Crispin Hull

Rates: destroying the economy to save it

I had an economics teacher who once joked that he set the same exam questions year after year. It was not a problem, he said, “Because I just change the answers.”

There is a lot of truth in that. The rise of behavioural economics in the 1990s, for example, put paid to the stupid presumption in economics that people behave rationally.

Dealing with autocracy

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, left greeting Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney during her address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, EU released photo.

The proposal that Canada could become an associate member of the European Union is of historic moment and something which Australia should take heed.

The geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting for good reason. An Axis of Autocracy has arisen. Trump, Xi, Putin and Netanyahu have in the past decade at least inflicted profound suffering on their own people and the people elsewhere that they seek to subjugate to their will.

One Nation’s super dumb idea

Here’s an interesting figure. Australia’s household debt (mortgages, credit cards, loans etc) is $3,400 billion. Australia’s total superannuation assets are valued at $4,400 billion.

Having a lot more assets than debt is a fairly secure place to be. Normally, fiscal conservatives would urge us to maintain that healthy balance sheet. But No, superannuation was set up by the Keating Labor Government, so it must be a Bad Thing. Yet, arguably it is the best thing any Australian Government has ever done.

Trump’s self-denying rating

US President Donald Trump fell for the observers’ paradox when he posted his ratings recently of the leadership qualities past US Presidents.

The observers paradox is where the act of observing something changes the phenomenon being observed, thus rendering the findings invalid.

Sleep-walking to electoral loss

Last Saturday’s Western Australian by-election in the state seat of Secret Harbour was worse than diabolical for Labor.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that Labor’s rating in opinion polls at 28 per cent made its position diabolical. But now we see that in a real vote in a real seat that Labor’s position is even worse. On Saturday, it got just 24.5 per cent of the vote and turned a safe seat with an 11 per cent margin into a 43-57 loss.

Rewarding captive customers

Over the past week or so, most Australians would have received an email notice from their bank announcing “bigger”, “better”, or at best “changes to” their rewards program.

In fact, the banks are on a mission to claw back about $600 million of income about to be shorn from their profits because of a Reserve Bank decision to prohibit merchants from charging credit or debit cards fees on transactions from 1 October.

28% is dangerous for Labor

Another month of polling indicates that the new three-way split in Australian politics is permanent: a tad under a third of the first-preference vote to each of Labor, One Nation and the Coalition.

If support for One Nation had not surged, Labor’s primary-vote position would be diabolical and the usual self-fulfilling destabilising talk about leadership change would be rife.

Corporate perfidy redressed

Usually there is enough folly and perfidy in Australian politics to fill many columns every week. This week, though, the story is one of a politician doing what politicians are supposed to do: improve the well-being of their constituents, especially in the face of big corporate interests.

It began when the ice-maker in our fridge stopped making ice. Yes, I know this is very much a first-world problem, even in the tropics. That was in November, 2022.

The lessons from 1914

On 4 August 112 years ago, stupid decisions by the leaders of great powers at the time, Britian, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary and Russia, resulted in a catastrophic war that caused the deaths of millions and economic damage and dislocation that resonated for decades.

We are in a hauntingly similar situation today and we should strive to learn from the history so there is no repeat.

Senate threat to Labor legacy

Since the recent rise of One Nation, pollsters have had to deduce not just a Labor-v-Coalition two-party-preferred tally but also a Labor-v-One Nation two-party preferred tally. In recent polls, Labor has come in front in both tallies and the pollsters have therefore predicted that Labor will “win” the next election.

By “win”, they mean getting a majority in the House of Representatives. The Senate in hardly mentioned. But without getting legislation through the Senate, an Australian Government is merely managing, not governing.

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