Today in The Australian

With Labor spending last week denying the obvious about its proposed tax hikes, it was hard not to be reminded of writer Hannah Arendt’s warning, which ought to be emblazoned on every street corner, that “no one has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues”.

Today in The Australian

And then there were seven, ­Agatha Christie might have said. But even with 16 candidates leaving the field since the outset of the primary season, there is still a lot of blood to be spilled before the line-up for the US presidential election is finally determined.

Today in The Australian

His budget won’t promise taxpayers any unicorns, Scott Morrison assured the National Press Club last week. Good thing too, for they are ever harder to find.

Today in The Australian
Even for a political party with a pronounced death wish, it seems reckless to propose a clampdown on negative gearing just as an NAB survey shows the housing market slowing and the share of established properties sold to local investors dropping to record lows.

Today in The Australian

You may well ask why the government ever floated the idea of raising the GST, given that by far the best tax reform would be bringing public expenditure under control.

In The Australian today:

It happens every year. Just as the country has settled into the postprandial doze known as the ­Australian summer, swiftly and without warning, wrathfully and without mercy, stupidity strikes.

In The Australian today:

Hearing Donald Trump, Groucho Marx’s comment springs to mind: he may look like an idiot and speak like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you — he really is an idiot. Yet with the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary only days away, Trump’s standing in the polls is similar to that Barack Obama had at this point in 2008, and is stronger than Mitt Romney’s was four years later.

Today in The Australian


With the world’s stock markets reeling after their worst-ever start to a year, it is important to remember that the adjustments at the heart of the current turmoil are inevitable and desirable. But that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. And as the threats mount, strengthening our economy’s capacity to withstand a global downturn becomes ever more urgent.

In today's The Australian

China’s leaders may not have a clue as to where they are going, but they seem determined to get there as soon as possible. The question is how much damage will be done to the world economy along the way. With world stockmarkets alternating between precipitous falls and short-lived rallies, commodity prices tumbling and economic growth forecasts slashed, the answer seems to be plenty.

In The Australian today

Political correctness, says Pierre Manent in his new book on France and Islam, is “the language of those who are terrified about what would happen if they stopped lying”.

In The Australian today


Australia’s industrial relations system, Justice Henry Bournes Higgins famously declared in 1915, had conquered “a new province for law and order”.

Today in The Australian

There are times when history ­escapes from the leash. And rarely has it done so more dramatically than in the past year.

In The Australian today

Today’s release of the 2015 Christmas Price Index should give consumers plenty to cheer about.

In The Australian today

 
With the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook only a sleep away, the Treasurer is facing his baptism of fire. But whatever the political risks involved in acknowledging the seriousness of our fiscal challenge, simply closing one’s eyes and wishing really hard for the deficit to disappear is hardly an option. Rather, while avoiding both alarmism and complacency, Scott Morrison must show the government has a credible strategy for budget repair.

Today in The Australian
With commodity prices plummeting, the pressures on our resource sector seem certain to intensify. But despite the damage that will inflict on commonwealth revenue, and hence on the forecasts of the budget bottom line in next week’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, it would be a serious mistake to write off mining’s contribution to the Australian economy.

In The Australian today:

 Speaking in Brisbane 10 days ago, the Treasurer called for a national conversation about what needs to be done to “ensure our superannuation system can provide higher standards of living for retirees”.

Today in The Australian

Another week, another call from the Grattan Institute to increase taxes. And yet again it is super­annuation in the crosshairs.

In The Australian today:

  After last week’s police raids in Saint-Denis, just outside Paris, and in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, it is only natural for Australians to wonder whether it could happen here.

In The Australian today

Barack Obama is right to call Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris an attack on humanity. But they are first and foremost an Islamist ­attack on the West. And it is only by destroying radical Islam that we can end the ever-escalating savagery that threatens our cities, our culture and our way of life.

In The Australian today:
“People died last time you were in charge”, senator Stephen Conroy, mad-eyed as Ahab and trembling with fury, barked at Bill Morrow, the chief executive of NBN Co, when Morrow, at a parliamentary committee late last month, questioned Conroy’s assertions about the company’s performance.

In The Australian today

With tough economic choices looming, coming weeks will see the Turnbull government face its first real stress test. For all his weaknesses, Bill Shorten thrives on galvanising the frightened, the resentful and the ill-informed: and even the merest suggestion of any serious tax reform will offer him a feast of opportunities for mischief.

