Posted: 8:00 am on 4th May 2012
Australia is sitting between two giants. It is no delusion of grandeur to think our extensive economic connections with China and deep security bond with the United States place us on a fault line between a superpower and a superpower-in-waiting. The arrival of US marines in Darwin and the Gillard government’s decision to bar the Chinese telco Huawei from bidding for the NBN have brought the complications of life on…
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Posted: 8:00 am on 29th April 2012
In looking at Europe, Australia may well see its own future. In some ways, Australia is just 20 or 30 years behind the developments in the Old Continent. Australia’s population is also ageing, albeit starting from a younger level. Australian governments have recently relapsed into financing their massive public spending increases on borrowing, just as European governments did in the 1970s and 1980s. And Australian government programs now sound as…
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Posted: 8:00 am on 18th April 2012
Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk, with Satyajit Das at a special CIS event investigating the causes of the global financial crisis. At 6pm on 15 May at the Macquarie Bank Auditorium. Book here
Posted: 9:11 am on 1st March 2012
THE $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation is “likely to be a complete waste of money” and have no impact on Australia’s carbon emissions, according to a new research paper from the Centre for Independent Studies. The author, Oliver Hartwich, writes that “the CEFC will have zero effect on emissions” once Labor’s carbon tax becomes an emissions trading scheme in 2015. The Gillard government wants the corporation, to begin next…
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Posted: 8:00 am on 12th February 2012
The debate over foreign investment in Australian agricultural land has seen the merger of capital xenophobia with the age-old myth that the world is going to run out of food. The suggestion is that we need to lock down our agricultural land to secure future food supplies. The merger of food security and xenophobia as an issue has a long history. Sir William Crookes’ 1898 ‘The Wheat Problem’ predicted not…
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