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.

In The Australian today:
"Nothing better summarises the report of the National Commission of Audit than its title: Towards Responsible Government. “Responsible” means not merely accountable but vested with a duty of care; “towards” reminds us how just far we have to go."

In the Australian today:
"The nation’s mood was grim that day..."

In The Australian today:
"Watching Barry O’Farrell’s resignation recalled Enoch Powell’s conclusion to his biography of Joseph Chamberlain that “all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and human affairs”.

In The Australian today:

"That affluence can buy influence is hardly news. What makes Clive Palmer different is that he flaunts it. Repeatedly, he tried to seize control of the Liberal Party in Queensland. When that failed, he set up his own political movement."

In The Australian  today:
"Tony Sheldon’s call for a campaign of “civil disobedience” against Qantas has been hailed in the labour movement. “It’s new thinking,” said the shadow Minister for Offence, Senator Stephen Conroy, “we’ve never tried being civil before.”

In The Australian today:
"There is no passion, said Georges Clemenceau, like that of a functionary for his function. He must have had the Clean Energy Finance Corporation in mind, as it battles the Coalition’s election commitment to abolish it."

Today in The Australian:
"As the Abbott government prepares its first budget, it faces some stark realities. This year will see our sixth budget deficit in a row. And although there may be some short-term improvements, the time bombs Labor left will result in deficits for years to come. Without fundamental change, the country’s fiscal position risks becoming unsustainable."

In The Australian today:
“Let us rain compassion in the shape of regulations,” urged one of the first accounts of European settlement in Australia.

In The Australian today:
"Fear was all Labor offered voters in Tasmania and South Australia: fear of “cuts”, fear for jobs, fear of change. The mixed outcome, which could see Jay Weatherill cling to power, may convince the party of that message’s potency; but it is neither a credible basis for rebuilding Labor federally nor a viable ­answer to the profound difficulties Tasmania and SA face. "

In The Australian today:
"Far from being an emerging superpower, Russia is a weak state, wracked by cronyism and corruption, and overly reliant on exports of oil and gas. That hardly means Russian aggression in Ukraine can be ignored or condoned. But detestable as he may be, Vladimir Putin is no Hitler and the Crimean peninsula is not the Sudetenland."

In today's The Australian:
"It has hardly been a stellar week for the flailing kangaroo. Not waving but drowning one day, it was not flying but soaring the next. If the aim was to confuse, Qantas’s mixed messages did the trick."

In The Australian today:
"With Qantas apparently on today’s cabinet agenda, the flying kangaroo seems beleaguered in each major area of its operations. But while Tony Abbott has taken a debt guarantee off the table, repealing the Qantas Sale Act not only faces Senate hurdles but may not be sufficient to address the airline’s problems."

In The Australian today:

"As Labor’s grasp on power was slipping, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd entered into school funding agreements with the states that will entrench disadvantage and perpetuate poor performance. If the state premiers are genuinely committed to quality education, now is the time to scrap those agreements and start again."

In The Australian today:

"Ever since the first G6 summit, held outside Paris in the wake of the 1973-74 oil shock, economic summitry has been condemned to a cycle in which initial enthusiasm degenerates into stage-managed ritual. With the raptures that greeted the formation of the G20 now a fading embarrassment, the weekend's gathering of finance ministers and central bankers did little to rise above a footnote in the annals of international relations."

In The Australian today:
"It is an honour to be rebutted by a former prime minister. But Julia Gillard’s claim, (”Laws and Fair Work”, Letters, Feb 14) that I “misled readers” in describing Labor’s changes to the industrial relations laws does not stand up to scrutiny."

In The Australian today:
"And then there were none. Late in May last year, Ford announced it would cease its vehicle assembly and engine production in Australia in October 2016; just before Christmas, General Motors Holden followed, with its closure due to occur by the end of 2017; and last week was Toyota’s turn, with its manufacturing operations also set to close by the end of 2017. "

In The Australian today:
"After the 1983 election, when half the Australian workforce were union members, barely a third of the ALP’s new MPs thanked the unions in their maiden speech. By the 2013 election, union membership had fallen below 20 per cent of the workforce; but more than 90 per cent of Labor’s new MPs devoted part of their first speech to praising the union movement."

