Posts
December 2020
Podcasts to Listen to, recommended by the Australia Institute
Here’s a list of podcasts that Australia Institute staff and our friends have been listening to and recommend.
Call for Applications: Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Fellow
As recently announced, the Centre for Future Work and the Australia Institute are honoured to house the Carmichael Centre, a new research centre recognising and continuing the legacy of union leader Laurie Carmichael. A key component of the Centre will be the Laurie Carmichael Distinguished Fellow, a research and educational position funded for an initial 3-year period.
Profile: Combining Economics and Social Justice
The Centre for Future Work’s Director Dr. Jim Stanford was recently profiled in a feature article published in In The Black, the journal of CPA Australia (the professional body for certified accountants in Australia). The profile, by journalist Johanna Leggatt, discusses the history of the Centre for Future Work, and Stanford’s philosophy of using popular economic knowledge to strengthen movements for social change and workers’ rights.
A Women’s Agenda for COVID-Era Reconstruction
Women have been uniquely and disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession: losing more jobs and hours, shouldering a higher unpaid caring work burden, and undertaking essential and frontlines jobs. Without targeted action to rebuild women’s jobs and ease caring demands, decades of collective advances toward decent paid work could be eroded.
November 2020
SA EV Tax Backlash Grows – Parliamentary Opposition Continues to Mount
The Australia Institute has welcomed the decision from the South Australian Labor and Greens parties to oppose the Marshall Government’s proposed Electric Vehicle Tax. “The Australia Institute welcomes the decision of the South Australian Labor Party and the South Australian Greens to oppose the electric vehicle tax,” said Noah Schultz-Byard, SA Director at The Australia
October 2020
Feature Interviews: Worker Voice in a Changing World of Work
The Centre for Future Work’s Jim Stanford, and Alison Pennington feature in a collection of interviews on technology, work, climate, and the role of unions, for a new online course Power, Politics and Influence at Work delivered by the University of Manchester, UK.
Australia Institute 2020 Budget Wrap
The Economy Income tax cuts as stimulus by Matt Grudnoff The fiscal cliff by David Richardson It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World by Alia Armistead Creating jobs by stimulating business by David Richardson Research & Development by David Richardson Spending on infrastructure by David Richardson Climate & Energy Climate change, what climate change? by Richie
Budget’s Illusory Hope for Business-Led Recovery
The Commonwealth government tabled its 2020-21 budget on 6 October, six months later than the usual timing because of the dramatic events associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession. There is no doubt it is a budget unlike any other in Australia’s postwar history. While the budget certainly unleashes unprecedented fiscal power, its underlying logic and specific policy design are unsatisfactory in many ways. We present here analysis and commentary on several aspects of the budget, drawing on input from all of the Centre’s research staff: Economist and Director Dr. Jim Stanford, Senior Economist Alison Pennington, and Economist Dan Nahum.
August 2020
Webinar: How TAFE Can Drive Australia’s Skills and Jobs Recovery
With millions facing unemployment and crisis-accelerated job transitions, public investment in the skills and earning capabilities of Australians will be critical to our post-pandemic recovery.
Open Letter to Google
Read full text version of the Open Letter to Google below, along with response from a Google spokesperson. Open letter text as published on 20 August 2020 in The Sydney Morning Herald, in full: An Open Letter to Google — As a nation we welcomed you into our lives and have made you our home base
June 2020
Repairing Universities & Skills Key to Meeting COVID-Era Challenges
Training must play a vital role in reorienting the economy after the pandemic, supporting workers training for new jobs including millions of young people entering a depressed labour market without concrete pathways to work. But what kind of jobs will we be doing in 2040? And how prepared is Australia’s skills system (and universities specifically) to play this important role now?
April 2020
Pandemic Shows Australia Needs Domestic Manufacturing
Disruptions in global supplies of essential medical equipment have served as a wake-up call to Australians that it is always vital for a country to retain the capacity to domestically produce manufactured products that may be crucial to national security and well-being.
Webinar: Protecting Jobs and Incomes During the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic is producing an unprecedented shutdown of large parts of the national and global economies. Our Director Dr. Jim Stanford provided an overview of the coming recession, how it differs from previous downturns, and the best ways for government to respond to protect Australians as much as possible from the economic fall-out.
