Peter Saunders gives a level-headed critique of the Australian welfare state and provides options for sensible reform in this article. Over the years of the Howard Government welfare spending has grown immensely, with little of it directed towards the most needy (and often diverted away from them with policies such as Welfare to Work). This is what ( Read more... )

Some more on urban water pricing...

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5421

"Anti-globalization activists... have a point: The post-Cold War world is an increasingly dangerous place in which to live, in part because of the dark side of globalization," writes the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. "Rather than capitalists and corporate power, national governments are to blame... Globalization's reputed villains respond to ( Read more... )

Water is a tricky resource: it’s sometimes abundant, sometimes not; it’s heavy and difficult to distribute; it’s absolutely necessary for both the natural and human environments’ survival. While proper sustainable management of water resources is a difficult, divisive matter with no straightforward answer, it seems that a greater focus on pricing ( Read more... )

Whilst it’s true much of the high debt levels currently in our economy are borne by households rather than governments or businesses, it is vitally important now to keep a close eye on corporate debt.

With households borrowing record amounts of money compared to their incomes and assets, they are becoming hyper-sensitive to interest rate changes. If ( Read more... )

"The divergence in price movements between goods and services [explains] the very different perceptions of inflation between our children and ourselves," writes Anatole Kaletsky in The Times. "A consequence of divergent goods and service inflation has, to some extent, offset the widening disparity in wages between lower-paid workers and high-end ( Read more... )

I find the growing reach of the Catholic Church, as an institution, over hospitals and health facilities to be a disturbing development. The Catholic Church has every right to promote its teachings, and individuals have every right to subscribe to these doctrines, but decisions regarding one’s own health should be the domain of individual ( Read more... )

If parents want to pay close to $4,000 to enroll their child in a private school then that’s their decision. Given that the schools can get away charging this much for nothing more than a placement (with the annual fees to follow) suggests that there is strong demand, and that parents can afford it. Why, then, does the government continue to give ( Read more... )

Although petrol refineries and oil companies may be ripping off consumers with high petrol prices that fluctuate in seemingly randomly ways and out of kilter with the oil price, it should be noted that this does not necessarily, by itself, imply that price-fixing between refiners is occurring. It would seem that the petrol market in capital cities ( Read more... )

It’s strange (although not all that surprising) that the NSW Government is claiming that Sydney residents won’t accept recycled drinking water, and therefore an expensive desalination plant needs to be constructed. Other than the odd polling exercise, which is subject to statistical errors and doesn’t account for the fact that people change their ( Read more... )