While the Australian economy has stayed buoyant from a borrowing and spending spree for housing, Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane has warned that the bubble must eventually burst. The Howard Government kept the economy bubbling along on the back of a booming housing market, helping it to win the recent federal election. Prosperity meant there…
In Victoria, the Barmah-Millewa Forest process provides a ground-breaking model for solving a range of environmental conflicts. This area is an important ecological wetland and forest on the Murray River between Cobram and Echuca. Over a decade ago, a meeting between the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) and local communities bought together a balance of farm…
Australia’s pork industry faces being reduced to the level of a cottage industry after three reports recommending action to save the industry have been ignored by the Federal Government. The Australian pig industry has about 2,300 active producers, employing 6,000 full-time “on farm” workers, another 6,700 “off farm”, and indirectly a further 16,800. The industry…
The “Katter Independents” have accused the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, of grossly distorting the truth in denying on ABC TV’s Landline program his government had any responsibility for the deregulation of several rural industries. “Without ‘blood money’ paid to the states under the Federal Government’s National Competition Policy, there would be no deregulation of…