House prices after a brief fall in 2022 rose consistently during 2023 and housing affordability is now as bad as ever

This article originally appeared in The Daily Telegraph, in response to a column that critiqued the call for small cars on our road. You can read the original column via the link below.

On occasion of International Women’s Day, the Centre for Future Work’s Senior Researcher Lisa Heap reviews the opportunities to use recent industrial relations reforms to more ambitiously address Australia’s gender pay gap.

As interest rates have climbed, Australia’s economy has slowed – let us hope the RBA has not stalled it.

Politicians Bob Katter and Andrew Wilkie dressed up as pigs this week in a memorable stunt in Parliament to draw attention to excessive supermarket profits.

Despite soaring production and revenues the gas industry is not paying more tax

The changes to the Stage 3 tax cuts have passed the Senate and will become law.

Australians are paying prices that are too high, too often.

This week, Parliament is set to approve a new set of industrial relations reforms, bundled in the second part of the “Closing Loopholes” bill.

Wednesday 14 February is a big day in Indonesia. The nation goes to the polls, and a new President will be elected. A popular and successful President will be succeeded by one of three candidates, none of whom is especially popular or generates much enthusiasm among voters.

Late yesterday the final part 2 of the government’s Closing Loopholes industrial relations bill was passed by the Senate.

Australia’s Parliament is set to pass a new set of reforms to the Fair Work Act and other labour laws, that would enshrine certain protections for workers against being contacted or ordered to perform work outside of normal working hours. This “Right to Disconnect” is an important step in limiting the steady encroachment of work

Politicians are often accused of backflipping when they change their minds.

On Wednesday, 31 January 2024, Richard Denniss and Allegra Spender MP addressed the National Press Club for a debate on the Stage 3 tax reforms. **Check against delivery** [See below for transcripts] Tax is good. Tax is an investment in our society and the highest taxed countries in the world also happen to be the

Unless minimum employment standards for care and support workers using digital labour platforms are guaranteed, decades of slow progress towards proper recognition of care work and equal pay for women could be undone.

Australians right across the country are calling out for cost-of-living relief, but the government doesn’t want to risk any measures that will increase inflation—keeping interest rates higher for longer, or worse, pushing them up even further.

“Who in God’s name does he think he is?”

The industrial reforms system needs important repairs, writes Dr Fiona Macdonald – no more, no less.

Be it administrative incompetence, secrecy and trickery, the failure of the Morrison government to hand over Cabinet documents about the Iraq War to the National Archives should trigger serious analysis of how Australia enters conflicts, writes Ebony Bennett.

With a Trump resurgence looming, the Australian Government’s fixation on AUKUS should not come at the expense of what we are frequently assured is one of the core components of the US-Australia alliance: shared democratic values, writes Dr Emma Shortis.

With the federal government announcing a desire to double charitable donations by 2030, Stephen Long examines the potential inefficiency & inequity of relying on charities, rather than governments, to provide essential services.

As the anniversary of the Jan 6 insurrection approaches, what are the implications of the crisis of American democracy, or a more successful coup attempt, for the rest of us? With a few important exceptions, there is startlingly little written – in Australia, internationally and even within the United States – on the “what if”

For decades, the Grinch has had a terrible reputation as a Christmas-hating monster who railed against the festivities of the season and stole the townspeople’s presents, food and decorations in an attempt to stamp out the whole technicolour carnival.

It’s a bitter irony.

In the United States, one of the men vying for the presidency faces 91 criminal charges in four concurrent criminal cases.

Labour hire workers can no longer be paid less than employees doing the same job in their workplaces as a result of industrial reforms passed by Parliament. However, other important reforms to close loopholes in employment laws and stop exploitation of workers and avoidance of standards won’t be voted on in Parliament until next year.

Australia has one of the weakest tax systems for redistribution among industrial nations, and as Dr Jim Stanford writes, the Stage 3 tax cuts will make it worse.

As the Budget outlook improves, with most of the benefits of Stage 3 tax cuts going to those earing over $120,000, over 80% of workers will be short-changed

The United Nations Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai has played out like a dystopian satire. Hosted by a petrostate, the official facilitator of the proceedings, Sultan Al Jaber, is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company—if you scripted it, it wouldn’t be believable.

The hydrogen dream has become widespread in the Australian climate conversation: apparently, with it, we’re going to decarbonise Japan, Korea, and the world! Is this ambitious vision a genuine step towards a greener future or merely a diversion from ongoing fossil fuel expansion?