On why Australians might have to get used to a lower standard of living.

This piece suggests economic measures for achieving a fair society.

Manufacturing industries in NSW that rely on gas as an energy source or a feedstock are now beginning to confront sharply rising prices and, by some calculations, looming supply shortages. In this piece the prospects for the Australian gas market are investigated.

In justifying an increase in the age of pension eligibility to 70 years, the Government asserts that Australians are living longer.  But it is not necessarily true of the poor. The life expectancy of poor Americans has barely improved over two decades, leaving Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman to ask why the poor should lose benefits as a consequence of better-off Americans living longer. This piece examines the assumptions implicit in the recent Federal Budget.

The official economic outlook for the next three years appears overly optimistic. Private investment is falling off a cliff as the expiring mining investment boom is not being replaced by new investment in productive capacity elsewhere. Mineral export values are being hammered by falling prices. Yet, confronted with a deteriorating job market and declining real wages, workers are implausibly assumed to spend much more of their incomes and to save less.

Competition policy should promote competition, not protect businesses from it.

Wise investment in infrastructure is essential to future productivity growth, but how do we ensure it's wise?

How can we avoid bubbles and create long-term economic growth?

It is said that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Australia’s economic history since the turn of the century has been one of bubble, bubble, toil and trouble: a housing bubble, a mining bubble, the toil of dealing with a global economic crisis and the trouble with relying on bubbles again.