Weekly roundup Saturday 9 December
What did it all cost last year?
Weekly roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues in public policy.
Australia’s energy transition
Real progress towards renewable energy goals for electricity, but we’re still waiting for initiatives in transport. The opposition’s nuclear push – a stalling tactic. Hydrogen – overhyped perhaps but it can de-carbonize industrial processes.
Other economics
Why the Reserve Bank Board should take a holiday on a big houseboat. Our GDP figures show that as we’re getting past the Covid-19 disruption we’re back to our sluggish low-productivity-low-growth economy. How households experience the cost of living – it’s largely about gender. We need to re-establish the Commonwealth Employment Service to replace the mess of privatized and ineffective services, but is our politicized and weakened public service up to the task? The case for reasonably fast rail.
Education
Our PISA results are really good, so long as you don’t compare them with Singapore’s or Korea’s. Teaching kids science with half the curriculum missing. The emerging education class division. The Productivity Commission demonstrates that it cares about children.
Health policy
How Medicare, in slipping from universalism to a residual “charity” system, lets down the least well-off. The person at your local supermarket’s checkout may be a dentist who cannot afford to have her qualifications recognized. Covid-19 hasn’t gone away, but we have let our vaccination guard down.
Politics
The High Court’s direction on immigration detainees stimulated the worst of journalism, including in the ABC, and exposed the cost of designating a political party as “the opposition”. How some young Europeans are warming to far-right populists.
Public ideas
There was a time when America provided a stronger model of social democracy than Scandinavia: what happened? More on the trial of David McBride: are our soldiers bound by something as tight as the Wehrmacht’s oath to Hitler? The joys of inflation.
The beauty of power stations
Links to sources of webinars, podcasts and readings
If you have comments, corrections, or links to other relent sources, I’d like to hear from you. Please send them to Ian McAuley — ian, at the domain name ianmcauley.com
