Women have suffered the worst labour market impacts since the shutdowns. Gender-unequal impacts have been due to women’s greater exposure to customer-facing industries shut down first by public health orders, higher employment intensity in insecure and part-time positions, and an increased caring burden unmet by the state. But instead of providing countervailing support, the federal government is accelerating women’s work crisis.

by Richard Denniss[Orinigally publsihed by the Guardian Australia, 24 June 2020] If conservatives really believed that the most important thing a young person could do was become “job-ready” then why are they so keen for Australia’s best and brightest students to study the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Aquinas, as part of a degree in

by Richard Denniss[Originally published in the Australian Financial Review, 26 June 2020] The Australian Government is, by any measure, significantly under leveraged. The Commonwealth Government’s lazy balance sheet and its underspending on productivity boosting services like preventative health, childcare and environmental protection will harm Australia’s prosperity for decades to come. BHP has been in debt

by Ben Oquist[Originally published in the Canberra Times, 13 June 2020] While it has been widely observed that all sides of politics become Keynesians in a pandemic, if COVID-19 has taught us anything else it is that strong government regulations are not “red tape” or “green tape”, they are protection. Everyone is a legislator in

by Richard Denniss[Originally Published on Guardian Australia, 10 June 2020] Not only have women been hardest hit by the response to Covid-19, they have got the least out of government assistance and stimulus packages. Monday’s announcement that the temporary provision of free childcare is about to end was just the latest in a long line

Our nation is confronting the most significant economic challenge in nearly a century. Australia’s own experience of long-term, sustained public investment during post-war reconstruction shows direct tools of government planning and investment will be essential to our recovery today. Yet Scott Morrison continues to pretend his hands are tied: “if there’s no business, there’s no jobs, there’s no income, there’s nothing.”

It’s easy to avoid a hard question by simply saying the government “should” provide more money to the universities. But there’s a long list of things the Morrison government should do: extend the JobKeeper payment to casuals and temporary residents; permanently boost unemployment benefits; provide support to the arts and entertainment industry; introduce a carbon

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy recently issued a directive that going to work with the ‘sniffles’ is ‘off the agenda for every Australian in the foreseeable future.’ But with millions of workers without access to paid sick leave, government plans to lift restrictions on economic activity could risk dangerous and costly outbreaks. 

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published by the Canberra Times, 16 May 2020] This week, the federal government announced Australia’s biggest monthly rise in unemployment since the Australian Bureau of Statistics started publishing labour force statistics, shooting up to 6.2 per cent from 5.2 per cent just a month earlier. But, in a classic case of expectations

by Richard Denniss[Originally published on Guardian Australia, 13 May 2020] The government is telling us that if we don’t open up the Australian economy soon, we will do lasting harm to it. But the forecasters at Treasury and the Reserve Bank are relying on economic models that assume the deeper the recession we have, the faster our

by Richard Deniss[Originally published in the Australian Financial Review, 11 May 2020] Would you prefer to double your salary or to double the rate at which it will grow in the next few years? Personally, I would rather a high-income that’s growing slowly. But the Morrison Government is telling anyone that will listen that we

Bank bashing is always popular in Australia and it’s by no means confined to one side of politics. It was the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull who introduced the big bank levy and gave us the royal commission into misconduct in the financial services industry. And, just last week, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg reportedly “slammed” the big banks for being slow to process loan applications from small businesses waiting to receive their share of the promised $130bn jobkeeper wage subsidy payment.

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published in The Canberra Times, 03 April 2020] It’s not every day I get up at 6am to talk about inequality with a Nobel Prize winner, but hosting the Australia Institute’s Economics of a Pandemic webinar series afforded me that opportunity this week. Before dawn on Thursday, Professor Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, joined

Disruptions in global supplies of essential medical equipment have served as a wake-up call to Australians that it is always vital for a country to retain the capacity to domestically produce manufactured products that may be crucial to national security and well-being.

There is hope in sight for the COVID-19 crisis. Australia’s curve appears to be flattening, and the numbers are looking so promising that the Prime Minister is talking about what needs to happen for restrictions to be eased – though the current rules will stay in place (like all of us) for the next four weeks at least.

