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?"

In The Australian today:

"There is one crucial result in the Parliamentary Budget Office's report on Australia's fiscal position: from 2001-02 on, the Howard government ran structural budget surpluses every year averaging 1.4 per cent of GDP; while every year it has been in office, Labor has run structural deficits averaging 2.8 per cent of GDP. And even accepting the fog of unreality that is Labor's latest budget, those structural deficits will persist through to at least 2016-17."

In The Australian today:
"Middle-class welfare" is not a descriptor; it is a rhetorical device. After all, who but the profligate could defend providing welfare to those who should be able to look after themselves?"

In The Australian today:

"Ford's workers are angry. And rightly so. Only weeks ago, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition reaffirmed their passionate commitment to Australia's car industry. Now, with Ford announcing it will shut down carmaking in Australia in October 2016, their jobs will disappear."

Today in The Australian
"Last week's budget seems the farewell card Labor had to have. It constrains spending, while funding DisabilityCare and the Gonski reforms; it projects sustained revenue increases, with receipts rising twice as rapidly as payments to 2014-15; it heralds a surplus in 2015-16; and it paints a strong picture of the outlook to 2023-24, at which time net debt will be negative and the government will be accumulating assets on behalf of taxpayers."

In The Australian today:

"Imagine a wage earner, John." But not Julia Gillard's avatar. Rather, the John who was elected prime minister on March 11, 1996. Inheriting a budget deficit of 2.1 per cent of GDP, he promises a surplus: a year later, he delivers it.

In The Australian today:

"In July last year, Julia Gillard curtly dismissed the Liberal premiers' suggestion of a levy to fund the national disability insurance scheme without proposing any alternative. A week ago she "changed her mind". Suddenly, the whole scheme, until then merely aspirational, is suffused in the warm glow of consensus, despite an increasingly dire fiscal outlook."

In The Australian today:

"On November 14, 2007, Labor launched its "economically conservative" fiscal policy. In only 10 lines of text, long since removed from the ALP's website, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan's media release repeatedly contrasted Labor's promised "restraint" and "discipline" with John Howard's "reckless spending"."

In The Australian today:

"Faced with Kevin Rudd's initial foray into essay writing, Rossini's quip about Wagner's Lohengrin leapt to mind. "One cannot judge Lohengrin from a first hearing," said Rossini. "And I certainly do not intend to hear it a second time."

Today in The Australian:
"As well as being policy fiascos, the carbon tax, the National Broadband Network and the mining tax have this in common: they were based on economic modelling that has been kept hidden from the public."

In The Australian today:
"According to the government, taxing retirees' superannuation earnings above $100,000 will "enhance the sustainability of retirement incomes" while only affecting 0.5 per cent of retirees who are "fabulously wealthy". Those claims are demonstrably false: should it ever be legislated, the tax would eventually hit millions of Australians and make the superannuation system increasingly unsustainable."

In The Australian today:
"Wayne Swan's woes are even worse than they seem. For the National Broadband Network has blown an additional $10 billion hole in Labor's next budget."

In The Australian today:

"Mark Latham is furious. With the ALP for turning its back on the legacy of economic reform. With Labor's opponents, accused of every possible malfeasance. And perhaps especially with himself, for coming to the leadership "too young" and "with too little life experience".

Today in The Australian:

"Early in 1952, a group of trucking operators decided to protest against the restrictions on interstate road freight imposed by the states to protect their inefficient railways. Placing a copy of the Australian Constitution in a wheelbarrow, the truckers pushed it from Melbourne to Sydney. The journey took 11 days; but that was still two days quicker than a parcel mailed the same day and carried by rail."

From today's The Australian:
"Rushed policy, as Kevin Rudd discovered with the mining tax, is bad politics. And bad politics can be harmful to prime ministers and other animals."

