Balancing the budget mantra overlooks benefits of infrastructure spending
Apr 19, 2016 05:04 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy Politics
When the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) recently released its recommendations on how the government should balance the budget, it prefaced it with the statement No economic problem in Australia is...

The problem with measuring productivity
Apr 19, 2016 04:59 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy
Productivity seems to be one of the measures the Federal Government is using to justify its policy decisions in the lead up to the budget. The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull invoked this little understood term in...

Are the Japanese and Ecuador earthquakes related?
Apr 19, 2016 04:54 am UTC| Insights & Views Nature
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck Japan on Friday, causing widespread injuries and property damage. Then on Saturday evening, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit Ecuador on the other side of the Pacific, collapsing buildings...

Apr 19, 2016 04:52 am UTC| Insights & Views Health Law
The misuse or abuse of pharmaceutical pain medications usually opioids has received increasing media attention recently. The focus of such news items has largely been on people who transition from oral use of medication...

The argumentum ad whingeum: an idea whose time can't pass quick enough
Apr 19, 2016 04:39 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The marketplace of ideas is usually less a showroom for shiny new models and more of a cheery Op Shop. So its a big deal when a genuinely new argument is spotted in the wild even, or perhaps especially, when it comes from...
A precarious geological bargain
Apr 18, 2016 14:21 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
The landscapes of the Xinjiang province of western China are very special. It is here the ancient trade routes of the Silk Roads skirt the great mountains and deserts of central Asia, weaving a magic thread through a...

Catholicism's multi-billion dollar brand is struggling despite Pope Francis
Apr 18, 2016 13:20 pm UTC| Insights & Views Life
When the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, told a newspaper the firm was doing Gods work, his appeal on behalf of higher powers was an attempt to rescue the tainted reputation not only of his own...