Governments enjoying surpluses have a very strong temptation to splash money around, and while tax cuts are always appealing, cutting taxes at the top of a boom runs the real risk of creating a structural deficit when the boom subsides.
If consulted by friends about marital dramas, I always encourage the singles to marry, the married to stick together, the neglectful and wayward to renew their loving commitment and the wronged to forgive.
On balance, after weighing the arguments, I believe that the time has come for Australia to create a new sovereign wealth fund.
Greece is an extreme case: a country where both the level of spending and the level of taxation were unsustainable!
My commitment to the Republican movement was pure and simply patriotism, a love of Australia... a desire or passion that all of our national symbols should be unequivocally and unambiguously Australian.
There is a tendency to try to dumb everything down and turn everything into a one-paragraph press release or even less, just a slogan.
