Climate Change Series

Banning fishing has helped parts of the Great Barrier Reef recover from damage

Apr 04, 2016 02:43 am UTC| Insights & Views Nature

The worlds coral reefs face unprecedented threats. Their survival depends on how well they can cope with a long list of pressures including fishing, storms, coral bleaching, outbreaks of coral predators and reduced water...

Vital Signs Series

Australian economy doing well but rate cuts loom

Apr 04, 2016 02:37 am UTC| Insights & Views Central Banks

The rising Aussie dollar gives the RBA cause for concern, credit-fuelled spending slows, and US unemployment ticks up amid growing US confidence. The basic logic of interest rate policy is that when the economy is...

US Election Series

There's a good reason we're so interested in the US election: it matters

Apr 04, 2016 00:31 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics

Kim Beazley was Australian ambassador to the United States from 2010 until January 2016, and a former leader of the federal Labor Party. He is now a senior fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre. This is the first of an...

Difference in a federal system should be cherished not feared

Apr 03, 2016 23:46 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics

The knee-jerk response to the Turnbull Governments proposed federalism reform is to complain that if the states controlled funding to their own schools, this could result in differences between the states, which is bad and...

Why African governments aren't taxing their rich

Apr 03, 2016 23:30 pm UTC| Insights & Views

A great deal of attention has been paid to the obstacles African governments face in effectively taxing the profits of transnational corporations. African governments are frequently urged to widen their tax bases by...

Our collective nuclear nightmare

Apr 03, 2016 23:26 pm UTC| Insights & Views

Some things never change, it seems. For my entire life people have been protesting about the madness of nuclear weapons. Policymakers have been studiously ignoring such protests for just as long. Not only have the bombs...

Climate Change Series

Great Barrier Reef pollution controls are not enough: here's what we can do

Apr 03, 2016 23:21 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature

Current efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef from land-based pollution are unlikely to be enough, according to our scientific review published in Global Change Biology. Poor water quality along with climate...