It’s time for another weekend reflections, which makes space for longer than usual comments on any topic. Side discussions to sandpits, please.
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It’s time for another weekend reflections, which makes space for longer than usual comments on any topic. Side discussions to sandpits, please.
John Quiggin 
May I point people to a worth cause for donation? The work of the Keelings has ensured a precise and accurate record of carbon dioxide changes in the atmosphere, and now they have something of a funding problem. Please check out the site and consider.
How likely is there going to be a recession next year?
Even at the heights of the GFC, I didn’t feel this resigned. I’d like to be proved wrong.
@Peter Murphy
Ask the Chinese. Will they stop buying our coal (close to 50 per cent of what we mine, or maybe that’s if you add Japanese imports) if we don’t curb our own use of it for burning here?
The defunding of the deal to lift wages in the child care sector has fallen foul of the current government’s ideological abhorrence of EBAs. What looked like a clever way to ensure the funds went to the employees without adding another layer of reporting red tape for the employers (which the current government are ideologically committed to reducing) was not only under-reported but was also insufficient to save the deal.
Of course, parliamentarians have their own EBA structure, called the Remuneration Tribunal that negotiates on their behalf, amongst others, for their pay and conditions.
This is just wrong, and I suggest that all MPs should be on individual contracts. Contract s could be determined by a suitably broad-based electorate committee including representatives from big business, finance, SMEs, NGOs, the government sector and the waged sector, with maybe the above mentioned tribunal offering secretariat services.
The base pay would be as determined, but of far more interest would be member KPIs that entitle them to bonuses. That is, they get bonuses when they deliver for the electorate in the areas of health, education, employment growth and infrastructure.
Watching underperforming MPs, particularly from rural electorates (the seat of Indi springs to mind) not only not achieving bonuses, but not even getting pay rises after particularly dismal performances, would be sufficiently pleasurable to justify the cost. As would the chagrin of some high performing members who would know they weren’t getting paid as much as some of the real slackers. Welcome to competition, MPs.
HSBC study points to coal consumption in decline and warns of the risks to investors.
Miners may declare greenies/environmentalists/warmists as the enemy but at the end if the day it is the market that will deliver the fateful blow.
Surprising or maybe not, that Business Insider publish this opinion by Josh Barro
This appears to be true in Australia where the Conservative position on many if not most policy issues is denial, deception and/or avoidance.