Here's my article from last week's Fin which it placed below the headline "ALP sold itself short instead of selling its strengths". I've also done an interview with Michael Duffy on Counterpoint which was recorded last Thursday, but went to air last night. How did it come to t...
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I have often worried about whether promoting ‘efficiency” – in the economic sense – ensures maximum well being where it makes some people better off but others worse off - even if the Kaldor-Hicks criterion is fully met e.g. by ensuring those who gain from the policy could pot...
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We've just had an election in Australia which was basically very clean, at least as far as one can tell. It was negative. It was empty but there was nothing illegitimate about what either party did or said about the other. Over the pond it isn't so. The Republicans are revolut...
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One of the more extraordinary things in life is the amount you can be charged by your mobile carrier on 'international roaming'. It's completely extraordinary with amazing stories of people downloading serious amounts of data - eg for a movie and getting back to find bills for...
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It's time libertarians ditched their alliance with conservatives and Republicans, writes Brink Lindsey . In a piece for Reason magazine , Lindsey argues that libertarians should stake their claim at the centre of American politics and imagines a new swing constituency animated...
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It's easier to declare a film a work of genius than to figure out its secret. But I think in the case of Boy , it's balance. This film tempts you at the start to expect a feel-good movie, but ends up steering clear of sentimentality. There's menace and heartbreak, but it doesn...
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"Oil and coal? Of course, it's a fungible commodity and they don't flag, you know, the molecules, where it's going and where it's not . . . So, I believe that what congress is going to do, also, is not to allow export bans to such a degree that it's Americans that get stuck to...
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Here's the breakdown of a Canb-Melb flight I just booked on the to be avoided at (almost) any cost Tiger Airlines. Ticket Fare AU 12.85 23% Airport Charges, AU 31.65 56% GST (if applicable) AU 4.45 8% Service Fees inclusive of Tax AU 7.2 13% Total Cost AU 56.15 100% Now 'airpo...
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I've thought for a while that the News Ltd stable of papers in Australia were stuck between two seperate models in the News Ltd empire when it came to political reporting. The old Murdoch model of cultivating the image of influence by backing winners, frequently supporting unp...
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Here are all the sponsors for the Australian Conference of Economists this year. All public sector agencies. Now economics is a discipline fundamentally about policy - or I think it is - so it's no scandal, but it's still pretty striking that there's not a private sector spons...
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As part of my duties as CDU's designated political analyst/commentator for NT electoral purposes, I've been delving into the interstices of the booth by booth results in the NT seats of Solomon and Lingiari . The results are quite fascinating, especially in Lingiari. Starting...
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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="249" caption="Unlike my AS peer Mr Trask, I'm unlikely to publish a book on my crippled escapades to make a living"] [/caption] Possum's recent job plea has inspired me to do an experiment. Unlike him, I'm not explicitly seeking a job (...
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In The New Republic this week Richard Just shines the spotlight on Barack Obama's hopelessly contradictory position on gay marriage. He compares it to Woodrow Wilson's pathetic attempts to dodge the issue of women's suffrage by claiming it was an issue for the states. The issu...
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I recall having lunch with the late great John Patterson about fifteen years ago and amongst the things he said was if you get to choose where you work, always base your choice on the quality of the people you'll be working with. Which brings me to Andrew Leigh who has just be...
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. . . quoting us ;) Kaggle has a couple of competitions running right now which are generating their usual stellar results. From Andrew Gelman quoting our blog : The Elo rating system is now in 47th position (team Elo Benchmark on the leaderboard). Team Intuition submitted usi...
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If you look at this presentation I gave just after releasing the draft report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, you'll see me (at around the seventh minute) talking about how Web 2.0 turbocharges the ecology of reputation. As I did in this column of mine (one of my best IMO) I...
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Readers of this blog will know that I share Paul Krugman's view that the US Republicans are a crazy, scary bunch. And during the Howard years there were lots of people who argued that Howard was the same. Which is ridiculous. He was sympathetic to the Crazy Party of the United...
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When the boss wins the Christmas raffle it's customary to draw again, and I wish I could think of an excuse to offer the prize in the election tipping contest to someone else. But you have to hand it to Nicholas for getting the House of Representatives result spot on . Even if...