From today's The Australian:
"Arrogance is the curse of those long on power and short on wisdom. Little wonder, then, that Stephen Conroy has announced his media reforms as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, giving parliament no time to consider, much less amend, legislation it has not yet seen and will not see until the last moment."

In The Australian today:

As Labor reels federally, demonising the Liberal premiers has become Wayne Swan's stock in trade. A man who makes enemies effortlessly, the outcomes of his strategy in Western Australia speak for themselves. But, as a Queenslander, the Treasurer has focused his attacks on Campbell Newman, denouncing his spending reductions as "unnecessary" while claiming they are "in stark contrast to those of the Gillard government".

In The Australian today:
"The goal of the "Give a Gonski" campaign is not a revolution; it is a counter-revolution. Its targets are changes taking place in the Coalition states that bring greater autonomy to government schools, devolve more control from bureaucrats to parents and principals, and increase school choice."

In The Australian today:
The impasse in Rome is bad news for Italy and Europe’s economic prospects.

In The Australian today:

"Campaigning is the enemy of governing. And while the prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully, the moments before the high jump are rarely spent developing sound public policy. The Howard government's water initiative, launched in 2007 just after Labor's sharp rise in the polls, was public policy at its worst; the Gillard government's jobs plan provides it with a worthy competitor."

In The Australian today:

"Now we know. Locked away in Parliament House were the world's largest miners. In strode the new Prime Minister and her Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, with a spring in their step and fresh blood on their hands. As the execution of Kevin Rudd had shown, it wasn't that they lacked scruples; they simply wouldn't let them get in their way. And so our capi dei capi made the miners an offer they couldn't refuse. "

In The Australian today:
"If you believe the allegations being reported daily, Eddie Obeid may have earned twice as much out of the resource bonanza as the MRRT. It's comforting that at least one part of Labor takes seriously Wayne Swan's mantra of "spreading the benefits of the mining boom". But that is little help to the government in its desperate search for revenue."

In The Australian today:
"The captain having announced that she intends to land the plane, the crew don their parachutes and
rush for the emergency exits. As far as votes of confidence go, it is a corker."

In The Australian today:
"Tomorrow the nation goes back to work with no clarity whatsoever as to the government's fiscal strategy. Yet exactly a year ago, the Prime Minister was unambiguous. "

In The Australian today:

"You don't need to be a professor of economics to know John Howard was more fiscally prudent than Silvio Berlusconi. And if an econometric study suggested the opposite, you would look very carefully at its data and methods before placing much weight on its results. Unless, that is, you were the Fairfax press and the ABC. "

In The Australian today:

"Bob Hawke wants to abolish the states because he believes the commonwealth would provide services more efficiently. "

In The Australian today:

"With the US facing both the prospect of the "fiscal cliff" and a looming showdown over the allowed debt ceiling, it is difficult to fault consumers and investors for being spooked. These are times to be prudent. And that makes it all the worse that the Gillard government has abandoned even the pretence of having a credible fiscal strategy. "

From today's Australian:

"Something fishy has happened to prices for our feathered friends. Not only has this year's Christmas Price Index, which calculates the cost of buying the gifts specified in the Twelve Days of Christmas, increased by 3.7 per cent, well above the Reserve Bank's inflation target, but prices for turtle doves, French hens and calling birds all spiked in 2012, rising by 25 per cent or more. Even swans, which at more than $1000 each already squeezed the family purse, have increased by a hefty 8 per cent."

In The Australian today:

"Little Miss Bossy tells everyone what to do. Little Miss Naughty is badly behaved.  And Little Miss Fickle breaks her promises. But no one is as scary as Little Miss Ogyny, especially when she goes on the attack."

Henry in "The Australian" today

"This Wednesday is Ted Baillieu's moment of truth. He must respond to the independent inquiry into taxi services. Does he have the ticker to tackle entrenched interest groups? "

In The Australian today:

"Julia Gillard's announcement yesterday that she would take action to "save families up to $250 a year on electricity bills" is readily understandable. With a long, hot summer in prospect, Australian families are in for an electric shock. "

In The Australian today:

"It just won't go away. All week, Julia Gillard refused in parliament to answer detailed questions about her role in overcoming the West Australian regulator's concerns with the incorporation of the so-called AWU Workplace Reform Association. Now it is clear that she was pivotal in doing so."

