Crispin Hull

THE banks will behave badly again. The only questions are how long it will take and what form will it take. In the 2011 film “Margin Call” an investment bank CEO played by Jeremy Irons rattles off the years of financial busts from the late 17th century to the 2008 crisis that he is dealing with in the film. Continue reading “Malfeasance evolves with booms and busts”

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. Continue reading “Economic blinkers warp immigration assessment”

THE future is in plain sight. I saw it over the past two weekends at either end of the country: in a house in Middleton south of Hobart and on Low Island, north-east of Cairns.

A family of five lives in the Middleton house. At Easter, my wife and I made it seven. The house is off-grid and off main water. On Low Island, a caretaker and several volunteers inhabit three houses and research the reef, take weather observations and look after the lighthouse. Again it is off the grid and there is obviously no mains water. The lighthouse is also run off solar power. Continue reading “Unprincipled Monash Forum ignores the obvious”

Published in The Canberra Times on 3 April 1982.

The Franklin River, in Tasmania’s wild south-west, is under threat by a hydro-electricity damming scheme. CRISPIN HULL rafted down river, finding the beauties and ruthlessness of the wild.

Franklin River rafters call it the Masterpiece.

It is a slab of rock the size of a car that sticks out on the western side of the river. The river has taken thousands of years to carve it into a smooth, abstract sculpture, and it has not finished its work. Continue reading “Rafting the Franklin: a trip of fearful beauty”

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. Continue reading “Dealing with the irrational at Budget time”

INTERNATIONAL competitiveness has had a bad week, whereas with a little enlightened government it could be the beginning of something really worthwhile.
Continue reading “The good and bad of international competitiveness”

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. Continue reading “Another tax policy from the jack-in-a-box”

MOST governments and regulators will admit they were taken by surprise by Uber, yet with many car companies expecting to have driverless cars in the early 2020s (two years away), a lot of questions remain unanswered. The chief executive and commissioner of the National Transport Commission, Paul Retter, acknowledged as much at the Australian Logistics Council Forum in Sydney last week. Equally, electric cars (driverless or not) present a major tax question. Smart governments would be preparing for the disruption. Continue reading “Preparing for disruption by driverless and electric cars”

HERE is a hypothetical example about a small jurisdiction – Tasmania – which can be used to illustrate a point. Just say Tasmania’s GDP grows by 1.5 per cent one year to $30 billion and the Tasmanian Government says, “Wow, we are obviously getting it right.” Continue reading “Measuring progress not just money”

As China’s President Xi Jinping came closer this week to becoming the next Emperor of China for Life, western leaders wrung their hands and worried about China’s military power; cyber power and soft power – meanwhile naively surrendering, without a scintilla of opposition, primacy the one field that made the British and then the American empires world dominant – energy. Continue reading “Beware the green dragon, not the red one”