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Simon Cowan, at last weekend’s Liberty & Society conference, addressed the pressing issue of Australia’s ballooning federal expenditure and the huge economic and social impact this will have if spending isn’t curbed soon. The elephant in the room that Cowan, a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, is referring to is Australia’s dwindling economic growth, an ageing population and the rapidly rising healthcare and pension costs associated with the demographic shift. Read more

The shifts in the political landscape with the anointment of David Cunliffe have sparked a flurry of ‘what if Labour and Greens get in?’ policy speculation recently, and unsurprisingly the electricity sector has been spotlight. Since it was first mooted earlier this year, the electricity industry and business sector have been at pains to call for a thorough economic analysis before policymakers dismantle the free market system currently used and move to a single buyer model. Read more

It is a new thing for New Zealand to have a chief science advisor to the Prime Minister. Sir Peter Gluckman’s laudable brief is "to promote discourse that will lead New Zealand to better apply evidence-based knowledge and research across all domains of public endeavour". Read more

Tony Abbott’s recently announced Australian Cabinet is conspicuous for its lack of women, and apparently this is a big deal. With only one woman out of a cabinet of 19, even Afghanistan boasts more females in its cabinet. Read more

Newly elected Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, announced his 19-person Cabinet on Monday, with just one female minister, Julie Bishop. Not that Australians would notice much. Read more

Imagine the following situation: Your next-door neighbours are going to have a party. They know it will be noisy and it might last till the wee hours. Read more

Nothing arouses the passions like a sport the whole country can get behind, a sport with such wide appeal it’s embraced by the masses and is accessible to anyone and everyone. I am, of course, talking about yachting. Read more

Government spending has been rising for the past one and a half centuries. The increase itself is startling, but even more worrying is the composition of government spending in the developed world. Read more

New Zealanders are an irascible lot when it comes to recreational fishing. Around 50,000 people have made submissions opposing options for tightening recreational snapper fishing limits. Read more

If there is one word that best describes the current state-owned asset sales programme, it would probably be ‘compromise’. In 2008, when the Government was faced with the challenge of tackling rising levels of public debt (projected at 36 per cent of GDP for 2013) in a low-growth economy, all the while nursing a balance sheet heavily overweight on A-rated electricity assets, the choice was clear: sell one to pay the other. Read more