The former Dear Leader has received his reward - something a little more prestigious than the weirdly named awards from obscure right wing think tanks he spent some time trotting over to America last year to collect. John Howard will be awarded the “Medal of Freedom” by another soon to be former leader - George W. Bush. Read more »
It’s a bit of a hard ask to keep up with all the policy reviews the Rudd government has initiated. And they appear to be in the habit of releasing the results or closing deadlines for submissions well into the Christmas blah season - though whether that’s deliberate or not is another kettle of fish. Anyway, the response to the review of public broadcasting was by all accounts quite overwhelming. Read more »
Picking up on Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens’ remarks about “borrowing to invest” and not being afraid of a deficit if there are good policy outcomes to be had, eight prominent economists (including a couple of blogging ones) have written an open letter to Kevin Rudd making suggestions for a further fiscal stimulus under three headings of policy - Superannuation flexibility, Building the nation and Preparing for climate change. Read more »
I’m sticking to my no politics on the weekend rule, and have a busy day tomorrow, so I’m going to save up my thoughts on the first anniversary of the defeat of the Howard government and the election of the Rudd Labor government for later on. But there’s no doubt that there will be a fair bit of discussion about it, so please feel free to use this thread for posting links, and making any observations you may have. Read more »
MB writes: The Search Foundation, working with Professor Frank Stilwell of Sydney University, has prepared a short statement on the global financial crisis and possible responses. Read more »
Commenter Angharad discusses Kevin Rudd’s homelessness white paper which didn’t get much discussion because of its timing, but deserves some because of the importance of the issue. -MB
A few days before Christmas, Kevin Rudd launched a white paper on homelessness The Road Home with far less fan fare than the climate change white paper a few weeks earlier. Read more »
Over at Catallaxy, Jason Soon links to Kerry Miller’s article in Spiked about Clive Hamilton’s influence in the propagation of the idea of the “Clean Feed” web censorship plan. Read more »
No doubt because Malcolm Turnbull has demonstrated his stunning grasp of economics yet again by claiming that the Commonwealth budget going into deficit is some sort of yardstick of economic failure, there’s been an immense amount of commentary on Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s willingness to utter the word “deficit”. The latest instalment in the saga is documented by Peter Martin here - Rudd’s conceded that Australia may have to sustain a “temporary deficit”. Read more »
The stock market has lost 51% of its value since its peak, a decline we’re told now exceeds the destruction of value seen in 1987. On the ABC News tonight, Alan Kohler grimly pointed to an index (tradeable, I think, but don’t quote me on that) of future sentiment which is apparently dire, and which apparently depressed that reified hive mind “the markets” even further. Read more »
That’s a bit of irony, by the way! But I was interested to see Crikey come out with this:
But you get the sense Turnbull also gets worried whenever he’s out of the headlines for any length of time. In politics, sometimes a low profile can be useful. Sometimes it’s best to let attention focus on your opponents. But Turnbull may not have worked that out yet.
Read more »
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