Category: Uncategorized

IT IS now a decade since I left permanent full-time employment. As it happens at roughly the same time Australia’s workforce hit a cross-over point. Those in full-time employment are now out-numbered by the rest of the workforce. Continue reading “Work crumbling to bits and pieces”

THE Coalition’s willingness to rule in discussion of the GST reminded me of an encounter some years ago. I was in the checkout queue at Manuka Coles and who should be behind me but a leading economist in one of Australia’s leading think tanks. Continue reading “Smarter, higher taxes make us better off”

TELEVISION journalists often have to fill air, especially when a big story breaks but there is little new detail to be had. And thus it was on the day the election was called. Perhaps the two most ill-considered statements were about the prospects for the Greens in the Senate. Continue reading “Rudd change to help Green Senate hopes”

CANBERRA’S bitter winter and even more bitter electricity costs are making everyone painfully aware of the need for greater energy efficiency in the home. It will be reinforced come the extremes of summer when the air-conditioner beckons. Continue reading “EER ratings past their used-by date”

EVERY television and radio news broadcast in Australia – commercial and public – has the same misguided priority. They all put sport before the weather. Continue reading “Weathering the media sport storm”

THE unannounced, but perhaps the best, part of Prime Minister Kevin’s Rudd’s change to the carbon tax is that it will very likely put the Australian car industry out of its misery. That would also put Australian taxpayers out of a lot of misery – $19 billion worth of misery to be more precise. Continue reading “End of car industry a benefit of tax change”

THE Instruction Manual for the British Civil Service (which is used extensively by its Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and even US counterparts) has quite a few instructions in several chapters on what to do when an incoming government proposes to “cut through the red tape”. I was reminded of the chapters this week when Opposition Leader Tony Abbott announced he was going to set up a “Deregulation Unit” within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Continue reading “Another futile attack on red tape”

NO DOUBT that before white settlement, the indigenous people of Australia lived in, what Thomas Hobbes called, a state of nature in which life was “nasty, brutish and short”. And to some extent life is more nasty, brutish and short for indigenous Australians than it is for the rest, but perhaps better than what it was in the state of nature. Continue reading “Qld murder laid bare & credit card usury”

THERE is something demeaning about the ride in the big white car ride to the Governor-General’s residence in Yarralumla – not just for defeated Prime Ministers, but also new ones. Australian Prime Ministers, though indirectly elected by the people, must be appointed by the Governor-General who in turn is the appointed representative of the monarch who holds office by hereditary or divine right. Continue reading “The demeaning trip to Yarralumla”

TWO plus two does not equal four. A rise in global temperatures of four-degrees is not just twice as bad as a rise of two-degrees. The effect is exponential. “Business in a four-degree world is not possible,” Ian Dunlop told a gathering in Canberra this week. Continue reading “2 + 2 does not equal 4 and business becomes impossible”