Today
- Opinion
- Opinion
Regrettable retreats into protection and intervention
For the government’s oil refining and electricity-generating interventions to be justified, they need to be integrated into an energy transition plan.
- 1 hr ago
- The AFR View
Yesterday
- Opinion
- Jobs
Labor’s wage hypocrisy
If boosting wages is as easy as borrowing and spending, then why isn’t the labour movement up in arms about Victorian Labor’s ‘austerity’ budget?
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Where have all the Liberal Party ‘Dries’ gone?
Is the internal contest of ideas inside a more tribalised Liberal Party no longer about Wet versus Dry economics, and really about culture war social issues?
- The AFR View
This Month
- Opinion
- Opinion
Follow health advice to escape the gilded cage
As health experts now warn, breaking out of Australia’s gilded COVID-safe cage will depend on accepting the need to live with the virus when new cases inevitably appear.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Victoria’s tax grab
The Victorian tax grab underlines the importance of building fiscal buffers before a crisis. But it is also a lesson about the failure to reform the tax system.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Budget deficits are about more than money
Recurring red ink represents a profound political reluctance to accept that the pie must be grown before it can be carved up.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Not a budget for the Liberals’ true believers
The Treasurer insists the budget stays true to the Menzian tradition. But the parties of the right are attempting to seize the left’s economic credentials as big spenders.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
The Treasurer ought to have put it this way
Here is the budget speech that Josh Frydenberg should have delivered on Tuesday night.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Australia is now a hostage to fortune
Australia has gone straight back to its recurring bad habit: the permanent spending of any temporary budgetary gain. It just assumes everything will keep going the government’s way.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Lessons for Labor from realignment in Boris’ Britain
The Tory victory in the Hartlepool byelection should warn the ALP that it can’t rely on Scott Morrison’s prime ministership crumbling in some Twitter war.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Treasurer should make fiscal repair a budget priority
When Josh Frydenberg stands up in Canberra on Tuesday evening to deliver the budget, the focus should be on what he says, or doesn’t say, about the fiscal strategy for repairing the nation’s public finances.
- The AFR View
Government to take fiscal U-turn 70 years after ‘horror budget’
Arthur Fadden’s 1951 budget was the opposite of the debt-financed fiscal stimulus Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will build on.
- Michael Stutchbury
From the archives: Heartie Artie’s rise from billy boy to treasurer
Sir Arthur Fadden was a billy boy, champion athlete, boxer, town clerk and accountant before entering politics and becoming treasurer and prime minister.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Fadden’s ‘horror’ 1951 budget is a lesson in sacrifice
The chief lesson of the 1951 budget is that prioritising short-term economic and political imperatives can ultimately require drastic corrective action.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Spending on care can’t be careless of deficits
The budget will have important social service objectives. We owe it to make them financially sustainable.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Make quarantine fit to return the stranded and open border
The India travel ban controversy must put large dedicated quarantine facilities on the table so expat Australians, then students, tourists and skilled labour can be brought back.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Australia draws the China line at Taiwan
Australia has now signalled that its collective pushback to manage China includes drawing the line at the defence of Taiwan.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Superannuation
Who checks when super funds cross the line?
Industry super funds are a good example of the age-old agency problem. The Treasurer is right to call for more transparency.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
JobKeeper profiteering by big business is fake news
Premier Investments is right to repay JobKeeper. But the idea the big end of town has outrageously profited from the wage subsidy is not true.
- The AFR View
- Opinion
- Opinion
Making Tasmania less healthy, wealthy and educated
The bigger problem with the Tasmanian election result is the Liberal Party’s failure to seek a mandate to undertake the structural reform needed to fix the state’s serious underlying problems.
- The AFR View
