Category: Economy

  • BRIAN TOOHEY. How to repair neo-liberalism

    The policy debate needs fresh ideas to fill the gap left by the lack of popular and political support for the neo-liberal economic agenda. Paul Keating, who championed that agenda, recently said neo-liberal economics “has run into a dead end and had no answer to the contemporary malaise”. (more…)

  • JOHN DWYER. Policy mayhem is stifling efforts to have more Australian doctors “in the bush” – part two

    In this two part article, I am reviewing the basis for the serious problem we have in providing adequate health care for Australians who live in rural, and particularly, remote areas. Good intentions are, as ever, intertwined with political machinations which make policies for solutions harder to implement. Currently, yet another government review is soon to be released. Here is the background needed for judging the results.   (more…)

  • IAN MCAULEY. There’s more to Morrison’s conversion on debt than appears at first sight

    There is nothing novel about Treasurer Morrison’s discovery that government debt is all OK provided it’s applied to funding useful assets. But it may be an indication that the government is disillusioned with monetary policy as a means of stabilising the economy, and is moving back to fiscal policy.    (more…)

  • IAN MCAULEY. The budget – still tough on the young

    The Commonwealth’s budget has a Keynesian boost for a sluggish economy, and is based on an optimistic, or even heroic, assumption that economic growth will deliver a fiscal surplus within a few years. We have heard similar claims from treasurers, Labor and Coalition, ever since 2009. The Government’s other claim is that it is “fair” – a claim that holds up only if one ignores its effect on young people.  (more…)

  • MICHAEL KEATING. The 2017 Budget – A welcome change in direction. Part 1 of 2

    This Budget represents a welcome change in direction. Forget the politics, it deserves to be supported. This latest Coalition Budget finally reflects a realistic appraisal of Australia’s fiscal needs.  (more…)

  • MICHAEL KEATING. The 2017 Budget – A welcome change in direction. Part 2 of 2

    Budget repair was never going to be easy. That is one reason why it has taken so long with quite a few false starts. While some of the individual decisions in this Budget are debateable, overall the quality of the policy changes is good. Probably a greater concern is that some very significant policy issues haven’t been adequately addressed.  (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. A rigged gas market and market failure.

    Yesterday, the government announced that it would impose an Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism on gas exports from July this year.  This will give the government authority to limit companies’ gas exports if they are emptying Australian gas reserves to meet overseas export contracts.  Two years ago – I drew attention to the market failure in gas policy. I have reposted below that article of April 28, 2015.  John Menadue  (more…)

  • IAN McAULEY. The Liberal Party’s French Connection

    The political future of Kelly O’Dwyer, Minister for Revenue and Financial Services (presently on maternity leave) is uncertain, as Liberal Party members in her electorate move to disendorse her. On one level this conflict can be seen as the shenanigans of Liberal Party faction wars, but at another level it reveals a deep malaise in our political system.   (more…)

  • TIM COLEBATCH. Yes, there is such a thing as too much immigration

    Adjusting the intake in response to shifts in employment makes long-term sense.  

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  • It’s time for Labor to think big about policy – a people’s bank!

    Tony Abbott is not the only one anticipating a change of government at the next election. Voters across the board are increasingly fed up with the Coalition and there are even signs that some of its most devoted cheer leaders in the media are beginning to give up on it. Dear old Alan Jones has certainly given up on it. So what does Bill Shorten have in store for us if the ALP wins the next election?   (more…)

  • TED TRAINER. Oil wake-up call.

    Almost no one has the slightest grasp of the oil crunch that will probably hit them within a decade. When it does it will literally mean the end of the world as we know it. Here is an outline of what some recent analysts are saying. We had better think carefully about their claims. Nobody will of course take any notice.   (more…)

  • How has education come to this?

    For a country that prides itself on the egalitarian ethos of a ‘fair go’ for all, the latest results from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are a distressing reminder that many are not getting a fair go in education. The egalitarian label is a self-indulgent delusion as far as education is concerned. It hasn’t fitted for some 40 years or more.   (more…)

  • IAN McAULEY. Capital gains taxes: Keating got it right in 1985

    Most commentators on the crisis in housing affordability correctly attribute the problem, in part, to the Howard Government’s decision in 1999 to “halve the taxation of capital gains”. But that was only one aspect of the 1999 change: the other was an end of indexation. The combined effect was to shift investors’ incentives to favour speculation in high-growth but risky assets such as housing while penalising more conservative investments. Labor proposes to reduce the discount on capital gains, from 50 per cent to 25 per cent, without restoring indexation, but this would retain some of the worst aspects of the Howard changes.  (more…)

  • JOHN MENADUE. 457 visas and our temporary residence system.

    In light of government announcement on 457 visas, I have reposted below an article originally posted on 18 November 2016.  See also at end, a link to an article by Joanna Howe in The Canberra Times yesterday.  John Menadue.

    Oversight of the management of work rights of temporary entrants into Australia is broken and needs fixing. 

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  • ANDREW HAMILTON. Labor Party reform through Catholic Social Teaching

    It can be disconcerting to hear our family history told by a sympathetic but unaligned outsider. We may recognise the partisanship that coloured some of our past judgments and be led to reconsider them.   (more…)

  • GILES PARKINSON. Tide turns as solar, storage costs trump ideologues and incumbents

    Looking at the machinations over the proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin this week, or seeing certain Coalition Senators howling at the moon over wind turbine “emissions”, or the Treasurer brandishing a lump of coal in parliament, it is hard to imagine that any sort of progress has been made in Australia in what all but a determined few accept is the inevitable clean energy transition.   (more…)

  • ALLAN PATIENCE. Is it time to resurrect the Albury-Wodonga city plan?