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The regulation requiring medicines to be sold with consumer product information guides is a good idea in principle. But in the attempt to find out a little more about an over-the-counter pill I sometimes take to get to sleep - Restavit - I found myself reading one. It's got so...
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From today's Fin: “He [Tony Abbott] has undermined and potentially destroyed a first-term Labor government.” This eulogy to Abbott from former prime minister, John Howard, captures all that is bad about the coalition’s approach to opposition. Oppositions do not have to be dest...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIeVEf5alk In politics you need a narrative about what you stand for, but you also need one – an ugly one – about the perfidy of your political opponents. As we can now see, the Coalition’s narrative of perfidy is in very good shape. In fact it’...
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There's been a great deal in this election that has been unprecedented, and some of the precedents it sets are good, and some less desirable. What I think is not particularly unprecedented is the swing. Quite a few commentators, have gone from the observation that first term g...
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Based on a good thread over at LP, I watched the Kerry O'Brien interview with Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter. Remarkable. I can't remember the last time I so enjoyed watching politicians. Perhaps never. Intelligence, humour, apparent integrity and, more than anythi...
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What if the Greens make amending the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to provide for at least some measure of proportional representation in the House of Representatives? Should Bob Brown do so? Should either major party agree? The Greens would have to be tempted to use this po...
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Dated but you get the picture ... Given that the most likely state of play in the House of Reps after distribution of postal and prepoll votes is 73 Coalition and 72 ALP or vice versa, we might yet witness a Labor minority government . The Greens' Adam Bandt and independent/Gr...
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Extraordinary: just extraordinary. Courtesy of the AEC , these are the seats in Australia with the most informal votes. I had no idea the informal vote could be so high. All from NSW. Division State Formal Informal Total Informal % Informal Swing % Blaxland NSW 61,996 10,276 7...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTl3U6aSd2w&feature=player_embedded
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Here's Annabel Crabb reporting on negative campaigning. Fear Is The Winner Of the 30 TV ads commissioned and aired by the Coalition, 29 attack Labor, and only 6 offer any positive reason to vote Liberal (thanks to Gruen Nation's hardworking research bunnies Xtreme Info, for th...
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One of the drivers of our modern world is the way in which public and private interest are being reconfigured. In many ways it's analogous to the rise of science. As Paul David’s history of the emergence of open science argues, the precondition for ‘take-off’ in modern science...
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The Australian fiscal stimulus package has been controversial, with some Australian economists and visiting UK historian Niall Ferguson arguing that it was unnecessarily large or wasteful, and other Australian economists and visiting US economist Joseph Stiglitz arguing that i...
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I'm quite puzzled by the negative, disillusioned tone of much of the blogosphere and MSM commentariat coverage of the federal election campaign. I've actually been quite heartened, almost inspired, by it. The advent of 21st century versions of old-fashioned "town hall" partici...
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A media release that's just been put out. Over a quarter of the debt from the fiscal stimulus will be repaid from the taxes of those who would otherwise have been unemployed. As our economy turned down in late 2008, Australians’ spending kept other Australians in work. And tho...
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I only recently became aware of the leasehold system on residential property in the Australian Capital Territory. This was an interesting attempt to create a city in which rent seekers and speculators would not prosper by allowing the increased value of land to accrue to the g...
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Immigration: America's nineteenth century "law and order problem"? by Howard Bodenhorn, Carolyn M. Moehling, Anne Morrison Piehl Abstract: Past studies of the empirical relationship between immigration and crime during the first major wave of immigration have focused on violen...
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As you've never seen them seriously - here .
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I thought I saw the fallacy of the excluded middle. I did. I did see the fallacy of the excluded middle, or perhaps I should say the fallacy of pre-prepared thinking iSnack processed food for thought 2.0. In a story on Mark Latham's call for us all to vote informal , we have t...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM_dOoUXgLE&feature=related
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Some great graphics from Tom Scott. I think the warning signs make most impact on their own, but Tom has annotated them on his site . Below, your opportunity to win the coveted Troppo Mercedes Sports and dinner with Nelson Mandela Warnings I'd like to see include: Warning: no...
