February 4, 2009 – 5:03 pm
Given I have complained long and loud for many years about the lack of attention paid to housing issues by the previous federal government, and the current government’s previous actions in throwing extra money at the inefficient and regressive First Home Owners Grant in their first stimulus package, I have to balance the ledger given [...]
February 3, 2009 – 11:12 am
The political terms ‘Left wing’ and ‘Right wing’ were already in serious need to being totally re-defined, if not dropped altogether, given how much they have been twisted, distorted, inverted and conflated over the last few decades.
But that is nothing compared to Kevin Rudd’s latest leaps of logic in his efforts to reinvent terms like [...]
February 1, 2009 – 5:20 pm
Among the many disconcerting things about the current global economic meltdown are (a) no one is sure how much worse it’s going to get locally or globally, and (b) no one seems sure about how best to respond to it. Most political commentary about it in Australia seems to focus on how various actions will [...]
November 28, 2008 – 10:38 am
The economic crisis has got most of the political attention in recent months, somewhat obscuring the potential significance of the delayed COAG meeting of the federal and state governments which is taking place this weekend.
Even such examination that has occurred of the COAG meetings has tended to focus on how big a pot of money will be [...]
October 20, 2008 – 11:10 am
It is fair enough for the Prime Minister to use the forum of Sunday night commercial television to get his message out to people about his views and actions on the global financial crisis. It is reasonable for any politician to use any means at their disposal to try to inform people about what they are [...]
October 15, 2008 – 11:44 am
The government’s announcement that they are injecting $1.5 billion into boosting the First Home Owners Grant looks like bad policy to me, regardless of the wider economic situation. If that amount of money can be spent rapidly to boost housing numbers, it should be put into boosting public housing stocks, or else into the new [...]
October 5, 2008 – 11:10 am
The federal government has indicated they are looking at spending up to twenty billion dollars, currently sitting in a bucket labelled “The Building Australia Fund”, to assist in combating the looming economic downturn. The notion of pump priming the economy for this purpose is reasonable enough in theory. However, there are plenty of reasons to justify [...]
October 1, 2008 – 5:43 pm
Peter Costello’s latest contribution to public debate makes me wonder once again why it is he is (or was) seen as leadership material by so many of his colleagues. His assertion in The Australian today that the former government never encouraged people to invest extra money into superannuation is quite extraordinary, even by his [...]
