Saul Eslake with ABC Night Life's Philip Clark: Carving Up GST

Описание: Saul Eslake had a long conversation with the host of ABC Radio's "Nightlife" program, Philip Clark, about the way in which the distribution of GST revenue among Australia's states and territories has been perverted by the desire of Federal politicians (from both sides of the aisle) to win votes and seats from Australia's richest state, Western Australia, through what Saul has called "The Worst Australian Public Policy Decision of the 21st Century Thus Far" - one which has enabled Western Australia to post six consecutive budget surpluses while every other state and territory, and now the Federal Government itself, are running deficits.  They also talked about prospects for tax reform more generally.

Saul Eslake is one of Australia’s best-known economic analysts and commentators, mainly from his work as Chief Economist of McIntosh Securities (one of Australia’s top stockbrokers in the 1980s), the ANZ Bank (one of Australia’s big four commercial banks) and the Australian arm of Bank of America Merrill Lynch (one of the best-known Wall Street investment banks). One of the things that’s always distinguished Saul from other people in similar positions is his willingness to write and talk about more than just what the Reserve Bank will do next month, what next week’s unemployment figure will be, or whether the A$ is going to go up or down next year. He delves into the politics behind major economic policy decisions; he looks at the social and regional dimensions of economic trends; and he considers global as well as national or local economic trends. He’s more familiar with Asia, and with New Zealand, than most Australian economists – and he makes extensive use of his wide global networks. And he writes, and speaks, with a sense of humour that sometimes gets him into trouble with powerful people: but he doesn’t care about that.

His website www.sauleslake.com contains most of Saul Eslake’s published talks, presentations, conference papers and articles over the last twenty-five years. Anyone interested in Saul’s work can subscribe to gain access to material otherwise only available to his clients, and to participate in online webinars and forums conducted through the site