Originally published by Huffington Post.

Are you one of the 690,000 or so Australians who weren't paid superannuation correctly last year? Most of us can depend on our employers to do the right thing and contribute quarterly to our retirement savings, but if you're the one in 15 Australian workers, you might be missing out.

Originally published in the Australian. 

Choice in the superannuation system is one thing, but we have to be careful about who is doing the choosing.

Originally published in the Labor Herald.

We got another taste of the critical relationship we have with our big banks as they recently jacked up their mortgage interest rates. But like them or not, banks and the broader financial system are a crucial part of our everyday lives.

Originally published in the Australian Financial Review. Written with Clare O'Neill. 

Earlier this year, we asked a group of Sydney bankers whether exporting financial services to China was part of their growth strategy. Their laughter was enough to reveal that without language expertise, regulatory networks and deep cultural understanding, they considered the China opportunity just too murky, complex and risky.

Originally published by Huffington Post.

There’s no enduring flaw in our nation that says we’re incapable of imagining – in time, in our way – a flag that is instantly recognized as ours at home and around the world. 

Originally published in Meanjin Volume 74 Number 3.

I grew up in Logan City to the south of Brisbane. In my twenties I travelled back and forth to Canberra for work. There I learned a bit about being homesick. I got through it, but I knew people who really struggled to succeed in their endeavours because they just wanted so badly to be back home.

Originally published on ABC's The Drum.

In economic debate, people rarely use the term "Luddite" as a compliment.  If anything the mention of Luddism or neo-Luddism is a kind of economic Godwin's Law, casting the prospect of any kind of reasonable debate out the window.

Originally published by The Guardian. Written with Tim Watts.

On Wednesday lunchtimes at Altona Primary, it’s not just the basketball court or the cricket pitch which is the place for students to be. It’s the library, where kids in grades four, five and six crowd around and enthusiastically learn the basics of how to give instructions to a computer – coding.

First published by ABC's The Drum.

Ours is a democracy, and we have choices. The economist and writer Tyler Cowen described what it would look like if we get those choices wrong: a society divided into two camps. Those who have the ability to work with machines, and those who are replaced by them.

Originally published at Business Spectator.

When electricity was first reticulated in the north-eastern United States in the 1880s, its primary application was street lighting. Doubters at the time argued against the investment of what would today be many billions of dollars in a lighting network.