The Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program welcomes the Victorian Electoral Matters Committee’s recommendation for Victoria to adopt truth in political advertising laws, with the Australia Institute’s submission to the inquiry cited extensively in the committee report published today. Key Facts: Since March 2020, the Victorian Parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee has looked into the impact

The Australia Institute surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Australians between Wednesday 8th September and Friday 10th September, about whether the Prime Minister should be free to travel between Sydney and Canberra, and whether he should live in The Lodge. Key findings: Australians are split on whether PM Scott Morrison should be granted an

The Australia Institute welcomes the WA Government’s decision to end native forest logging and calls for independent inquiries into native forestry in other states. “The end of native forest logging represents not just good environmental policy, but good economic policy,” said Rod Campbell, economist and Research Director at The Australia Institute. “Australia Institute research has

Twenty years pass so quickly, and so slowly. Memories of that Tuesday in September are very much alive because the shock remains so fresh, just as the shock of the fall of Kabul is so immediate. Of course, 9/11 and the catastrophe that has become Afghanistan are deeply connected – historically, psychologically and strategically. The

The lack of a clear blueprint for vaccination ‘passports’ that addresses public concerns around safety and security risks is undermining the implementation of vaccine mandates, warns the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology. With vaccine passports for international travel reportedly just weeks away, there appears to have been little focus on the way a digital

Correspondence between Resource Minister Keith Pitt and civil society groups involved in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) shows that the Australian Government is walking away from its promise to join the tax transparency initiative for the mining, oil and gas industry. The move comes despite major mining companies and civil society groups supporting Australia’s

In an amazing feat, both leaders shift attention away from their past performances and on to future freedoms to be granted, based on decisions made by the public In the ultimate expression of neoliberal language, prime minister Scott Morrison and New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian are gradually shifting their messaging away from the dangers

Extracting gas from the Northern Territory through hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is one of the largest potential sources of carbon pollution in the world. In this episode we explore the climate cost of a potential policy backflip on opening up the NT to fracking, as well as the community opposition and the economics of it all.

The Australia Institute commissioned uComms to conduct a survey of residents across the federal electorates of Brisbane (622 residents), Braddon (632 residents), Boothby (641 residents) and Bennelong (629 residents) on the nights of 4th and 5th of August 2021. Key Findings: Seat of Brisbane – 78.2% of Brisbane voters support setting up a Commonwealth Integrity

New research from The Australia Institute shows that South Australians rank health, the economy and climate change as the three most important political issues in South Australia ahead of the next state election. The Australia Institute’s survey of a representative sample of 599 South Australians also found the vast majority of voters would prefer it

An unlikely group of 12 companies and organisations, including car manufacturers, automotive groups and environmental organisations have come together to publish an open letter to the South Australian Parliament, calling on them to abolish stamp duty on electric vehicles. The letter, which appears as a full-page advertisement in The Advertiser newspaper today, comes as the

In the middle of a pandemic, through the middle of a recession, Australia has undergone a secret wealth explosion. When the national accounts were released on Wednesday, there was a collective sigh of relief. Australia was not on the brink of a double dip recession. However, a much bigger story was missed. While everybody recognised

New Australia Institute analysis of the Doherty Modelling shows that while vaccination rates of 80% are essential to protect the community, so are other measures such as the ability to contact trace effectively and other little-analysed assumptions and outcomes of the model. Key Findings: While high vaccination rates lead to a significant reduction in the

The Doherty Modelling makes clear that without a highly functioning Test, Trace, Isolate and Quarantine (TTIQ) system we have no chance of stopping Australia’s ICUs from being overwhelmed; the problem is the effectiveness of TTIQ declines as case numbers rise and that has not factored into the modelling.

