Greg Hunt is the unsung architect behind Labor’s climate plans
Articles from Peter Martin
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Top economists see no prolonged inflation, no rate hike next year
Despite appearances – especially in the United States – the era of high inflation isn’t set for a comeback in the view of Australia’s leading economists, and most see no need for the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates next year.
In the US, figures released last week showed the consumer price index surged 6.2% in the year to October, the most since 1990. So-called “core” inflation (which excludes volatile prices) climbed 4.6%, also the most for 30 years.
How government modelling found net-zero would leave us better off
The government’s decision to target net-zero emissions by 2050 will leave each Australian nearly A$2,000 better off by then compared to no Australian action.
That’s what we were told in a six-point summary of the government’s economic modelling released at a press conference on Thursday October 26, days before the prime minister left for the Glasgow climate talks.
2022 looks like an ideal time for a government to land re-election
At the risk of being political – and politics is important, it will determine how we are governed for the next three years – economic conditions could scarcely be better for a government seeking re-election.
The economic things that matter most to most people are, in my view:
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jobs – if employment is climbing rather than falling, most people are not at much risk of losing their job
Now it’s Liberals telling us we are going to have to cut the capital gains tax concession if we want to get Australians into homes
NSW is doing what Labor’s Bill Shorten could not – explaining why Australia’s capital gains tax concession is knocking first home buyers out of homes.
The easy way to rein in Facebook: stop it eating competitors
Few of us who have survived the last year aren’t grateful for technology.
Zoom, email, connected workplaces and solid internet connections at home have made it possible to work, shop, study and carry on our lives in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had the pandemic hit, say, 20 years earlier.
But parts of big tech — the parts that track us and drive us to think dangerous and antisocial things just so we keep clicking — are doing us enormous damage.
Delta is tempting us to trade lives for freedoms — a choice it had looked like we wouldn’t have to make
Last year COVID-19 seemed simple. It was horrific, but the arguments about what to do were fairly straightforward.
On one side were people rightly horrified by its rapid spread who wanted us to stay at home and stay away from school and work and socialising in order to save lives.
From October, it will be all but impossible for most Australians to vape — largely because of Canberra’s little-known ‘homework police’
After a misstep, it’s about to become illegal to import e-cigarettes without a prescription, which means that, for most Australians, it’ll become all but impossible to vape from October 1.
The misstep tells us a lot about how the Australian government works behind the scenes — most of it good.
Four GDP graphs that show how well Australia was doing – before Delta hit
Australia’s economy was performing exceptionally well in the lead-up to the Delta variant lockdowns, propped up by a barrage of government spending in the three months to June and impressive household spending.
