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Tony Abbott is the most opportunistic and morally bankrupt Liberal politician in a generation. He has no values, no ideals and will do or say almost anything to gain power. But his ambivalent musings on the case for thinking about a policy for addressing the problems faced by Australian manufacturing do raise concerns. I am [...] From Nicholas Gruen at Troppo I became aware of the Yale Environmental Performance Index. The 2010 EPI ranks 163 countries on 25 performance indicators tracked across 10 policy categories covering both environmental public health (50%) and ecosystem vitality (50%). These indicators provide a gauge at a national level of how close countries are to “established [...] I have posted before on the relative success that Asian kids have in Western education systems. Amy Chua has written a strident defense of the role of Chinese mothers in using discipline to bring out the best in their children. I am sympathetic. Westerners do undervalue the abilities of their kids and apologize for childish laziness [...] Its that time of year when so-called stock market experts tip the course of the All Ordinaries Index over the coming year. Its also the time when cynics routinely (but quite fairly) deride the value of such predictions. Self interest motivates me to take a highly conditional attempt to work out what will happen. If [...] I am tired of hearing the complaints from over-indulged Aussi brats at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. They complained about the housing, the temperature at the opening ceremony and now the food – 5 of the brats got upset stomachs. I resent spending a cent of public money on these graceless buffoons. They are a [...] Rare earths are a collection of seventeen elements in the periodic table – scandium, yttrium and the fifteen lanthanides. These elements have various applications – superconductors, high-flux magnets, , refining catalysts, hybrid car components, wind energy components, communications, TV sets, in welding, in smart phones and smart bombs …. See here. [...] Monopolist sellers and monopsonistic buyers contain their struggles to control crucial world resource markets. China’s Sinochem has hired two large banks to advise it on the case for buying a large stake in the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. BHP-Billiton has extended its $39b bid for the company ( I discussed this in an August post [...]
“Data collected by the Bureau of Meteorology indicate that Australia’s annual mean temperature for 2009 was 0.90°C above the 1961-90 average, making it the nation’s second warmest year since high-quality records began in 1910. High temperatures were especially notable in the southeast during the second half of the year, with Australia, Victoria, [...] Quadrant has outdone itself this time with a forum of views encouraging the Senate over the next week to reject the proposed ETS. It is in the main – not entirely – the same old denialist nonsense – the science is wrong, all due to the sun, the earth is cooling, the earth hasn’t heated [...] The pursuit of Malcolm Turnbull should now cease. It is clear that Godwin Grech – a formerly respected public servant who ran the OzCar policy for Labor – provided a false email to Turnbull that was the basis of Turnbull’s attack on Swan and Rudd and which therefore distorted this attack. The Labor Party is [...] The decision of the wealthy University of Melbourne to axe 220 jobs shows the strains that the Australian university sector is under. One wonders whether part of the claimed income losses that forced this move are due to Glyn Davis’s forced introduction of the Melbourne Model which has deterred some first year enrollments. The claimed [...] It is unclear whether (changed from, ‘likely that’) Kevin Rudd attempted to do a favour for a mate and lied to parliament about that. It is certain that Wayne Swan attempted the favour and took personal interest in seeing that the favour worked – Swan should resign and be replaced by Lindsay Tanner who will make a better Treasurer. The pair are now [...] Colleague JL pointed out to me this stupid ban imposed by the NSW Government on the procurement of Chinese products by government agencies. The NSW government has the obligation to purchase goods and services at the cheapest possible cost. This ban disadvantages NSW taxpayers by wasting their hard-earned tax dollars and threatens Australia generally by the [...] I had thought my comments for Australia’s national interests being best served by rejecting the Rio-Chinalco deal were self-evident. My general argument was that Australia should not give up its monopoly power in the resource sector by transferring resource assets to Chinese firms with monopsony power over the [...] I am opposed to free trade in Australian natural resource assets. I am not specifically opposed to China obtaining significant stakes in our natural resource industries – I am opposed to any resource-hungry customer of Australian resources buying a significant stake in the enterprises that supply them. The general issue here is set out nicely [...] It is a stunning outcome. The Australian economy grew in the March quarter. Strong growth in exports have offset the weak performance in private investment. In the absence of two consecutive quarters of negative growth we are technically not in recession – nor have we been in recession for nearly 20 years. There has been [...] Alexander Downer sorts them out. Yes, and the evidence was that Annice Smoel was drunk, did steal an expensive beermat, did make a run for it and did abuse arresting officers. What did she expect? 94.6% of Australian workers retain their jobs a year after the world experiences the worst financial crisis for 80 years. This compares with 95.8% prior to the crisis when the economic ravages of the Howard Coalition Government were still bearing on the down-trodden Australian working class. This disasterous state of affairs has led the reformist [...] The Herald /Neilson poll shows promising news for the Coalition. The Coalition is – as it should be – making significant inroads against Rudd and Labor. A 5% swing to The Coalition since March and back to the narrow margin of the 2007 poll. Labor leads the Coalition by 53% to 47%, down from the 58-42 gap in the [...] The Tax Review report on the retirement income system recommends retaining a means-tested Age Pension, retaining compulsory savings for retirement at 9% and allowing (!) voluntary savings for retirement. It however recommends increasing the age of eligibility for the ‘Age Pension’ pension to 67 years and moving the age of eligibility for superannuation (the ‘preservation [...] |
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