Recent publications in Occasional Paper
Clough Lecture 2000: Is National Sovereignty Out Of Date?
Many voices now tell us that sovereignty has become irrelevant or anachronistic in our age of globalization.
Clough Lecture 1999: Private Conservation
Despite what one tends to read or hear, the gains in environmental quality around the world in the last few decades have been astounding. People are living longer, the air is getting cleaner, and agriculture is getting more productive, freeing up...
Numerology and the Media
The media's fascination with large and/or round numbers can get in the way of meaningful reporting.
Outworkers speak out
The proposed introduction of Fair Employment Bill by the Victorian Government has caused a lot of confusion and fear among local Victorian clothing ‘manufacturers' and ‘outworkers'.
Broadcasting Planning and Entrenched Protection of Incumbent Broadcasters
Broadcasting planning and licensing should be primarily a technical function facilitating orderly operation of broadcasting services. Instead, policy makers and regulators have used it as a tool for economic control of the nature and rate of...
Wind Power and Other Renewables
In relation to combating the supposed global warming trend, environmentalists are fond of saying, ‘If nuclear is the answer, we are asking the wrong question’.
The Challenge of a Deregulated Market
Most of us remember the confident forecasts of 1994 where the world's most prestigious consultancies estimated the shadow price of new generation at something like $38 per MWh. Those forecasts still haunt the smaller consumer as they are the basis...
Clough Lecture 1998: Renewing the Miracle: Economic Development in Asia
The Harold Clough Lecture for 1998. The lecture is available in PDF here - Renewing the Miracle: Economic Development and Asia.
Regulatory Pricing and Access Issues
The issues for Victoria and Australia are: * the structure and powers of the regulatory agencies * the services to be regulated * the standards that should be regulated * the "just" price for the regulated services * ensuring information is...
Privatising Victoria's Electricity Distribution
In October 1994 the Victorian industry was restructured. Five DB's were created and Generation Victoria disaggregated down to four individual base load power stations (including Loy Yang B then under construction), one portfolio of hydro plant and...