Letter from Munich
As a permanent reminder of the fragility of democracy when put under the combined pressure of economic crisis and populist…
Letter from Russia
The Football World Cup was a winner for Russia; tourists like me flooded in (to cheer a reasonably performed Australian…
Letter from London
If the crescendo of cranes towering above development blocks represents a city’s prosperity, then Manila and London are prospering. Setting…
Letter from Penge
Australia is now unwittingly linked even more closely with the dreary outer-London suburb of Penge. Not only was it the…
Business/Robbery etc
Australia’s current corporate leaders, the ‘managerial class’, are slowly destroying the capitalism that has made us such a great and…
Business/Robbery etc
Having politically sabotaged the government’s tax reform package (and endangering its own prospective corporate tax cuts) the big end of…
Business/Robbery etc
So what’s new? Twenty years ago, Westpac’s then boss, Bob Joss proclaimed: ‘Banks face shutting down entire divisions of business…
Business/Robbery etc
Whacko! American farmers have now joined the Australian economy in being seriously at risk of collateral damage from ‘friendly fire’…
Business/Robbery etc
Collateral damage – and it’s not only from the (unlikely) risk of a world-wide protectionist tariff war. ‘Friendly (economic) fire’…
Business/Robbery etc
Bed-wetters are on the move; the federal parliamentary Liberal party’s problem is now a liquid liability in Collins and O’Connell…
Business/Robbery etc
The Turnbull government’s survival depends on a far more serious internal battle than whether Barnaby should keep his fly done…
Business/Robbery etc
Small businesses and individuals income-earners beware! Now that Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan’s successful five-year multi-billion dollar campaign against tax dodging…
Business/Robbery etc
Now that Sam Dastyari is at last about to give up his $200,000 a year Senate salary for Kristina Keneally’s…
Business/Robbery etc
It’s not President Trump’s corporate tax cuts, or even the retailer-busting arrival of Amazon to these shores that poses the…
Business/Robbery etc
Forcing the deferral of the government’s vital superannuation industry reforms by terrorising cross-bench Senators with electoral political threats only serves…
Fame of Hall
Anne Watson’s book underlines the truth that in order to praise Jørn Utzon, whose architectural vision created the concept of…
Business/Robbery etc
We now know why so many listed public company directors are more concerned with social and environmental virtue-signalling than focussing…
Business/Robbery etc
It’s a festering boil on the backside of progress, but no government will lance this offensive double of PM Keating’s…
Business/Robbery etc
There was no cost/benefit analysis; it was opposed by the government’s financial advisor, the Treasury; it has ballooned over 25…
Business/Robbery etc
BHP’s green-aligned sabotage of the Mineral Council of Australia’s battle to save the Australian coal industry cannot be explained simply…
Business/Robbery etc
Sound commercial practice for marketing and industrial relations reasons? Self-indulgent directorial virtue-signalling for status purposes? Fear of retaliation by activists…
Business/Robbery etc
Created by a combination of federal political incompetence and ideology-based state stupidity, it is sovereign risk, above all else, that…
Business/Robbery etc
Why are so many company directors diverting their energies into pushing publicly-owned corporations to take up controversial social and political…
Business/Robbery etc
Equality of opportunity, not of outcomes; it’s the classic free enterprise backbone of Liberal philosophy. So attacking Bill Shorten’s politics-of-envy…
London diary
There is one thing Brexit negotiators must fix if Britain really intends to rediscover its Commonwealth. For the last 44…