The Australian

Goodbye GM, hello Rudd Car

Committing $100,000 of taxpayer money to saving each job in the car industry was already a prodigious waste of money but this will look cheap compared with the cost of nationalising Holden. In time, Australians will come to rue the day Rudd decided to treat the car industry as an issue of systemic significance. [...]

More power to the people

A country the size of Australia could be better served if it tried to delegate more tasks to lower tiers of government. Federalism is one way of achieving this, and many have cogently argued that it should be strengthened. Yet the very same arguments in favour of federalism also apply to local government. [...]

Crisis a valuable lesson

Markets have shown remarkable resilience and keep bouncing back. Despite their flaws, they have consistently turned out to be the best way to co-ordinate economic activity. They aren't perfect, but what is? It was Belinda Carlisle who promised that Heaven is a Place on Earth, not free-market economists. [...]

Clueless road to serfdom

THE great sociologist Max Weber once defined the art of politics as "a strong and slow boring of hard boards" that required "both passion and perspective". What, one wonders, would Weber have made of Kevin Rudd, who early this month ventured into the sphere of political philosophy with a renewed attack on liberal thinker Friedrich Hayek? While it is hard to deny the passion behind the Prime Minister's views, the perspective of his critique of the Nobel prize-winning economist is far from clear. [...]