In The Australian today:
"Malcolm Turnbull is right to check whether the ABC and the SBS provide taxpayers with value for money. But to ensure good use of the community's resources, it is not enough to ask whether the public service broadcasters are doing what they do properly; one must also ask whether they are doing the right things. "

In The Australian today:
"Cecily, you will read your Political Economy in my absence", Miss Prism instructs the young heiress in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. But, the prudish governess hastens to add, "the chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side."

In The Australian today:

"History may not teach us much, but it does show that you can't keep a bad idea down. And this bad idea resurfaces with a regularity that, if it applied to ageing human bodies, would deprive prune growers of their livelihoods."

In The Australian today:
"Australians are ambivalent about their cities. From AD Hope's Australia - with its denunciation of "her five cities, like five teeming sores,/ ... Where second-hand Europeans pullulate/ Timidly on the edge of alien shores" - to Barry Humphries' Gladiola Duchy of Moonee Ponds, the metropolis has been where Australians live, not where they dream. The result is a society profoundly uncertain as to what it wants its cities to do, and even more uncertain as to how they should do it. "

In The Australian today:
  
"Australian cities are suffering a double blow: despite ambitious project announcements, public investment has fallen as governments try to rein-in spending; but as infrastructure costs continue to climb each dollar of that investment is yielding less and less relief to frustrated commuters."

In The Australian today:
"The urgent need to repair the budget bottom line will dominate politics this year. After Labor's failure to blaze a path back to surplus following the global financial crisis, despite repeated promises to do so, it falls to Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey to demonstrate their fiscal prowess. "

In The Australian today:

"The news would have sent the champagne corks popping. Merely two days before Christmas, Ross Gittins, the sage of the Fairfax press, had crunched the numbers and the verdict was in: Rudd-Gillard-Rudd may not have been models of fiscal rectitude, but Howard was far worse."

In The Australian today:

"It's official: Wayne Swan was good for the birds. That's according to this year's Christmas Price Index, which measures the cost of buying the items listed in The Twelve Days of Christmas in Australia on a basis strictly comparable to a similar calculation by the PNC Financial Services Group for the US."

In The Australian today:
"Exactly a year ago, Wayne Swan conceded that the Labor government would not achieve its much touted budget surplus. Since then, the $5.4 billion surplus Swan promised in 2010-11 for 2012-13 has melted into a $47bn deficit. As for the benign outlook Swan's 2012-13 budget projected, its cumulative surplus of $16.3bn to 2015-16 has become a $123.8bn sea of red ink."

In The Australian today:
"As usual, the Speedy Gonzales prize following last week's Holden announcement went to the premiers of the affected states, who sprinted to Canberra clutching their begging bowls. "

In The Australian today:
"It has been the longest goodbye. After all, it was 65 years ago that Ben Chifley launched the FJ Holden; only a few months before, his government had nationalised Qantas. That those twin symbols of the Chifley Labor government's post-war order are now crumbling is hardly surprising. But no matter how obsolete that order seems, its legacy remains at the heart of the political divide."

In The Australian today:
"Coming after the school funding row, last week's Program for International Student Assessment results provided the education lobby with a golden opportunity to vent its claims. Not that those claims needed repeating, for they have become articles of religion. But that doesn't stop them being demonstrably false."

In The Australian today:
"Whatever one might think of the GrainCorp decision, it was never going to be an easy one for the Coalition -- which is why Chris Bowen handballed it to Joe Hockey. After all, the Coalition is precisely that; and with the costs of disunity now seared into politicians' minds, a highly publicised rift between Liberals and Nationals would hardly have gotten the Abbott government off to an auspicious start."

From today's The Australian:
"It was hardly a marriage made in heaven: the suitor's track record was mixed and the parents might well have hoped for a more attractive match. But that doesn't mean Archer Daniels Midland's $3.4 billion takeover of GrainCorp should have been blocked. And by blocking it, Treasurer Joe Hockey has raised any number of questions, while providing all too few answers."

In The Australian today:

"According to the ABC, Australian taxpayers aren't entitled to know how much it pays its executives. But while shrouding itself in secrecy the national broadcaster did not hesitate to divulge highly classified information about Australia's intelligence programs, worsening the crisis unleashed by the US traitor Edward Snowden. "

In The Australian today:
"It would be possible to tell the tale of Jules and Kev comically, pathetically, even savagely."