In The Australian today:

"Corruption, the economist Robert Klitgaard once said, is the inevitable product of "rents plus discretion minus accountability". He had the gangsters running equatorial Africa in mind; but if the allegations being presented to the Independent Commission Against Corruption are proven, he could have been writing about the government led by Kristina Keneally in NSW."

In The Australian today:

"The opposition was right to ridicule the Asian Century white paper. But that hardly means the changes under way in the world economy can be dismissed; on the contrary, positioning Australia to grasp the opportunities they create, while managing their risks, should be at the heart of the opposition's economic strategy. "

In The Australian today:

"Historically, American voters have responded less to the immediate state of the US economy than to recent trends: if the economy is improving, incumbents win. On that basis, Barack Obama should secure a second term in this week's vote. But whoever the next president may be, the US faces challenges its political system seems increasingly poorly placed to address."

In The Australian today:

"According to the "Asian Century" report, making our education system one of the world's five best is crucial to seizing the opportunities created by Asia's economic growth. Perhaps, but the real question is what that would involve. "

In The Australian today:

"On October 9, 2007, the New York Stock Exchange's Dow Jones index reached its all-time high of 14,164.53. Almost exactly five years of turmoil later, the International Monetary Fund's recently released World Economic Outlook warns that the "risks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high". With world trade virtually stagnant in recent months, the fund has downgraded its assessment of global economic prospects, while hedging even that projection with a chilling litany of possible downsides. "

Click on the filename to download a pdf.

In The Australian today:

"Bad enough strangling the goose: they shouldn't get away with also gilding its eggs. For there are myths and there are facts. And while the myth is that superannuation savings are lightly taxed, the fact is that effective tax rates on long-term super savings are close to or even above the top rate of income tax."

Click on the filename to download a pdf.

In The Australian today:

"It's hard to disagree with Ross Garnaut that China's slowing growth will place new pressures on our economy. But the implications he derives from that are wrong-headed. And that is unsurprising, as they are driven more by the politics of protecting the carbon tax than by sensible economic analysis."

Click on the filename below to download a pdf.

In The Australiian today (subscription required)

"This is a tale of deficits, deaths and deceptions. The deficit is that for 2011-12, which we now know was nearly $44 billion. The deception is the process by which the estimates of that deficit were massaged in the lead-up to the 2010 election. The death is that of budget honesty."

Click on the filename below to download a pdf.

Henry in The Australian today (subscription required):

"One cannot but admire Joe Ludwig, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. After the triumph of the ban on live cattle exports, a lesser man might have rested on his laurels. But with the Abel Tasman episode, Ludwig has shown he can trawl new depths"

Click on the filename below to download a pdf.

Henry in The Australian Monday 10 September 2012:

"Bad government is no excuse for bad governance. Yet an interim report just released by the Productivity Commission highlights the damage this government has done to a key element in the integrity of public decision-making: the process of scrutinising proposed regulations."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or on the link to download.

Henry in The Australian Monday 3 September

"Last week's violence in Melbourne is merely the most visible sign of resurgent union thuggery. Far from keeping peace, the Fair Work Act is fanning conflict, allowing negotiation to descend into extortion. And far from addressing root causes, Julia Gillard and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten are at best papering over the symptoms, at worst tolerating criminality."


Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or on the link below to download a pdf version.

Henry in The Australian Wednesday 29 August

 "The carbon floor price is dead, but it certainly hasn't died alone. Rather, there are so many fatalities in this announcement that Canberra will need a new cemetery."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or on the link below to download a pdf version.