In The Australian today

 Widely cited claims by the International Monetary Fund that subsidies to fossil fuels amount to a staggering 6.5 per cent of global income have been savaged by David Henderson, former chief economist of the OECD, in a letter to London’s Financial Times published on Friday.

In The Australian today:

It may be symptomatic of that “instinctive distaste for the past” that historian Keith Hancock thought characterised Australians that there is no official history of the Treasury. Chris Bowen’s The Money Men doesn’t claim to fill that gap, but it does provide vivid and insightful portraits of some of our more prominent treasurers.

Today in The Australian
As he prepares to leave 24 Sussex Drive, the large, somewhat dilapidated, limestone house in the New Edinburgh neighbourhood of ­Ottawa that is the official residence of Canada’s prime ministers, Stephen Harper remains an enigmatic figure.

Today in The Australian

Like Portnoy, Tanya Plibersek has a complaint. And with all of Labor piling on to the psychiatrist’s couch, she isn’t alone. But there’s no need to call Dr Freud. The problem is simple enough: ­Malcolm envy.

Today in The Australian

 On this, let us be absolutely clear: Farhad Jabar, who shot police ­accountant Curtis Cheng, was not a victim but a murderer.

In The Australian today

According to senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs in the Turnbull government, the young Muslims who are being drawn into the extremism that led Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad to murder a NSW Police Force employee last Friday feel “disengaged” and “disenfranchised”.

In The Australian today:


In an update on Thursday, the Canberra-based economic modelling firm Cadence Economics estimated that each one percentage point fall in China’s long-term growth rate knocks $46.5 billion off the present value of Australia’s national income, making every Australian about $500 worse off in 2035 than they would otherwise have been.

In The Australian today:

Appearing last week on the ABC’s 7.30, former treasury secretary Ken Henry claimed Australia has a revenue problem, because the ratio of tax revenues to GDP is lower than in 2002, the implication being tax rates should rise. And that was only the highlight of a week-long “taxfest”, in which the media was crowded with like-minded pundits proposing ways of lightening taxpayers’ wallets.

In The Australian today

According to the Australian Election Study, which surveys voters at each federal
election, Tony Abbott won the 2013 election with the lowest approval rating ever for an
incoming prime minister. So despite gaining 53.5 per cent of the vote and delivering on a
broad range of commitments, he had little political capital on which to draw and never
found a way to secure the electorate’s goodwill.

Today in The Australian

Just as the government, in allocating the 12,000 places it has added to the humanitarian intake, has every right to screen out security threats, so it has every right to test whether applicants are capable of integrating peacefully and effectively into the community.

Today in The Australian

All the grief in the world about the death by drowning of Aylan and Galip Kurdi, aged 3 and 5, as they tried to cross from Turkey to Greece, cannot absolve Europe of its responsibility for the 2600 lives lost, this year alone, to the Mediterranean’s treacherous seas.

Today in the Australian

If there is an iron law of Australian public policy, it is that you can’t keep a bad idea down. And never was that clearer than in the ­National Reform Summit’s ­discussion of capital gains tax.

Today in The Australian:

“Every human benefit and enjoyment,” wrote Edmund Burke, “is founded on compromise.”

Today in The Australian
The sole objective of the industrial relations system should be to facilitate the process by
which employees and employers reach mutually advantageous agreements about the
terms and conditions of employment.

In The Australian today
 While the initial shock has eased, the reaction to the devaluation of the yuan highlights just how anxious world markets are about China’s economic prospects.

In The Australian today

After spending $6000 on chartering a corporate aircraft to fly her from Sydney to Nowra, Bronwyn Bishop had no option but to resign. There must still be questions, however, about why it took Tony Abbott so long to act

Today in The Australian

When Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, made the first recorded use of the term “reformare”, it meant the sudden rejuvenation of an old man — but for one day only.

Today in The Australian

The question is not whether Greece’s debt burden is sustainable; even on its current, highly concessional, terms, it isn’t. Rather, the real question is how the adjustment occurs — and who pays for it.

In The Australian today

It isn’t only for Greece that hope has proven the handmaiden to misery, as it always does in the classical tragedies. Rather, after the turmoil of the last month, what little remains of the European ­project also lies in tatters.

Today in The Australian
“The Guide says there is an art to flying, or rather a knack,” the gal­actic hitchhiker Ford Prefect explains in Douglas Adams’s Life, the Universe and Everything: “The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

In The Australian today:
Let’s be clear: John Daley, who heads the Grattan Institute, is perfectly entitled to his obsessions, among which negative gearing seems to figure prominently. But Ogden Nash had a point when he warned that: “Of obligations, by far the solemnest / Burden the ­conscientious columnist.”

