The fortunes of China are tied intimately with global economic growth. This year alone, 25 percent of export growth was a result of Chinese consumption.

L21 has been doing some far ranging and in depth work with some leading think-tanks in London, Canberra and Sydney on the question of the future prospects for China. In this edition of Worth Noting, we thought we would report some of our preliminary findings on the state of the 'Chinese economic miracle' and point out some extremely worrying signs ahead for the wannabe superpower.

Definitions of 'globalization' changes from year to year. A decade ago, globalization was meant to signal the beginning of the end of our state based international system.

'Globalisation' is now increasingly seen to imply a so-called 'capitalist' world order of free trade and the unrestricted and global movement of capital and labour. This has led to debates about the winners and losers of 'globalisation' and whether an increasingly globalised world in this sense is a good thing.

In this edition of Worth Noting, we thought we would assess this newer turn in the debate about the good or bad of globalization, in particular the argument that free trade and the free flow of capital and labour exacerbates poverty in undeveloped economies.

We all know the archetype of the self-made billionaire: left school at sixteen, dismissed as a poor learner with insufficient smarts and concentration by teachers, entered into their own businesses from scratch, dismissed convention and orthodoxy, and over decades built a massively successful business and in the process redefined the way business textbooks are written.

How true is this characterization of self-made billionaires? In this edition of Worth Noting, we thought we would do some systematic research into the educational backgrounds of the world's one hundred richest people.

We periodically hear doom and gloom reports about our current account deficit (CAD) which is currently at about 6% of GDP. The U.S. CAD is even worse, running at about 6.5% of GDP. Given that the IMF cautions that anything over 4% for developed economies becomes tricky to manage, the numbers make for scary reading. Translated into dollar figures, Australia has a CAD of about AUS$60 billion. The U.S. has a CAD of about US$850 billion which is larger than Australia's entire GDP.

The question whether CADs really matter is a serious one and is keenly debated by academics, financial analysts and economists. In this edition of Worth Noting, we decided to assess a few arguments to see whether CADs are a beat-up or a genuine economic menace.

Many see the future as a world dominated by several giants and ASEAN has been put forward as one of these future giants - especially ever since talks about a China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement began.

There is increasing talk about an ‘ASEAN bloc’ emerging in our region which will heavily influence Australia’s future. We have been doing some work for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on this issue and thought it would be interesting to offer a few points on this in this issue of Worth Noting.

The Howard Government’s Industrial Relations (IR) reforms are the basis for one of the most contentious and radical changes to take place in decades. Supported by many business groups but opposed by many other stakeholders, and despised by unions, ‘Work Choices’ is seen as the defining legacy of the Howard years in a future time.

With the Coalition controlling both Houses of Parliament, the legislation enabling these changes was recently passed in the Lower and Upper Houses. With the parliamentary battle over, the legal one has just begun. Labor controlled State Governments are preparing to launch a legal challenge in the High Court against these IR reforms and the outcome is far from clear.

The substantive changes that will occur have been well documented and analysed on many fronts. In this edition of Worth Noting, we thought we would summarise what legal experts say about the constitutional challenge since this is now the main front against these reforms taking place.

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