcasts and media conferences denied the presence of US troops and tanks in Baghdad even as they could be seen behind him. The delusional in denial. What reminded me of him, of course, were all the climate change deniers spouting their nonsense while high-temperature records were broken and bushfires raged across the country. Continue reading “Coal-ition in delusional denial on electricity”

SENATOR Cory Bernardi’s statement that he wants to restore integrity and confidence in Australian politics as he ratted on the party under whose banner he was elected is about a credible as the assertion that Donald Trump will “never let you down” spoken by his third wife. And they are linked. Continue reading “Bernardi ratting shows Senate needs reform”

FORMER prime minister Tony Abbott’s call for a referendum to change the constitution to reduce the power of the Senate is, at last, an admission from the conservative side that the Constitution is “broke”. Hitherto, conservatives have mouthed the platitude, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Continue reading “Abolish double dissolutions and have fixed terms”

Thought I would share my pic of a black-tipped reef shark I took while snorkelling at Low Isles, Far North Queensland.