Accounting for rhetoric
The release of the national accounts always brings into stark relief the contrast between fact and rhetoric in public discourse.
The neglected stimulus
The furore accompanying this year’s minor surge in illegal ‘boat people’ has obscured the Rudd government’s decision to cut legal immigration to Australia.
Questionable incentives
Tucked away in last week’s federal Budget is a change to the tax code that will curtail use of employee share ownership plans (ESOPs).
A wasted opportunity
Now it is official.
A chance to be tough
‘That’s why I’ve always said, and why I will always say, with pride, I’m an economic conservative.
Our viral vulnerability
For all the bleating about the economic crisis, eight months later Australia remains a fundamentally salubrious place.
Tough by necessity
The minor surge in unauthorised boat arrivals in northern Australia this year has been steadily increasing concern about the effect of the Rudd government’s promised ‘humanising’ of immigration policy.
What government should be doing
Government’s raison d’être is to provide services to citizens that could not be provided economically by anyone else, or if they were, would be priced to the point of abuse.
Fatal abstractions
While Australians pondered the consequences of last week’s G20 summit, the Rudd government made good on one of its lesser-known election promises last Friday.
Misguided visionaries
On the doorstep of 10 Downing Street this week, Prime Ministers Rudd and Brown claimed the G20 meeting in London to be ‘a decisive moment for the world economy’.
At large with a plan
Our 25th issue caps the most frenetic fortnight of political activity in Australia since the 2007 federal election.
A chance for renewal
On 21 March, Queenslanders have a choice between a stale 11-year-old Labor government and the untested Liberal–National opposition led by Lawrence Springborg.
Our vice-regal maverick
Last year, the official secretary to the governor-general, Malcolm Hazell CVO, gave a speech in Wagga Wagga to shed light on the governor-general’s role.
Fix companies with capitalism
Telstra’s announcement last week that chief executive Sol Trujillo will depart in June put corporate governance in the spotlight.
The politics of grief
Individual reactions to this month’s tragic loss of life and property in Victoria show the widespread sympathy Australians feel for their countrymen in a time of crisis, no matter how far removed they might be in practice.
The easy folly of debt
Victorians are still picking over their charred possessions and adjusting to a life without their loved ones: a real Australian crisis.
A nation in mourning
Last weekend the rustic beauty of the Victorian bushland became a charcoal wasteland of suffering and despair.
In pursuit of hindsight
Mr Bush’s departure from the White House has incited an unprecedented level of coruscating criticism.
Carbon brinkmanship
On 24 January, Malcolm Turnbull launched the Liberal party’s first policy salvo of 2009, unveiling his response to the government’s emissions trading scheme (ETS).
Happy Holydays
‘Not since 1990 have Australians approached a Christmas so fearful and uncertain,’ we wrote just before Christmas last year.
Reflections on Australia Day
Monday 26 January will mark 221 years to the day since the colony of New South Wales was established.
The benefits of ageing
This year marks the centenary of Australia’s old age pension, and it has seen a 50 per cent increase in applications.
Let the debates begin
While 2008 will be remembered for its financial fireworks, 2009 will be about public policy debates: less memorable, maybe, but far more formative.
Relax and be merry
The Spectator Australia wishes its readers a Happy Christmas
More feckless federalism?
The Australian states have never raised enough money to pay for their natural constitutional chores — they vacated the field of direct income taxation in 1942, and their indirect ‘franchise fees’ on alcohol, tobacco and petrol were branded ‘excise’ duties by the High Court in 1997, and struck down.
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