First published in the Australian Financial Review – here It’s bizarre that people blame Tony Abbott’s demise on his inability to communicate. He was a great communicator, and people knew exactly what he stood for. No politician was as relentlessly ‘on message’.  Abbott’s problem wasn’t the clarity of his message; it was the incoherence of

The mining industry is furious that if you make a donation to an environment group, your donation is tax deductible. You know the drill. You give someone in a koala suit anything over $2, they give you a receipt and go off to save an owl, hug a tree or, more likely, make a submission

Imagine this. You’re a State Government minister. Your department and the most powerful industry it regulates are under fire for failing to comply with your government’s own guidelines. Courts, the media and community groups keep complaining that the industry breaks the guidelines and your department lets them get away with it. Even the consultants you

Politicians get their fair share of blame for the parlous state of policy making in Australia but they are not the only culprits. The bigger problem is that policy doesn’t get made the way people think it does. It doesn’t get made the way the way academics think it does, it doesn’t get made the

The Australia Institute wrote to all NSW political parties on March 11, asking for them to outline their policies on regulating lobbying, and to what extent they had adopted the ICAC recommendations. Letter from The Australia Institute to NSW Parties Response from the NSW Liberal Party  Response from the NSW Labor Party Response from NSW

First published in the Australian Financial Review, 24th March 2015 Politics The senate is often describe as obstructionist and causing chaos but it is there for good reasons and governments have to learn to deal with it. Imagine if there was no senate to block Gough Whitlam’s reform agenda. Malcolm Fraser would have had no

The Australia Institute sent letters on January 8th 2015 (copy of letter to LNP) to Queensland’s main political parties. Responses were requested by January 19th, 2015. Responses received: Queensland Labor Party – ALP response – PDF Queensland Greens – Greens response – PDF Bob Katter’s Australia Party: Response to The Australia Institute Letter to Katter’s Australian

Is it OK to break laws that you don’t believe in? Corporate Australia certainly seems to think so. Coles lost a Federal Court battle in June over the definition of “fresh”, when it was discovered their “baked today, sold today” bread range included products made overseas, frozen and transported months earlier. Coles took a slap

The stunning victory by the ALP in Victoria on the weekend raises a number of big questions for the Coalition parties nationally, the most significant of which is whether their strategy for winning elections in recent years has ruined their chances of governing like grown-ups.

Tony Abbott was made for “drop and run” politics.  A key part of media training for politicians, the “drop and run” is a smooth strategy for deflecting a question, promoting a three-word slogan and moving on to attack your opponent. Dodge the query, never dwell on details, just drop your message and shift debate to

The term “energy poverty” refers to people who do not have access to electricity and clean cooking facilities. Globally, 1.3 billion people do not have access to electricity in their houses and 2.6 billion people cook by burning coal, wood and other solid fuels. This has major impacts on people’s health, safety and quality of

You’d never know it from their behaviour, but the Greens hold 10 seats in the current Senate compared to the Palmer United Party’s three. Their current strategy of voting against virtually everything the Abbott Government announces, including things they actually support, has made them largely irrelevant since the last election. It is hard to think

The Abbott government can’t decide if it wants to tell people how to live their lives or free them to make their own decisions. The Coalition’s education policy, for example, reveals the contradictions between the world views of libertarianism and conservatism that the Coalition claims to represent. For many years, the balancing act has worked.

Divestment By the shrill sound of things, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Australian National University (ANU) had sent its teaching staff on a paid trip to blockade the Pilliga. Jamie Briggs, Minister for Infrastructure, attacked ANU for “damaging” job creation. Christopher Pyne, Minister for Education, called the university “bizarre”. Joe Hockey made similar intonations,

If universities can’t be trusted to make their own investment decisions, who can be? Indeed, if the federal Coalition wants to join in the mining industry’s attack on the Australian National University for having the temerity to divest its shares in Santos and six other companies, why is the government proposing fee deregulation for the

The hypocrisy of Joe Hockey’s call for big business to make the case for his economic reforms is breathtaking. His government’s signature economic ”reform” was to rip up a perfectly good carbon tax. The Prime Minister and Treasurer rightly bet that business groups would sit silently by while this populist policy destruction took place. But

Economic modelling is like The Wizard of Oz. Behind a impressive facade of power and omnipotence lies an underwhelming array of bizarre assumptions, confused theory, inadequate data, and a desire to please the customer. Economic modelling, it seems, is loved by everyone. Lobbyists and industry groups love it as it allows them to dress up

Usually political staffers are not seen and not heard. This week a striking exception was made when Clive Palmer brought attention to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff’s potential qualification for his paid parental leave scheme, and then called her the “top dog”. Outrage ensued, as it became better known that Credlin – perhaps the

There is a disparity between politicians’ love of symbolism and shareholders’ love of results. Unfortunately for Prime Minister Tony Abbott, that disparity seems set to distance his government even further from the agenda of the mainstream business community in Australia. As if proposing to introduce a new levy on corporate profits and increasing the top

Last night’s federal budget is more of a discussion starter than the final word when it comes to policy change in this term of government. Given the numbers in the Senate, the list of “new commitments” announced by Treasurer Joe Hockey are best interpreted as a wish-list rather than the likely end result.

John Howard is the Ronald Reagan of Australian politics. While Reagan is deified by modern Republicans for his fiscal conservatism, in reality he oversaw big increases in government spending. But because he took from the poor to deliver to the rich they love him all the same. 

Despite the skill of individual musicians, orchestras still need a conductor to bring the whole performance together. It is one thing to know how to play the horn, but someone needs to decide when the best time to honk it is. This week the Abbott government sounded like an orchestra without a conductor – there

Despite the Abbott government carrying out their commitment to slash tens of thousands of public-sector jobs and the pride taken in the deterrence effect of the death of an asylum seeker on Manus Island, our deputy prime minister in waiting, Barnaby Joyce, describes $300 million from taxpayers to his constituency as proof that we are

Class war, it seems, can only be declared on those who have the least. When laws are reshaped to pour money into the pockets of those with the most, however, it is more polite to call it tax reform.

Tony Abbott tore through Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd (again) but now, according to the polls, Bill Shorten is the most effective Opposition Leader in history. Abbott’s Coalition is the least popular new government on record and they haven’t even passed a horror budget yet. Incumbency used to be seen as a great

The idea that more flexible workplaces promise advantages to all is not new. For decades, Australians have been told that with the aid of new technologies, we can “work smarter, not harder” to achieve a better work-life balance and greater productivity. Goodbye to rigid nine-to-five office-based regimes. Employees will be able to negotiate working arrangements that

If you believe the recent media reports about the composition of the Senate from July 1 next year, you’d think we were facing three years of the Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party (PUP) “bloc” holding the Abbott government to ransom. But there are two important reasons to view such reports with scepticism…

Earlier this month the Greens lost more than 500,000 of the 1.6 million voters who supported them in 2010. Earlier this week Greens leader Christine Milne lost six of her most senior staff, including her chief of staff who cited fundamental strategy differences as the reason for his departure. Senator Milne, on the other hand,

A common response from progressive Australians to electoral defeat is to threaten to move to New Zealand.  Just what moving to a country with a weaker economy, worse weather and a conservative government is supposed to achieve is typically left unsaid.  There is no doubt that if he sticks to his word there will be