Originally printed in The Age.  Nearly 800 years after celebrated rogue Robin Hood and his entourage of bandits launched raids from their Sherwood Forest hide-out – redistributing wealth from a greedy and corrupt aristocracy to the starving peasantry – he has been recruited to a new campaign. This month, 350 prominent economists, including Nobel Prize-winner

The Greens and government should at least be able to agree that some carbon price is better than none, writes Richard Denniss.

Is Australia getting better or worse? The economy is growing but our greenhouse gas emissions are rising. More money is being spent on health and education but are we healthier and wiser because of it? The Australia Institute wants to develop a new series of indicators of Australia’s social, environmental and genuine economic wellbeing. We

According to the spin doctors, governments should never let a crisis go to waste. And of course the best crises are the ones you invent yourself. Done well, they ensure others spend a lot of time worrying about the wrong things. Of course the latest intergenerational report, like its predecessors, is full of doom and

The Commission’s final report reveals little inclination to seriously address excessive executive remuneration. While its recommendations aimed at reassuring shareholders have been watered down, there is a distinct lack of recommendations aimed at addressing the equity issue which the report so starkly highlights.

AH, Copenhagen. Never before have so many gathered for so long to achieve so little. In the past year, the government has consistently linked the need to pass the CPRS with the need to get a binding agreement at Copenhagen. Rather than focusing on the real dangers of climate change and the benefits of early

This edition of the Institute’s newsletter looks at the CPRS, indigenous affairs, food waste, the Disability Discrimination Act, homelessness, congestion charging, superannuation, unpaid overtime and national Go Home On Time Day, and emerging issues for Australia’s youth.

Between the lines is the Institute’s selective analysis of the policies and politics affecting the wellbeing of Australians. This edition looks at the Cooper Review into superannuation; the ‘quarantining’ of income support; the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme; bank profits and food waste.

The scientific consensus is that climate change is an urgent problem; the economic evidence says that the costs of tackling climate change are trivially small compared to the costs of inaction; and polling shows that the vast majority of the Australian public wants to see real action. So why has the CPRS stalled and why

Emission reduction targets are so weak as to be useless, Richard Denniss argues.

Are your working hours ‘flexible’? Thank goodness for your annual leave, when you can recover from all that flexibility. Unfortunately, your annual leave might be eaten away by the extra hours you work throughout the year.

The CPRS is perhaps the most poorly understood piece of legislation to dominate Australia’s public debate in modern times. While there have been acres of press about whether climate change exists or not, and acres more about how clever the Rudd Government has been in splitting the Coalition, there has been much less analysis of

Between the lines is the Institute’s selective analysis of the policies and politics affecting the wellbeing of Australians. This edition looks at national Go Home On Time Day; compares the government’s climate change rhetoric to that on purchasing new submarines; and, how the Do Not Call Register could be strengthened to better protect us from

Last week many people were questioning why the Victorian Premier was so keen to secure additional compensation for the impact of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) on his state’s biggest polluters. Luckily for him, however, he has not been forced to answer a more interesting question: Why isn’t he demanding that the Commonwealth Government

The Government wants to allow meat from countries with Mad Cow disease into Australia. And our loose labelling rules mean you won’t know the difference, writes Hilary Bambrick.

Between the Lines is the Institute’s selective analysis of the policies and politics affecting the wellbeing of Australians. This edition considers: the strange argument for carbon price compensation; buying power stations vs compensating them; an uncharitable act; and, bank profits.

The CPRS is increasingly looking like the answer to a question that nobody asked, namely, what would be the best way to introduce a complex and expensive national scheme that sounds like a solution to climate change without really changing anything? But as the Senate vote gets closer the first question that the Climate Change

Most of us like to complain about the banks from time to time, but compared to some parts of the superannuation industry the banks seem like the good guys. That’s because many commercial super funds are profiting enormously through excessive fees on the savings of ordinary workers.

The science says that we need to reduce emissions by around 40 per cent by 2020 if we want even a fifty per cent chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. The Government has ignored that advice both in setting the targets for their so called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) and in developing Australia’s negotiating

The Senate debate about the CPRS is getting close, and with views as diverse as those of Steve Fielding and Bob Brown it’s likely to be a cracker. Unfortunately, while there might be plenty of heat in the debate, whether the CPRS gets up or not will make no difference to global temperatures.

Research Fellow and co-author of The case for a universal default superannuation fund, Josh Fear, talks to Life Matters about superannuation fees and how the system could be improved.

                              Since 2005, the great majority of Australian workers have been able to choose their own superannuation fund. While some people have taken advantage of greater choice in super, for many people choice is actually a burden. Widespread lack of engagement with superannuation means that competition in this sector is structured around intermediaries (like financial advisers)

Economists can and do get it wrong. The lead up to the subprime mortgage crisis being an obvious case in point. While some economists and regulators were convinced all was well, many people were alarmed at a system that enabled people to buy expensive houses with loans that were beyond their means of repaying. It

Picture this country five years from now, once an emissions trading scheme is fully operational. How will your life be different? Will higher energy prices radically change your approach to work, travel, shopping and leisure?

1. Electricity and pricing signals ”¦ 2. ”¦ How is our behaviour affected? 3. The Australian home: a sacred site for tax policy? 4. The slippery slope of the war on terror

Richard Denniss examines the work of the Institute over his first year as the new executive director; Brian Walters looks at anomalies in the common law with regard to public and private interests; David Richardson dissects the benefits of the mining boom; Georgia Miller explains some of the problems inherent in the nanotechnology revolution.

Denticare: making a mountain out of a molar. Dissent is a dirty word. A fair-weather friend: Australia’s relationship with a climate-changed Pacific. Extract from author Ben McNeil’s speech at the launch of ‘The Clean Industrial Revolution’.

The global financial crisis has meant Australia’s top four banks have moved into the world’s top 10 banks in terms of financial soundness. While that says a lot about Australia’s regulators and regulatory environment, the global financial crisis has also meant much of their competition has been wiped out as customers consolidate around ‘sound and