AS two icons of Australian manufacturing, Ford and Holden, wind up their operations, doubts inevitably will arise as to whether, with Australia's relatively high cost structure, we will be any good at making anything. Despite high costs, Australia seems to have some sort of future in manufacturing premium-quality foods and beverages such as cheese, infant formula and wine. And if one expert is right, we also may have a future in producing lots of a highly sophisticated manufactured good: submarines.

MOST market analysts have concluded the Abbott government is deliberately pessimistic in its economic forecasts underlying the mid-year fiscal and economic outlook. Then, when the economy does better than forecast, the budget deficit will be better than expected and the government will claim the credit. But what if the economy does worse?

ONE year ago I wrote in these pages that the world's trading nations must not give up on successfully completing the decade-long global trade talks.

FIVE minutes into the contest for the Coalition government's economic philosophy and it's already Nationalists 1, Rationalists 0. A government that declared Australia was open for business following the biggest investment boom in a half century has sent a shocking signal to global investors by blocking the acquisition of GrainCorp by US firm Archer Daniels Midland.

Australia’s on-again, off-again budget emergency is on again. But this time it’s real, it’s lurking just around the corner of the four-year budget period and it’s worsened by the unaffordable promises of the new government.

AUSTRALIA has been better at economic reform than most developed countries. It's no coincidence that Australia is one of only a handful of developed countries to have enjoyed more than two decades of recession-free economic growth.

Early in the life of any new government, impressions are formed that can be hard to shake. The new Abbott government seeks to be defined by silence: an understandable refusal to be taken hostage in the desperate battle of 24-hour news coverage. Tony Abbott is attempting to take government out of the lounge rooms of everyday Australians, to make them feel, in the words of his mentor, John Howard, "relaxed and comfortable".