Not only is this excellent news for consumers who enjoy the convenience of free lightweight bags, but it is also welcome relief for hardworking small businesses and independent grocers trying to challenge the corporate oligopoly of big supermarket chains that don’t like competition.
Read MoreAll too often the information spreading across social media and into reporting misleads users and is inaccurate or all-around fake. In response to this, fact-checkers and social media platforms have waged a somewhat ineffective crackdown on misinformation. Yet this misinformation has seeped into our government and has begun impacting a broad set of issues including the vaping debate, the drought facing Australian farmers, and even climate policy.
Read MoreThe International Monetary Fund has forecasted a sharp decrease in Australia’s economic growth over the next year. The estimate predicts Australia will have an even weaker economy than Greece. Experts have shown the Morrison government’s low-income tax rebates have been ineffective due to misaligned incentives. Australia needs to fast-track tax cuts and rollback regulation to stimulate the flagging economy rather than spending taxpayer dollars to create a short-lived impression of growth.
Read MoreSeventy years ago, the authoritarian dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party was established.
The “Great Leap Forward” which followed in the fifties was one of the largest acts of systematic genocide in world history, taking 45 million lives in just four years.
Read MoreAlthough pro-Beijing Hong Kong Premier Carrie Lam formally withdrew an unpopular bill early in September that would’ve allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to the mainland to face Chinese courts, protests for the city’s autonomy are still ongoing — even though it’s fallen out of the main news cycle.
Read MoreThe federal government’s highly controversial robo-debt program has extorted thousands of dollars from hard-working Australians and abused bureaucratic power, hurting some of the most vulnerable groups in our society and discrediting attempts to crack down on welfare fraud.
Read MoreIt’s tempting to see the mainland Chinese government’s recent repression of Hong Kong as far removed from Australia’s national interests. Yet at a time when politicians like Gladys Liu and state representatives in NSW and Queensland are already being linked to or even outright support groups that serve the interests of the authoritarian and increasingly brazen Chinese Communist Party (CCP), these events in fact mark the beginning of a new chapter in Sino-Australian relations. One which threatens not only our sovereignty, but our businesses, investors and workers.
Read MoreBusiness and investors are up in arms about the Liberal South Australian government’s land tax reforms. Scott Salisbury, Managing Director of Salisbury Homes, this week has become just the latest to warn that the changes not only risk handing over government back to the Labor Party with a large war chest, but that they alienating the SA Liberals’ voter base.
Read MoreGovernment legislation that would have outlawed cash payments for goods and services exceeding $10,000 AUD to or between businesses has just been set aside and referred to a committee that won’t report back until February 2020. Although this setback for the bill is a notable victory, it should be seen as part of a wider pattern amongst world governments to push for cash’s demise for the sake of their own interests.
Read MoreThere is no greater act of economic or environmental vandalism in Australian history than our nonsensical prohibition on nuclear power. It’s doubly perplexing that successive state and federal governments have given in to the whims and bullying of anti-nuclear activists and special interest lobbyists when Australia has the world’s largest uranium reserves.
Read MoreThe protests in Hong Kong have rightly attracted international media attention. Escalating tensions frequently boil over into violence coming from both the police and pro-Beijing triads as well as hardcore elements among the protestors.
Read MoreHundreds of medical personnel from three hospitals across Hong Kong have staged sit-ins this week in resistance to the excessive violence used by police when responding to protests.
The savagery dished out by police was compared to that dished out by the triads in their infamous attack on passengers and protesters in Yuen Long train station.
Read MoreNews that Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam has proposed to withdraw the now-infamous Extradition Bill, the catalyst for more than three months of protests in Hong Kong, appears to be a cause for celebration.
Dig a little deeper, however, and you can see that this is nothing more than a thinly veiled ruse designed to convince the United States to avoid imposing further sanctions that would cripple China and limit their expansion.
Read MoreTheir ABC is rejoicing. We’ll hit our renewable energy target by 2020. But at what cost? The Australian government only recently rolled out a $11.7 million energy program to help small businesses assess the prices offered by different energy providers. Small businesses, especially in the hospitality industry, are struggling to keep the lights on. The energy companies are begging the states to allow them to use the resources at their feet.
Read More16 years after the first e-cigarette was invented, media outlets across the world have been quick to link the devices to what is apparently their first potential ‘death’. The case has fueled concerns about the potential harms of vaping, a proven harm reduction tool for smokers who struggle to quit their habit, despite no identified cause and much of its surrounding circumstances remaining unknown.
Read MoreThe Australian steel producer BlueScope will invest $1 billion in an Ohio-based American steel plant, citing the United States’ energy-friendly policies which have driven power bills down to a third of what Australians pay as a decisive factor. This hasn’t just been good news for American businesses. It has also meant thousands of high-quality jobs in a sector that has long been thought of as resigned to an inevitable decline and end due to automation and competition from developing countries with low labour costs.
Read MoreIf our government isn’t careful, it could end up trading away the rights and interests of Australian businesses and consumers to placate the whims of Brussels-based bureaucrats and social engineers driven by a combination of nanny state fetishism and, ironically enough, old-fashioned European nativism.
Read MoreAs the debate on hiking compulsory super contributions continues, it’s well worth revisiting Liberal NSW Senator Andrew Bragg’s suggestion to advocate for voluntary superannuation under an ‘opt-out’ system for lower-income workers.
Read MoreIranian Ayatollah Khomeni and the despotic Saudi regime found unlikely Australian allies this week in Labor Senators Penny Wong and failed NSW Premier Kristina Keneally. Wong and Keneally smeared conservative political opponents including Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker and Craig Kelly MP for appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC to be held from August 9-11 in Sydney.
Read MoreWe’ll never unleash our energy potential if we fall for a policy that discouraged investment over the long term, writes Satya Marar.
Although they might lower power prices at least in the short-term, the Morrison government’s planned export restrictions on gas are a Band-Aid solution which will backfire and cause job losses and long-term damage to the economy, government revenues, and even natural gas supply. They are no substitute for boosting supply by removing unnecessary restrictions on gas extraction pervasive throughout our eastern states.
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