Australia has become a fools' paradise, with the biggest fools mis-managing it.

ttbn. We agree on something. Also note that business cannot flourish without an adequately trained work force, large numbers of whom need to come from overseas.
David

Treasury Secretary, Stephen Kennedy, has said that, while the budget is affordable, the government's spending splurge must end.

We face an economic ruin because energy prices are often higher than the wages bill!

This means some drongos who just accept this horse manure of an energy policy and try to offset it with cheap imported labour! Instead of training the highly unemployed young folk right here. Even as we face a future that includes carbon tariffs and Australia shunned across the world because of our moronic reliance on coal and gas!

As ttbn the intellectually challenged morons at the helm! One of who nailed his colours to the wall by bringing a lump of coal into the federal parliament as a prop and extolling the virtues of coal!

And now proposes without the peoples' mandate to build a taxpayer-funded gas-fired power plant in the Hunter. To replace aging infrastructure due to be decommissioned 2023! Or 2 years from now.

Claiming, it is hydrogen ready technology? Maybe. But if that hydrogen is to be extracted from coal and the resultant carbon buried? It will be the most expensive hydrogen in the world and reliant on carbon geo-sequestration, abandoned by the rest of the world due to prohibitive costs.

The smart money has abandoned coal as has the insurance companies of the world. With the exception of the fools (tools) on the hill. TBC.
Alan B.

Most of what this visionless government has done is done to improve its election prospects and appeal to a shrinking base?

The elephant in the room is the cost of energy! And there's not a single service, amenity or process or manufacturing endeavour that exists independent of some, (price gouged) [Politicians ATM,] energy input. And that input like our dog's breakfast of a tax policy cascades upward until it hits the final consumer!

Even as this government saddles us with the biggest debt in our history! Even as interest rates in the US urge above 4%! And we will surely follow? What then of an over-leveraged mortgage market? As a new cohort of homeowners seek shelter in bankruptcy! And the housing sector floods the market with unaffordable housing stocks.
Alan B.

I agree with ttbn, the fools (tools, puppets) on the hill, are as useful as a hip pocket in a singlet!

Bury their heads somewhere warm and comfortable and create massive record debt to support consumption and their base and vested interest, cronies?

If there is a more coherent explanation? Then it escapes me!

A good businessman knows when to cut their losses and get out, and what we needed o do with coal and gas at this time. and then given it's now very doable, transition to thorium, cooperative capitalism and power prices that could be as low as 1 cent PKWH.

And accompanied by tax reform that has to be, a flat and unavoidable tax of 15% on all income and or profit earned here!

A lot of folks will scream that's far more tax relief than is envisioned! NO, IT'S NOT MORON! IF IT REPRESENTS ACTUAL DOLLARS THAT ARE TRANSFERRED TO THE ATO!

In 2017 the top tax paid in actual dollars to the ATO by any Australian operator, was just 13%! With some paying as little as 4% and up to 40% paying nothing.

Meaning this in real terms is more tax that hits the ATO. And given there were no exclusions, no need for tax compliance and reconciliation! The cost of the latter could be returned to the bottom line as an average of 7%.

Meaning, in adjusted terms, total tax and compliance costs would be just 8%. And ensure the total tax paid in actual dollars to the ATO, more than double what they get now.

And if we rationalise government via a referendum, we could also liberate a further 70+ billion for nation-building (rapid rail) or debt reduction or both!TBC.
Alan B.

Great article Alan.

We really only need to do 2 things to get back on track, & both are mostly old hat.

First return to our competitive advantage. We once shoveled coal straight from the ground to the power house boiler, then wired all the cheapest electricity in the world out to our industry & homes. A simple return to such a simple solid system will see us back in business. We just need to acknowledge the global warming scam for what it is.

Having got our costs of production & living back down we then need to forget importing labor, either skilled or unskilled, & get our education system back on course. Get it back to teaching the real stuff, Math, Physics, Chemistry & English, so kids come out of school ready to become engineers, builders, electricians or surgeons, then chuck the garbage out of our universities & start teaching real skills.

We didn't need to import skilled people back in the 50s & 60s, we got on with training our own to be some of the best in the world, & if we get the feminasty's out of control of our education system & we can do it again.

We need really good people giving career guidance to kids right through school, so they have some idea of where the high paying, in demand professions are going to be. It is too late to come out of school with dance, music & media studies tomfoolery, when the jobs are in mining & engineering.

We can do it, but I fear it is highly unlikely that we will.

I find it amusing in a very sad way that those who participated in the run-down of the economy are always the ones with all the answers when they're not actually being part of the group that has to manage their legacy i.e. economic mess !

While I agree there's a lot in what you say, Hasbeen. I just don't see coal as part of the solution when there is a much cheaper option than coal that also needs to be shovelled

And that option will include the many valuable rare earths that invariably coexist in the same mineral deposit as the thorium. Thorium is very heavy and magnetic enough to allow a good recovery spectrum via gravity and magnetic separation.

As for prospects? Aerial surveys with side-looking radar will identify the best most concentrated prospects. If you believe that graphene highways are pie in the sky? Then how about underground superconductor graphene cored cables replacing eyesore transmission towers to quite massively reduce transmission and distribution losses. A total combined 75%?

And allow the aluminium and copper to be recycled. The sale of same going a long way to offsetting the cost of the replacement grid. Moreover with a system not wiped out with summer storms, termite attacks on poles that fall, or burn with the next firestorm.

Meaning loss of power may reduce your ability to fight fires/pump water. Or just keep the freezers going and your food fresh/ still suitable for human consumption.

It's a no brainer!
Alan B.

Alan 'd be very happy if your Thorium was allowed to compete on a level playing field, & proved itself. That is provided it was private enterprise with no government/tax payer input. It should be given a real chance, as should all other options, to come to the top if it can.

I know the problems of power lines in this woke age, when idiots object if trees are cleared a suitable distance from them. I have a 10 KVA gen set to cover that problem. I also have experience of problems with underground power transmission. When running the Telford marine division I became pretty good mates with the South Mole Island engineer. he recruited me to go out with him at first light on cool wet winter mornings, following the plan of the underground grid, looking for steam rising. This indicated a hot spot where he had a power leak. He had thought that once the existing problems were cured he would be right, but new leakage continued to develop[ over the 3 years I was involved.

I don't know much about electricity, except it is always more difficult, & more troublesome than it is supposed to be.

Who will be the new owner of Qantas?

Low interest rates, spending too much & growing debt is what got us into this mess.

More of the same will give us more of the same economic stagnation.

Cut spending, cut spending, cut spending, then lower taxes & regulation.