Budget should give universities more flexibility on student contributions
Apr 04, 2016 03:03 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy
The Australian government is committed to making inroads into its A$36 billion budget deficit in the forthcoming May budget. Universities and students will not escape unscathed. While the 2014 fee deregulation plan...
Banning fishing has helped parts of the Great Barrier Reef recover from damage
Apr 04, 2016 02:43 am UTC| Insights & Views Nature
The worlds coral reefs face unprecedented threats. Their survival depends on how well they can cope with a long list of pressures including fishing, storms, coral bleaching, outbreaks of coral predators and reduced water...

Australian economy doing well but rate cuts loom
Apr 04, 2016 02:37 am UTC| Insights & Views Central Banks
The rising Aussie dollar gives the RBA cause for concern, credit-fuelled spending slows, and US unemployment ticks up amid growing US confidence. The basic logic of interest rate policy is that when the economy is...
There's a good reason we're so interested in the US election: it matters
Apr 04, 2016 00:31 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
Kim Beazley was Australian ambassador to the United States from 2010 until January 2016, and a former leader of the federal Labor Party. He is now a senior fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre. This is the first of an...
Difference in a federal system should be cherished not feared
Apr 03, 2016 23:46 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The knee-jerk response to the Turnbull Governments proposed federalism reform is to complain that if the states controlled funding to their own schools, this could result in differences between the states, which is bad and...

Why African governments aren't taxing their rich
Apr 03, 2016 23:30 pm UTC| Insights & Views
A great deal of attention has been paid to the obstacles African governments face in effectively taxing the profits of transnational corporations. African governments are frequently urged to widen their tax bases by...

Our collective nuclear nightmare
Apr 03, 2016 23:26 pm UTC| Insights & Views
Some things never change, it seems. For my entire life people have been protesting about the madness of nuclear weapons. Policymakers have been studiously ignoring such protests for just as long. Not only have the bombs...