HalfEarthMedic

I found this section interesting

Ms Hayward[Port Hedland resident] believed compulsory voting would "absolutely" enhance the quality of local councils. "I think that if it's compulsory, then people are going to take more of an interest and possibly give them the opportunity to have a voice, whereas before they might not have wanted to do that," she said.

According to the Western Australian Electoral Commission, local government elections in 2023 achieved a voter turnout rate of 31.6 per cent, up from 30.2 per cent in 2021 and 29.07 per cent in 2019.

Shockingly Trump is showing no commitment to using soft power to maintain alliances. This administration can only accelerate the loss of the US status as global hegemon as living under the US umbrella no longer feels secure if it can plausibly be whipped away for short term transactional gain

Recently in Adelaide, the Australia-US leadership “dialogue” between the business, bureaucratic and media elite of the two countries met for the 33rd time since its inception in 1992 ... But this year, no-one from the Trump administration attended the “dialogue”. Americans were thin on the ground ... The “dialogue” appears to be dead, at least for the Trump years.

A recent visit from an American official advised Canberra that the Pentagon had told Seoul that it did not regard Kim as a problem for the United States!

In his undoubted zeal for a summit with Xi and an apparent win in his trade war with China, it is reasonable to surmise that Trump surely may make Putin-like concessions to China even if it undermines the security of Taiwan.

Article suggests gender quotas and scholarships. Has anyone considered treating, and paying, teachers like the vital professionals they are?

An interesting take on Albo's leadership.

I would tend to think he has been over cautious since the referendum, glacial movement on the middle east and a failure to so anything meaningful on housing.

Maybe slow and cautious is the way we get real reform. Infuriating but effective?

A specific road use tax on EVs and hybrids makes no sense.

Given the harms caused by traditional vehicles, society should welcome the decline in fuel excise revenue caused by the transition to EVs – in the same way we should welcome declining revenue from cigarette taxes.

Vehicle registration fees make only a modest contribution to road costs. That’s why all motorists should pay a road-user charge. The payment should be based on a combination of vehicle mass and distance travelled

[T] he poor design of the resource rent tax has meant little or no money has been collected. According to Treasury, “to date not a single LNG plant has paid any petroleum resource rent tax and many are not expected to pay any significant amounts until the 2030s.

Nor do the big multinational exporters of gas — including Exxon, Shell and Chevron — seem to pay much company tax. The Australian Taxation Office has labelled the oil and gas industry “systematic non-payers” of tax.

In brief

Be sure your dodgy modelling will find you out. I’m starting to think economists have become so used to pretending to know more about the economy than they really do that they don’t notice the way they mislead the rest of us.

The Productivity Commission has proposed a radical change in the way companies are taxed which, it tells us, would improve the economy’s productivity and leave us better off. It has commissioned modelling that, it implies, supports its case for change.

Its modelling shows the benefit from cutting the rate of company tax would take years to materialise, and still be trivial, but the commission thinks we should do it anyway.

As pressure mounts on the Australian Government over Palestine, a group of highly respected Australians, who have represented our nation overseas, have gone straight to the top with a letter to the prime minister.

The productivity comission propses to reduce the tax paid by all companies bar the top 500, they’d get no cut in conventional company tax, but would pay the new 5 per cent cash flow tax.

On paper, the commission’s partial switch from conventional company tax to a tax on companies’ net cash flow – which allows them to write off the full cost of new assets immediately – ought to improve productivity.

The join statement by 24 business lobby groups says that “while some businesses may benefit under the proposal, it risks all Australian consumers and businesses paying more for the things they buy every day – groceries, fuel and other daily essentials”. Get it? This is the lobbyists’ oldest trick: “We’re not concerned about what the tax change would do to our profits, dear reader, we’re just worried about what it would do you and your pocket. It’s not us we worry about, it’s our customers.” Suddenly, their professed concern about the lack of productivity improvement and slow growth is out the window, and now it’s the cost of living they’re deeply worried about. They’ve been urging governments to increase the GST for years, but now they don’t want higher prices.

The US geopolitical objective is to destroy China’s power. This is being pursued variously. China’s economy depends on Asian sea traffic. The US military strategy is to sever those sea lanes. Thereby China’s economy is imperilled.

However, as the US itself has claimed (from Obama on) it lacks the resources to achieve its objective. It says it must rely on allies’ support.

Unsaid by US planners is that those same sea lanes upon which China depends are critical also for Japan and Australia. Any pedant can see that the natural allies here are China, Japan and Australia.