At a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising, it’s easy to see the appeal of social media during an election campaign, with politicians eager to harness the votes of the nearly 10 million daily active Facebook users in Australia. To put it in perspective, both Denis Napthine and Daniel Andrews have more Facebook ‘likes’ [...]

Update as of 21 November, 2014: This week had a marked health focus for the Coalition with promises of a $177-million critical care wing for Monash Children's Hospital, $60 million for Victorian Cancer Agency for research and announced today, $56.8 million for drug and alcohol addiction treatment. Labor's big spends this week were in the [...]

A Draft Report of the Competition Policy Review (referred to as the Harper Review) was released on 22 September 2014. Submissions can be made by 17 November 2014. The panel’s report is wide-ranging, drawing on more than 300 submissions and nearly 100 consultation meetings with stakeholders across areas as diverse as road pricing, retail trading [...]

As the Coalition secures support from the Palmer United Party to sound the death knell for the mining tax, many will turn their minds to whether the mining boom is over and how Australians can maximise the benefit from the resources industry. Economist John Edwards explains in his report for the Lowy Institute, Beyond the [...]

The fifth of six reports to be completed by the independent panel led by former Victorian Treasury official Michael Vertigan, a cost-benefit analysis released last week, unsurprisingly sided with the approach preferred by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull: fibre-to-the-node (FttN) and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) technologies. The long-awaited cost-benefit analysis explored four possible scenarios: Labor model: rollout [...]