Australia has enjoyed a mining boom based on China’s voracious appetite for minerals. If we get it right, Australia can enjoy a dining boom based on China’s voracious appetite for premium quality food and wines.

The inability of industry and governments at all levels to effectively address the community’s environmental concerns about coal seam gas, combined with political opposition to its development, is creating substantial economic risks in south eastern Australia.

Australia's hosting of the G20 meeting in November gives us the opportunity to sustain the momentum in world trade talks achieved at a meeting in Bali last December. If we miss that opportunity, momentum gained could be irretrievably lost - with the world trade negotiations facing oblivion.

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?