By Richard Denniss, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute. [Read in The Australian Financial Reiew here] Confidence is silent and insecurities are loud. How else could you explain Sky TV commentator Rowan Dean’s need to credit “Western values” for the Thai junior soccer team’s successful rescue? In case you missed Dean’s comments – because, like most

By Richard Denniss, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute [View article in the Canberra Times here] Confidence is silent and insecurities are loud. How else could you explain Sky TV commentator Rowan Dean’s need to credit ‘‘Western values’’ for the Thai junior soccer team’s successful rescue? In case you missed Dean’s comments – because, like

Australians rate the ABC as increasingly important in an age of ‘fake news’ and social media new research shows. The Australia Institute commissioned a poll of 1,557 people which was conducted by Research Now between 27 March and 7 April 2018. Key results: Majority (68%) of respondents think the ABC is more important in an

By Richard Denniss, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute [Read in the Sydney Morning Herald here] Economic rationalism and neoliberalism are dead in Australia. In an unexpected twist, the idea that markets are good and governments are bad was killed by the right wing of Australian politics, who simply couldn’t resist the desire to shovel

A new national poll, conducted by The Australia Institute, has found a majority of Australians support placing a strict limit on the maximum salary for CEOs or executive staff, with four out of five saying CEOs are paid too much. The poll follows a report by The Australia Institute that showed ten years on from

After years of decline, Australia’s manufacturing industry is finally recovering – adding almost 50,000 jobs in the last year, one of the best job-creation records of any sector in the whole economy. But that recovery could be cut short by growing shortages of skilled workers, according to a new report on vocational training in manufacturing.

New Australia Institute analysis of stage three of the government’s income tax plan show high-income earners will get 95% of the benefit, while three-quarters of taxpayers get no benefit at all. Today the Senate has rejected stage 3 of the government’s income tax plan, which removes the 37 per cent tax bracket completely, resulting in

The Australia Institute commissioned ReachTEL to conduct a survey of 1,031 residents across the federal electorate of Mayo on the evening of 5 June 2018.  The poll included a question about funding for the ABC. The results are released today. Key results: 74% of respondents think funding for the ABC should be increased or stay the

On Monday 18 June, The Australia Institute, Australia21 and the former Treasurer, the Hon Wayne Swan MP, are jointly hosting a roundtable discussion in Parliament House on dealing with economic inequality in Australia. A new report from The Australia Institute, released as part of the Inequality Roundtable, shows inequality is getting worse in Australia with

New polling released by The Australia Institute today shows that a majority of voters support key recommendations put forward in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It has been one year since the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a declaration by the 2017 First Nations national Constitutional Convention. The Australia Institute surveyed 1417 Australians in

Budget proposes Australia’s progressive tax system be overhauled to put majority of workers on the same tax rate. [Report – see PDF below] The Australia Institute has issued a briefing paper which modelled the distributionary effects of the proposal, showing the benefits flow overwhelmingly to the highest income earners who get 62%, while just 7%

Reported moves to expanded the under-utilised Pension Loan Scheme (PLS) to allow pensioners access to the scheme would be a welcome budget breakthrough. “This is sensible economic reform which will allow those on the aged pension to effectively access some of the value of their home without having to sell it,” said Ben Oquist, Australia

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

First published in The Examiner, 15 April 2018 By 2050, everyone everywhere will have the right to thrive. (Yep, utopia). All communities are changing all the time.  The future of our Tasmanian community is not like a book that has already been written, each chapter is emergent & authorship is our collective responsibility. The narrative

First published in The Examiner, 28 March 2018 On Tuesday, The Australia Institute Tasmania launched a new initiative cheekily titled #WTF2050 – What’s Tasmania’s Future?  The project brings together some of the state’s best thinkers to answer the question –  where do you want Tasmania to be in 2050? What’s your big hairy goal and

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