Retraction:
On Monday Crikey inferred Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour had questions to answer regarding insider trading while working at the National Australia Bank. There is no evidence to support this claim. Crikey has removed the reference and apologises to Mr Fahour unreservedly.
Global competitiveness:
John Richardson writes: Re. “Richard Farmer’s chunky bits” (yesterday, item 12). So, the Global Competitiveness Report released by that august body, the World Economic Forum (WEC), again ranks Australia’s competitive standing at 20th.
At first glance, the report looks pretty impressive and strongly encourages a view that Australia must further deregulate its labour markets, if it is to become more competitive.
Now, you might think I’m being cynical, but what the WEC doesn’t do is acknowledge the fact that the data used to build the report is sourced from private sector business organisations, that are not independent and sometimes just might see an opportunity to shape the report’s findings to serve a local political agenda.
As a matter of interest, the Australian data informing the latest report was sourced from that influential employer organisation, AIG.
John Richardson does make a good point and the data used in the WEC’s report may not be gained from genuinely disinterested sources, but, it seems likely that any bias would be the other way, given it’s coming from private industry. I imagine, that Australian business interests would generally be motivated to suggest the situation is worse than it really is as this might provide pressure for productivity improvements. Of course, such bias might be in the data, it’s just that the overseas data sources have an even bigger bias that makes Australia look better!
Given all the other data and information, including the evidence of my own, very comfortable situation, as well as the comfort I see in those around me, I am happy to take the WEC’s report at face value.
Cheers,
Happy Jack (aka Alex).