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Andrew's Writing

 

Future Lies in Skilled Cities - Australian Financial Review - 7 December 2010.
One of my favourite Banjo Paterson's poems is Clancy of the Overflow: a contrast between the life of the drover who 'sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended', and the urbanite, who must put up with 'the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city'. Published in 1889, the poem neatly sums up the Australian character - a nation of bush-loving city-dwellers.
Read full op-ed about skilled cities

We have to sell the farm - Australian Financial Review - 23 November 2010.
An iron law of populism is that while Australian businesspeople investing abroad are portrayed as job-creating entrepreneurs, foreign investors are depicted as rapacious robber-barons.
Read full op-ed about foreign investment

Too Many in the Lock-Up - Australian Financial Review - 09 November 2010.
I spent the morning behind bars last week: a relatively unusual experience for a sitting politician. Opened in 2008, Canberra's new jail is one of a dozen or so correctional facilities that have opened across Australia in the past decade.
Read full op-ed about foreign investment

 

Disconnected - UNSW Press - 2010.
Crunching data from membership records and surveys, I find that community engagement in Australia has declined. Organisational membership is down. We are less likely to attend church. Political parties and unions are struggling to keep their members. Sporting participation and cultural attendance is down. We have fewer friends and are less connected with our neighbours. In response, I discuss how Australians can take steps to rebuild social capital in our local neighbourhoods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students Vital to Growth - Australian Financial Review - 28 September 2010.
The noughties may well be remembered by historians as a terrific decade for gadgets. But when it comes to productivity, Australia has had a disappointing decade. Although we don't yet have all the data, the noughties looks set to record a rate of productivity growth about half as fast as we enjoyed in the nineties.
Read full op-ed about students

 

Debt Has Served Us Well - Australian Financial Review - 14 September 2010.
Much fun was had during the election campaign when the Chaser lads pointed out to Tony Abbott that while the ratio of Australian government debt to national income will peak at 0.06, his personal debt-to-income ratio is nearly fifty times higher (Abbott's reported $700,000 mortgage is almost three times his annual income).
Read full op-ed about debt

 

Time to Make Our Luck - Australian Financial Review - 31 August 2010.
In 1964, Donald Horne argued 'Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck'. Forty years later, he wrote that: 'Things have changed for the better. But the jury is still out.'
Read full op-ed about luck

 

Make Trade - Not War - Australian Financial Review - 3 August 2010.
We sometimes think of globalisation as something new, but it's easy to forget that the world economy of a century ago was highly integrated. As John Maynard Keynes famously described the world economy of 1913: 'The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth... he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world.'
Read full op-ed about trade

 

Good Schools, Less Crime - Australian Financial Review - 20 July 2010.
Notorious gang rapist Bilal Skaf dropped out of school at age 14. Convicted murderer Neddy Smith writes in his autobiography that he last saw the inside of a classroom at age 13. Port Arthur killer Martin Bryant could not read or write when he left school. In Australia's jails, the typical prisoner has under 10 years of education - substantially less than the general population.
Read full op-ed about schools and crime