Category Archives: Public policy

Evidence-free policy on cars

His Tel­stra term has appar­ently left Ziggy Switkowski with a taste for Gaullist illogic. He reck­ons that the absence of a ratio­nale — other than rent-seeking — is not fatal to a pol­icy that sup­ports a “diverse” indus­trial pat­ri­moine. It is very hard to make a con­ven­tional busi­ness case for sub­sidi­s­a­tion of (or, more fash­ion­ably, …

February 9, 2012 – 6:33 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Davos dribbles

What a world of blather, the Davos meet­ing must be. The cor­po­rate chat­ter­ing classes titi­lat­ing them­selves with scary, fuzzy, big-picture booga­loo. Clever talk and a few good din­ners mus­ing about issues they guess are com­plex, loom­ing, and some­one else’s prob­lem (tomor­row) must con­sole them for the rest of the year when they have to deal …

January 27, 2012 – 7:51 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy | Tagged , | Comments (0)

That High Court decision

The Prime Min­is­ter is “deeply dis­ap­pointed” with the deci­sion on the plan to send Christ­mas Island arrivals to Malaysia. Under­stand­able; it’s not a good look for her gov­ern­ment. But is Paul Kelly in the Aus­tralian right to argue that the deci­sion was ill-made and an “unjus­ti­fied” inter­fer­ence in for­eign pol­icy? This is cer­tainly an “intru­sive” …

September 2, 2011 – 9:39 am | By pwg | Posted in Foreign policy, Public policy | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Manufacturing dissent

United States man­u­fac­tur­ers, like their Aus­tralian coun­ter­parts, are indulging some hyper­bolic alarm about their future, but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. U.S. eco­nomic growth seems too anaemic to sup­port demand in the sec­tor; Australia’s eco­nomic growth seem to be bypass­ing it. Still, this self-interested plea in the NYT from a direc­tor of GE for pub­lic sub­si­dies (“inno­va­tion …

August 31, 2011 – 11:56 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy, Trade | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The canker in quarantine policies

No, it’s not the bit­ter reac­tion from the apple and pear lobby to the end of our century-long ban on apple imports from NZ. What else could we expect: thanks to the price (and qual­ity) pro­tec­tion afford by the ban, uncom­pet­i­tive pro­duc­ers in those indus­tries have been ripping-off the con­sumer so long we could hardly …

August 31, 2011 – 9:05 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy, Trade | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Economic benefits of longevity

The Wall St Jour­nal car­ries an arti­cle by Sonia Arri­son on the poten­tial for, and ben­e­fits of, greater longevity. Her con­clu­sions are sim­i­lar to those I pro­posed in a recent arti­cle in Pol­icy on The New Future of Old Age: The world’s advanced soci­eties are finally in a posi­tion to launch a true offen­sive against …

August 30, 2011 – 8:41 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Abbott’s foreign investment policy

This is the sen­tence that makes me feel most uncom­fort­able: Vot­ers are likely to be less hos­tile to for­eign invest­ment if they think that the gov­ern­ment is pre­serv­ing a well-balanced econ­omy. Extract from We are pledged to real reform | The Aus­tralian Most of the Abbott state­ments about man­u­fac­tur­ing assis­tance, trans­ac­tion costs and “eco­nomic diver­sity” …

August 30, 2011 – 8:03 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)