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Archived news for October 2011 | Recent news
A throwback to union militancy
The television scenes last week of union members marching through airport terminals were arresting. They wore vests, carried banners and were...
'Occupy' must understand there is nothing fundamentally wrong with banking
It is all too easy to dismiss the Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States and elsewhere over the past month. After all it was almost...
Most important to avoid the perception of crony capitalism
While there is a tradition of former bureaucrats moving to business or even politics, Ken Henry provides an interesting challenge to Australian...
Democracy means doubt
Those business leaders bleating Tony Abbott's promise to repeal the carbon tax should remember one thing. That's the price of doing business in...
Carbon policy sacrifices nation's wealth
When Adam Smith famously pointed out that "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation", he had in mind the foolishness of its political leaders. The...
Baillieu needs to move on reform
Nobody is accusing the Baillieu Government of intemperate haste in rectifying the Bracks-Brumby era's unrestrained spending programs and regulatory...
The costs of taxation and other Laffering matters
The Laffer curve is nothing new. The philosopher Ibn Khaldun (1332 - 1406) wrote in his 1375 masterpiece al-Mugaddimah: "At the beginning of the...
Rudd continues to struggle with economics
Recent musings by Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd provide a timely reminder that economic policy remains his Achilles heel. Speaking in New York last...
Rebels without a cause indulge in delusions of revolution
Comparisons between the Arab Spring and Wall Street protests are facile. It's hard to imagine a comparison more trite than that made between the...
Abbott's hollow agenda
Tony Abbott needs to be careful It's one thing for him to be cautious. But it's another thing when he starts ruling out policies which are based on...