    The housing crisis, hitting young Australians in particular, is one of the cruelest consequences of economic rationalist policy making to which both our major political parties remain super-glued. Neither party has a clearly articulated, long-term solution to this ideologically generated and completely unnecessary crisis.  (more…)

  • IAN VERRENDER. Distribution of debt poses new trigger to the property, housing market

    The trigger has been cocked. Our attitude to property has changed. No longer is it merely a castle, a family retreat and a place in which to find shelter. It’s now a highly geared investment vehicle.  It will take enormous skill and a huge degree of luck for our regulators to reset the safety catch.   (more…)

  • KEITH JOINER. Negating the Impact of the Future Submarine at Next Election

    Australia’s future submarine project has already been a factor in Australia’s political pulse, in both the fever of pre-elections and in the now omnipresent prime-ministerial instability between these all-too-frequent elections. South Australia’s Xenophon factor has become powerful, and appointments like the new Defence Industry Minister from South Australia are probably an attempt to mitigate that factor.  (more…)

  • IAN McAULEY. Can we please have a more intelligent debate about corporate taxes

    The simple explanation behind the Commonwealth’s proposal to cut corporate taxes is in terms of a struggle between the interests of business and of the broader community, but it is also about the Coalition’s determination, under pressure from vested interests, to wind back the economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating Government.  (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Another distraction, but what a distraction.

    The starting point is putting a price on carbon – some form of emissions trading policy. But this is total anathema to the coalition party room – worse even than negative gearing.  (more…)

  • RODNEY TUCKER. The Tragedy of Australia’s National Broadband Network.

    A National Tragedy

    Australia’s National Broadband Network is heavily dependent on a soon-to-be-obsolete technology (FTTN) that most of the world has rejected. The FTTN-based network was sold to the Australian public based on an underestimate of Australia’s broadband needs (Tucker, 2014), and continues to be justified using incorrect estimates of the cost differentials between FTTN and FTTP.

    The FTTN network performs poorly compared to FTTP networks used elsewhere in the world.  What is worse is that the NBN does not have a clear and affordable upgrade path.  FTTN is of limited value to some users, such as high-end users and small businesses, who require affordable access to higher speeds than FTTN can deliver. 

    In the meantime, the rest of the world is moving to FTTP and gigabit cities are thriving. Leaders in broadband delivery around the world are already planning for upgrades in their FTTP technology to even higher speeds. 

    This situation is nothing short of a national tragedy and a classic example of failed infrastructure policy that will have long-term ramifications for Australia’s digital economy.
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  • WAYNE McMILLAN. David versus Goliath: reform and reinvention (Part 2 of 2)

    What Sally McManus’s is saying is correct, I agree with her conclusions about what has happened to workers over the last 30 years and what is becoming intolerable now in 2017. Across Australia in 2017, little or no wage growth, increased working hours, increases in casual jobs, a decrease in full time meaningful work, rising increases in household debt and rising inequalities in income and wealth is the bleak future facing Australian workers and their families. In the public sector, outsourcing and privatisation have meant an erosion of working conditions and rates of pay for workers. What can be done to rectify this alarming trend?   (more…)

  • WAYNE McMILLAN. David and Goliath: One step forward, two steps back. (Part 1 of 2)

    Malcom Turnbull’s recent comment that he couldn’t work with Sally McManus the recently elected Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is just another excuse against strong union representation for ordinary waged workers. (more…)

  • DAVID PEETZ. How tax minimisation affects CEO pay

    Firms whose executives behave ‘unethically’, as proxied by not paying any company tax, are also likely to pay their CEOs an average of around a fifth more than firms of similar size and circumstances who do pay company tax.   (more…)

  • ALLAN PATIENCE. Where do we go from here?

    “Why do we experience such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage? Are we doomed indefinitely to lurch between a dysfunctional ‘free market’ and the much advertised horrors of ‘socialism’?” – Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land   (more…)

  • TONY SMITH. Company tax cuts by any other name

    The federal government might have called its company tax cuts bill by another almost Orwellian name, but semantic disguises should not fool anyone. Tax cuts are being delivered to Australian business.   (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Even in Malcolm Turnbull’s own terms, it is a fizzer.

    Well it wasn’t what was hoped for, and certainly not what was required; but it was better than nothing.   (more…)

  • TOM BURTON. Data rights for all.

    A proposed new legal right for consumers and businesses to control and access the data created about them is set to be one of the major reforms of this decade. Not everyone is supportive.   (more…)

  • TIM COLEBATCH. Old coal, no new gas: how to generate an electricity crisis.

     We need to set a timetable to reduce emissions from electricity generation, which now contributes a third of Australia’s greenhouse gases – and, by and large, the third that will be easiest and cheapest to reduce. We need price mechanisms to drive it.

    And we need the federal government to step into the gas market and stop domestic supplies being sent overseas. It has the power to put a moratorium on sales to overseas spot markets until the domestic crisis is fixed – and to tell Santos and its partners that if they don’t produce enough gas to meet their contracts, they can buy more overseas. We can’t let Australia’s energy-intensive manufacturing die because of policy mistakes.   

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