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Archived news for April 2010 | Recent news
A PM without a platform
Not everything John Maynard Keynes said was wrong. Admittedly his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money became the guidebook for 40...
Plain packaging ploy likely to go up in smoke
Turning public debate from the failed emissions trading scheme to universally despised tobacco emissions is a media masterstroke from Kevin Rudd,...
Rudd's other great big new tax
Economic rent has its origin in the labour theory of value. Classical economists couldn't understand why natural resources had value when human...
Is there a plan B for the ETS?
F. Scott Fitzgerald once remarked: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time,...
Green policies: too much of not enough
It can't be a coincidence: the worst examples of bad policy making and implementation in the last few years have been green policies. The Federal...
The murky business of sport
Lost in the endless vilification of Melbourne Storm is the notion of what salary capping means. It is an agreement by a group of businesses to...
Our Great Books
In his review of 100 Great Books of Liberty, edited by John Roskam and myself, with Andrew Kemp, Merv Bendle argues our book "obscures the extent...
Chance to combat climate change through policy has come and gone
On the ABC1's 7.30 Report last week, Barack Obama reiterated his belief that putting a price on carbon was the best way to reduce greenhouse gas...
Immigration and growth: 200 years of success
There's a Rowan Atkinson sketch about a (pre-David Cameron) Conservative Party speech. In character, Atkinson starts talking about Indian...
Shuffling hospital deckchairs
Public hospitals will remain afflicted by the blurred accountabilities, buck- passing and unresponsive bureaucracy if the Federal Government's...