Friday, November 3, 2006

AN OUTSIDER’S CRITIQUE OF THE PERFORMANCE OF TREASURIES

Talk to Australasian Treasury Officers’ Conference, Hobart November 3, 2006 I’m pleased to be here to talk to you and offer an outsider’s view of the performance of Treasuries - when I say Treasury, please take that to include finance departments where they’re separate from treasury and to refer to the ‘purse-string departments’ at both federal and state level. It’s not my practice in speaking to any group to tell them how wonderful...
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Saturday, September 23, 2006

FUNDING SCHOOL EDUCATION

Talk to Cornerstones Conference, Sydney September 23, 2006 By rights, what I should be giving you now is a learned and crystal clear exposition of federal-state funding of school education, about how crazy, unfair and irrational the Howard Government’s formula for funding non-government schools is and about how, when you look at it properly, what Howard and his cronies claim to be economic rationalism is actually quite irrational,...
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Thursday, August 24, 2006

CHRISTIANS IN A CONSUMER CULTURE

Talk to Baptists Today conference at Collaroy August 24, 2006 In his book In Praise of Slowness, the journalist Carl Honore says that all the world’s a store and all the men and women merely shoppers. Sometimes it feels like that. I think we all know what consumerism is, but let’s look at it anyway. Consumerism is the belief that personal happiness lies in the purchasing of material goods. Sometimes that idea motivates our behaviour...
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Tuesday, June 6, 2006

THE MEANING OF BUSINESS LIFE

Australian Institute of Management breakfast briefing June 6, 2006 When I was asked to talk to you today I spent some time thinking of what I could talk about. I could preach a sermon on the need for more micro-economic reform, or I could urge you all to be more competitive, or argue passionately that the Government should slash the rate of tax we high income-earners pay so as to encourage us to work much harder. Well, you may...
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Tuesday, December 13, 2005

AUSTRALIA’S POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC OUTLOOK 2006

Talk to Australian Business Economists Annual Forecasting Conference, Sydney, December 13, 2005 At last, at last, economists are getting what they’ve longed for: the return of micro reform. With the Howard Government’s acquisition of a majority in the Senate, the good times are back. We’ve had completion of the privatisation of Telstra and now the Holy Grail of economic rationalism, reform of the labour market. What’s more, and...
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