Henry in The Australian Monday 27 August 2012:

'Reducing mining investment is not collateral damage from the carbon tax: it is integral to achieving its objective of shrinking the carbon intensive components of Australia's economy. As Treasury found, because of the tax, "the (Australian) mining sector experiences a significant decline in rates of return. As a result, investment falls significantly."'

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download the file at the link below.
 A pity prosperity depends on mining

Henry in The Australian Monday 20 August 2012:

"Julia Gillard is a woman of principle: the survival principle. And if the backflip on asylum-seekers is about saving lives, the life it is intended to save is her own."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download the pdf file below. More reading at Henry's blog.

Henry in The Australian Monday 13 August 2012:

"Displaying that Laurel and Hardy sense of timing that has brought them fame on Canberra's vaudeville circuit, Stephen Conroy and Julia Gillard closed last week contradicting each other."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download PM in another fine gold-plated mess. More reading at Henry's blog.

Henry in The Australian Wed 8 August:

"The genie is out of the bottle and no statistic is safe. For clutching his Gini coefficients, Wayne Swan is on the rampage. The Treasurer's fury is directed at this paper's George Megalogenis, who writing in last Thursday's edition dared suggest inequality had increased on the class warrior's watch."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download Treasurer should put his Ginis back in the bottle and go for growth.  
More reading at Henry's blog.

Henry in The Australian Mon 6 Aug 2012:

"Wayne Swan's John Button oration raises important questions: why is it that inequality has increased more in the US than in Australia? And what lessons can be drawn from those differences?"

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download The Treasurer is dancing in the dark. More reading at Henry's blog.

In The Australian:

"There are two issues with the National Disability Insurance Scheme: how it will be paid for, and how its services are delivered. The NDIS trials seem designed to address the second; but virtually no progress has been made on the first. As a result, regardless of the trials' outcomes, there seems little prospect of the scheme being adequately funded."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download Why Mr Abbott needs this big new tax.

In The Australian Monday 23 July 2012:

"At the heart of Labor's problems is its reaction to the 2010 election. In that election, voters swung to the Right, but thanks to Julia Gillard's deal with the Greens, the government shifted sharply to the Left. Those opposing movements transformed a gap between Labor and the electorate into a chasm. And with voters sceptical of the Prime Minister's trustworthiness from the outset, that chasm now threatens to swallow Labor whole."

 Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download Electorate right about PM's left turn.

In The Australian Wednesday 18 July 2012:

"When Hamlet soliloquised about shuffling off the mortal coil, he cited "the insolence of office" in the same breath as "the pangs of disprized love". Judging by the presentations at an Australian National University conference earlier this week on tax reform, he could have had Canberra in mind."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download Ken Henry is no Paul Keating, nor was he meant to be.

In The Australian Monday 16 July 2012:

"It was not meant to be this way. In the Australian collective consciousness, as the country grew, it would become less dependent on natural resources, not more. But the reality is that we remain an economy that rides on the sheep's (or at least, the miners') back, with the prosperity, but also volatility, that implies."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) 

More reading at Henry's blog. 

In The Australian Monday 9 July 2012:

"With more compensation packages than boat arrivals, the carbon tax is a policy at war with itself."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) or download Stuck in a policy of odd origins.

More reading at Henry's blog.

"A strange thing happened to the "public interest" test for media ownership as it made its way from the Productivity Commission's 2000 broadcasting report to Stephen Conroy's 2012 Convergence Review. The PC designed the test to apply only to major media mergers. But with little discussion and less explanation, the Convergence Review, while citing the PC report as the authority for such a test, expanded it to cover mere changes of ownership."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required)

Download Let market forces determine the future of media

Henry in The Australian Monday 25 June 2012:

Beaming from ear to ear, Wayne Swan declared the latest figures on Australia's economic growth "stunning". As for Julia Gillard, she hailed the "remarkable" data as "proving the doomsayers and sceptics wrong". "They are proof," Swan added, "that something special is happening in our country."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required) 

More reading at Henry's blog.

