Peter Martin is the Economics Editor for The Age.
If you're anything like the typical Australian, you probably break the copyright law 80 times a day, according figures included in the Productivity Commission's final report to the government on intellectual property.
Australia's copyright laws would be dramatically simplified, the collecting agency placed on probation, and small copyright owners given a forum in which to take on big corporations under a series of sweeping recommendations to be tabled by the government on Tuesday.
The ratings agencies won't fall for it, and neither should you.
Treasurer Scott Morrison loaded up the mid-year budget update with bad news in the hope that the budget itself, due in May, will appear to contain good news.
Australia could lose its prized AAA credit rating as early as Monday afternoon as Treasurer Scott Morrison prepares to hand down a mid-year budget update likely to show little improvement for deficit projections.
Consumer confidence has dived to its lowest level since April in a "jolt to stability and confidence", plunging into doubt retailers forecasts ten days before Christmas.
The Turnbull government is to consider a ban on the $100 note and a crackdown on all but small cash payments as part of an assault on the cash economy to be unveiled in Monday's mid-year budget update.
Aldo Giurgola would have said these changes rip out the building's heart.
The Lowy Institute has proposed opening Australia to workers from Pacific nations including Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as a way of easing some of the shortages predicted as a result of changes to the backpacker tax and as a way of helping workers from those nations far more powerfully than could foreign aid.
The Tax Office ruled out a census-style "denial of service" attack as the reason for the loss of its entire website, saying the massive failure was due to hardware problems "not being caused by any external factors".
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