In The Australian today
Like every great tragedy, it is all about fate, but fate in the sense of the Greek word ananke, a force even more powerful and pitiless than the gods. Yet as the referendum that will decide Greece’s future looms, any ultimate resolution of the euro’s drama seems as remote and uncertain as ever.

In The Australian today:
Merely hours after the managing director of the ABC claimed Zaky Mallah had the same right to ­appear on Q&A as Charlie Hebdo had to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the Islamists showed the world exactly how much use they have for freedom of expression.

Today in The Australian :
That Cleanevent and the EastLink consortium did very well out of their agreements with the AWU is beyond question.

In The Australian today:
"There’s an old Yiddish joke about a man whose job is to stand at the city gates and wait for the Messiah: it’s dull and badly paid, he explains, but at least it’s steady work."

Today in The Australian:

You have to feel for Joe Hockey. He was simply stating a truism: if the price of houses in Sydney is rising, it’s because people are buying them. As abundant demand chases scarce supply, he suggested, it doesn’t seem sensible to call Sydney’s housing “unaffordable”.

In The Australian today:

In the cartoons, before machines explode they start shaking violently, their shudders presaging the approaching conflagration.

In The Australian today:
Speaking in Senate estimates this week, Treasury secretary John Fraser may have been less eloquent than Jonathan Swift but his message was no less ominous.

In today's The Australian
Oh, the poetry of economics! Exchange rates float, economies limp and tax brackets creep. No wonder the field attracts fertile minds. But it would be better if they kept their imaginations under control.

In The Australian today

“The taxation concession on superannuation earnings in retirement is unsustainable,” Chris Bowen said last week. And “someone has to show the courage to say it and to deal with it”.

In The Australian today

Joe Hockey’s second budget would have left many asking, as Peggy Lee did years ago, “Is that all there is?” As for Bill Shorten’s budget reply, it made Peggy Lee’s advice, faced with a disappointing answer to her question, to “break out the booze”, seem like sound common sense.

In The Australian today
"Aristotle opens the Metaphysics with one of his most striking phrases: “By their nature, all men desire to know.” Quite so. But not at the University of Western Australia."

In The Australian today
Whatever else last year’s budget may have achieved, it certainly placed fairness at the heart of the political battle. And whatever this year’s budget may bring, the ­government will be working overtime to ensure it is less vulnerable than its predecessor to being cast as unfair.

In The Australian today
"It’s hardly about negative gearing. Rather, what the Left really wants is to increase income tax on the middle class. As it lacks the courage to do that directly, fiddling the definition of income is the coward’s way of achieving the same goal."

In The Australian today:

You can’t step into the same river twice. But the bathwater is a different matter. It just gets colder and nastier each time.

Today in The Australian
"The trouble, it seems, is not that we spend too much: it’s that we tax too little. And the Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance, chaired by Labor senator Sam Dastyari, is unlikely to leave much uncertainty about the culprits: those ­tax-dodging, revenue-shifting multinationals. "

In The Australian today

"As the search for budget savings focuses on the age pension, the challenge for the government is to reconcile rigour, fairness and sustainability. With the pension intended to help those who cannot reasonably help themselves, it seems absurd that public money is going to the well-off. But in a retirement income system that is struggling to meet its objectives, simply tightening access to the pension carries risks of its own. "

In The Australian today:

Thursday’s murder by Somali terrorists of 150 mainly Christian students at Kenya’s Garissa University College provided a horrific backdrop to the Easter weekend. And with more than 200 young Christian girls kidnapped in Nigeria by Boko Haram still in captivity, the spotlight is once again on Africa and on the continent’s struggle to find peace and prosperity.

In The Australian today:
The good news is that Mike Baird has been re-elected Premier of NSW. The bad news is that there was a large swing to Labor, un­deserving though it was.

In The Australian today:
"As Singapore, arguably the most successful city-state in contemporary history, mourns the death of Lee Kuan Yew, it starts a new chapter in its history. And with Hong Kong also in the midst of a difficult transition, the “queens of the further east”, as an early British colonialist called them, face ­far-reaching economic, social and ­political challenges. "

In The Australian today:

"As things turned out, Malcolm Fraser’s prime ministership was not a fresh start; it was merely the final act in the long crisis of the 1970s."