Download Bad ideas are slow killers 

Henry in The Australian Monday 18 June 2012:

"Next year, each man, woman and child in this country will pay $450 in electricity charges for "green schemes", including the carbon tax, renewable energy targets and solar feed-in tariffs."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required)

More reading at Henry's blog

Download Carbon impost a recipe for low wages

Henry in The Australian Monday 11 June 2012:

"Two weeks after being elected, Kevin Rudd convened the state and territory premiers to announce "a historic new era of co-operative federalism" that would, at long last, "fix the federation". Five years later, Australian federalism lies in tatters."


Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required)

More reading at Henry's blog

Download
GST punishes resourceful states to reward the rest

Henry in The Australian Monday 4 June 2012:

"Here's the rub," Julia Gillard told the nation's mining executives at last week's Minerals Council annual dinner; "you don't own the minerals". But she carefully omitted to say precisely who does. For she knows full well the commonwealth no more owns those minerals than it owns the moon."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required)

More reading at Henry's blog

Download the pdf.

"It is far easier to make a fish soup out of an aquarium than the other way around. And once the soup has been made, it is a bit late to try to extricate a particularly inedible goldfish. "

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required)

Download
Better for Club Med to stay in eurozone and face up to reform

"Last Tuesday, Martin Parkinson, the Treasury Secretary, used the annual post-budget address to examine the uncertainties in the economic outlook. While his speech was wide-ranging, one component stuck out: the suggestion that the rapid growth of mining was "dampening tax receipts as a share of the economy", with "the accelerated write-offs provided for many mining assets" being "of particular importance". "

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website (subscription required)

Download
Miner's taxes pay for PM's follies

"Despite the devastating Christchurch earthquakes, New Zealand is undertaking a fiscal consolidation twice the size of Australia's"

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website.

Download
PM rebuilds the base to go back to the future

Henry in The Australian 7 May 2012:

"Since being elected in 2007, Labor has taken policy decisions that have increased revenue by $24.2 billion and expenditure by $126.1bn, worsening the budget bottom line by $102bn."

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website.

Download
Flimsy balancing trick really a lacklustre effort

Henry in The Australian 7 May 2012:

"Tomorrow, in presenting the 2012-13 budget, Wayne Swan is likely to repeat the Gillard government's mantra that it has achieved "the fastest fiscal consolidation on record". But the reality is far from the government's claims of shining fiscal rectitude."

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website.

Download
Talk of fiscal rectitude is Labor spin

Henry in The Australian 30 April 2012:

"Given just how warped our taxation of superannuation is, one might have thought it difficult to make it worse."

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website.

Download
Doubling tax on super will blow out distortions

Henry in The Australian 23 April 2012:

"It is nonsense to talk of population ageing as a problem. Rather, its main cause -- the immense rise in human life expectancy -- is perhaps society's greatest achievement. But it does create challenges, and providing aged care is central among them."

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website.

Download
Aged-care package buys time but tsunami ahead

Henry in The Australian 16 April 2012:

"The Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling is right: our schools should provide better and more equitable outcomes. Unfortunately, the funding model it recommends is unlikely to achieve those goals."

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website.

Download
Extra money won't fix schools

Henry in The Australian 1 April 2012

"That drugs destroy lives hardly needs to be said. The question is how we should deal with them. In a recently released report, Australia21, a policy think tank, calls our prohibition-based approach an exercise in "failure and futility". Australia21's claims are exaggerated and in important respects incorrect. But that doesn't mean our policies should stay as they are."

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the article at The Australian's website.

Download
Prohibition still best way to beat drugs

Henry in The Australian Monday 2 April 2012

"The ALP's crushing defeat in Queensland has renewed calls for Labor to expand and empower its shrinking membership."

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the op-ed at The Australian's website (subscription required).

