Bala Bashir

"In Economics and Business, students write with a specific purpose as they communicate their interpretations to others. Students aim to explain, critique or analyse real-world situations.

In writing responses, students will often be required to provide one or more:

recommendations that propose the best course of action to take in response to an economic or business situation
explanations that justify implementing their chosen course of action.
Three strategies to support students to develop economic and/or business recommendations with explanations are:

use a framework to structure an explanation or recommendation
explicitly teach the language features of an explanation or recommendation
use a sample to model how to write an explanation or recommendation.
Explanation (of issue or strategy) sequenced by time/order or cause and effect
Conjunctions and connectives to demonstrate cause and effect relationship, such as 'if... then', so, because, 'as a consequence', 'as as result' used
​Support points of view/arguments with credible, reliable data/evidence.

Example: 'According to the ABS, retail sales fell by 0.1% in July 2019 even though some Australians have already received their tax cut. This might suggest that a different strategy to tax cuts should be considered to boost consumer spending.'
A recent issue for Victorian state and local governments is the problem of how to deal with household and business waste in the community (1). This has become a significant issue as other countries are declining (3) to take our waste for processing and, therefore, the government needs to consider (3) what action can be taken to address the waste generated in their communities effectively. Three possible strategies that can be considered. (1)

Firstly (5), more waste can be taken to landfill sites. In the short term, this might help to effectively address the immediate problem of where to dispose of the waste that countries will no longer take from Australia. However, according to data supplied by local councils to the ABC (Oaten, 2019) (7), over 4,600 tonnes of recyclables were estimated to go to landfill in one week. Therefore, in the longer term, the government might need to expand, or create, more landfill sites to dispose of the growing amount of waste which is costly (8) and environmentally unsustainable (2)(8).

Secondly (5), the government can encourage households and businesses to recycle more waste by providing facilities such as container deposit stations where they can be paid for bringing in their recyclable waste. NSW, the ACT and SA have a container deposit scheme already in place. Whilst (6) this might encourage more households and businesses to separate their waste for recycling, leading to less waste going to landfill, it can be costly to the government to pay for such a scheme. According to The Age (2019), the Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office estimates it will cost the state government $9 million over 4 years. It also still leaves the problem of what to do with the recyclable waste once the government collects it.

Finally (5), the government can encourage the creation of innovative businesses that can re-use waste. Although (6) providing incentives for waste and recycling businesses, such as the Innovation Connections Grant, might cost the government money in the short term, in the long term it might help the government achieve some of its economic goals. For instance, more Victorians can be employed (2) by successful (8) new waste and recycling businesses, more taxation revenue (2) will be received from these businesses to help fund other government programs and the cost of garbage collection by Victorian governments might fall as few recyclables are put into landfill.

Overall, the most appropriate strategy is for innovative waste and recycling businesses to be supported and encouraged by the government (4). Even though there might be short term costs to the government to do this, the benefits should outweigh the costs in the long term.
Citing source information (e.g. author, the title of the source, the publisher, the date of publication, etc.) in text and in a reference list."