In today's The Australian
"There is a direct link between the NSW election and Australia’s deteriorating international competitiveness. "

In The Australian today:
"Between 2008 and 2014, electricity transmission and distribution costs increased by some $400 per household in Queensland and New South Wales, where the poles and wires are government-owned, but by around $250 per household in the privatised systems of Victoria and South Australia."

In The Australian today:
"With jihadist violence continuing to escalate, the acid test of today’s national security statement will be the actions it proposes."

In The Australian today:
"With Joe Hockey warning that the imminent Intergenerational Report will knock people “off their chairs”, the cost of our retirement income system is unlikely to disappear from the front pages anytime soon. But reconciling fiscal sustainability and community expectations is every bit as politically challenging as it is technically complex. "

Today in The Australian
"It's the simplest measure of all: the cash the commonwealth spends each month compared to the cash it receives, stretching back to 1973."

In The Australian today
If the merest spark sufficed to set off the firestorm consuming the Abbott government, that is because so many grievances have been smouldering beneath the surface. No doubt, the circumstances the government has faced might defeat even the ablest leadership; but it is hard to deny that there have been many unforced errors, worsened by an apparent insensitivity to mounting concern in the party room, frustration among senior ministers and a deteriorating public mood.

In The Australian today:
"While Canberra focuses on the big issues, such as whether Prince Philip should have been awarded a knighthood, the Australian dollar burns."

In The Australian today:
"The voice of the people, the Romans used to say, is the voice of the gods. And on Saturday, that voice decisively rejected Queensland’s LNP government and the policies it stood for. "

In The Australian today
' “IN the ancient world,” Karl Marx famously wrote, “the class struggle took the form mainly of a contest between creditors and debtors.” Ever anxious to breathe new life into old theories, Greek voters on the one side and the EU on the other seem set to give Marx’s claim a fresh run. '

In The Australian today:
"Although the US economy is growing more strongly than the International Monetary Fund expected in last October’s World Economic Outlook, that acceleration will not suffice to boost global economic growth.

In The Australian today:

"The French love the idea of France, Americans their country’s shining ideal of liberty. Australians simply love their country as it is. And nothing is more integral to the achievement we celebrate on Australia Day than the easygoing tolerance of difference. "

Today in The Australian:
"Last Thursday, in a dramatic policy reversal, the Swiss National Bank abandoned the cap it had maintained since 2011 on the value of Switzerland’s currency. The move, which took markets by surprise, saw the currency rocket from 1.20 to 0.85 Swiss francs per euro, before settling just above parity. But while that 23 per cent appreciation may have stabilised the Swiss franc, the shock waves will reverberate for months to come."

In The Australian today:
"One thing is certain: Labor left Queensland in a mess. And it is equally certain that Campbell Newman has been willing to take the hard decisions needed to turn the situation around."

In The Australian today
"As the Australian summer dims memories of the Lindt cafe, the terrorist attacks in Paris are a savage reminder of the world we’re in. Yesterday, European leaders gathered to honour the victims; but barbarism will hardly be defeated by pious pleas for unity. "

In The Australian today:

“It’s not difficult to end up like Europe. What is hard, once the rot sets in, is to prevent the slide into debt from becoming a tumble.”

In The Australian today:
"When our Christmas Price Index, which measures the cost of purchasing all the items listed in The Twelve Days of Christmas , was first compiled, Australian suitors intent on giving their true love the full complement could save $36,000 by hopping on a plane to the US, with the price difference across the Pacific more than sufficient to fund a romantic trip in first class for two.

In The Australian today:

"With this week’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook projecting deficits through to 2019-20, Australia’s prosperity is as threatened as our peaceful way of life. But while the horrors of terrorism have brought Australians together, the economic risks this country faces are tearing our political system apart. Whether the government can regain the initiative, focusing the nation’s attention on the dangers of simply letting our fiscal situation drift as export prices plunge, is the crucial question for the year ahead."

In today's The Australian
"It's the season for miracles. Unfortunately, today’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook is likely to show they are in short supply. But if divine intercession is too much to hope for, surely a sensible discussion about public spending is not. And with MYEFO adding to the focus on the proposed GP co-payment, health expenditure should be a good place to start."

Today in The Australian
"It's certainly been good news for Australian consumers. In October, a litre of petrol cost about $1.50; with prices now down to $1.25, the typical motorist is saving $60 a month."

