Jim Chalmers has a once in century opportunity to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars on nation building without going into a cent of debt. In fact, if he chooses his public investments well he could drive growth up, cost of living down, and pay down the Morrison Government’s debt faster than currently expected.

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’ remarkable decision to scrap her own tax cuts offers an incredible opportunity for the Albanese government. After weeks of outrage from voters, her own backbench and even the financial markets that once trumpeted the benefits of tax cuts, common sense and economic sense combined to deliver a timely, if humiliating, backflip. Here

The ending of mandatory Covid isolation periods has also ended disaster payments for workers who don’t have access to sick leave. It’s time we faced up to the fact that the industrial relations rules have been creating the wrong kinds of work. That’s the bad news. The good news is we can change them if we want

Last week I attended the International Conference on Fossil Fuel Supply and Climate Policy to present on Australia’s state-sponsored greenwash and how carbon markets are being used by the Australian Government and industry to facilitate fossil fuel expansion.

Corruption thrives in the dark, but this week Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus KC shone a welcome light into dark places by tabling the legislation to establish the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) in Parliament. Whether the NACC will have the power to expose corruption to sunlight, or it is restricted to a dim torch beam is now

This week the UK government introduced massive high-income tax cuts – cuts that are not even as bad as the Stage 3 tax cuts here in Australia. And the reaction by the market was brutal. Investors saw the tax cuts for what they were – a redistribution of national income from the poorest to the wealthiest, that provided no economic growth. As a result the value of the UK Pound plunged.

Last week before the House Economics Committee, the Governor of the Reserve Bank made it clear that the current rise in inflation has nothing to do with wages growth. And yet he also made it clear he expects workers to bear the brunt of the cost that comes from slowing inflation.

The spectacle that has accompanied the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second is something to behold. But the pomp and pageantry do little to conceal the faintly ridiculous aspects of being a constitutional monarchy, where leadership is conferred not by merit or means of election, but by divine right and accident of birth.

Sweden’s Social Democratic Party has narrowly lost office since last weekend’s election, after governing in coalition or alone for the preceding eight years and for an extraordinary 73 of the past 90 years. The defeat follows a rise in support for a far-right xenophobic party. Had the Social Democrats been returned for a third consecutive

Neoliberalism can’t and won’t fix our climate crisis or save our endangered species from extinction. Market-based policies have failed spectacularly when it comes to aged care, disability care and saving the Murray River. But despite the catalogue of catastrophe, earlier this month Tanya Plibersek said: “Ultimately, I would like to see the market truly valuing nature,

Since the Reserve Bank began raising interest rates in May, the housing market has very much come off the boil.

The June quarter GDP figures released by the Bureau of Statistics showed that over the past year the economy grew a seemingly strong 3.6%.

Fossil fuel subsidies from major economies including Australia reached close to US$700 billion in 2021, almost doubling from 2020, according to new analysis by the International Energy Agency and OECD. These subsidies are expected to keep rising in 2022 as governments worldwide attempt to use fossil fuel subsidies to shield customers from the high energy prices caused

Canberra often leads Australia on policy reform, but now it’s time for the Parliament of Australia to stop getting in our way. Canberra often and unfairly cops the blame for the contentious decisions of elected representatives sent here by the rest of the country, but for the past 25 years it is the Parliament that

The truth hurts, which is why it will be painful for Anthony Albanese to come clean with Australians about how wrong it would be to spend $240 billion on tax cuts, the bulk of which will go to very high-income earners, mainly older men. Breaking promises is never easy, but keeping the wrong promises is just

The Stage 3 tax cuts, which will essentially create a flat income tax system, have always been clearly biased towards high-income earners. For those earning over $200,000, the tax cuts represent a 4.5% cut compared to just 0.6% for someone on the median income of $60,000. But this week, the Parliamentary Budget Office has released costings that detail just how skewed the allocation of money is to the richest in our society.

A massive tax cut worth $240bn over the next 10 years is set to come into effect in 2024. But this tax cut will not help those who are struggling the most. It will not help those on low incomes. People earning $45,000 a year or less will get nothing at all. Meanwhile people earning

For most of the past 40 years whenever the discussion turns to the need to lift productivity, invariably the conversation is dominated by business groups and various media commentators who suggest the solution is more labour market flexibility. Just a bit more flexibility and productivity will improve!

AS PEOPLE gathered for the electric vehicle summit in Canberra yesterday, the hope in the air was palpable. But despite the Albanese government’s rhetoric, the so-called climate wars are far from over. In reality, the fight for meaningful climate peace is only just beginning. The policy struggle now is not between Labor and the Coalition,

The latest wages price index figures from the Bureau of Statistics reveal just how far workers ability to purchase items with what they earn has fallen.

The 2019-20 taxation statistics released this week by the ATO provide a plethora of data that reveals with precision the salaries of people by location, occupation age and importantly, gender.

It’s never too late to fix a problem. It doesn’t matter if it’s you who has been putting off a trip to the doctor or your country that has been putting off properly taxing its natural resources, it really is better late than never.

The Australian parliament is more representative of the Australian population than it has ever been. It has more women, indigenous people and first generation Australians than any before it. And just as importantly it has less climate sceptics, less religious zealots and less bigots. To be sure there are plenty of homophobes, science deniers and

The latest raise in the cash rate has meant interest rates have increased by more in 4 months than they have anytime since 1994.

The latest inflation figures from the Bureau of Statistics reveal just how much workers have been left behind. Writing in Guardian Australia, labour market and fiscal policy director Greg Jericho notes that while the focus is on the biggest annual increase in inflation since the introduction of the GST, the data also shows that real wages have fallen drastically.

Richard Denniss Professor Joseph Stiglitz, welcome to Australia. John Maynard Keynes once said “practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”. It’s decades since you and other Nobel prize winners debunked the intellectual underpinnings of neoliberalism. Are Australians slow to change their minds

Canberra is back and it feels good. Next up: using the city’s new power to take the national capital to its rightful next level. Key national political figures in the new parliament are from Canberra. Our local politicians are leading national debates. The territories ban on assisted dying laws is set to be lifted. The

The unprecedented heatwave and fires engulfing Europe might seem a long way away, but they are a frightening portent of what’s in store for Australia. Britain has just experienced its highest temperature ever, extreme conditions and fires are sweeping Spain, Portugal, France and Greece. This is just the latest in a string of extreme events

Despite unemployment at nearly 50 years lows, it will be little surprise to workers that wages growth is only at 3 year highs. Over the past decade the relationship between wages growth and unemployment has shifted such that levels of unemployment that would have once seen wages growing at more than 4% are now associated with growth of well below 3%.

Following the national state of the environment assessment release, Tasmanians deserve to know when a report on our state will occur, writes Eloise Carr.