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Keywords: Budgets

  • AUSTRALIA

    'Spend mentality' won't help the new Burma

    • Duncan MacLaren
    • 20 February 2013
    5 Comments

    'Development is the new name for peace,' said Pope Paul VI in 1967. Well, not in Burma, where wars and religious disputes have caused the death or displacement of 190,000 people. Such horror stories don't concern the Western and Chinese business people who sweep in, salivating, to 'develop' Burma.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Philanthropy should be a condition of tax relief

    • Michael Mullins
    • 11 February 2013
    6 Comments

    Business Council of Australia president Tony Shepherd justifies superannuation tax concessions for the wealthy: 'We go to work, we get paid. The money is ours.' In the USA, philanthropy is common among self-made men. There is no such tradition here, where taxes are needed to fund welfare and other projects for the common good.

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  • EDUCATION

    Gillard's education pipedream

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 20 December 2012
    16 Comments

    In setting a target of Australia reaching the OECD's top five school systems by 2025 the Prime Minister has made a rod for her own back. It is difficult to see our present way of organising, funding and governing schooling getting us anywhere near that target. But what kind of system might?

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate view from a nation doomed to drown

    • Paul Collins
    • 14 December 2012
    15 Comments

    Kiribati, situated in the central Pacific Ocean and home to 101,998 people — more than half of them Catholic — will be the first country to be drowned by global warming. While we wring our hands and climate sceptics pretend there is no problem, on Kiribati people are already in the midst of a climate change disaster. 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Ways out of economic depression

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 18 October 2012
    8 Comments

    Tony Abbott warned that Australia could go the way of Greece with excessive debt. Such claims reflect a climate of exaggerated concern about debt. Instead Australia could be taking advantage of historically low interest rates and embarking on major infrastructure projects, increasing employment and laying the basis for sustained growth in productivity.

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  • EDUCATION

    Rhetoric rules in Gillard Gonski announcement

    • Chris Middleton
    • 12 September 2012
    5 Comments

    The Prime Minister's credibility in announcing an education policy response before reaching agreement with the states may be questioned. Without the states, the implementation of Gonski is impossible. This was illustrated graphically by the NSW Government's announcement of funding cuts to Catholic and independent schools.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hope beyond disability support flip-flopping

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 03 August 2012
    2 Comments

    Disability policy is no longer a short-term issue for political point-scoring, it is in the middle of the public policy sphere. While it is heartening that there is general consensus between political parties on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, some state premiers' bickering over funding has fuelled the distress of affected people.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shaky surpluses and dirty nappies

    • Jen Vuk
    • 09 May 2012
    4 Comments

    You could you call it coincidence that the week I'm asked to write on budgets, ours blows out. I call it life. Such is the cyclic nature of our 1.5-incomes-and-two-kids lives that just when we think our savings are safe, a new enrolment fee is due, the kids' jeans are suddenly a size too small and I've run out of nappies.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Swan slights jobless

    • Paul O'Callaghan
    • 08 May 2012
    11 Comments

    When budgets are tight, governments seek savings by moving people from an expensive payment to cheaper payment categories. By moving a larger number of single parents from parenting payment to the cheaper Newstart allowance the Government will effectively remove $686 million out of the hands of low income families.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The virtuous circle of Gillard's climate tax

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 11 July 2011
    22 Comments

    The Government has crafted a historic package of reforms: driving long-run reductions in carbon pollution, simplifying personal tax and making it fairer, and reducing poverty traps and barriers to work. It's exactly the kind of smart and gutsy approach we want to see from this Government. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    O'Farrell makes a sham of government guarantees

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 May 2011
    13 Comments

    Earlier this month, NSW premier Barry O'Farrell announced he would dishonour the guarantee made to those who signed up to the previous Labor Government's Solar Bonus Scheme. Undermining the 'sacred' bond of a guarantee can seriously damage the spirit of public trust.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dire Ireland

    • Peter McVerry
    • 01 March 2011
    7 Comments

    Ireland's election was all about how to repay the country's debts. One hundred and fifty predominantly well-educated and skilled young people are expected to emigrate each day over the next two years; not only because they have no jobs, but because they have no hope.

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