TPG bid for Fairfax: what usually happens when private equity meets media?
May 09, 2017 15:48 pm UTC| Insights & Views Investing
TPG Capital, the US private equity firm leading a consortium bidding for some of the assets of troubled Australian media company Fairfax, has a reasonable track record in media acquisitions. Judging by its past...
Is China to blame for the global avocado shortage?
May 09, 2017 15:45 pm UTC| Insights & Views Economy
Recent media reports of an avocado shortage have hipsters and foodies horrified the world over. Prices are at a record high as a result of a classic supply and demand situation. Harvests from major producers in Mexico,...
Are fewer people switching gas or electricity company?
May 09, 2017 15:42 pm UTC| Insights & Views
We wanted to see more competition. We wanted to see more people able to switch between energy users [sic], that, over the last three or four years has not happened. This is a market that is not working perfectly and...
China is planning ahead for life after coal
May 09, 2017 15:37 pm UTC| Insights & Views
Chinas remarkable growth over the past three decades has elevated it to global superpower status. But its economic miracle has also attracted attention for the wrong reasons: the country is now the worlds largest energy...
Tax on 'unearned gains' is the missing piece of the affordable housing puzzle
May 09, 2017 15:35 pm UTC| Insights & Views Real Estate
With housing prices still consistently in the news, could the ideas of 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill help improve affordability? In 2015, some landowners near the proposed Northern Beaches hospital in Sydney...
Life after redundancy: what happens next for journalists when they leave newsrooms
May 09, 2017 15:33 pm UTC| Insights & Views Business
The planned 125 editorial job redundancies at Fairfax Media is a huge blow to those working within some of Australias most established newsrooms, to their readers, and to the capacity of established media to operate as a...

Weaponised research: how to keep you and your sources safe in the age of surveillance
May 09, 2017 15:31 pm UTC| Insights & Views
Surveillance has become so ubiquitous that it appears likely that Russia was caught in the act conspiring to fix the 2016 United States presidential election, and at least one of his staffers was basically overheard...