New research from The Australia Institute has found that significantly reducing floodplain harvesting would have minimal economic impact and could actually increase overall employment across the Basin. The findings, contained in a submission to the NSW Parliamentary inquiry into floodplain harvesting, show that a reduction in the practice within the cotton-dominated northern basin could increase

While the effectiveness of ‘test, trace, isolate, quarantine’ (TTIQ) is dependent upon case numbers, new analysis from the Australia Institute shows the Doherty Modelling does not adequately take this into account. Key findings: While most discussion is around vaccine rates and COVID cases at the time of transition to Phase B (‘opening up’) a significant

The South Australian Government’s decision to delay its EV Tax until 2027 is welcome but the small, temporary EV incentive revealed today is insufficient to facilitate the rapid transition to zero emissions cars that our state needs, The Australia Institute says. Key points: As it stands, the 6000 one-off purchase incentives offered represent just 0.4%

The same Prime Minister who spruiks ‘technology not taxes’ as a climate change strategy is now championing ‘pharmaceuticals not physical distancing’ in the battle against COVID-19. As always, his slogan is more spin than science, and the phoney distinction will be dangerous to our health, our wealth and our society. Just as virtually every economist agrees that

In 2020, Australian GDP was $2 trillion but Australian households received another $1.7 trillion in capital gains as overall wealth increased to $12.7 trillion. But Australia currently has no taxes on wealth, so what does that mean for the economy in the long term and for reducing inequality?

The wealth of Australians has grown by an extraordinary $9.5 trillion or 302% in the past 33 years according to a new report released by the Australia Institute. However, despite this enormous increase in wealth, which primarily takes the form of housing and shares, the rapid growth in the assets of Australian households has been

Leading innovative energy companies have published an open letter, co-ordinated by the Australia Institute, to state and federal energy ministers and the Energy Security Board (ESB), opposing a key recommendation from the ESB to create a new market for ‘physical reliability’ that would subsidise loss-making coal power stations. The open letter signatories include Tesla Energy,

Recorded live on 24 February 2021 as part of the Australia Institute webinar series. Professor Ross Garnaut is an economist and author of new book Reset – which explores the opportunity Australia has to reset its economy in the wake of the pandemic. Warning: there is a bit of feedback on the audio for the

New electoral laws proposed by the Government will have unintended consequences and unfairly benefit incumbent political parties, warns the Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program. The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Party Registration Integrity) Bill would require political parties to have 1,500 unique members each within the next three months, up from 500, and prohibit new parties

When the Black Lives Matter protests swept the globe in 2020, it shone a spotlight on Australia’s legacy of Aboriginal deaths in custody. It was a subject journalist Amy McQuire had written about extensively. Amy McQuire was the Australia Institute’s Writer in Residence recipient for 2020 and in this episode she discusses her upcoming book

Things feel like they’ve taken a turn for the apocalyptic lately. Between the fall of Afghanistan, the IPCC report and the exponential growth of Covid cases in NSW, every time you turn on the news things are spinning out of control. Not because there’s no hope, but because of the hubris of some of our

Today the federal, state and territory energy ministers will meet to discuss a range of proposed, clean energy-based redesigns of the National Electricity Market (NEM), prepared by the Energy Security Board (ESB). While Barnaby Joyce may still want to see what’s on the climate action ‘menu’, we know already that the Prime Minister’s easiest path

A new discussion paper published by The Australia Institute makes a case for major reforms to how livelihood and work programs operate in remote Australia. The paper was developed by eight leading researchers with decades of research experience on remote Indigenous unemployment. “We welcome the Federal Government’s acknowledgement that the Abbott-era Community Development Program (CDP)

Almost half of Tasmanians surveyed (48.5%) distrust the Tasmanian Integrity Commission’s ability to uncover and prevent misconduct in public administration, according to Australia Institute research. Only 34% trust the Integrity Commission’s ability to uncover and prevent misconduct. Is it any wonder, given the inability of the Tasmanian Integrity Commission to hold the state government to

The assumption that terrorism can be defeated by military force doomed the war in Afghanistan from the start, says Allan Behm

The sixth IPCC assessment report sounded the alarm on the climate crisis, finding that human activity is changing the Earth’s climate in “unprecedented” ways, with some of the changes now inevitable and “irreversible”. We unpack the latest report and the urgency of change with Richie Merzian and Alia Armistead from the Australia Institute’s climate &