March 2020
Open Letter From Economists and Policy Experts: Wage Subsidy to Protect Jobs During Pandemic
109 Australian economists and policy experts have signed an open letter, initiated by the Centre for Future Work, supporting a government wage subsidy to prevent mass unemployment during the coming economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Financialisation and the Productivity Slowdown
There has been much discussion in recent months about the apparent slowdown in Australian productivity growth. Rather than dredging up the usual wish-list of the business community (more deregulation, more privatisation, and more deunionisation), it’s time to look at the deeper, structural factors behind stagnant productivity. In this commentary, Dr. Anis Chowdhury, Associate of the Centre for Future Work, looks to the perverse role of our overdeveloped financial sector in slowing down productivity-enhancing investment and innovation.
February 2020
Seminar Presentation: Superannuation & Wages in Australia
Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford gave a seminar presentation in Sydney on 21 November based on his research paper about the historical and empirical relationship between superannuation contributions and wage growth.
November 2019
Young Workers are “Shock Troops” of Precarious Labour Market
Dr. Jim Stanford, Director of the Centre for Future Work, appeared before the National Youth Commission on 31 October in Sydney to discuss the challenges facing young workers in Australia’s labour market.
October 2019
Five Contrarian Insights on the Future of Work
In this comprehensive but readable commentary, our Director Jim Stanford challenges five stereotypical claims that are often advanced in debates over the future of work.
September 2019
Job Opportunity: Research Economist
The Centre for Future Work invites applications for an economist to join our research team in labour market research and policy analysis. The position may be at a junior or senior level, and the successful candidate may work from our offices in either Sydney or Canberra.
Climate of the Nation 2019 wrap
The annual Climate of the Nation report has tracked Australian attitudes on climate change for more than a decade.
This is the second Climate of the Nation report produced by The Australia Institute, continuing the work of the Climate Institute (2007-2017).
May 2019
Minimum Wage to Rise 3% for 2019-20
The Fair Work Commission has announced a 3% hike in Australia’s national Minimum Wage, effective July 1, taking it to $19.49 per hour. That increase is lower than the 3.5% increase implemented last year.
Scourge Pricing’: Understanding and Challenging Uber’s Business Model
Centre for Future Work Economist Alison Pennington recently gave a keynote address to hundreds of delegates at the ATIA International Taxi Conference, held this year in Gold Coast, QLD.
Denying Wages Crisis Won’t Make It Go Away
As the great novelist Isaac Asimov wrote, “The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.” Business leaders and sympathetic commentators have adopted that advice with gusto, during current public debates over the unprecedented weakness of Australian wages.
April 2019
How Australia’s Environment Minister was ‘bullied’ into Adani approval by her own colleagues
The Australia InstituteFollowApr 12 In a blink and you’ll miss it move on the eve of the Federal Election, Environment Minister Melissa Price rubber stamped the groundwater management plans for Adani’s coal mine and rail project. Adani still requires further approvals before it can proceed, but the timing of this decision is a major concern: on the cusp
Economics 101 for the ABCC
The Australian Building and Construction Commission’s decision to press charges against 54 steelworkers for attending a political rally, with potential fines of up to $42,000 per person, is abhorrent on any level. No worker should face this kind of intimidation for participating in peaceful protest.
The Australia Institute 2019 Budget Wrap
https://australiainstitute.medium.com/the-australia-institute-2019-budget-wrap-d6c8168a3924
Rushed through the Senate when no-one was looking
You don’t announce anything you’re proud of at 5pm on Friday and you certainly don’t rush legislation you’re proud of through Parliament in the shadow of the Budget on the eve of a Federal Election. The Australia InstituteFollowApr 4 In the final sitting day before the election Senators passed a bill to greatly increase the
Budget 2019-20: Ooops, They Did It Again!
You would think that after 5 consecutive years of wage forecasts that wildly overestimated actual experience, the government might have learned from its past errors – and published a wage forecast more in line with reality. But not this government. They are still trying to convince Australian workers, who haven’t seen real average wages rise in over 5 years, that better times are just around the corner. And rosy wage forecasts are helpful in justifying their equally optimistic revenue forecasts: since if Australians are earning more money, they will be paying more taxes!
March 2019
LNG: The new ‘low tar’ cigarette?
Just as ‘low tar’ cigarettes were aimed at keeping people smoking, WA’s big gas export companies want to lock Australia into using Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) for decades to come. The Australia InstituteFollowMar 21 Image source: AAP by Mark Ogge, Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute. Remember when the tobacco industry was pushing low tar cigarettes as a
The Parliamentary Budget Office and debt
David Richardson, Senior Research Fellow The Parliamentary Budgetary Office (2019) has just published a report on net debt but is really a plea for wider use of ‘net financial worth’ as a better indicator than net debt of what it calls ‘fiscal sustainability’. They say ‘net debt is widely regarded as a key budget indicator
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