The latest inflation figures from the Bureau of Statistics reveal just how much workers have been left behind. Writing in Guardian Australia, labour market and fiscal policy director Greg Jericho notes that while the focus is on the biggest annual increase in inflation since the introduction of the GST, the data also shows that real wages have fallen drastically.

Richard Denniss Professor Joseph Stiglitz, welcome to Australia. John Maynard Keynes once said “practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”. It’s decades since you and other Nobel prize winners debunked the intellectual underpinnings of neoliberalism. Are Australians slow to change their minds

Canberra is back and it feels good. Next up: using the city’s new power to take the national capital to its rightful next level. Key national political figures in the new parliament are from Canberra. Our local politicians are leading national debates. The territories ban on assisted dying laws is set to be lifted. The

The unprecedented heatwave and fires engulfing Europe might seem a long way away, but they are a frightening portent of what’s in store for Australia. Britain has just experienced its highest temperature ever, extreme conditions and fires are sweeping Spain, Portugal, France and Greece. This is just the latest in a string of extreme events

Despite unemployment at nearly 50 years lows, it will be little surprise to workers that wages growth is only at 3 year highs. Over the past decade the relationship between wages growth and unemployment has shifted such that levels of unemployment that would have once seen wages growing at more than 4% are now associated with growth of well below 3%.

Following the national state of the environment assessment release, Tasmanians deserve to know when a report on our state will occur, writes Eloise Carr.

Right now, the big numbers of the economy look pretty good. Unemployment in June was just 3.5% – the lowest since 1974. So why has consumer confidence crashed and why are so many Australians worried about a recession?

When it happens to you, it can be devastating. Violating. Traumatising. But did you know it’s also rape? I’m talking about stealthing – the non-consensual removal of a condom during sex. Elena, who was 24 when she experienced stealthing says: “If stealthing was criminalised at the time of my incident, it would have provided me

Climate change often gets blamed on market failure, but government failure plays a pretty big role as well. Not only do Australian governments spend more than $11.6 billion per year subsidising fossil fuels, at the same time the Federal Government spends billions paying some landholders to grow more trees, state governments perversely continue to subsidise

Tasmania’s coastal waters are globally significant, and our island way of life is deeply embedded in our psyche. But our coastal waters are under threat from a range of pressures, including fishing, aquaculture, climate change and pollution. Our east coast waters are warming four times faster than the global average. We have depleted fish stocks,

When I was on the ABC’s Q&A panel in April I said, “whoever gets in at the next election, we need to see some investment [in regional Australia] because we’re on life support out here.” For too long, rural and regional Australia has been forgotten – out of sight and out of mind for both

Reserve Bank of Australia governor Phillip Lowe has invoked memories of the 1970s, warning wage growth must be restrained to contain Australia’s surging inflation. In the 1970s, Lowe said last week, “we got into trouble because wages growth responded mechanically to the higher inflation rate”. Now, with inflation above 5%, and tipped to reach 7% by the

The poor Labor government. It got the keys to a brand new federal government, opened the doors ready for a fresh start, but inside the place was a mess. Barely had Prime Minister Albanese turned the lights on and the gas-fired recovery had turned into a gas-fired catastrophe and an electricity market failure. Some dings

Last year Reserve Bank governor Phillip Lowe said he wouldn’t increase interest rates until he saw signs of strong real wages growth. Now he is telling workers that if they don’t accept real wage cuts, then their greed will be responsible for inflation. No wonder Treasurer Jim Chalmers is not only keen to hold a review of

The decision by the Fair Work Commission to increase the minimum wage by 5.2 per cent is a rare bright spot for workers in what has been a terrible decade for wage increases. This increase represents an extra $1.05 per hour or about $40 per week for someone working full time. About 2.3 million workers

The Fair Work Commission has announced an important increase in the national minimum wage, which will rise by $1.05 per hour (or 5.2%) effective 1 July 2022. This represents a significant shift in the debate over wages in Australia, whichi have been languishing for years — and are now falling in real terms.

Amid soaring energy costs, the new Labor government is working to deliver a A$20 billion pledge to rebuild and modernise Australia’s electricity grid. It will help deliver a plan for 122 gigawatts of new renewable energy in the National Electricity Market by 2050, eventually replacing coal generation. The transition will bring significant social, economic and environmental change. Electricity generation

The decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia this week to increase official interest rates by half a percentage point surprised many. The bank is a notoriously conservative organisation. It usually likes to take things slowly. As it spent the last year suggesting it was unlikely to do anything drastic on interest rates until wages

The thing that strikes you when reading about how The Lodge used to be, is just how humble an abode it once was. How, when Robert Menzies lived there for example, the home seemed embedded in the local community and neighborhood. Menzies’ daughter Heather Henderson writes about how when she lived at The Lodge the

There is an energy crisis. Actually, there are two separate but related crises, an electricity price crisis and gas price crisis. While separate they both have the same problem, our reliance on fossil fuels. The first is a sharp rise in electricity prices, caused almost entirely by our dependence on coal and gas for electricity

The latest labour account survey released by the Bureau of Statistics revealed that while job growth remains solid and the job vacancy rate is at record levels, workers real incomes remains at best flat.

A massive expansion in Australia’s gas production did nothing to make gas cheap for Australian homes and businesses. A decade of propping up ageing coal-fired power stations did nothing to ensure the reliability of our electricity supply. And the Coalition’s so-called “gas trigger” and “big stick” electricity reforms have done nothing to control Australian energy

The March quarter GDP figures show that while the economy is growing strongly, workers are missing out of their fair share.

Local gas suppliers aren’t in crisis – soaring prices are going according to plan The Australian gas industry isn’t in crisis; it’s in heaven. Its profits and share prices are rising even faster than its greenhouse gas emissions, and everything is going according to the plan it has been working on for more than a

For all the tabloids’ orchestrated pompom waving throughout the election campaign, to their credit Anthony Albanese’s marriage breakup was one place they refused to go. Albanese’s standing as a divorced man in a relatively new relationship is a first for an Australian prime minister, but could also serve as a metaphor for his incoming government

The election of a new government presents Australia with a much-needed opportunity to reappraise its place in the world. In less than 20 years, we have segued from serious engagement in Asia and a leadership role in the Pacific to marginal significance in the affairs of Asia (except as a massive mine and a source

Proposed laws that impose harsh fines and jail time for a broad range of peaceful protests are unnecessary and an assault on citizens’ fundamental democratic rights, writes Rachel Hay

The democracy sausage has become the symbol of Australians’ trust and enthusiasm for our free and fair elections, but we have much more to celebrate than sausage sizzles (which, I will point out, are needed to help P&Cs fundraise for our underfunded public school system). Think about the thousands of people across the country who

Three days before the federal election, new ABS data confirmed that Australian wage growth is still stuck at historically weak rate (up just 2.4% year over year to March 2022). One day later, another ABS release showed another small decline in the unemployment rate, which is now below 4%. Most of the decline was due to people leaving the labour market (rather than new jobs being created). But the data is being cited by the current government as a sign that better wage growth is just around the corner.

The release of the March Wage Price Index confirms what a horror year it has been for workers. While inflation in the past 12 months rose 5.1%, wages grew just 2.4%. Even worse, in the past year the price of non-discretionary items rose 6.6%, meaning for those on low wages, who spend more of their incomes on essential items, real wages would have fallen even more than the 2.6% average fall.