Year: 2011

In Germany, subsidies for renewable energies are paid for by energy users. Renewable energy suppliers can feed their production into the grid at guaranteed high prices; the additional cost of green electricity is passed on to private and business energy users.

Politicians love ‘creating’ jobs, especially when these jobs serve a ‘greater good,’ such as fighting climate change. Greens leader Bob Brown recently praised Germany’s renewable energy policy.

Our political leaders’ sometimes strained relationship with the truth pales into insignificance when compared with the extent of fraud and deceit on display at the highest level of government in Germany. It is the affair of a man with many names: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, the German Minister of Defence.

It is a very useful experience to travel to the scenes of political disaster. Because they hold lessons for us to learn. At least that’s my own experience travelling between Europe and Australia.

ast week’s unexpected resignation of Bundesbank president Axel Weber sent shockwaves through the German government. It reignites the debate about the best way to deal with the euro crisis, the policies of the European Central Bank (ECB) and Germany’s role within European Monetary Union. It also poses questions about an institution that was once regarded as the best central bank in the world.

In Australia, we have so far tried to ameliorate the effects of our unaffordable housing market only with first-time buyers grants and public housing. To make the whole market much more affordable, perhaps we should copy the German model instead.

Europe’s political class finally acknowledges that their pet project of free-for-all multiculturalism was a delusion. But to correct its disastrous consequences requires more than carefully crafted speeches at international conferences.

The strong link between local government finance and housing development fully explains why German and Swiss house prices have been steady for decades. To say it with Sherlock Holmes, improbable as it seems “all other explanations are more improbable still”. If Australians really cared for making housing more affordable in the long run, they should be studying the German and Swiss experiences more closely.