Ethical claims have become big business. Australians have every right to choose what they consider to be ethically better places for spending and investing their earnings. But because so much money can be made from being classed as ethically superior, there is a growing risk of alliances of convenience between environmental groups and corporations making misleading claims about their offerings and about their competitors.

Philosophically the Harper review's interim report on competition reforms heads in the right direction: competition policy should protect competition not competitors. But its recommended effects test is likely to do the opposite, deterring major businesses from engaging in vigorous competition to deliver lower prices and new offerings to consumers

With official confirmation that national income has been falling, as predicted in Ross Garnaut’s book, Dog Days, attention must now turn to arresting the decline. 

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.