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Archived news for May 2010 | Recent news
Privacy pose shows the minister is off his Facebook
It must have felt nice for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy not to be the bad guy. Just for a little while. At a Senate estimates hearing...
Ruddism doesn't add up
MALCOLM Fraser, now the darling of the left, has declared the Rudd Government to be worse than the 1972-75 Whitlam Government. Previously, even...
Rudd loses grip on reality
Kevin Rudd's reliance on economic modelling to justify his resource super profits tax (RSP'I) is ironic. Only a year ago he was blaming economic...
A lesson in how not to cook up a birthday cake
John Hewson's GST-on-a-birthday-cake moment is now folklore on how not to sell a new tax. That lesson is something the Rudd government is now...
Defence's spending debacle
If you still have faith in the natural efficiency of government, there's a quick way to eliminate that. Read the first dozen pages of the...
Rocks in their heads: ministers' miscalculation over resources tax leaves Labour in a hard place
According to the Metals Economics Group, global spending on exploration in 2009 totalled $US8.4 billion. Australia enjoyed 13 per cent of this...
Budget papers fudged to boost Rudd's stimulus effect
"It will always be difficult," said Ken Henry in February 2009, after he was asked whether the government would ever be able to judge the success...
Why trimming the waste line is harder than it looks
It must be election time: fiscal conservatism is fashionable again. Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey go into this election with a battle cry about the...
Resource tax digging a hole for rich and poor
Terry McCrann named Labor's proposed Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) the Really Stupid Politicians Tax. RSPT also has a similar ring to British...
No self-control in budget
Kevin Rudd has come full circle. Before the 2007 federal election, he was a fiscal conservative. During the global financial crisis, he was a...