The federal government is playing a very large game of pretend when it tells us our economic ogres have been banished by a bit of budgeting fairy dust.

Budget in trouble? Just assume a surplus. The budget creation process has too many contrivances. That is delaying the task of budget repair.

The Coalition likes to dismiss attacks on tax perks as tax increases and class envy. But Labor should support the government on pension reform.

Australia rose to prosperity on the big idea of an open economy. Now it needs some more ideas to keep up the momentum. We need a culture that nurtures new ideas instead of consigning them to the conflict zone of political partisanship.

Hauling multinational corporations before a Senate committee to be interrogated about tax minimisation might not be pretty but it’s pretty effective at exposing the insidious demolition of Australia’s company income tax base. The hearings chaired by Senator Sam Dastyari possibly involve an element of rough justice, since some of the corporations making invited appearances might have done little or nothing wrong. Yet all have claimed there is no issue here; that they are entitled to minimise their tax within the law. But are they?

Reform is not dead. That is the lesson from the NSW election. Supporters and opponents of electricity privatisation agree on this: privatisation is electorally unpopular. Yet a Premier who levelled with the people, persuading them that he considered privatisation to be in the state’s interest, received a strong electoral endorsement.

What does the Abbott government want for Australia? If it doesn't know, the people can't follow.

Business is generally pessimistic about the prospects for further economic reform. For this it blames Canberra. While the Australian Parliament must shoulder some of the responsibility, the problem runs much deeper: on the question as to what constitutes reform there is agreement neither inside nor outside the Parliament. Until such agreement is reached, any federal government will struggle and the parliament will bicker.

Without structural changes to the budget, Australia  will face unsustainably large deficits through the middle of the century and beyond.

Tony Abbott’s National Press Club speech was an unsurpassed opportunity to put the last 17 months behind him, chart a new course for his government and take the Australian people with him. Yet yesterday’s speech contained mixed and confusing messages: the budget needs repairing but new spending is appropriate, lessons have been learned but broken promises will be pursued.

If Australia is to make a successful transition from the end of the mining boom to a competitive, more diversified economy it needs a lower exchange rate without an accompanying lift in wage inflation and consumer prices.

It does not follow that what is good universities is also good for students as consumers of higher education.

"The array of promises broken in the May budget … has shocked consumers already worried about their jobs."

Mining industry attitudes towards taxation policy are about to confirm the adage that refusing to learn from the errors of history makes their repetition inevitable. As world iron ore and coal prices slump the inefficiencies of the state royalty regime are again being laid bare. A shift to a profits-based royalty system could lift both state government revenues and after-tax mining returns.

The Australia-China trade deal can be properly evaluated only when its details are fully known. It should be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny. 

Let’s have a proper discussion about tax reform, but let’s recognise that the GST cannot be all things to all people and the public will not accept company tax being a voluntary tax for profit-shifting multinationals.

The row over the ANU’s share portfolio quickly descended into tribalism rather than embracing any logic or consistency.