LAB COATS IN THE STREETS: THE NEVER ENDING DEMAND FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH FUNDING Stone the crows! Medical research can be a pain in the public purse. Well before the last election, Tony Abbott promised to leave universities alone (at best) but explicitly committed to no medical research cuts.[i] The politics made sense – rumours of [...]
Stone the crows! There’s a deal of despair in the decline of the dismal science. La Trobe University is cutting back on economics education - allegedly planning to cut staff from 28 to ten.[i] The University of Western Sydney did the same in 2012, sacking four senior professors and their staff. [ii] And, across the [...]
THE CASE AGAINST AN INFLATION-LED RECOVERY Stone the crows! Inflation is on the agenda. Anybody who remembers the 1970s will recall inflation as awful – stealing savings, slowing growth and stopping budget discipline in state spending. According to Don Stammer: Australia fared worse than other countries, with stagflation running from 1972 to 1984. Unemployment rose [...]
UBER – EMPOWERING TAXI DRIVERS AND CUSTOMERS Stone the crows! Licenses to run up money on the meter aren’t what they were and taxi owners know it. Last week cabbies turned out all over Europe to protest the arrival of Uber, the app based system that connects passengers with drivers who aren’t in licenced cabs [...]
SELF EMPLOYED THE NEW WINNERS IN NEW ECONOMY STONE the crows! The cottage is back in industry. There were two whammys last week for Australian workers. The first was bad news – a prediction of falling wages to compete with Asia. But it was whacked by the second. This one pointed to a fab [...]
CHRISTOPHER PYNE – THE GREATEST ADVOCATE OF UNIVERSITIES SINCE GOUGH WHITLAM Stone the crows! Vice chancellors really should have been careful what they wished for. For decades, university leaders lamented they were under-resourced, over-regulated and politically ignored, despite education being the surest way to expand the economy, improve society and enrich individuals. As University of [...]
Stone the crows! We are all (sort-of) federalists now. Just about everybody except The Australian and Financial Review are upset by the budget.[i] Particularly premiers outraged with the way the Abbott Government announced it would cut $80bn in federal funding, leaving them to fund health and education increases from their own resources.[ii] However, the Crows [...]
LOSERS AND WINNERS IN AN AGING AUSTRALIA Stone the crows! We are going to penalise people who work the hardest. While the budget case for delaying access to the age pension is obvious, critics claim this is unfair to people who cannot go the distance, largely due to the wear and tear of manual labour.[i] [...]
THE COMMISSION OF AUDIT’S PUBLIC SERVICE SAVINGS Stone the crows! Have fat cats no friends? The Illawarra Mercury summed up much of the coverage of the Commission of Audit in an editorial, which did not let reason get in the way of a rant. “(The) report is the work of fat cats in lofty places [...]
DESPITE NEW PLANES AND SUBS – OZ STILL NEEDS US Stone the crows! If the new fighter is so flash why is the government cutting its order? The government’s decision to buy 58 F-35 fighter planes, on top of the first 14, generated three predictable responses.[i] The Opposition endorsed it - hardly surprising given Labor [...]
