For more than a year, financial markets have been in turmoil. Banks have been refusing to lend to one another. Companies and individuals have found it increasingly difficult to borrow money. Investors and pension holders have seen the value of their assets collapse, and government intervention has been largely counterproductive, making matters worse and turning...

With the car manufacturing industry faltering further, the Rudd government’s massive taxpayer-funded support for the Australian car industry is doomed to fail. This paper argues that a strong car industry would be an asset to the Australian economy only if it stood on its own two feet. Relying on government support is no substitute for...

The lack of private property rights on communal title land has prevented Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders from becoming homeowners. Even for those who can afford to purchase a house, banks will not provide financing for home loans without legal title over land. But the choice to become a homeowner should be available to all...

The unfolding global economic debacle has led many governments, including our own, to reach into their policy toolkits for fiscal stimulus measures. In doing so, they have revived fiscal policy as a counter-cyclical tool, which was so much in vogue until the early 1970s that Richard Nixon famously declared 'We are all Keynesians now.' Are...

NSW public hospitals are plagued by massive systemic failures, as diagnosed in the Garling report. At the same time, hospital costs are blowing out, and may yet bankrupt the NSW budget despite a massive federal bailout under the COAG agreement. The situation requires dramatic and fundamental changes to hospital management—not additional layers of bureaucratic control...