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."

In The Australian today:
"Strewth Proust, Swan’s on the loose! With the memoirs of the world’s greatest treasurer shaping up as the stocking stuffer of the season, Wayne Swan’s remembrance of deficits past adds mightily to this year’s choice of spitefully disappointing Christmas presents."

In today's The Australian:
"However uncertain the future may be, what cannot happen will not happen. In Australia’s case, we cannot run large budget deficits forever. At some point, debt accumulation, combined with loss of confidence and external shocks, will force painful adjustments."

In The Australian today:
"There is plenty to criticise in the government’s handling of its proposed data retention laws. But the hysteria with which they have been greeted completely misses the point."

In The Australian today:
"If you are going to steal,’’ they say in America, ‘‘steal big.’’ Jonathan Moylan did just that: by issuing a fraudulent ANZ press release claiming the bank had withdrawn its support from the Maules Creek mining project, he knocked $300 million off the market capitalisation of Whitehaven Coal."

In The Australian today:
"The carbon tax may have gone, but the players have not moved on. For the Greens, its resurrection is only a matter of time. Labor, ever reluctant to face realities, pretends to maintain the rage, much as it did with the GST. Meanwhile, the lessons of the fiasco, and its implications for the Abbott government, are ignored."

In The Australian today:
"Defeat can be turned into opportunity if it is properly managed. With budget measure after budget measure risking rejection in the Senate, the government should use the threat it faces to improve the measures, strengthen public understanding of why they are needed and lay surer foundations for continuing reform."

In The Australian today:

"With Clive Palmer, Labor and the Greens combining to destroy the government’s budget, it is important to understand just how serious our fiscal crisis is."

In The Australian today:
"In the house of the hanged, said Cervantes, it is unseemly to talk about the noose. But someone needs to remind Bill Shorten of Labor’s fiscal record. From 2010 on, every day brought pledges of a speedy return to surplus; in the end, all Labor left was a sea of red ink."

In The Australian today:
"With RET-seekers descending on Canberra by the corporate planeload, honest citizens need to clutch not only their wallets but also their sanity. After all, as the Red Queen told Alice, it is easy to believe the most impossible things if one has enough practice; and nobody works harder at that than the Greens and their fellow travellers."

Today in The Australian
"NOT every nanny encourages her charges to take up alcohol and tobacco. But then again, not every health minister is like Nicola Roxon. "

In The Australian today:
"In this case too, as with climate change, “the science was settled”: plain packaging would “reduce the consumption of tobacco by about 6 per cent and the number of smokers by 2 to 3 per cent”.

Today in The Australian:
“In the game of the round ball,” Jean-Paul Sartre ruefully observed, “everything is complicated by the presence of the opposing team.” So too, alas, in politics. But as in soccer, there are own goals as well: and the government is set to score one with its regulations on illegal timber imports. Unless it changes course, the credibility of its commitment to deregulation will be severely damaged.

In The Australian today:
"Without the ground having been adequately prepared, Joe Hockey and his landing party have struggled to secure a foothold on the beach of entitlement. And as they prepare to crawl through hostile terrain in the Senate, more causalities lie ahead. What could have been done to avert the losses will fuel controversy for years to come. Earlier release of the Audit Commission’s dire fiscal predictions would have helped. So would hammering home the fact that Labor’s promises were entirely unfunded, and would never have been delivered. The Department of Finance’s incoming government brief said as much; but although the government dropped hints, it couldn’t quite bring itself to break the bad news."

In today's The Australian
"Day after day, serried ranks of QCs struggle to make sense of Clive Palmer’s finances. But the abdominal showman’s business dealings are a model of clarity compared with the PUP’s economic policies, which take inconsistency to infinity and beyond."

In The Australian today:
"When power and principle collide, the smart money bets on principle getting a bloody nose. And when all the major parties agree on changes to the electoral system, yellow lights should start flashing. But, despite those risks, the reforms proposed by parliament’s joint standing committee on electoral matters are eminently sensible and deserve to be legis­lated as speedily as possible."

In The Australian today:

"It's not a tax, it’s a charge. A tax is an unrequited payment governments secure by compulsion. A charge is the fee paid for a service. And the proposed GP co-payment isn’t even mandatory: whether doctors impose it is up to them."

In The Australian today:

"Tough but measured. So far, however, only the toughness has registered with voters. That the budget is measured has been drowned out by the shouting."

In The Australian today:
"With well-off students angrily demanding subsidies that will be paid for by taxpayers with far lower lifetime incomes, self-­interest is plainly alive and well at the nation’s universities. Good thing, too, for if competition could harness it to productive uses our aspiring Che Guevaras might get an education worth having."

In The Australian today:
"Having failed at the art of fiscal management, Labor has now descended into its kitsch. Time and again, Labor heralded a return to surplus, only to leave the country drowning in red ink. Reduced to the last refuge of the profligate, Bill Shorten’s budget reply speech ignores the problems altogether, offering yet more promises built on a marsh of unreality."

In The Australian today:
"One thing is clear: this budget is a herculean effort. But while it has put our fiscal position on the right track, we still have miles to go, and the path is fraught with risks."

In The Australian today:
“It was not intended to make anyone giggle,” treasurer Arthur Fadden said of his ‘‘horror budget’’ of September 1951. The wool boom unleashed by the Korean War had nearly trebled the terms of trade, adding a massive 7 per cent to real gross domestic income. With unemployment falling below 1 per cent of the labour force, the inflation rate had risen to an all-time high of 25.6 per cent and seemed likely to increase further. Yet by 1953 inflation had plummeted to less than 2 per cent, setting the scene for two decades of solid economic growth.

In The Australian today:
The audit commission is right: there is a strong case for reforming the age pension. But those changes must be part of a broader restructuring of our retirement incomes system. For unless that system can provide reasonable income security in old age, the changes will prove neither economically desirable nor politically sustainable.