This article was first published in The Australian. I did not vote for Scott Morrison. But like so many Australians I am willing him to succeed in the fight against COVID-19. And he is. The squashing of the curve to date has been one of the great public policy successes of our time. When the

by Richard Denniss[Originally published on the Guardian Australia, 15 April 2020] Just as economists should never be used to tell Australians what kind of society we “must” live in, medical scientists, and indeed climate scientists, should never be used to tell us what we “must” do. The role of experts is to inform us about

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published by The Canberra Times, 01 April 2020] Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. State and federal governments are exercising broad new powers and deploying eye-popping public spending to manage the COVID-19 health and economic crises. But government transparency and parliamentary accountability will be crucial to preserving one all-important commodity: trust. There

by Richard Denniss[Originally published by The Guardian Australia, 1 April 2020] The Coalition just announced a $130bn wage subsidy when the budget is already in deficit. As that sinks in, try to absorb the fact that the $130bn wasn’t targeted at any vulnerable group and had absolutely no “mutual obligations” attached to it. It was not “funded”

How the secretive trillionaire superannuation funds are using your money to reshape capitalism

by Richard Denniss[Originally published by the Australian Financial Review, 31 March 2020] After a $62 billion shot of adrenalin designed to keep businesses going through the coronavirus crisis, the Morrison government has finally ditched its strategy of “targeted and temporary” measures based on existing policies. Instead, it now wants to put large parts of the Australian

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published by the Canberra Times, 21 March 2020] After a summer of unprecedented bushfires and a billion animals dying, Australia now finds itself in the midst of an unprecedented public health pandemic with an economic crisis to match. While the $17.6 billion economic stimulus program was welcome for an already sluggish economy,

For decades, Australians have been sold an imagined poverty. We have been told we need to “rein in” government spending – that if we want to spend more on health or education, we will need to spend less on the age pension or childcare. The Coalition even has an arbitrary cap on the size of

The scale and scope of the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 will be unprecedented in our lifetimes. Mainstream economists have belatedly realised the pandemic will cause an economic downturn, but they are not yet appreciating the size of that downturn, nor the unconventional responses that will be required. Simply calling for government “stimulus” is sadly inadequate, given the complete shut-down of work and production that is occurring in many sectors of the economy. The task is no longer supporting markets with incremental “pump-priming.” What’s needed is a war-like effort, led by government, to mobilise every possible resource to protect Australians’ health and livelihoods. Money is not an object – and this epic effort should not be held back by normal acquiescence to private-sector priorities and decisions.

If you thought the prime minister was slow to respond to the bushfire crisis, take a look at his response to Australia’s ailing economy. Morrison is currently trying to pivot away from the government’s economic inaction using the coronavirus outbreak as cover, but the only reason the coronavirus might push Australia into recession is because the economy has been languishing since the Coalition took office in 2013.

by Richard Denniss[Originally published in the Australian Financial Review, 02 March 2020] In the summer of 2010, devastating floods hit Queensland killing 33 people, causing billions of dollars in damage, shutting coal mines, and knocking an estimated $30 billion off GDP. The then Labor Government’s promise of a budget surplus was washed away too. Fast

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published in the Canberra Times, 07 March 2020] It might be time to panic. Not about running out of toilet paper, the real danger is that the Morrison government will undercook its mooted fiscal stimulus package and risk sending Australia into recession to prove an ideological point. The economy has been weak

There has been much discussion in recent months about the apparent slowdown in Australian productivity growth. Rather than dredging up the usual wish-list of the business community (more deregulation, more privatisation, and more deunionisation), it’s time to look at the deeper, structural factors behind stagnant productivity. In this commentary, Dr. Anis Chowdhury, Associate of the Centre for Future Work, looks to the perverse role of our overdeveloped financial sector in slowing down productivity-enhancing investment and innovation.

A part-time cleaner earning $18,000 a year will receive zero tax concessions for their compulsory superannuation contribution; meanwhile, a chief executive of a big bank can get tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxpayer support for their “retirement nest egg”. This is the strange world of Australia’s retirement income system: a world in

by Ebony Bennett[Originally published in The Canberra Times, 22 February 2020] I’m not a revhead, but I come from a Holden family. Not a Holden worker family, but the type of Holden family that used to get up before sparrow’s fart to catch the bus five hours to Bathurst to watch Peter Brock race (my