A landmark ruling will tackle the gender pay gap for thousands of workers Lordn/Shutterstock Fiona Macdonald, RMIT University The Fair Work Commission has found award pay rates in five industrial awards covering a range of female-dominated occupations and industries do not provide equal pay. This important decision should narrow the gender pay gap. The commission proposed

ABC political editor Andrew Probyn got all the attention when his job was made redundant, but there are several less well-known journalists on the ABC’s award-winning investigative programs who are also facing the sack. The ABC’s blueprint for digital transformation includes losing two staff from Four Corners, two from 7.30, four from the investigative reporting

A pandemic-era $1.6 billion injection in much-needed funding into the nation’s training system has dramatically increased headcount of people in vocational courses, a new report says, but left Australia’s pipeline of skills in disarray. Three in five new apprenticeships have gone to male-dominated trades while numbers training in feminised sectors, such as aged and disability

David Baker talks with ABC News Breakfast about the significant issue of affordability for families needing childcare and how improvements could be made to government assistance funding to childcare that would see families better able to afford childcare services.

How much do we need to live on? As a society we have a lot of different categories of poor. Both political rhetoric and the implicit assumption in many people’s minds focus on how a person has gotten into that position rather than the state or the need of that person, before we decide how

What is stealing? Is it ok to eat a grape without paying for it but not an apple? What is the dividing line between fairly sampled goods, readily available goods and stealing items to which you have no right? In the third installment of Richard’s ‘Economics and Ethics’ chat with ABC666, he discusses the point

Should Australians spend more on preventative medicine or should they address the shortages in acute care the system faces today? Were the hundreds of millions of dollars spent buying vaccines for bird flu a waste of money or a modest precaution? In the second instalment of Richard’s ‘Economics and Ethics’ chat with ABC666, he discusses

Which industries do you think are the most politically powerful in Australia? This paper examines the influence of the superannuation, mining, banking and gambling industries and concludes that perhaps the real test of power is the ability to get things done without anybody even noticing.  To download the paper, click here To read Ross Gittins’

Human life is often described as ‘priceless’ yet in practice economists regularly estimate the ‘value of a human life and policy decisions are often made with such valuations in mind. In a wide ranging interview with ABC666, The Australia Institute’s Executive Director Dr Richard Denniss discussed how and why economists attempt to value human life

Since 1973, the system of legal aid in Australia has provided legal assistance for people who would otherwise not be able to afford access to justice. Unfortunately, for much of the time since then the legal aid system has been underfunded. In a new paper, Justice for all: Giving Australians greater access to the legal

 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. To listen to the interview, click here.