Category Archives: Budget / economy
Are we intentionally increasing the burden on public health?
Pondering the budget papers from the Health Portfolio, I am moved to ask this question: are we intentionally moving people back out of private health and increasing the burden on the public health system? I appreciate it’s an ideological thing, but didn’t we just spend the last two decades doing the opposite? The cliff notes […]
Ready to Lead
Is Tony Abbott ready to be Prime Minister? Or, more to point, is the Australian public ready to vote for him? Of course, the answer to that question depends on what version of Tony Abbott we are thinking of. Is it the man that Annabel Crabb famously dubbed the Mad Monk – the socially conservative […]
Budget 2013-14: the budget reply language shifts to the individual.
Ah, the second Tuesday and Thursday in May. I find it is a wonderful time, the air is crisp and there is every excuse to sit inside, heater on, with a glass of my favourite beverage to watch on TV the budget speech on Tuesday and the budget reply on Thursday. Yep, I’m a budget night tragic, happily curling […]
How Values influence Policy
This word ‘values’ flys around the politicians and media players; but like many English words it seems to have many meanings. This is not in the slippery or weasel-wordish way, it is just a word that most people seem to feel they understand, and are entitled to use in any old way that they mean […]
Parenting leave – two strong policies with a deep divide
Stupid hashtag misquotes of Tony Abbott (and equally stupid reporting thereof) aside, recent weeks have seen a bump in the presence of policy discussion in Australia. Both parties have been forced to discuss substance in view of the upcoming budget and in the absence of parliamentary sitting days to fill with ephemera and shouting. One […]
Fiscal dissonance
It’s budget time again. And as the kabuki-like rotisserie of bullshit continues to twirl its way to May 14, Joe Hockey gave a serious speech to the IPA which touched on several important issues relating to Australia’s long-term future budgetary health. Ranging from discussion of a rapidly ageing Chinese population to a series of local […]
Budget smudget
Can we get over the budget? Please? The entire political class of Australia appears to be able to consider nothing else. It has long been worth a modest chuckle that once a year, the Treasurer gets a solid hour in prime time to deliver the budget, after lobbyists and journalists are locked in a room […]
The Old is New Again – The United Australia Party Reborn?
ANZAC Day saw a great many things – football, partisan voices continuing to whine about Leigh Sales, arguments about Catherine Deveny. I deal with all that here, back at my blog, the Preston Institute. The most interesting part of it for me, however, was Lateline, where we saw the re-entry of Clive Palmer on the national […]
A Shot in the Dark
Are Labor just really, really bad at politics? That’s a conclusion you could easily draw. I don’t think it is possible to blame the media alone for the negative perception of the Labor party (although certain sectors are certainly doing their level best to cement that perception). Further, whilst Tony Abbott is very good at […]
On tax expenditures
Reblogged from We are all dead.: Imagine if everyone with a surname starting with the letter C didn’t have to pay income tax. For some arcane reason, back in the mists of time when the tax was introduced in Australia, those with a ‘C’ name were completely exempted, and the exemption remained on the books, […]
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