Essays

Here are a few short takes for you to chew over on the weekend, from the week’s happenings that probably didn’t need a full post.

I’m going to venture out beyond our borders today because what’s happening in Argentina is quite possibly the wildest reform experiment the world has seen… ever. And believe it or not, the results could offer some important lessons for Australia.

This is why we can’t have nice things. Last week, federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek decided to block Victoria’s Victorian Renewable Energy Terminal, a port that would have been used for the state’s planned offshore wind industry, citing the damage it would cause to wetlands, including:

Here are a few short takes for you to chew over on the weekend, from the week’s happenings that probably didn’t need a full post.

Over the past couple of years, food in Australia has become expensive. So much so that even politicians have started to (belatedly) take notice. That’s usually a good sign that there’s going to be some kind of policy response, once the various reviews are completed and briefing notes are prepared. I’m not sure what form it will take, or how and when it will happen, but the sheer volume of political statements made over the past couple of weeks all but guarantees something is brewing. The common thread throughout: the perceived lack of competition and pricing power in the sector, but especially for the two major supermarket chains, Coles and Woolworths.

I thought I’d kick the year off by commenting on perhaps the biggest issue facing the average Australian last year, and one that looks set to continue in 2024: inflation and the cost-of-living crisis. According to the ABS:

The numbers are in: in 2022-23, Australia’s population grew by 624,100 people, or around 2.4%. That’s a huge figure – a record, in fact – and it was driven by the net addition of 518,090 overseas migrants. As you might expect, the media jumped all over it:

When COVID-19 struck, the Australian government – along with just about every government around the world – unleashed unprecedented support for workers who were at risk of losing their jobs due to the various health-related restrictions on business activity. One of the talismans of the Scott Morrison/Josh Frydenberg government’s response was JobKeeper, a scheme formulated by Treasury’s Jenny Wilkinson, for which she was later awarded a Public Service Medal.

Australia has a long and successful history of immigration. Migrants contribute economically, help fill labour shortages, improve the country’s demographics and provide important cultural diversity. But as countries like Sweden have learned, migration can also present significant challenges.

Whether immigrants fuel inflation is a complicated question, in part because there’s no single, uniform “immigrant”. Immigrants can be students, skilled workers, entire families, refugees, retirees, or backpackers. Their ages also vary, as do their consumption, savings, and working patterns.