In The Australian today:
"The Australian car industry is waiting around to die. With every passing day, analysing its problems becomes less a diagnosis and more a post-mortem. The only question is whether anyone has the courage to sign the death certificate."

In The Australian today:
"Let's start the week with a heretical thought: Australian farmers aren't idiots. If they are concerned about the proposed acquisition of GrainCorp by Archer Daniels Midland, their fears shouldn't be dismissed as hysterical rants."

In The Australian today:

"Fancy a pancake? Well, you can't have one. Because they don't exist."

In The Australian today:

"Like the theologians Voltaire skewered for attributing the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 to licentiousness and vice, the green lobby has seized on the NSW bushfires as a sign that the carbon tax must be retained."

Today in The Australian:
"Adelaide, August 28, 1993. Prime minister Paul Keating launches the first Collins-class submarine. As the gleaming vessel hits the water, Australia's technological prowess glistens as brightly as its military strength. Led by the ABC, the media hails the event as a triumph. "

In The Australian today:

"Labor's leadership ballot was supposed to revitalise the party. Instead, it has revitalised the factions, leaving them firmly in control. Rather than learn from the past six years, Labor seems intent on repeating its mistakes."

In The Australian today:
"Joe Hockey's warning on Wednesday that Australia will use its chairmanship of the G20 next year to secure action curbing tax minimisation by multinationals shows the Coalition is every bit as determined as Labor was to protect Australia's revenue base."

In The Australian today:
"Bill Clinton famously called the US "the indispensable nation"'. With the shutdown grinding on, America seems more incomprehensible than indispensable. And further crises lie ahead, as showdowns on the debt ceiling and the automatic sequester loom."

From today's The Australian

"From 1980 on, country after country moved to greater economic and political freedom. A report released last week by Canada's Fraser Institute shows that since the global financial crisis, that wave of liberalisation has come to an end, and in some cases, reversed."

In The Australian today:

"It is in the nature of events that their consequences seem clearer than their causes. Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the global financial crisis is no exception. Yet just as the causes of the crisis remain intensely controversial, so uncertainty pervades its long-run effects and the dangers of recurrence."

In The Australian today:

"According to Anthony Albanese, the sacking of three department heads and the announcement that a fourth would step down amounts to treating the public service as "political playthings".

In The Australian today:

"Elections should be the storm before the calm. But 2007 and 2010 broke that pattern. Now, pundits say, Tony Abbott's hopes of orderly government will be spoiled by a fractious Senate. And though the final result remains uncertain, there is a clamour for changes that would make it more difficult for small parties to win Senate seats through preference deals."

In The Australian today:
"History, it is often claimed, is written by the victors. Yet from Thucydides on it is the defeated who have most readily sought its solace. "As their overwhelming experience is that everything occurred other than as planned," explained the great German intellectual Reinhart Koselleck, himself a veteran of Paulus's army at Stalingrad, "it is the losers who feel the most desperate need to understand how that could have happened."

In The Australian today:
"To reform our economy, an Abbott government needs an effective Treasury. That requires addressing problems whose roots stretch back to the Whitlam years. But solving them is not a question of returning to the past, nor can those solutions be viewed in isolation from broader reforms to the public service."

In The Australian today:
"According to Kevin Rudd, we mustn't put all our eggs in the one basket. Come Saturday, the Australian people will at last have a chance to tell him un oeuf is enough. But getting rid of Labor's fiscal mess will be far more challenging than throwing out a rotten egg."

In The Australian today:
"With the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers looming, financial markets are again in turmoil. Paradoxically, the jitters come not from the risk of crisis in the US but from fears that a strengthening economy will lead the Federal Reserve to scale back on "quantitative easing" and eventually increase interest rates."

In The Australian today:
"Next year, Australians will invest an estimated $2000 each on public infrastructure, from roads and electricity poles to trains and the National Broadband Network. If the Coalition wins on September 7, it needs to bring greater discipline to that spending, ensuring users and taxpayers get value for money. Creating a new department with responsibility for all commonwealth infrastructure decisions should be part of those reforms."

