In The Australian today:
"After the 1983 election, when half the Australian workforce were union members, barely a third of the ALP’s new MPs thanked the unions in their maiden speech. By the 2013 election, union membership had fallen below 20 per cent of the workforce; but more than 90 per cent of Labor’s new MPs devoted part of their first speech to praising the union movement."
03 Feb2014
Time to challenge the priests of public broadcasting
In The Australian today:
"Malcolm Turnbull is right to check whether the ABC and the SBS provide taxpayers with value for money. But to ensure good use of the community's resources, it is not enough to ask whether the public service broadcasters are doing what they do properly; one must also ask whether they are doing the right things. "
"Malcolm Turnbull is right to check whether the ABC and the SBS provide taxpayers with value for money. But to ensure good use of the community's resources, it is not enough to ask whether the public service broadcasters are doing what they do properly; one must also ask whether they are doing the right things. "
01 Feb2014
Bumps in road to prosperity
In The Australian today:
"Cecily, you will read your Political Economy in my absence", Miss Prism instructs the young heiress in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. But, the prudish governess hastens to add, "the chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side."
"Cecily, you will read your Political Economy in my absence", Miss Prism instructs the young heiress in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. But, the prudish governess hastens to add, "the chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side."
27 Jan2014
Lower income renters would pay the price of change
In The Australian today:
"History may not teach us much, but it does show that you can't keep a bad idea down. And this bad idea resurfaces with a regularity that, if it applied to ageing human bodies, would deprive prune growers of their livelihoods."
"History may not teach us much, but it does show that you can't keep a bad idea down. And this bad idea resurfaces with a regularity that, if it applied to ageing human bodies, would deprive prune growers of their livelihoods."
25 Jan2014
Our metropolises must evolve but let's preserve their strengths
In The Australian today:
"Australians are ambivalent about their cities. From AD Hope's Australia - with its denunciation of "her five cities, like five teeming sores,/ ... Where second-hand Europeans pullulate/ Timidly on the edge of alien shores" - to Barry Humphries' Gladiola Duchy of Moonee Ponds, the metropolis has been where Australians live, not where they dream. The result is a society profoundly uncertain as to what it wants its cities to do, and even more uncertain as to how they should do it. "
"Australians are ambivalent about their cities. From AD Hope's Australia - with its denunciation of "her five cities, like five teeming sores,/ ... Where second-hand Europeans pullulate/ Timidly on the edge of alien shores" - to Barry Humphries' Gladiola Duchy of Moonee Ponds, the metropolis has been where Australians live, not where they dream. The result is a society profoundly uncertain as to what it wants its cities to do, and even more uncertain as to how they should do it. "
13 Jan2014
Wrong way, go back: mega project funding muddle
In The Australian today:
"Australian cities are suffering a double blow: despite ambitious project announcements, public investment has fallen as governments try to rein-in spending; but as infrastructure costs continue to climb each dollar of that investment is yielding less and less relief to frustrated commuters."
"Australian cities are suffering a double blow: despite ambitious project announcements, public investment has fallen as governments try to rein-in spending; but as infrastructure costs continue to climb each dollar of that investment is yielding less and less relief to frustrated commuters."