Download
ReformingTheALP.pdf

Henry in The Australian Monday 26 March 2012:

"The challenge facing Queensland's new 264 is to clean up the legacy of 14 years of Labor rule, improve the state's 266 and deliver on its ambitious election promises. "

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the op-ed at The Australian's website (subscription required) or on the link below to download a pdf.

Download
Campbell_must_clean_up_state_finances_Mon_26_Mar_2012.pdf

There is inspiration in respiration

One of those obnoxious climate sceptics, may they perish in the eternal flames (should it stop raining long enough for those flames to burn the way they used to), has written querying a report on the ABC science blog. That report suggests climate change is to blame for yes, obesity: “Steadily rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be affecting brain chemistry and contributing to the obesity epidemic”. The sceptic (may he perish etc.) complains this assertion does not seem to be based on any evidence.

Read more at Henry's blog.

Download
ThereIsInspirationInRespiration.pdf

Henry in The Australian Monday 19 March 2012:

"Since 1999 Australia's prison population has increased by 50 per cent. And with high and likely rising recidivism rates, it seems set to continue growing."

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the op-ed at The Australian's website (subscription required) or on the  link below to download a pdf.

Download
It_s_only_when_crime_doesn_t_pay_that_criminals_will_be_deterred_Mon_19_Mar_2012.pdf

The 264 is placing huge weight on its rather small cut in the company tax rate. However, Australia has an imputation tax system. That means that dividends that are ‘franked’ are effectively pre-payments of personal income tax. As a result, the company tax bites most when companies are paying dividends to foreign shareholders. Those dividends are typically covered by double tax agreements: so payments made on investments in Australia to foreign investors are taxed at the higher of the Australian or foreign tax rate. When the Australian rate of company tax is cut, the investor’s tax liability only decreases if the effective Australian tax rate is higher than the tax rate overseas. In other cases, the result of cutting the Australian tax rate is simply to transfer tax from the ATO to its foreign counterparts. 

Read more at Henry's blog.

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JustHowImportantCuttingCompanyTaxRates.pdf

Henry in The Australian Monday 12 March 2012:

"Should the News 267 Council recommended by the Finkelstein 267 inquiry be established, it will have no difficulty finding penalties: for severe offences, 100 pages of the inquiry's report; for recidivism, another 100; and for the truly heinous, the entire document, committed to memory. Like capital punishment, that should ensure recalcitrants never do it again. "

More reading at Henry's blog.

Click here to read the op-ed at The Australian's website (subscription required) or on the  link below to download a pdf.

Download
Watchdog_can_muzzle_264_critics_Mon_12_Mar_2012.pdf

Henry in The Australian Monday 5 March 2012:

"Whatever Wayne Swan's strengths may be, a sense of irony is not among them. Were it, he might have hesitated to publish in The Monthly, the brainchild and mouthpiece of developer Morry Schwartz, an essay excoriating tycoons for investing in the 267. But then again, The Monthly hews to the Left; and what Swan really objects to is not tycoons as such, but those who dare to disagree with him."

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Henry in The Australian Monday 27 February 2012:

"Tetth bared and hissing in action, Rudd and Gillard, the cobra and the mongoose of Labor politics, seem intent on giving fresh life to the famous opening lines of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

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Decline_and_fall_of_social_democracy_27_Feb_2012.pdf

Henry in The Australian Mon 20 Feb 2012:

"Call it Rip Van Winkle economics. Invented by Julia Gillard, it says we should protect struggling firms so that when we wake up from the mining boom, they will still be there. It's a pity that by then the world will have moved on, ensuring today's laggards are tomorrow's relics."


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Henry in The Australian Monday 13 February:

"It is disingenuous to claim, as the 264 does daily, that its private health insurance changes, which seem set to get parliamentary approval this week, are a savings. And it is even more disingenuous to claim they will increase efficiency in our health system. Rather, they will increase costs while entrenching a two-tier health system that penalises the poor. "

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Both_sides_failing_the_test_on_health_13_Feb_2012.pdf