The annual fertility statistics were released last month. There wasn’t as much of the traditional story about how Peter Costello had single handedly forced up the fertility rate by introducing the baby bonus (here’s a story here – reasonably staid), which was so prevalent a few years ago, but I thought wasContinue Reading
This week, the ABS released the annual mortality statistics – the analysis of all the people who died in Australia in 2008.. Overall, at a population level, the “standardised death rate” (deaths per 1,000 population, adjusting for a standard age structure) was 6.0 per 1,000 people – the same asContinue Reading
By world standards, the Australian economy is doing very very well. Our unemployment rate was 5.8% in October, up from 4.3% a year ago. No banks have been bailed out. In May 2009, two Australian banks were in the world’s top 20 by market capitalisation (where Australia has around 1%Continue Reading
The thought that the market can do anything better than the public sector has become pretty unpopular in the last six months. Nevertheless, I still believe it. And I’m going to illustrate it today with one public service that is pretty close to being a basket case; Sydney Ferries. SydneyContinue Reading
I’m just back from a week’s holiday up in far north Queensland, so I’ve got a few books to review. First cab off the rank is HIH: the Inside Story of Australia’s Biggest Corporate Collapse. by Mark Westfield, who is the journalist who kept the pressure on HIH for mostContinue Reading
AIG, the world’s biggest insurer, has been rescued by the Federal Reserve. They’ve lent them $85bn, and in return they get to own 80% of the company. Given that the market capitalisation of AIG was $10bn (on Tuesday’s close, according to the NY Times), I’m guessing that the $8bn or soContinue Reading
The campaign for paid maternity leave in Australia has gotten renewed vigour following the recent change of government. The government has asked the Productivity Commission to enquire into what should be done. And there are a lot of blog posts about it. Joshua Gans has written a series from anContinue Reading
Today the teachers went out on strike in NSW – over recruitment policies for schools. The SMH had two conflicting letters next to each other from teachers: The Government’s tinkering with a fair, time-tested and successful transfer points system is just the latest unintelligent act that will make recruiting qualityContinue Reading
Mr Penguin alerted me to this interested article in Wired. As you would expect, in the US, Republicans are more likely to be sceptical about global warming than Democrats. Environmentalism has always been found more on the left than the right, and Republicans have more to lose from action thatContinue Reading
As part of the carefully scheduled program of budget leaks, the government has leaked a likely change in the medicare levy in this weeks’ budget. A few blogs have comments – Larvatus Prodeo, wonders whether this will increase the pressure on the public system with a long comment thread, coveringContinue Reading
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