In The Australian today:

"Campaigning is about raising expectations, governing about managing them. The critical question about Tony Abbott's paid parental leave scheme is whether we can afford it."

In the Australian today:
"According to the ALP's "A New Way" ad, "the old politics of negativity just won't work". Luckily, there's a new politics of negativity to replace it: so far, 60 per cent of the election ads posted on Labor's website involve attacks on the Coalition, with the proportion for the Coalition being similar."

In The Australian today:

"Talk about chutzpah. On Tuesday, Treasury and Finance release the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook showing a cumulative deficit from 2008-09 to 2015-16 of $250 billion; but Kevin Rudd calls it "D Day" for the Coalition, as if it was Tony Abbott who had some explaining to do."

In The Australian today:

"Kevin Rudd has at last stopped the boats: the boats that export coal from Australia."

In The Australian today:
"Labor's policy decisions since 2007 increased commonwealth revenues across the 10 years to 2016-17 by $78 billion. At the same time, however, they increased spending by $138bn."

From today's The Australian:
"Queensland lost its AAA rating by re-electing an incompetent government that wouldn't control public spending. Now "Kevin from Queensland" is here to help repeat that outcome nationally."

In The Australian today:
"First they needed a deficit to spread the boom. Now they need a deficit to spread the bust. If General Macarthur were running Treasury, he'd declare failure as the "Keating Line" had been breached: in real terms, commonwealth net debt is back to where it was in 1996, and climbing."

In The Australian today (with Judith Sloan):
"The era of Kevin, interrupted by the Julia interlude, has been a roller-coaster ride. Having promised Howard-lite and fiscal conservatism, the excuse of the global financial crisis unleashed a period of rapid growth in government spending, successive budget deficits and mounting public debt under Kevin Rudd's guidance."

In The Australian today:
"Always keen to play the blame game, Kevin Rudd claims Labor's climate change policies are not "the primary reason for the hike in electricity prices"; rather, the hike is due to "excessive rates of return for publicly owned transmission and distribution utilities which have become cash cows for various state and territory governments". That is not just incorrect; it misleads the public about the cost of Rudd's policies."

In The Australian today:
"According to Kevin Rudd, with "the China resources boom over, we need to aim for a productivity number with a '2' in front of it."

In The Australian today:

"The carbon tax, it seems, is a good policy that has lost its way. Thank goodness Kevin Rudd is there to set it straight. But far from putting it back on track, he has merely confirmed that under Labor, climate change policy is determined not by rules but by roulette, with the ruler du jour spinning the wheel and choosing the outcome."

In The Australian today:

"On April 20, 2008, 1000 of the "nation's best and brightest thinkers" rose in stage-managed unison to give a triumphant Kevin Rudd a standing ovation. With the delegates to the 2020 Summit having agreed that 1 per cent of all public spending should be devoted to the arts and that every employer should be obliged to provide 30 minutes of free fitness training a day, the imagination had seized power. And Rudd, who had guided Labor out of the wilderness, was its messiah."

In The Australian:

"Good on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the $10 billion fund established by Labor's climate change package. Other government efforts at picking winners end up shafting taxpayers. The CEFC is doing so from the start."

In The Australian today:

"The trouble with Kevin is that he's unfit to govern. On that his former colleagues are right. And when no less an authority than Stephen Conroy thinks you're certifiable, the home for the bewildered surely beckons."

In The Australian today:
"Will he, won't he? Will she, won't she? Maybe only her hairdresser knows for sure. But regardless of whether Labor's soap opera ends with a bang or a whimper, one thing seems a sure bet - the carbon tax, a year old next week, won't survive to a second birthday."

In The Australian today:
"The past week's financial turbulence seems somewhat paradoxical. After all, Wednesday's statement by Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, which triggered the largest fall in US stockmarkets in a year, reflected the Fed's perception of an improving outlook for the American economy."

In The Australian today:

"Having picked the wrong lifeboat, Labor seems set to clamber back on the Titanic. With the mast broken, the rudder lost and the rocks looming, the backbench's panic is understandable: and their despair is far more credible than Julia Gillard's claim that the raft really is afloat and making headway."

In The Australian today:

"Have all savings options been explored?"