The list of right-wing claquers mindlessly cheering on Nick Cater’s The Lucky Culture continues to grow.  Actually, for many of them, it’s not entirely mindless, as Cater edits the opinion pages of The Australian newspaper and bollocking the boss’s book is probably not the best career-move one can make at News Ltd.  So the applause continues to reverberate from Janet Albrechtsen, Chris Kenny, Chris Pearson, Christian Kerr, James Jeffrey, Nick Leys, Jack Hoysted and, of course, from Cater himself (given that he and his partner Rebecca Weisser write the Cut and Paste section, which has joined the conga-line).  Elsewhere in the extended Murdoch empire, Piers Akerman, Miranda Devine, Andrew Bolt and Peter Coleman have cheered on their champion.  What was that about group think?

It is important to understand what they are cheering for.  The book has three policy recommendations: to abolish the Human Rights Commission, to recommence a multi-billion dollar dam-building program and to wind back university access in Australia to the standard set by Keith Murray in his report to the Menzies Government in 1957.  As Cater explains it, only “16 percent of the Australian population had the intellectual ability to succeed at university” – a sifting process he supports for today’s tertiary education system.  Presumably the money saved from expelling one-third of the student population (reducing the university attainment rate from its current level of 25 percent back to 16 percent) can be spent on new water projects in the nation’s deserts.

Cater’s tome might only have amounted to... Continue Reading

We shouldn’t allow the usual argy bargy about budget-week ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ obscure Australia’s overall economic and budgetary successes.

Jim’s article was first published by The Drum Opinion on 13 May 2013.

The news last Thursday that 961,027 jobs have been created under Labor was a stunning reminder just five days before the budget that the Government’s economic management has been far more successful than its critics in sections of the media and business community will concede.

And there’s another crucial piece of perspective in yet-to-be published remarks by “the finest public servant since HC ‘Nugget’ Coombs“.

Delivered by former treasury secretary Ken Henry to a University of New South Wales forum organised by the ‘Airport Economist’ Tim Harcourt, the unreported speech argues ‘fiscal activism’ has delivered Australia some extraordinary outcomes.

Chief among these is his analysis that “this recent period might be the only instance in Australia’s history of a fiscal stimulus having insulated the economy from an external shock that would otherwise have produced a deep domestic recession”.

This, in Dr Henry’s estimation, “could be a unique achievement”. And one not based solely on China or mining, or aggressive monetary policy, or other factors that Labor’s critics rely on to diminish its achievements.

The 961,027 new jobs created under Labor are perhaps the best evidence of its ability to help steer the economy through choppy international waters. Fiscal policy is of course not the only contributor to this enviable number, but it’s important. And the secret to the Government’s budget policy... Continue Reading