Most people when they get back from a week at a tropical resort are usually inclined to want to lead a simpler life. For the planet’s sake, let’s hope the entourage getting back from the latest round of climate talks in Cancun are also in the mood for simplicity. What simpler way could there be

There is nothing more profitable for the banks than confusion about what they do. As long as they keep talking about acronyms no one has heard of and financial theories that no one understands, they can continue the enormously profitable business of borrowing money at low rates and lending it at high rates. This year

Australia’s banks seem to have embraced the credo that if you are going to tell a lie, you might as well tell a big one. One of the biggest is that when the Reserve Bank lifts official interest rates, the banks have no choice but to pass on the rate rise in full to their

Wouldn’t it be funny if we spent so long arguing about what to do about climate change that we ran out of cheap oil first? No, it wouldn’t really, it would be catastrophic. But given the government’s delay in producing an Energy White Paper and the steady backsliding on the need to actually reduce our

Political power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. The second the Commonwealth Government began to vacate the policy stage the state and territory governments began to pour in. It’s a good thing too. The first shot in this new battle between the states and the Commonwealth came from John Brumby. And what a shot it was.

The most boring election campaign in living memory has delivered the most interesting election result since World War II. While the major parties, and many of the commentators, are struggling to figure out what it all means, the result is actually quite simple to interpret. Australia’s voters do not think that either the ALP or

Despite the prosaic origins of our constitution, many of us still treasure the right to vote. We might feel we have little influence over government decision-making, but at least we get a chance to pronounce judgement every three years. Except that we don’t – not like we used to. Because in this election, the voice

Don’t you just love the banks? They just give and give and give. In fact, they are so generous that, according to a recent survey by The Australia Institute, more than half of Australians who do not have a job received unsolicited offers of credit cards last year. Offering money to people in their time

The problem with modern elections is that they are designed to actively prevent community debate about the big issues. It is not an accident, it is not the media’s fault (well not entirely), and it is not the fault of new technology and the 24- hour news cycle. It is simply the consequence of two

Big business loves rapid population growth for the simple reason that they profit from having more potential customers. Governments seem to love rapid population growth because they benefit from having more taxpayers. But neither big business nor government wants to invest in the essential infrastructure that all those extra customers and taxpayers require. While the

In a big Australia, there are more people, more profits. But it’s a lazy way to grow. This opinion piece by Richard Denniss, first published in The Age, argues that population growth should impose obligations on governments to invest in new schools, new hospitals and new public transport.

“Welfare cheat” stories have become a staple for tabloid current affairs programs in Australia. We regularly hear about the scourge of dole bludgers and those in the community who are claiming benefits but appear to be healthy. In fact, the recent Budget announced a crackdown on the disability support pension by overhauling the impairment test.

The Minerals Council of Australia’s advertising campaign against the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) highlights its $80 billion tax payments over the last decade. Eighty billion dollars in the abstract does not really mean much. It has to be related to the mining industry’s profits and compared with other industries. Using the national accounts as

Should Australia increase its population to 36 million? In this era of evidence-based policy, it seems strange that for all the government inquiries that have been held there is yet to be a major scientific, social and economic analysis of the impact of rapid population growth in Australia. While it might be hard to agree

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.

AH, Copenhagen. Never before have so many gathered for so long to achieve so little. In the past year, the government has consistently linked the need to pass the CPRS with the need to get a binding agreement at Copenhagen. Rather than focusing on the real dangers of climate change and the benefits of early

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