The way big business sees it, economic reform has ground to a halt because the politicians on both sides have lost the political will to make the tough decisions. But I think big business must share the blame for the stalemate we've reached.
Business leaders have lost confidence in the Gillard government and, having concluded its days are numbered, are uncharacteristically willing to attack it in public. In private, though,...
Monday, November 12, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
States are correcting earlier mismanagement
In most states around Australia, recent years have seen long-standing Labor governments tossed out and replaced by Coalition governments. In all cases, the new governments have immediately embarked on campaigns to cut government spending. Why?
Is it American-style anti-government ideology? Is it uniform Labor mismanagement across the nation? Could it be some changed feature of the national economy, or just the state governments'...
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Climatic adjustment limits our farmers' Asia boom
The first thing to realise about the rise of Asia is that our farmers are about to join our miners in the winners' circle. The second is that climate change and other environmental problems may greatly limit our farmers' ability to exploit this opportunity. The third is that what we see as a looming bonanza, the rest of the world sees as a global disaster.
According to the government's white paper on the Asian century (which,...
Monday, November 5, 2012
Asia white paper assumes away environment
The most glaring weakness in the Prime Minister' s white paper on the Asian century is its failure to factor in the high likelihood that mounting environmental problems will stop Asia continuing to grow so rapidly as well as limit our ability to take advantage of what growth there is.
To be fair, most of the environmental problems that could trip up Asia s economies and ours do rate a mention in the bowels of the 300-page...
Saturday, November 3, 2012
How Asia is catching up with the rich West
Asia's transformation into the world's most dynamic economic region has been a defining development of our time. The pace and scale of its rise have been nothing short of staggering.
That's the story according to Julia Gillard's white paper on the Asian century, and it's right.
"Over the past 20 years, one third of the world's population has re-engaged with the global economy and more are set to do so," the paper says. "Living...
Thursday, November 1, 2012
GETTING PEOPLE TO DO THEIR JOB WELL
Talk to Jobs Australia National Conference, Manly, Thursday, November 1, 2012
The last time I spoke to your national conference, many moons ago, I offered some confident predictions about the outlook for the labour market. It seemed to go down quite well, but turned out to be hopelessly wrong. So this time I propose to do something quite different, something more philosophical, something I haven’t done before, even something...
MAIN STREET & WALL STREET: the interrelationship between the real and financial economies
Comview conference, Melbourne, November 2012
Last year Glenn Stevens remarked that it was ‘very sensible of Australian households to be strengthening their balance sheets’. What on earth did he mean? In recent years we hear a lot of jargon in the economic debate that we usen’t to hear and that certainly wasn’t mentioned when we were at university. People keep on about ‘balance sheets’ - household balance sheets, business balance...
Macquarie University IR Panel Discussion
I want to make four points very quickly. First, I’m not convinced we have an economy-wide problem with productivity - I don’t think the statistical evidence bears that out.
Second, I don’t believe we have a nation-wide problem with unreasonable unions exploiting an IR system that a Labor government has stacked in their favour, if for no other reason than that the great majority of employers, and the great majority of employees,...
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
White paper shows way to Asian century
When governments make grand policy unveilings, as Julia Gillard has with her white paper on the Asian century, it’s terribly tempting for people in jobs like mine to sit back and criticise. After all, unlike you and me governments tend to be less than perfect.
If you’re disposed to criticise, there’s never a shortage of material - particularly if you’re prepared to offer mutually inconsistent criticisms, or shift your angle...
Monday, October 29, 2012
It's better to honour budget commitments
Those economists who’ve joined the smarties in proclaiming Julia Gillard’s seeming resolve to get the budget back to surplus this financial year to be purely political and of no economic merit are revealing how little they know about political economy - the politics of economic policy.
They don’t understand the vital role faithful adherence to ‘frameworks’ has played in giving Australia it’s widely envied record on fiscal (budgetary)...
Saturday, October 27, 2012
How the budget redistributes income
In a capitalist economy such as ours, the rich have loads of money, the poor have next to none and the government does little about it.
Is that what you suspect? It's a long way from the truth. While some (including me) may argue they could be doing more, between them our governments - federal and state - are doing a lot more to redistribute income from the rich to the poor than many people imagine.
The reason so few people...
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Budget redistributes income over life cycle
Listening to all the argy-bargy over the budget update makes you think - what strange things budgets are. The government spends all this money - hundreds of billions a year - but where does it come from? From us, of course. The politicians use the budget to take money from us with one hand, then give it back with the other.
They have one set of public servants to take our money from us and another to give it back. What's the...
Monday, October 22, 2012
Business cons the states out of tax revenue
WHEN we see the mid-year budget review today, all eyes will be on the savings Wayne Swan will announce to ensure he still achieves a surplus this financial year. The measures will be needed because the weakness in tax collections is even greater than expected.
Deciding how much we should cut spending is one thing, but working out what to do about the budget's structural problems on the revenue side is quite another.
One way...
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