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I know how powerful internet and Web 2.0 technologies are, so I don't need any convincing. If this study had not confirmed my prejudices I would have retained the prejudices (Why? Because it's obvious that sophisticated knowledge management capabilities have the capacity to gr...
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HMS Dunera carried about three thousand 'Dunera Boys' to Australia. I received this sad email today which I reproduce for anyone who's interested below the fold. The Dunera Boys, now mostly in their late eighties are down to around 80 with around 50 remaining in Australia. Dea...
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I have no doubt about it. Labor will be returned with an increased majority. With one week to go, the election campaign has descended to a level of debate at which rational argument is irrelevant. There's little point in having a reasoned position on greenhouse policy, offshor...
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The delightfully named Ben Spies-Butcher of the CPD writes in support of the Henry Review's proposals for the income tax system as opposed to a flat tax. In a nutshell, he feels that the Henry Review's scheme offers great efficiency benefits by simplifying the tax system and r...
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Books at 30% off in Borders - here .
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The floods in Pakistan have resulted in about 1,600 deaths, with many more expected (even disregarding the possibility of a cholera outbreak), and have stranded or displaced about 12 million people. The worst aspect seems to be that this is just a taste of what's to come, if t...
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I was asked at a Departmental seminar today whether the eleciton of a Coalition Government would set back Government 2.0. I said I didn't know, but that even if it did not have as much support from an incoming government as it has had in this term, the main tasks ahead of us w...
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We have competing paid parental leave schemes in this election, and voters are going to choose between them.But the kind of scheme desired depends a great deal on why you would want a paid parental scheme at all. Whilst details of the different schemes are available in the med...
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I'm in broad agreement with this piece by Chris Dillow. Jonathan Calder asks a good question: why has political radicalism become synonymous with wanting to see a permanent and massive public debt? Let me deepen the puzzle. In three ways, the left should be more concerned abou...
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Given the massive ignorance, not just of you're average Joe (Sorry I think that's now 'Joe Six-pack') but of experts, I think we should be particularly on the lookout for 'no-brainer' reforms. Simple things that we can do than generate gains and for which it's very difficult t...
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Here I cite this article by Annabel Crabb [fn1]. Here she defends the fact that all questions asked at press conferences are race calling in nature on the fact that policy literature isonly given to journalists at the beginning of the conference, and that the harried journos j...
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Noises are being made about high speed rail links in Australia again, and once again focus has begun on the Newcastle-Sydney leg of any such system. I assume this is both because of the density of the population, but also because the endless dormitory suburbs and above ground...
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Well folks, that's how your mad as hell correspondent feels. I'm refining the #HeSaidSheSaid campaign. After posting it I realised that we really needed a more general term as the pathologies of modern media - what Tim Watts calls souffle journalism - comprehend quite a few mo...
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The most common defence of 'he said she said' journalism is that reporting both sides with wide-eyed ignorance about the merits of their claims is at least 'objective' and it's true in a way. I remember having dinner with some relatives in Italy when a heated argument broke ou...
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A guest post by Conrad Perry: It looks like the new Julia being the real Julia campaign has kicked off with a bit of good old fashioned teacher bashing. This reminds me of one of the things that seems really ingrained in many people’s minds, and an assumption which a lot of th...
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In case you're interested, there are some great election haikus circulating with the hastag above. Here are a few chosen pretty quickly. Feel free to offer your own here, or on Twitter. Labour it campaigns / Five weeks in a leaky boat? / Waterfalls await. All day winter winds/...
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Elo ratings involve a system whereby your 'rating' is a function of who you beat or lose to and their rating. The 'future of the species' business is a reference to the fact that this manoeuvre of bootstrapping meaning from the record has become more important to the world rec...
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Julia is now 'being Julia' - complete with a big announcement - by her - that she's going to be the new 'real' Julia prompting the opposition and media into the obvious riposte 'then who was the old Julia?'. Might it have been a bit wiser to have been the real Julia for a few...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmavNoChZc#t=6m25s
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This was the theme of a talk by Andrew Moore at the Blackheath History Forum yesterday. Blackheath is in the Blue Mountains out of Sydney and it has a lot of semi-retired academics and the like who support a thriving intellectual subculture of bookshops, galleries and action g...
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