Based on the way they talk about the proposed income tax cuts, the average Turnbull government MP struggles with the definition of average. To be fair, averages can be a bit confusing. For example, the average Australian has less than two legs (as the number of people with one leg far exceeds the number of people

Bracket creep is as maligned as it is misunderstood. Indeed, it can even be a good thing. But while most people probably know that bracket creep refers to people getting tipped into higher marginal tax rates as their wages rise, few seem to realise that there is good bracket creep and bad bracket creep. But before I explain

Peter Dutton’s best argument for Australia to lower its annual immigration intake is one word: Sydney. Australia’s largest city has been made crowded, slow, expensive and unproductive by decades of unplanned immigration. [This article was first published in the Australian Financial Review – here] Anyone planning an event knows that it makes a lot more

In its desperation to cut the company tax rate the Turnbull government is willing to burden future generations with the kind of record budget deficits it has previously sought to pin on the ALP. As an economic strategy it makes little sense but as a political strategy it makes no sense. Indeed the PM seems so keen

All poor people have low taxable incomes, but many people with low taxable incomes are a long way from being poor. [First published in the Australian Financial Review – here] And while the debate about the fairness of abolishing cash refunds for “spare” tax credits has conflated poor people and those with good accountants, the two groups

I’m proud that The Australian Financial Review thinks that my colleague Ben Oquist and I ran a “well-orchestrated thought campaign” against the BCA’s call for a $65 billion tax cut, but, to be honest, defeating it in that debate wasn’t difficult. [First published by the Australian Financial Review – here] Indeed, while Aaron Patrick’s piece titled “How company tax

The word “ideology” has a bad name these days but, as we are beginning to see, it is surprisingly hard to govern a country without one. Take, for example, the ideology of small government often associated with conservative governments like that of Mr Turnbull’s. [First published by the Australian Financial Review – here] Last week

Just as many politicians choose to ignore the evidence of criminologists when designing crime prevention policy, the majority of Australian politicians choose to ignore economic evidence in the design of Australian energy policy. That’s OK. There’s no mention of role of evidence in the Australian Constitution and there’s no obligation on parliamentarians to base policy

Three years after Campbell Newman suffered the biggest swing in Australian political history, the Liberal National Party (LNP) just lost another 8 per cent of Queensland voters. [This article was first published in the Australian Financial Review – here] Remarkably, senior conservatives are already demanding greater distance between their party and the vast majority of voters

he Adani coal mine is the most divisive resource project since the proposal to dam Tasmania’s Franklin River in 1983. The debate over whether to subsidise it even more so. But thanks to Annastasia Palaszczuk’s last-minute decision to veto any Commonwealth loan to the project, the voters of Queensland are now being offered a full range of policy positions

Is the purpose of being in government primarily to keep the opposition from doing it? The Coalition is now in its fifth year in power, yet it spends more time blaming Labor for the country’s problems than spelling out its own plans to improve Australians’ lives. [This article was first published by The Canberra Times

The Australian gas industry’s best hope is the Turnbull government’s worst nightmare; a big increase in world prices for oil and gas. Santos and Origin executives lost billions of their shareholder’s dollars when they bet $60 billion worth of gas export facilities in Gladstone on a world oil price of around $US100. They lost. The

Given the enormous investment in renewable energy taking place in the US and in Europe, other national governments must be determined to drive up the price of their electricity. [First published by the Australian Financial Review – here] Either that, or everything Malcolm Turnbull has been saying about the need to keep a 50-year-old power station going