Thoughts on Freedom

Lenore Taylor in the SMH. One of the first fights inside the ALP will be about why it so comprehensively lost the economic debate during the election campaign. Very senior figures are asking why Labor didn’t talk louder and sooner about its achievements in managing the country through the global economic crisis. With the national [...]

Peter Martin has set out the types of ‘error’ Treasury identified in the Coalition policy costings. The Charter of Budget Honesty sets out guidelines for election costings, in order to make sure they are done on the same basis. One forbids the counting of proceeds from expected ”second-round effects” such as a saving on the [...]

Graduate Careers Australia has released Beyond Graduation 2009, a follow-up survey three years on of graduates they first surveyed in 2006. A few points of interest on topics of particular interest to me: * The proportion of their sample who were overseas had doubled from 3.2% to 6.8%, which means that they will not be [...]

I received a letter today from John Roskam, executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs, outlining the organisation’s recent successes (and it has indeed flourished under his leadership). He included with the letter what I think is the first ever survey of think-tank name recognition. Though as John points out in the letter the [...]

The ABS has an interesting new publication out today on the financial benefits of higher education. ABS anlayst Hui Wei uses data from the 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006 censuses to provide estimates of rates of return for investment in higher education. In the figure below, the rates are based on post-tax earnings [...]

The election result isn't all bad. If you own shares, you shouldn't be unhappy we don't have a government yet. That's...

Julia Gillard says that neither party has convinced Australia that it alone has won the right to govern and that "our...

Despite both major parties claiming they'll fight to stop increases in the cost of living, neither are likely to deliver...