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The Oregon Department of Transportation is unaccountable for routine cost overruns on major highway projects.  Nothing it has done has acknowledged or solved this decades old problem, and giving it billions more will fuel further cost overruns.

ODOT’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) misleadingly claim that 97 percent of projects are completed under budget.

ODOT is careful to define overruns only as costs after contracts are awarded:  this conceals ODOT staff’s consistent pattern of low-balling cost estimates to get  projects approved.

ODOT also has a practice of “re-baselining” a project—retroactively altering the initial cost estimate to conceal cost increases.

ODOT’s project database omits every large project that has experienced a cost overrun.  The agency’s Transportation Project Tracker dashboard lists only six tiny projects as having experienced cost overruns.  For example, there’s no mention of the Abernathy Bridge which has gone from $248 million to $815 million.

In recent correspondence with concerned citizens, ODOT staff simply omitted initial cost estimates, covering up a 47 percent cost overrun on the Iowa Street I-5 Viaduct project.

Accountability is the latest buzzword from highway builders:  they claim that after decades of repeated cost-overruns, that somehow ODOT will suddenly become “accountable” and that this will rein in over-spending running in to the billions dollars.

If you rocked up to cast your ballot on polling day a few weeks ago, you may have noticed it was a bit quieter than it used to be. More and more Australians are forgoing their democracy sausage – and more importantly – voting before the final days of the election campaign. In fact, only 45% of Australians voted on election day, a record low that could be hampering Australians’ collective democracy.

Despite the shortest pre-poll period in living memory, with booths opening only 11 days out from the election (over a week later than in 2019), Australians set pre-poll records several times during the campaign.

Figure 1: Pre-poll votes in the days before Federal elections 

(Source: AEC)

But in the case of Climate Active, it’s the government itself running the scheme — and promoting it.

While claiming to crack down on greenwashing, the Australian government has been quietly enabling it for years.

I previously worked on the Climate Active program and understand the intent behind it.

But intent is no substitute for integrity.

And the scheme’s reliance on carbon offsets — combined with limited transparency, no assessment of real-world emissions trajectories, and endorsement of claims that may be impossible to prove — has turned it into a high-risk proposition.

Climate Active is not just misleading — it’s dangerous. It exposes businesses to legal risk, investors to financial risk, and consumers to outright deception. And now, with Energy Australia taken to court over its long-standing “carbon neutral” claims, the consequences are finally surfacing.

Here’s how the scheme works. Climate Active certifies organisations and products as “carbon neutral” if they offset their emissions using carbon credits — even if those emissions are increasing.

The offsets themselves are often of questionable quality and permanence. But once the box is ticked, the government puts its name behind the claim.

• Full time (Part Time negotiable), Fixed term for 3 years
• Work with a team of interdisciplinary researchers and doctoral students building a conceptual and empirical map of the emerging Climate Economy in Australia
• Academic Level A, Base Salary from $109,301 + 17% superannuation 

About the opportunity

The School of Social and Political Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the School of Geosciences in the Faculty of Science at The University of Sydney are seeking a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to work on a joint project: The Climate Economy: Emerging Strategies for Australia.

This project explores Australia’s emerging Climate Economy, investigating how climate change challenges conventional economic policy paradigms and redefines political economic concepts and practices. We want to understand how the pressures of climate change are reshaping governance, investment, and policy strategies in unexpected ways. Our approach highlights the hybrid nature of this new political economic configuration, where public and private actors are taking on new roles and producing new economic geographies, financial instruments are being reimagined, and economic and sociospatial outcomes must be measured in novel ways. By mapping and evaluating Australia’s Climate Economy, we aim to provide new frameworks for understanding and democratising the economic policies that will define a climate-changed future.

The Australia Institute is proud to release a unique, authoritative and accurate assessment of Chinese foreign policy commentary, a first for Australia.

Postdoctoral Fellow at The Australia Institute, Dr. Fangcheng (Frank) Yuan, has combined his extraordinary research and language skills to deliver his paper, Chinese Foreign Policy Brief.

Dr Yuan has drawn on publications, interviews, statements and other sources reflecting the foreign policy views of Chinese officials and state-affiliated analysts, covering four themes:

• The exchange of trade restrictions between China and the US
• Taiwan’s reunification with China and other countries’ stance on the matter, including China’s misrepresentation of Australia’s position
• Tensions between the US and its European allies
• The Russia-Ukraine War

“China’s messaging, aimed at international and domestic audiences alike, has become increasingly colourful and self-referential, suggesting a sense of confidence matching the content of Beijing’s messages,” said Dr Frank Yuan, Postdoctoral Fellow at The Australia Institute.

“Beijing has treated the trade war as a malicious attack on China’s right to development by the US.

“While Beijing clearly disagrees with the sanctions on Russia, it is not shy to signal its discomfort with Russia’s use of force, even if it sympathises with Moscow’s security concerns.”

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Covering Up the Cover-Ups | The Roundtable Ep. 268

Is it a safe and secure place for people to live? Or is it a place to make a small minority of people rich?

The answer is important because the housing market over the last two decades has shown that it can’t be both.

Since the turn of the century, investors have flooded into the market, pushing up house prices, outbidding first home buyers, and making housing less affordable.

With the Reserve Bank now cutting official interest rates, house prices are going to grow even faster, and these rising house prices are going to attract even more investors.

After an election where the issue of housing affordability was hotly debated, first home buyers struggling to break into the market are likely to watch as rapidly rising prices leave them further behind.

The major party’s policies on housing affordability fell into two categories.

The first are those that increase supply, which in the long run will make housing more affordable.

The second are those that gave some financial advantage to a particular group of home buyers, most often first-home buyers, that would increase demand, push up prices, and ultimately make housing less affordable.

Overall, the major party’s offerings on housing are best described as a dumpster fire of dumb stuff.

What neither side offered were policies that deal with the underlying cause of unaffordable housing, the explosion in investor demand for housing.