australia

Keep the date, and Vote

24 August 2017

James Glover is back with another guest post, this time digging into some poll figures ahead of the postal plebiscite on same sex marriage. Hey, there is a survey/plebiscite/referendum on, in case you haven’t heard. It’s on same sex marriage or marriage equality. Leaving aside the fact that this is a survey and not at […]

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Getting Australia Post out of the red

19 June 2014

John Carmody returns to the Mule in his promised second guest post and takes a close look at Australia Post’s profitability with some (ahem) back-of-the-envelope calculations. There are many forms of communication which underpin the function and productivity of a modern society like Australia. Despite the Cassandra-commentary from Mr Ahmed Fahour (the well-paid CEO of Australia Post), regular mail […]

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Government spending

20 May 2014

Before, during and after this month’s budget, Treasurer Joe Hockey sounded dire warnings about Australia’s “budget emergency”. Amidst this fear-mongering, it was a pleasant relief to come across a dissenting view. In a recent interview on 2SER Dr Stephanie Kelton (Department of Economics at the University of Missouri in Kansas City) argued that the government budget is very […]

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Shark season

31 December 2013

Summer in Australia comes with cicadas, sunburn and, in the media at least, sharks. So far, I have learned that aerial shark patrols are inefficient (or perhaps not) and that the Western Australian government plans to keep swimmers safe by shooting big sharks. Sharks are compelling objects of fear, right up there with spiders and snakes […]

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Poll Dancing

15 July 2013

With elections looming, and Kevin Rudd’s return to power, it is time for our regular guest blogger, James, to pull out his beer coaster calculator and take a closer look at the polls.  It is really that time again. Australian election fever has risen. Though in this case it feels like we have been here […]

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Unfounded liability

20 May 2013

Today a tweet from “Australia’s most idiosyncratic economist” Christopher Joye caught my eye. I followed the link and found a scaremongering article trying to whip up concerns about Australia’s levels of government debt. A key part of Joye’s argument is to accuse the government of creative accounting by including Future Fund assets in the calculation […]

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NDIS and how many disabled people are there anyway?

3 May 2013

Regular guest writer, James Glover, returns to the Mule today to look at the figures behind the proposed NDIS. The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is in the news again. A welcome development for people with disability and their carers and families…and friends and pretty much anyone else who cares about their fellow humans. It is […]

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Account Keeping

5 March 2013

I have been digging through some family archives and came across an old bank passbook belonging to my great grandfather, William Booth. He lived in Perthville in the central west of NSW. His account was with the Bank of New South Wales, Bathurst branch. Pasted inside the front cover is a statement of the account […]

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Mixed prediction results: Cup 0, RBA 1

6 November 2012

With Green Moon winning the Melbourne Cup, Fiorente in second place and Jakkalberry in third, none of the Mule’s tips even rated a place. That leaves a tipping record of one for three, and I am sure it will only get worse if I keep up this “analysis” in years to come. Fortunately, many of my […]

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Mule bites horse

4 November 2012

The Melbourne Cup is almost here again, which means that it is time for the Mule to perform some utterly bogus analysis with which to predict a winner. So here goes. Once again, I will look to past winners as a guide. Picking on those characteristics readily available from a Google search, I have focused […]

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