The demise of the Australian car industry does not mark the end of taxpayer assistance in Australia, it marks only the end of highly visible assistance. The free marketeers didn’t win, they only defeated the easy targets. The real rorters not only still grow fat on the public purse, they lead the cheer squad for

Research by The Australia Institute, including modelling commissioned from NATSEM has shown that ending the GST exemptions for private education and health, both of which overwhelmingly benefits higher income earners could net the Government up to $2.3 billion per year. There are a number of ways for the Government to increase revenue, such as winding

New research finds that improved connections with health services for people leaving prison and their families is a critical first step in addressing mental distress and ensuring smooth reintegration into the community.  Unlocking Care, a new report from The Australia Institute, finds that the incidence of moderate and severe mental health issues increases after release

The Tasmanian Government is taxing electricity users to prop up the losses that keep bleeding from Forestry Tasmania. Indeed, the $30 million “woodchip levy” funded by Tasmanian business and households is significantly larger than the $22 million annual cost of the Renewable Energy Target that some Tasmanian businesses claim to be so disadvantaged by. Energy

It would be easy to highlight the hypocrisy of the government’s determination to rely on a price signal to reduce GP visits, versus its determination to avoid price signals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But what may look like policy inconsistency is actually a central element of the government’s strategy. Scrapping the carbon price helps

New research from the Australia Institute finds that the health and environmental impacts of wind and solar technologies are far less detrimental than fossil fuels.  Two reports were released today, examining the impacts of, and broad public attitudes toward, wind power and solar energy. They find Australians are overwhelmingly more interested in a future fuelled

Is it OK to break laws that you don’t believe in? Corporate Australia certainly seems to think so. Coles lost a Federal Court battle in June over the definition of “fresh”, when it was discovered their “baked today, sold today” bread range included products made overseas, frozen and transported months earlier. Coles took a slap

Women could be made billions of dollars better off if the Government considered gender issues when formulating the Budget, a new report from The Australia Institute reveals. Released today, The budget’s hidden gender agenda report finds that – in good times and in bad – women are getting a rougher deal than men from budget

Work/life balance worsens under burden of unpaid overtime Millions of Australian workers are losing the battle for better work/life balance due to excessive unpaid overtime and feel they have little control over how to change the situation, new research by The Australia Institute reveals. Released to coincide with today’s national Go Home on Time Day, Walking the

The Queensland government’s decision to pour billions of taxpayer dollars into the Adani coal project in the Galilee basin proves, once and for all, that the mining industry are leaners, not lifters.

On any given day, 2.8 million Australians have little certainty around what time they will finish work.  That’s the equivalent of one in four workers regularly having to juggle their other commitments such as child care, social activities or important appointments, because of the unpredictability of their job. Go Home on Time Day, an initiative

If the Greens and Labor really are concerned about cost of living, they should support the re-indexation of fuel excise in return for a say on how this revenue is spent, writes Richard Denniss for The Drum.

You’d never know it from their behaviour, but the Greens hold 10 seats in the current Senate compared to the Palmer United Party’s three. Their current strategy of voting against virtually everything the Abbott Government announces, including things they actually support, has made them largely irrelevant since the last election. It is hard to think

The Abbott government can’t decide if it wants to tell people how to live their lives or free them to make their own decisions. The Coalition’s education policy, for example, reveals the contradictions between the world views of libertarianism and conservatism that the Coalition claims to represent. For many years, the balancing act has worked.

Divestment By the shrill sound of things, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Australian National University (ANU) had sent its teaching staff on a paid trip to blockade the Pilliga. Jamie Briggs, Minister for Infrastructure, attacked ANU for “damaging” job creation. Christopher Pyne, Minister for Education, called the university “bizarre”. Joe Hockey made similar intonations,

Australia’s richest seven people have more wealth than the bottom 1.73 million households combined. Most people think that’s a problem. Amanda Vanstone, on the other hand, seems to think the bottom 1.73 million should be thankful. “The politics of envy”. This is Amanda Vanstone’s condescending dismissal of concerns over Australia’s rapidly growing gap between its richest and poorest

As the world coal price continues to fall, politicians are asking themselves what the Australian economy will look like by the time the downturn bottoms out.They needn’t look far.Tasmania offers a clear road map for what happens to an economy when the price of a significant export commodity falls.And, most recently, with news the Tasmanian

The Abbott government has proposed a “one stop shop” approach to environmental protection to reduce so-called “green tape” and speed planning. The Commonwealth will no longer have oversight for a wide range of developments and it will be left to state governments to consider the national benefit. No one complains about duplication when it comes

In a democracy, power is the ability to talk crap and get and away with it. And nobody talks more crap than coal companies.  The public think that mining employs far more people than it really does, pays far more tax than it really does, and that it kept Australia out of recession during the

Richard debated Stephen Galilee, the head of the NSW Minerals Council on 7.30 NSW regarding their recent attack on our research into mining subsidies. This material sheds light both on our approach to our research and the disingenuous approach taken by the NSW Minerals Council.

Facts are so last century. The secretary of the NSW Treasury thinks we have a shortage of electricity and we are in danger of an electricity price explosion. The Commonwealth Minister for Industry, Ian Macfarlane, on the other hand, believes we have an “oversupply” of electricity generation capacity, and that electricity prices are unsustainably low.

The austere measures contained in the proposed Commonwealth budget have been justified by fears that Australia’s public debt is expanding rapidly and dangerously, and must be arrested through a dramatic change in fiscal policy. These fears are misplaced. Australia does not face any present or imminent debt crisis. Australia’s deficit and accumulated debt are both

The Australian Institute says the Minerals Council members – the large, mostly foreign-owned, mining companies – should explain the attacks on The Australia Institute. The Minerals Council has claimed that The Australia Institute is being directed by a political party. This is untrue and defamatory. The Minerals Council should immediately desist from making such claims

For American presidents, the ‘State of the Union’ address provides a once in a year opportunity to set out a plan for the direction the country needs to take and the policies required to get it there. The closest Australian governments get is the annual budget speech, and that is provided by the treasurer, not

Many may have bemoaned the dominance of “economic rationalists”, but I’m beginning to miss them. Sure, they often used simplistic and narrow assumptions to justify a wide range of bad ideas but, compared to the economic irrationalists dominating today’s policy debates, at least they were willing to have a fight with vested interests. The economic

The hypocrisy of Joe Hockey’s call for big business to make the case for his economic reforms is breathtaking. His government’s signature economic ”reform” was to rip up a perfectly good carbon tax. The Prime Minister and Treasurer rightly bet that business groups would sit silently by while this populist policy destruction took place. But

Tony Abbott’s problems with the Senate are only just beginning. The black eye the Palmer United Party gave him on his carbon and mining tax repeal is nothing compared to the body blow he will receive when the major policy initiatives announced in the budget, initiatives that weren’t mentioned during the election campaign, hit the

The Liberals will tell you that they don’t like telling people how to live their lives. Indeed they regularly tell us that individuals, not governments, are best placed to make decisions about what is in their own best interest. But, like successive ALP and Coalition governments, Tony Abbott and his team are big fans for

Just as introducing the carbon tax didn’t really drive the cost of a leg of lamb to $100, removing it isn’t really going to have any noticeable impact on the cost of living. Supermarkets are adamant they didn’t increase prices when the carbon price came in, and they are just as adamant they won’t cut

It’s much easier to solve imaginary problems than real ones, which explains why the current Government is highly concerned about low levels of debt, and relaxed about high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Since 1950 our national debt has fallen from 100 per cent to 14 per cent of GDP. Our greenhouse gas emissions have