In The Australian today

"With Victorians flocking to put King Herod in charge of the nursery, the federal Coalition could be forgiven were a sense of anxiety intruding like a creeping fog. Whatever its weaknesses, the Napthine government was neither incompetent nor corrupt; that it was thrown out after a single term suggests an electorate that is impatient, intolerant and unforgiving."

In The Australian today:
"Like watching a dog hit by a car, the dying takes longer than one could possibly have imagined. But as budget measure after budget measure writhes in agony, the government has struggled to adapt to the situation it finds itself in."

In The Australian today:
"Ain't love grand! Spell-bound, you see what isn’t there. But though it made the cow-eyed audience at the University of Queensland swoon, virtually none of the $US3 billion Barack Obama pledged for the Green ­Climate Fund is new money."

In today's The Australian
'"If way to the Better there be,” wrote Thomas Hardy, “it exacts a full look at the Worst”. And who could imagine a worse predicament than the eurozone’s?"

In The Australian today:
"Founded exactly six years ago, the G20 is battling to prove its continued relevance. Yes, Aust­ralia has never hosted a gathering of world leaders as eminent as that taking place in Brisbane; but the question is whether the enormous effort and expense will ultimately enhance global prosperity."

In The Australian today:

'According to the polls, the next premier of Victoria will be a man with close links to criminals. Not that Labor leader Daniel Andrews shows any embarrassment about his relationship with Victorian Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union secretary John Setka, who, Andrews claims, “has the confidence of his members”.'

In The Australian today:
"The Ruler of Dubai can sleep easy. No such luck, however, for 500 workers at a Muswellbrook coalmine. In a recent decision, NSW’s Planning Assessment Commission rejected Anglo American’s proposal to extend the mine’s life because it might harm the Ruler’s Darley thoroughbred stud and the Coolmore stud, located nearby."

In The Australian today:
"The decision by the US Federal Reserve to end quantitative easing does not close the era of easy money in the world’s largest ­economy. "

In The Australian today:
"To have lived through the late 1960s and early 70s is to have experienced an unforgettable sense of exuberance. From Stockholm to Ottawa, Bonn to Canberra, a tidal wave of social ­upheaval resulted in far-reaching political renewal."

In The Australian today:
"The Barry Spurr affair is terrifying in the shoddy treatment of Spurr; in what it says about our universities; and in the lack of outrage that either has evoked. "

In The Australian today:
Australian Labor Party has trapped itself in a shrinking pool of ideas
'What a difference five years make. In 2009, Kevin Rudd called competitive neutrality “essential”; now, according to Labor senator Stephen Conroy, the Keating-era requirement that publicly owned businesses not be artificially ­advantaged is a “right-wing ideology” that reflects “deeply flawed ratbaggery”.'

In The Australian today:

"Had Julia Gillard been the heroine of a Gothic romance, she would have put a stiletto through
Kevin Rudd’s heart and gone mad. Instead, she worked the numbers, became prime minister and
has now written a book."

In The Australian today:
"Even for those not steeped in the lore of cricket, reading John Howard on the Menzies era is like hearing Richie Benaud comment on Bradman. There is the insight that only comes from having played at the highest level; the capacity to distinguish brilliance from skill and chance; and perhaps hardest in those one greatly admires, the willingness to call out error."

In The Australian today:
"The nation’s attention is riveted on terrorism, but ultimately, only domestic prosperity can underpin our national security."

In The Australian today:
"Every year, Transparency International publishes a “corruption perceptions index” that ranges from 0 to 100, where higher values indicate cleaner government. On that measure, Australia, which scored 88 a decade ago, is now down to 81."

In The Australian today:

"John Key’s election victory is rich in lessons for the Coalition on how to govern and for Labor on the costs of remaining a wholly owned subsidiary of the unions."

In The Australian today:
"What game is Treasury playing? Last Wednesday, Mathias Cormann, Minister for Finance and Acting Assistant Treasurer, launched a Minerals Council monograph by Professor Tony Makin on Australia’s declining international competitiveness."

In The Australian today:
"It is not easy to imagine a less controversial statement than Tony Abbott’s claim that the arrival of the First Fleet was the “defining moment in the history of this continent”. Nor could it possibly be contentious that British settlement provided the foundation for Australia to become one of the most prosperous societies on Earth."

In The Australian today:
"That the release of the cost-benefit analysis of the National Broadband Network has generated as much heat as light is perhaps unsurprising. The debate about the NBN has always been drenched in politics. And the analysis itself is lengthy and complex, making its findings difficult to communicate and absorb."