The Fair Work Commission unveiled its long-awaited decision on penalty rates for Sunday and holiday work this week. Penalty rates for most retail and hospitality workers will be cut, by up to 50 percentage points of the base wage. Hardest hit will be retail employees: their wages on Sundays will fall by $10 an hour or more. For regular weekend workers, that could mean $6000 in lost annual income.

Malcolm Turnbull is using Donald Trump as a celebrity endorsement for his plan to give corporate Australia a $50 billion tax cut. But, like all dealings with people who are famous for being famous, the risks can be greater than the returns. Take Trump’s views on free trade. First published by the Australian Financial Review

When politicians spend taxpayers money flying themselves to fundraising parties or flying to their own weddings, we leave it up to the politician to decide if their claim is “outside of entitlement”. First published on The Guardian – here When it comes to income tax we allow people to claim $300 worth of tax deductions without receipts because

The travel rorts scandals make the Turnbull government look like it’s out of touch, but its plans to give $50 billion in company tax cuts over the next 10 years are about to prove it beyond doubt. First published in the AGE and Canberra Times – see here.  This time last year Prime Minister Turnbull

This op-ed was first published on 19 December on Crikey here > https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/12/19/rudd-gillard-and-abbott-cut-taxes-a… The debate surrounding MYEFO and whether Australia has a credible path back to a surplus should start by remembering how we got here. If Scott Morrison had delivered much of Peter Costello’s taxation ratio the budget would not be in deficit today. This

The notion of evidence-based policy in Australia is dead. While it’s been in poor health for some time, it was finally killed by the Coalition backbench last week and replaced with “gut instinct” and “the pub test”. First published by the Australian Financial Review – here When Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was recently quizzed

Just as market forces were about to push the price of housing down in Australia, the Treasurer stepped in with some new regulation. Phew. Some first home buyer’s nearly snatched a good deal, but luckily the Treasurer was there to protect the property developers from the oversupply their building bonanza created. [First pubished by the

In the modern version of “the battle of ideas” political interests trump political ideology nearly every time. Take, for example, the alleged supporters of “small government” who have been strategically silent as the Australian resource industry pushed for a $100 billion, wholly government owned, nuclear waste dump in South Australia. First published by the Australian Financial Review

When Tony Abbott promised to shed more than 13,000 full time jobs from the public service there was a deafening silence from the Australian business community about the impact of job loss on Canberra communities and families. Likewise, you could hear crickets when Campbell Newman sacked 10,000 teachers, nurses and other Queensland public servants.

The ACT election result is further proof that Australian conservatives have a tin ear. Either that, or because they spend so much time telling voters scary stories about taxes and public debt that there is simply no time to listen to what the voters are really want. First published by the Australian Financial Review –

The rise of anti-globalization sentiment, including in Australia, poses a big challenge to mainstream politicians who’ve been trumpeting the virtues of free trade for decades.

Successful investors let their winning bets run while quickly cutting their losses. But while the strategy of “spreading your bets” and “failing fast” might work for venture capitalists, it doesn’t work well for prime ministers. A chief executive that shuts down an underperforming factory is decisive; a PM who abandons Tasmania or regional Western Australia is divisive.

Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to merge the environment and energy portfolios could lead to a breakthrough in the toxic climate politics of climate first triggered when he was rolled by Tony Abbott in December 2009. Full article on Guardian Australia – here. Dan Cass, Strategist, The Australia Institute @DanJCass

The ultimate irony of neoliberalism is that the buck no longer stops. It just keeps going and going. The company at the heart of #censusfail, IBM, was once paid more than $1 billion to deliver what started out as a $6 million contract to upgrade the Queensland Health Department’s payroll system. For decades we have

First published in the Australian Financial Review – Here The first order of business for the Turnbull government when Parliament returns next week is to cut the dole for new recipients from $263.80 to $259.40 per week. That is less than the tax free allowance politicians receive for each night they spend in Canberra. It

If Arrium Steel closes in Whyalla around 8000 people in a town of 22,000 will be looking for work. On average, of every 100 Australians who lose their jobs 30 will still be looking for a new one 12 months later. Unfortunately, the average is much higher when job losses are concentrated in a particular

