Category Archives: Industry policy

Nostalgia for the car industry won’t bring it back: domestic market too small, labour costs too high

It is the last day of car manufacturing in Australia today, with the final Holden cars to be manufactured at the soon to be shut Elizabeth plant in SA, as reported in the Courier-Mail. It is awful that thousands of … Continue reading

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Andrew Leigh’s Choosing Openness – highly recommended reading

On Wednesday evening, at the Queensland College of Art at South Brisbane, I attended the Brisbane launch of Australian Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh’s new book Choosing Openness: Why global engagement is best for Australia. It is a Lowy Institute … Continue reading

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My comments on possible NRL Grand Final at Suncorp in today’s Courier-Mail

I am quoted in today’s Courier-Mail story Queensland in talks to host NRL Grand Final at Suncorp in $10 million boost to the economy: MORE than $10 million could be injected into the Queensland economy if the state hosted an … Continue reading

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Interview on Buy Qld with Dave Pellowe

The State Government’s new Buy Queensland policy giving local firms extra weighting in procurement processes came into effect yesterday. I recorded an interview over Skype on the policy yesterday afternoon with Dave Pellowe for his new Youtube channel Pellowe Talk: … Continue reading

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Weekend reading: CIS Policy mag featuring my article on film industry subsidies, available at good newsagents

If you’re looking for something to read this weekend, you could try the latest issue of the Centre for Independent Studies’ magazine Policy, which includes some excellent feature articles. These include an article on the worrying levels of public debt … Continue reading

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Treasury dumps wellbeing framework & defines principal objectives around Budget, productivity and globalisation

Of the many outstanding contributions that former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry made to public policy in Australia, one of my favourites was the wellbeing framework. This framework established Treasury’s goal as improving the wellbeing of Australians, and identified five elements … Continue reading

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Ex-Holden boss confirms that Carr’s car cash was excessive

Lately I have been hearing a number of people lamenting the loss of car manufacturing in Australia. The loss of jobs is certainly devastating for many former assembly line workers of Holden, Ford and Toyota, who may struggle to find … Continue reading

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Upcoming CIS Liberty & Society weekend in Melbourne

The Centre for Independent Studies sent a reminder note yesterday regarding its upcoming Liberty & Society weekend conference in Melbourne on October 14-16. This is a great opportunity for university students and recent graduates to have fun chatting about important … Continue reading

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Ragnarok in Brissywood

Next week, the Brisbane CBD road closures for the filming of scenes for Thor: Ragnarok will obviously, through the disruption to traffic and local businesses, add to the already large multi-million dollar cost to the Queensland community of hosting the … Continue reading

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International film productions such as Thor: Ragnarok unworthy of Qld taxpayer support

Thor: Ragnarok, now filming on the Gold Coast, and which is supposedly receiving Queensland taxpayer support of $3 million (see my post from October last year), is delivering much lower benefits to locals than may have been expected, as reported … Continue reading

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