Tony Abbott has turned out to be a chameleon. Before the election, he
took the guise of a populist, opposed to all things nasty and in favour
of all things nice. Since the election, he's revealed himself to be a
hard-line ideologue, intent on reshaping government to suit the
interests of big business and high-income earners.
Before the
election, he was the consummate vote-seeking politician. Since the
election, he has...
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Monday, June 9, 2014
Why Hockey's budget is unsustainable
Coalition governments have been banging on about the need for "smaller
government" since Malcolm Fraser started echoing Maggie Thatcher and
Ronald Reagan. They've talked without doing anything. Until now.
Few
have noticed, but the goal of this budget is to reduce government
spending by 1.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), from 25.3 per
cent this financial year to 24.2 per cent in 2024-25.
If that
doesn't impress...
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Mining hides news of non-mining recovery
And the smarties told you the resources boom was finito. Now it's being
given most of the credit for this week's news that the economy grew by a
rip-roaring 1.1 per cent in the March quarter and by an above-trend 3.5
per cent over the year to March.
The boom is far from finished. It
will be adding to - and subtracting from - the growth in real gross
domestic product for several years yet.
Media reports that "the
mining...
Thursday, June 5, 2014
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN AUSTRALIA’S EXTERNAL SECTOR
UBS HSC Economics Day, Sydney, Thursday, June 5, 2014Australia’s external sector – measured by the balance of payments, the current account deficit and exports and imports – is an important part of the syllabus and, indeed, the economy. Australia would be a very much poorer country if we had no trade with the rest of the world or no flows of capital to and from the rest of the world. And yet with the exception of discussion of...
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Changes to HECS debt: a users' guide
There is one glaring exception to the rule that Tony Abbott’s budget
cuts are designed to protect higher income-earners at the expense of
lower income-earners: the changes to university fees.
Although uni students like to see themselves as part of the
deserving poor, it’s overwhelmingly the sons and daughters of people in
the upper part of the distribution of income who go to university, and...
Monday, June 2, 2014
Hockey crafts our first decadal budget
This is the 40th budget I've studied, and it's unique. The only decadal
budget we've ever had, a budget only an incoming, Coalition government
would deliver, a budget with big political costs up front, but a big
pay-off way into the future.
It's obviously the budget of a new
government, one confident it can blame its predecessors for its harsh
cuts and broken promises. But it's such a slow-burn, delayed-reward
budget that...
Sunday, June 1, 2014
ENTRY FOR THE COMPANION TO THE AUSTRALIAN MEDIA, ED BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY, 2014
2014Reporting, economic focuses on reporting developments in the national economy - and, occasionally, the state economies - and the efforts of governments and their agencies to influence the economy. It covers economic policy, micro-economic as well as macro-economic. It is to be distinguished from business (formerly financial) reporting, which focuses on the activities of listed companies and the stock exchange. Economic journalists...
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