The big banks now dominate the Australian financial system in the same way that the Melbourne Storm dominated the rugby league. They take the profits they made last year and they use them to fend off new competitors next year. They take the profits they earn in one part of their business and cross subsidise

Back before the CPRS took the wind out of the community it was common sense to believe that early action was cheaper than delayed action. And back before anyone had heard of ’emission intensive trade exposed industries’ it was patriotic to believe that Australia should lead the world, not lag it. If we are to

A lot of people in the superannuation industry are very worried at the moment. This is not because they see another market crash on the horizon; things are generally back on track in that sense. They’re worried because things are about to get much better for millions of ordinary working Australians at the expense of

Banking is an essential part of the Australian economy – almost an essential service. So why should it be “extremely profitable” to use the former RBA’s Governor’s words? Why do bankers have to be exceedingly privileged? What does that mean to those of us who need to use the banking system? And what can we

Originally printed in The Age.  Nearly 800 years after celebrated rogue Robin Hood and his entourage of bandits launched raids from their Sherwood Forest hide-out – redistributing wealth from a greedy and corrupt aristocracy to the starving peasantry – he has been recruited to a new campaign. This month, 350 prominent economists, including Nobel Prize-winner

The Greens and government should at least be able to agree that some carbon price is better than none, writes Richard Denniss.

According to the spin doctors, governments should never let a crisis go to waste. And of course the best crises are the ones you invent yourself. Done well, they ensure others spend a lot of time worrying about the wrong things. Of course the latest intergenerational report, like its predecessors, is full of doom and

The Commission’s final report reveals little inclination to seriously address excessive executive remuneration. While its recommendations aimed at reassuring shareholders have been watered down, there is a distinct lack of recommendations aimed at addressing the equity issue which the report so starkly highlights.

The scientific consensus is that climate change is an urgent problem; the economic evidence says that the costs of tackling climate change are trivially small compared to the costs of inaction; and polling shows that the vast majority of the Australian public wants to see real action. So why has the CPRS stalled and why

Emission reduction targets are so weak as to be useless, Richard Denniss argues.

Are your working hours ‘flexible’? Thank goodness for your annual leave, when you can recover from all that flexibility. Unfortunately, your annual leave might be eaten away by the extra hours you work throughout the year.

The CPRS is perhaps the most poorly understood piece of legislation to dominate Australia’s public debate in modern times. While there have been acres of press about whether climate change exists or not, and acres more about how clever the Rudd Government has been in splitting the Coalition, there has been much less analysis of

Last week many people were questioning why the Victorian Premier was so keen to secure additional compensation for the impact of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) on his state’s biggest polluters. Luckily for him, however, he has not been forced to answer a more interesting question: Why isn’t he demanding that the Commonwealth Government

The Government wants to allow meat from countries with Mad Cow disease into Australia. And our loose labelling rules mean you won’t know the difference, writes Hilary Bambrick.

The CPRS is increasingly looking like the answer to a question that nobody asked, namely, what would be the best way to introduce a complex and expensive national scheme that sounds like a solution to climate change without really changing anything? But as the Senate vote gets closer the first question that the Climate Change

Most of us like to complain about the banks from time to time, but compared to some parts of the superannuation industry the banks seem like the good guys. That’s because many commercial super funds are profiting enormously through excessive fees on the savings of ordinary workers.

The science says that we need to reduce emissions by around 40 per cent by 2020 if we want even a fifty per cent chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. The Government has ignored that advice both in setting the targets for their so called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) and in developing Australia’s negotiating

The Senate debate about the CPRS is getting close, and with views as diverse as those of Steve Fielding and Bob Brown it’s likely to be a cracker. Unfortunately, while there might be plenty of heat in the debate, whether the CPRS gets up or not will make no difference to global temperatures.

Economists can and do get it wrong. The lead up to the subprime mortgage crisis being an obvious case in point. While some economists and regulators were convinced all was well, many people were alarmed at a system that enabled people to buy expensive houses with loans that were beyond their means of repaying. It

Picture this country five years from now, once an emissions trading scheme is fully operational. How will your life be different? Will higher energy prices radically change your approach to work, travel, shopping and leisure?

The global financial crisis has meant Australia’s top four banks have moved into the world’s top 10 banks in terms of financial soundness. While that says a lot about Australia’s regulators and regulatory environment, the global financial crisis has also meant much of their competition has been wiped out as customers consolidate around ‘sound and

the ‘cap-and-slice’ proposal actually resembles the public’s perception of how emissions trading works more closely than the CPRS. Three-quarters of respondents to a recent Australia Institute survey said that Australia’s total emissions would go down if every household reduced its electricity use. Only 13 per cent gave the answer that corresponds to the CPRS: that

It is hard to imagine a scheme that is less fair than the CPRS. The Commonwealth collects the revenue and the states do the spending. The polluters get compensation and those dependent on the public health and education systems get nothing. Of course tackling climate change doesn’t need to be so unfair. With the legislation

Australia is a wealthy country. Although the current slowdown in the rate of economic growth has had a substantial impact on the government’s finances, the fact is that much of the ‘boom’ preceding this downturn was squandered through round after round of tax cuts. This occurred to such an extent that, despite the fact that

The mining boom bonanza barely spread beyond the mining industry itself but the negative implications of the mining boom were felt very widely. This is important in view of the current suggestions that the end of the mining boom implies that Australians will have to tighten their belts. Symmetry should apply in the event of

The CPRS has fundamental flaws that need to be addressed. A mechanism to ensure that the efforts of individuals and state governments to reduce emissions result in lower emissions, not extra permits for other polluters, needs to be introduced. Similarly, the decision to insulate the petrol price from the introduction of a carbon price needs

While it may not have been the government’s intention, it looks like the most potent symbol associated with the CPRS might be the Senate uniting to vote it down. The likely delay in implementing an effective scheme is a source of much regret for people who have called for urgent action for many years. But

While it may seem appealing to wait until we know where the new jobs are going to be before we start moving away from the jobs the atmosphere can no longer support, developing such a ‘plan’ is a fool’s errand. The fact is we did not wait until we knew where photo development lab workers

Tax cuts for the rich damage the Australian economy and disadvantage the average Australian.

Right up until the end of the resources boom and the onset of the global financial and economic crisis, the government was flush with money, a result of the virtually continual ‘surprises’ as economic growth, and especially government revenue, came in way over budget forecasts in each of the years from 2003-04 to 2007-08. By