australia

Resource Super Profit Tax Everything Correctly Explained (R.S.P.T.E.C.E.)

25 May 2010

This guest post from Mule Stable regular Zebra (James Glover) delves into the details of the proposed Resources Super Profits Tax.

Among other things, James concludes that the RSPT will benefit small and marginal mining projects.

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Where is debt headed now?

20 March 2010
Debt levels - thumbnail image

As expected, government debt levels exhibit a marked up-swing. What is striking, however, is that the levels of household debt have not yet fallen. While US and the UK are consumers “deleveraging”, Australian households are showing no signs yet of reducing their debt.

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Who are the big carbon emitters?

4 March 2010

Earlier this week, @pureandapplied brought to my attention the emissions data that has been published by the Department of Climate Change in Australia. Their report comprises data for the 2008-09 reporting year provided to the Greenhouse and Energy Data Officer by corporations whose greenhouse gas emissions exceeded 125 kilotonnes*. A few corporations are missing from [...]

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The Mule on Mortgages

13 February 2010

So you’ve saved up a deposit for your first house, you want to take advantage of the government’s first home owner grant while you still can, and the bank is actually prepared to lend you money. But how much should you borrow?

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Rethinking the basis for the Australia Day holiday

25 January 2010

January 26 is a nettlesome date for the official celebration of the Australian nation and as a commemoration of our colonial foundation. Apart from the significant nuisance that it falls so close to the end of the holiday season when our minds and emotions are trying to deal with more pressing obligations, it really asks a serious philosophical and moral question.

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Hot and Dry Days Ahead for Australia

13 November 2009

Earlier this month, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology released the October figure for the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). It showed a precipitous plunge of almost 20 points down to -14.6. Just how significant a drop this is can be seen in the chart below, which shows the distribution of monthly changes in the SOI going [...]

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Melbourne Cup by Numbers

2 November 2009

I don’t know anything about horses. Ever since I was bitten by one at the Easter Show as a small child, they have ranked very low on my animal preference list: only just above geese. Still, at this time of year almost everyone in Australia gets caught up in some way with the Melbourne Cup, [...]

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Petrol Price Update

21 October 2009

Oil prices have been heading up, but so has the Australian dollar. So, petrol prices in Sydney for October will have fallen since September.

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A better view of the asylum-seeker league tables

19 October 2009

The last post looked at how many applications for asylum Australia and other countries have received this year on a per capita basis. The top three countries in the resulting league table are Malta, Cyprus and Norway and their figures are so much higher than other countries that they skew the data, making it hard [...]

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Crime Around The Corner

10 September 2009

Observant visitors to this blog may have noticed the recent appearance of a “wiki” button at the top of the page. This links to the recently established Stubborn Mule wiki, which I plan to use as a repository of information relevant in some way to the blog. Since so many of the posts here focus [...]

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