Club Troppo

I'm just back from the launch at the IPA - or rather re-launch for it was first published in 1980 - of The Heart of James McAuley by Peter Coleman. It was a star studded cast of launchers. Tony's Staley and Abbott did the launching but Peter Coleman was also there to respond....

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Harry Clarke draws our attention to the demise of Earth Sanctuaries Limited (ESL). It has been in bad trouble for a long time. It's a very sad day. ESL was a marvellous experiment in private conservation hounded out of existence by jealous bureaucrats and the ideologues of the...

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I just ran across this abstract in the Journal of Public Economics . I reproduce it here for what it is worth. I mean that literally, as it is not me pushing a barrow. I don't have a considered view and have done very little reading on this. Anyway, here's the abstract. In 198...

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I spotted a comment in the last week that I thought would be a good starter for our weekend open thread. If I do so again in the future, there'll be another commenter of the week. The comment was from Cam in the thread on history education - which was itself a pretty high qual...

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Last night's Late Night Live had a teriffic interview with David Runciman, Lecturer in politics, Cambridge University, UK. Theorising one of the most talented and in my view ultimately tragic polititians of our age Tony Blair, Runciman wrote The Politics of Good Intentions: Hi...

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Should you be restructuring your communications? A month or so I decided to bite the bullet and fix my family and (small) business telecommunications. I thought I'd outline what I did here and follow it with some reflections which I'm hoping to research further. Currently they...

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Here's a diagram from a recent paper (pdf) on the Swedish distribution of income. It shows that the kinds of income distribution through time that Andrew Leigh and Anthony Atkinson came up with for Australia and NZ are typical of most western countries. It also shows that you...

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Saul, who needs little introduction, has kindly accepted my invitation to occasionally post on Troppo. Saul is a wise and moderate fellow and you could do worse than accord his thoughts on the economy as much weight as you give anyone else. Over the fold is an article Saul has...

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Commenter Chris Lloyd asked the other day whether I had any observations about the risks of defamation action against bloggers. As it happens I do. Moreover, it's an opportune time to muse on the subject because there's a fairly new uniform national Defamation Act that is rele...

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Hot off the press from Sarsparilla . Regular Sarsaparilla contributor Wendy James' novel Out of the Silence has been shortlisted in the 'First Crime Novel' category of the 2006 Ned Kelly Awards for crime fiction. How good is that ?

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I was recently banging on about the ABC and podcasting re-iterating Steven Bounds' suggestion that the ABC could lower the cost of distributing podcasts by distributing them over BitTorrent when the very next day I hear that the ABC are considering doing just that . The ABC is...

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Troppo readers will know that one of my interests in economic policy is regulation. So with the Banks Report receiving its final response from Government, I wrote a column on it which was published today in The Age. Quite a bit was cut in The Age - something that usually happe...

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Here's Stephen Mayne from today's Crikey on the ABC and podcasting. The ABC's extraordinary podcasting performance All those ABC critics who attack the national broadcaster for not attracting large audiences are eating plenty of humble pie over its extraordinary performance wh...

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Political debate Australia is starting to remind me of the balls that used to be held at uni halls of residence when I was a student. Rather than some kind of broad discourse we move from one topic to another with the media paying obeisance to an agenda set by the Government w...

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An enterprising Paul Williams from the New South Wales Department of Education and Training sent me a study the Department had commissioned on the economic value of TAFE in NSW. Easily flattered on Club Troppo's behalf - I've not been courted as a media outlet before - I thoug...

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[photopress:Bookshelf.jpg,full,pp_empty] Carmen Lawrence's Fear and Politics Lawrence's central argument is that we need to get rid of the Howard government. We need to get rid of the Howard government because terrible things will happen to our nation if we don't. These terrib...

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I. I enjoyed myself at The Boy from Oz last Friday night. I'd have loved to see one of Peter Allen's big Broadway shows and was curious as to what all the fuss was about The Boy's great success in New York. Mind you, the reason for its success seems pretty obvious. Peter Allen...

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Thoughts anyone?

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Dear Crikey Subscriber, Father's Day is fast approaching, (September 3rd for all you forgetful children) and Dads across Australia are gearing up for another round of dodgy ties, el cheapo car cleaning kits, and of course, the three-pack of Bonds undies. Instead of going throu...

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This piece started out as a rejoinder to James Farrell's terse comments on a Catallaxy post about Peter Bauer's work on "development economics" and the role of aid in helping (more usually not helping) poor nations. Rafe Champion asks, apropos of nothing in particular, whethe...

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