Weekly roundup Saturday 5 April
Some have a special hatred of wind power
Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.
Politics
Dutton’s enthusiastic embrace of Trump’s DOGE leads not only to promised cuts in government services but also to authoritarian proposals to shape schools’ agenda and to a muzzling of the ABC. How election boondoggles result in bureaucratic waste. Confirmation of Keith Hancock’s observation that Australians see government as “a vast public utility”. A pre-election assessment of three parties’ policies.
Polls
Labor recovers support, but in this election, and in future elections, the presence of independents makes it hard for polls to predict who will form government. Essential Research surveys our assessments of Albanese, Dutton and the budget: Dutton is losing support, and those few who took any notice of the budget didn’t like it.
Australia’s energy transition
Who is funding and organizing “environmental” opposition to windfarms? What the Coalition would do to our most significant policy to reduce greenhouse gases. Why the Coalition’s friendless gas reservation won’t work. A Dutton snub to our Pacific neighbours as a chaser to a bad joke.
Housing
Why houses are unaffordable – wages stopped growing while house prices kept rising. The Coalition’s housing policy – put more money into the market to make housing more unaffordable. Alan Kohler and the Productivity Commission on housing and productivity: we need more public housing.
Living with Trump’s America
Two economists describe how we can live with Trump’s tariffs: there shouldn’t be a world trade war but Trump’s idiocy will have world-wide consequences. Why Trumpism will hang around for a long time unless the Democrats return to social-democrat policies.
Other economics
The Reserve Bank admits it doesn’t know what’s going on and boldly commits to do nothing. We want more public services but we don’t want to pay more tax, because we believe the falsehood that Australia is a big-government-high-tax country.
Public ideas
A historian explains how the Yolngu people shaped our democracy. A humanities professor explains our dangerous attraction of ignorance.
We used to be the best of friends
If you have comments, corrections, or links to other relevant sources, I’d like to hear from you. Please send them to Ian McAuley — ian, at the domain name ianmcauley.com
