'You can't put a dollar value of human life' is the standard retort of those who regard the lockdown's ruination of the economy as necessary and worthwhile. Actually, you can estimate the countermeasures' cost, however heartless that might seem to some, and the bottom line is written in the red ink of a monumental overreaction

The Main Streets of Australia have been transformed into ghost towns by the WuFlu panic-demic as queues of the newly jobless besiege Centrelink, but we can now understand why renewable energy spruikers wear their hearts on their sleeves: it leaves their hands free to draft demands for subsidies and pick the taxpayers' pockets

If our most senior advisers cannot comprehend the interconnectedness that characterises the economy, we are doomed to be saddled with conditions that will mean a permanent reduction in supply capacity, hence our income levels

Without mincing words, the world is poised on the brink of a very deep depression. There is no shortage of consumer demand but the basis of that demand, income from the supply of goods and services, has been or soon will be sharply curtailed. Beyond the Wuhan virus itself, the peril is ill-advised government action hobbling the economy's ability to adjust and rejuvenate

Bid farewell to the addled Joe Biden, send Elizabeth Warren back to the reservation, accept that angry old man Bernie Sanders would never be able to carry the Midwest against Donald Trump and who is left? Just one Democratic primaries candidate with even the slightest chance, Amy Klobuchar

The Murray-Darling Basin was transformed by irrigation and hard work into the national breadbasket. Today it is undergoing another transformation, this one orchestrated by green hysteria, government decree and political cowardice

In its latest pandering to the inner-city voters it fears will give Greens their first preferences, the Andrews government has announced a 2030 phase-out of all timber-getting in state forests. And it won't stop there, with further dangerous and counterproductive restrictions on use and access in the pipeline

The chronic mismanagement of the Murray-Darling, the diversion of otherwise productive capital into renewables and the black hole that is the NBN -- were you to list key instruments for hobbling investment and growth, they would be your three core items

Australia's deindustrialisation is certain under policies adopted by the Coalition and the ALP alike, with the next major manufacturing departures likely to be least two of the three east coast aluminium smelters. Subsidising transmission, which the PM has just announced, is such a bad idea it enjoys the backing of Malcolm Turnbull. Enough said