australia

More Informality

24 August 2010

Yesterday’s post on informal votes generated a lot of questions, both on and off the blog. One commenter was interested in understanding why there was so much variability in informal votes in New South Wales. It is a good question, and one I do not have an answer to. Presumably demographic differences across electorates (such [...]

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Dress: Informal

23 August 2010

While Australia still waits to see which party will manage to scrape into power, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has announced an investigation into the unusually high rate of informal votes. Veteran ABC analyst Antony Green observed that the rate of informal votes was the highest since 1984. Some are attributing the rise to the [...]

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Infrastructure Bonds

17 August 2010

With Australia’s Federal election looming, the opposition has today proudly announced a new policy to fund infrastructure without actually increasing Government debt! What are we to make of this? It’s hard to determine the details from a media announcement, but based on the text posted by Peter Martin on his blog, it would seem that [...]

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Broadband Poll

12 August 2010

As a follow up to our guest post on the numbers behind Labor’s broadband policy, here is a quick poll to see whose policy you prefer. Let us know what you think!

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Labor’s National Broadband Network – Less than $10/month

11 August 2010

Our regular guest contributor James Glover (aka @zebra) returns today with a look at the numbers behind the National Broadband Network. He asks: do you think it would be value for money?

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Emissions League Tables

13 July 2010

Everyone knows that the biggest carbon emitters are China and the USA, but how to other countries perform when emissions are viewed by population or economic output? This post charts a few league tables.

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When will Julia go to the polls?

2 July 2010

After taking Kevin Rudd’s scalp and now having done a deal with the miners, Australia’s new prime minister, Julia Gillard, is widely expected to call an early poll. The question is, when will the election be held?

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RSPT RIP – Long Live the MRRT

2 July 2010

In the third in a series of guest posts on the subject of Australian mining tax, Zebra (James Glover) considers the changes to the proposed tax the new prime minister, Julia Gillard, has negotiated with miners.

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RSPT – A Fair Valuation Based on True Value of New and Existing Mines

12 June 2010

Guest author James Glover takes another look at the resources tax and concludes that the tax for existing mines should be lower.

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No move expected by the Reserve Bank

31 May 2010

Over recent months there have been a few informal polls on the Mule Stable on whether or not the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) would be moving interest rates. There will be another monthly policy decision tomorrow and this time I decided to make poll a bit more structured, courtesy of the PollDaddy website. If [...]

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