It was a “sleeper” issue in the recent election, and led to the defeat of some high-profile Liberal candidates.  But now the debate over penalty rates for work on weekends and public holidays shifts to the Fair Work Commission.  The economic arguments in favour of cutting penalties (as advocated by lobbyists for the retail and

Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to merge the environment and energy portfolios could lead to a breakthrough in the toxic climate politics that was unleashed when Tony Abbott rolled him in the December 2009 leadership coup. Or the new super-ministry and its new minister Josh Frydenberg could be set up for failure. It depends entirely on whether

The Business Council of Australia and the Liberal party just lost a debate with Bill Shorten about the economy. Badly. The days where expensive suits and even more expensive modelling were enough to win a public debate about “what the economy needs” are over. The days where newspaper editors could shift votes are over. The days where governments can deliver unpopular

Britain will now decide which Germans can invest in, or travel to, the UK and the circumstances in which they can do so.  The Brexit decision provides clear evidence of the tension within conservative politics between strident nationalism and economic rationalism. And as the business community is discovering, there are enormous economic risks when conservatives

It is hard for the benefits of a company tax cut to “trickle down” to workers when employer groups insist on building dams to capture the gains for themselves, writes Richard Denniss. First published on The Drum – here. The Turnbull Government’s claim that a company tax cut will trickle down to benefit workers rests

It is hard to claim a mandate for something you barely mention, but just as the Turnbull government has stopped talking about the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the business community has now made a TV advertisement for the company tax cuts that, wait for it, doesn’t mention the company tax cuts. It wasn’t meant to be

After three long weeks of election campaigning neither the Prime Minister nor the Treasurer has explained how the $48 billion centrepiece of their “economic plan” will be funded. Sure, they love being asked about it, as such questions allow them to say “jobs and growth” a lot. But the actual answer is yet to pass their

The centrepiece of the Turnbull government’s ‘plan’ for the economy, and its plan to win the upcoming election, is based on some heroic assumptions. There is no strong evidence to support the government’s claim that cutting the company tax rate will boost “jobs and growth”. And there is no strong evidence that the public will

For someone who piously bemoans an “us versus them” mentality in political culture, Treasurer Scott Morrison certainly drove a deep wedge into the social fabric with one of the centrepieces of his budget. There are four thresholds in the personal income tax system; Morrison chose to increase one of them, supposedly to offset the insidious effects of “bracket creep.” The third threshold will be raised from $80,000 to $87,000.

As Transfield Services found out last year, governments don’t just outsource service delivery, they outsource political risk. And while Scott Morrison was promoted from immigration minister to Treasurer because of his “success” in “stopping the boats”, he left the Belgiorno-Nettis family, Diane Smith-Gander and Transfield Services shareholders to take the heat and pay the price. Well played, Scott. Politicians

In the lead-up to tomorrow’s pre-election Commonwealth budget, much has been written about the need to quickly eliminate the government’s deficit, and reduce its accumulated debt.  The standard shibboleths are being liberally invoked: government must face hard truths and learn to live within its means; government must balance its budget (just like households do); debt-raters will punish us for our profligacy; and more.  Pumping up fear of government debt is always an essential step in preparing the public to accept cutbacks in essential public services.   And with Australians heading to the polls, the tough-love imagery serves another function: instilling fear that a change in government, at such a fragile time, would threaten the “stability” of Australia’s economy.

When other people get pay rises, do you feel discouraged from working? If the Australian Taxation Office stopped BHP or Google from using tax havens, would your firm be less likely to invest in its own expansion? In a bizarre twist on behavioural economics, Treasurer Scott Morrison seems to think individuals and companies are motivated

The latest “big idea” on tax policy from the Coalition government is to grant independent income tax powers to the states.  This would be accompanied by a devolution of funding responsibility for big-ticket services like health care, hospitals, and schools.  Prime Minister Turnbull argues that forcing state governments to raise the money they spend will

The ruling mantra once was user pays, but now laws requiring mining companies to clean up their mess are derided. Where have all the economic rationalists gone? Back in the 1980s and ’90s most conservative politicians and businesspeople were obsessed with expanding the “user pays principle” to all areas of government service, but these days you