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.
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.
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.
Casino operator Crown Resorts must be desperate or think we’re dumb.
Last week, before the royal commission into its right to hold a casino licence in Victoria, Crown resorted to one of the oldest, most discredited, tricks in the book. It used its workers as shields.
So you don’t believe the official inflation figures. Why would you? They show prices climbing at an annual rate of 1.1%
On Wednesday the update for June quarter is likely to show prices climbing at an annual rate three times as high — somewhere between 3% and 4%, which will probably be another reason you won’t believe them.
The biggest unstated message from the intergenerational report released during the lull between lockdowns is that we will need more tax.
Not now. At the moment it’s a matter of throwing everything we’ve got at getting on top of the COVID outbreaks and worrying about how to (and the extent to which we will need to) pay for it later.
