Ross Gittins

The present fashion of obsessing with productivity improvement for its own sake is counterproductive and probably won’t achieve much.

If you want to govern effectively, you have to be prepared to stand up to powerful interest groups. It’s now clear Albanese isn’t prepared to do that.

With its silly decision to hold rates, the Reserve Bank has shaken the faith of the financial markets, businesses and households.

We’re told that our defence spending must be greatly increased. But if Trump and the gleeful defenceniks have their way, we’ll be poorer and no safer.

Repairing the budget and improving productivity aren’t easy, but there are measures the treasurer can look at that offer less political risk.

Our tax and benefits system favours the old over the young. Then there’s our ridiculous housing market. No wonder young people feel dudded.

The Business Council of Australia is unsurprisingly playing spoiler to any attempt by the federal government to improve our taxation system. It’s another sign of big business’ resistance to radical change.

In Norway, they tax their oil and gas industry heavily and give their kids free higher education. Here, we do the opposite.

Virtually every economist attending last month’s economic pow-wow in Canberra agrees, so why is the federal government so afraid of locking in this measure?

China is the great contradiction. It’s the world’s biggest single emitter, accounting for about 30 per cent of global emissions, but it’s the country doing most to move to renewables.