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  A national information policy?

  Nicholas Gruen     |      April 16, 2008

  

  Sometimes a little leadership is all it takes to nudge market forces along. 

  150 years after Adam Smith first expounded the miraculous way the market's ‘invisible hand' transforms private self interest into social prosperity, some economists argued that we could achieve the same result with sufficiently sophisticated government planning.

  Enter the Austrian émigré Friedrich Hayek . . . who showed that markets achieve their efficiency by utilising information which is distributed throughout the economy and so often unavailable to government. 

  Traders and entrepreneurs become aware of new information constantly.  In seeking only his own advantage a trader who is hoarding grain as a result of some impending local crop failure, contributes to the common good because his hoarding drives up grain prices and this broadcasts the increasing scarcity of grain to all in the market.

  Market participants need not know why grain has become scarcer, only that it now costs more, to build that information into their own decisions.  Hayek showed how deeply dysfunctional an economy robbed of this intelligence would be, an insight ultimately vindicated by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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  New dogs, old tricks

  editor     |      April 15, 2008

  

  By Greg Eatock

  Little children ARE sacred, which is why the NT intervention has to stop.

  The Howard government’s decision to create a blanket punitive approach to instances of child abuse in the Top End has been a disaster for Aboriginal communities throughout the Northern Territory.

  Garnishing welfare payments, and returning to a system of ration cards has forced a tremendous upheaval and heartache. Not only is it degrading and humiliating for many Aboriginal people to be using the cards rather than controlling their own money, it is also forcing thousands to flee remote communities for urban settings, which were already over crowded and bereft of basic services.
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  Understanding Asia’s Daily Concerns

  Warren Reed     |      April 7, 2008

  Would an 'Asia Daily' news bulletin help Australia to better understand its closest neighbours?
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  Civilised society

  John V Ryan     |      April 6, 2008

  Australia should teach its people the elements of a civilised society.  I mean, the rule of law, periodic elections, government by majority subject to the protection of the rights of minorities, freedom of expression, freedom of religion subject to respect for the rights of others to practise their own religion or lack of it, submission […]
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  Water wise, Desalination Wise

  lindonr     |      April 5, 2008

  

  Desalination plants can provide a long term solution to Australia's water supply issues.

  What is fresh water? Don't be too quick to say it's a precious natural resource. To me fresh water is energy. There is heaps of water on earth it may just not be where or in the form that you want it at the time that you want it. You will get fresh water anywhere you want it in any quantity if you are willing to provide the energy and infrastructure to get it there. To me energy and infrastructure are fairly similar too as infrastructure is produced at its source by energy.

  When we look at conventional forms of water supply consisting of dams and piping systems we don't see the huge energy costs involved or the massive environmental damage caused by these schemes. The biomass destroyed in the flooding on the valleys upstream of the dams alone adds millions of tonnes of green house gases to the atmosphere.

  Building the associated dams and infrastructure utilise massive resources in the construction and manufacture of the component parts. Once operational we then forget about the massive pumping that has to be undertaken to get the water to the point of supply at the pressure we want to use it at. In many cases the electrical usage of present systems rival that of desalination systems. For example Sydney Water has always been one of the biggest users of electricity in the state of NSW.
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  Populate and Perish

  lindonr     |      April 5, 2008

  Sorry, I can't see much correlation between increasing our population and sustainability. Why do we need to endlessly increase our population? This idea has been the dominant paradigm in this country for some time now which appears to me to be the main reason it continues to exist. I believe logic and good sense should prevail to kill this sacred cow of an idea. There are plenty of prosperous countries in the world not increasing their populations so why do we continue to do so? The Aboriginal people of this country achieved equilibrium and balance with the environment and became care takers of this land over many thousands of years. Why can't we return to this belief that we are here to take care of this country and not exploit it?
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  Short memories, deep pockets: a bad combination

  Douglascomms     |      April 2, 2008

  Why does this whole credit crunch look so damn familiar?
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  Don’t forget Earth Hour!

  Douglascomms     |      March 28, 2008

  Surely we should be thinking about our power consumption more than once per year.
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  Leading by example

  editor     |      March 27, 2008

  

  By Kerry Fallon Horgan

  Better work/life balance needs to start at the top.

  When I asked John McFarlane, then CEO of ANZ Bank, whether to create an enabling environment that supports work/life balance it is necessary for an organisational leader to model this balance, his response was illuminating.

  "Get a full life and then have success at work!"

  One of his key strategies being to follow a personal mission statement. This statement sets out the roles and pursuits on which he focuses all of his attention, avoiding "with good grace activities that are inconsistent, however appealing". He also takes very practical steps to ensure his time is managed well such as only having meetings in the mornings and if people are "high maintenance" he sends them away.

  To create sustainable flexible workplaces managers must lead by example. Unfortunately all too often what we find in our organisations are "mega-managers". They are the people, who because of the long hours spent at work, have highly developed roles as managers at the expense of other life roles. When these "mega-managers" return home late at night, usually tired and stressed, the only role accessible to them is that of manager. And no partner, child or friend wants to be managed!
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  A whole new approach to Women’s business

  Douglascomms     |      March 20, 2008

  Sometimes it's ok to break the rules.
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  Let’s hear it for Sydney

  alison gordon     |      March 19, 2008

  Sydney scores 8% lower than the "place to be" in a survey released today by recruiter Talent2.
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  Calling all polyglots

  Douglascomms     |      March 19, 2008

  We've trained our sights so far out we can't see what's in front of our noses.