‘Tax burden’, ‘tax relief’, ‘tax breaks’… the very way we talk about it implies tax is something inherently onerous. An unreasonable imposition. Even an unfair one. This is of course a great shame. It holds us back from pursuing all manner of important and exciting ventures together. Exactly how we arrived at this aversion is …
Wow – what a week so far! You may have been following the saga of the Dalai Lama’s visit to University of Sydney. To cut a long story short, last week a courageous student and friend Sophie Bouris spilled the beans to the ABC about the University’s bizarre efforts to distance itself from the Dalai …
Two trillion dollars That’s the value of global fossil fuel subsidies, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Yes, TRILLION – $2,000,000,000,000 Twenty-six trillion dollars That’s the value of global pension funds (superannuation), a high proportion of which is currently invested in high-carbon industries Again, twenty-six TRILLION – $26,000,000,000,000 Eighty percent That’s …
How to eradicate poverty and increase ‘human development’ while staying within ecological limits is to many the defining challenge of the twenty-first century. I’ve found no better illustration of this challenge than this simple diagram from the report that launched Oxfam’s GROW campaign back in 2011: To keep within planetary boundaries we must reduce overall …
After years on the increase, food prices in Australia have recently been falling, according to New Limited analysis published on 7 January. Among the key factors, researchers cited the ‘nomalising’ of fruit prices after their sudden rise following natural disasters in Queensland and Victoria. Sadly, this reassuring news came before the record heat wave claimed …
As with any seemingly intractable conflict of opinions, to understand the argument currently raging over gun control we need to dig a little deeper. It is not an argument over evidence or readily observable facts but a veiled expression of different fundamental beliefs about the way the world is. And it’s these underlying feelings and …
So what I thought would be a quiet week of tying up loose ends and taking stock of the Doha climate conference became altogether more interesting. And maddening. As tired delegates were boarding their flights home, a certain newspaper, which had shown almost no interest in the negotiations up to that point, suddenly sniffed that …
