The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Solid op-ed from Stephen Kirchner

A good little op-ed from Stephen Kirchner in The Oz--which, incidentally, is still playing catch-up on the population debate--reiterating the point that I made regularly a month or so ago in Business Spectator and Crikey: it is asinine to condition our future population expectations on current infrastructure and accommodation capacity. Yes, that would indeed be the tail wagging the dog. We need to invest in infrastructure, urban planning, housing and other public amenities today to more sustainably enable larger populations in the future. And it would be nice to have a reasonable basis on which to predicate those investments (ie, better population projections). I am still incommunicado, and will be so probably for another week or so.
at 7:45 AM