Upshots from politicians delivering more free stuff and regulations
The forerunner of democracy – a post-medieval one-man-one-vote – was propelled by radicals seeking greater freedom of trade, speech, and…
Recessions are bad news for super funds
The Commonwealth budget surplus stems from the nation’s resource assets, and to a lesser degree its agricultural strengths. But, rather than…
Energy: drowning in subsidies
Paul Broad, the former head of Snowy Hydro, resigned amid, according to the Australian Financial Review, an escalation of tensions…
Australian productivity growth lowest in 60 years
Last month the Productivity Commission (PC) revealed that Australian productivity growth on the decade to 2020 was the lowest in…
Two cheers for democracy!?
Two cheers for democracy! So wrote E.M. Forster speaking for the Bloomsbury set, the affluent intellectuals who were the leading ‘Wokes’ of…
The unsafe Safeguard Mechanism
And so, the Greens have joined the ALP in imposing additional carbon taxes on the top 215 greenhouse gas emitting…
Slow rolling crisis or banking wildfire?
The world’s leading funds manager, BlackRock, has argued the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) may start a ‘slow…
Silicon Valley Bank: doomed to fail?
The basic question to ask about the collapse of the $200 billion Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is, why did it…
Australia: suffocated by regulation and raided by greedy politicians
Gary Banks in The Australian notes how government regulatory measures are destroying our vital comparative advantage in energy supply and promoting inefficient labour…
Climate change: short on proof, drowning in nonsense
The environmentalist creed in context Environmentalism, more particularly its prevalent global warming strain, dominates politics. It is the fourth such…
Is coal making a comeback? Australian mining’s uphill battle
Coal supplies a quarter of the world’s energy, oil and gas account for a half, and renewables – in spite…
Climate ruminations: the markets reject Chalmers
Combatting the perceived incidence of global warming is driving government policies. In Australia this has been obvious for many years,…
‘Chalming’ no one: Labor romances communism
Jim Chalmers is proving to be the most iconoclastic Treasurer since the Whitlam government’s Jim Cairns, a man who only…
Energy chaos: the shape of things to come
Australian governments have made energy policies focused on achieving higher shares of renewable energy that they claim is the cheapest…
Collapse of the $35 billion Sun Cable
Last week saw the collapse of Sun Cable, a pie-in-the-sky $35 billion plan by alternative energy enthusiasts, Andrew Forrest and…
Dark money
Recent years have seen a strengthening dominance of politics over individual and commercial decision-making. This is readily evident in the…
Batteries not included
Renewable energy battery farms threaten to cripple the economy with cyclic costs
Chris Bowen’s rendezvous with bad ideas
Back in July 2022, Chris Bowen the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, launched the latest CSIRO electricity costs report which…
Energy collapse: it all begins with a market cap
Thousands of years of experience – from the ancient Babylonians and Roman Emperor Diocletian, through to modern times – have…
ESG: climate virtue bleeding super dry
Business, where the profit motive is explicitly dominant and where the hundreds of millions of direct and indirect owners want…
Dan enters the pantheon of ‘great’ leaders
Now the hurley burley’s done, and Dan Andrews is in the pantheon of the state’s great leaders, it’s time to…
Victoria’s looming energy disaster
A centrepiece of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ campaign is to renationalise Victoria’s privately owned electricity businesses. He claims that the…
Our retreat from rational economics
In today’s world, government spending accounts for up to and (in the EU) over 50 per cent of GDP –…
Greta and her green-communism
Many breathed a sigh of relief when Greta Thunberg announced she was not going to attend COP 27 Climate Change…
Andrews’ Leninist approach to power
Last week, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews paraded his inner Lenin. He attacked Victoria’s privately owned coal generation businesses, claiming that…
