In 1987 Prime Minister Bob Hawke promised that by 1990 no child would live in poverty. While those words have haunted him ever since, a new analysis by The Australia Institute reveals that his government did more to tackle poverty than all subsequent governments. Under the Hawke government, poverty rates dropped when welfare benefits rose

Passage of the Tasmanian Forest Agreement Bill in the state’s lower house effectively ended three years of negotiations between the forestry industry and environment groups. The deal is being celebrated by many as a resolution to the 30-year conflict over native forests in Tasmania and a win for the environment and economy. Nothing could be

QUEENSLAND Premier Campbell Newman has stared down former federal treasurer Peter Costello and he deserves some credit for that. A stocktake of Australia’s electricity now, compared with two decades ago, confirms that the privatisation and corporatisation of the sector has been a massive failure. An analysis of the sector since Victoria privatised power in the

Australia spends more on subsidies to the booming mining industry than it would cost to increase the Newstart Allowance by $50 per week, a new analysis by The Australia Institute reveals. The analysis shows that Australia has the least generous unemployment benefit in the developed world, falling behind countries such as Germany, Spain, America and

Electricity privatisation has failed to deliver cheaper power to consumers and has not improved the sector’s efficiency, a new analysis by The Australia Institute has found. The analysis shows that since Victoria privatised power in the 1990s, electricity prices have outpaced inflation, increasing by 170 per cent compared with an increase of 60 per cent

The Australian native forest sector has been in decline for the past two decades and all but fallen off a cliff since the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008. The forestry lobby has tried to lay the lion’s share of the blame for its predicament at the feet of the environmental movement,

What is the corporate equivalent of a dole bludger? For all the talk about class warfare in Australia it is interesting that the conservatives have a pejorative name for individuals who need support from the state but progressives don’t even have a term for the foreign companies that make huge profits but still have their

The Australia Institute today called for the release of Treasury modelling on the relative cost of the age pension and tax concessions for superannuation over the coming decade. Speaking today at the National Press Club Executive Director Dr Richard Denniss said that until the Treasury releases this modelling neither the government nor the opposition can

In New Zealand, cabinet documents are routinely released soon after cabinet has made a decision. In fact, the New Zealand guide for accessing cabinet documents states explicitly that the need for public servants to provide “frank and fearless” advice is not a reason to keep cabinet submissions secret. Where many Australian public servants might react

Today’s announcement by Treasurer Wayne Swan will not fundamentally alter the incredible inequity that lies at the heart of the tax treatment of superannuation, according to The Australia Institute. The Institute’s Executive Director, Dr Richard Denniss, said not only did the government fail to go after the top one per cent of income earners, his

Tony Abbott’s Direct Action Plan has been ridiculed by many as expensive and unworkable. One of the primary objections has been that the centrepiece of the policy, the Emissions Reduction Fund, is a baseline-and-credit scheme that will require counterfactual baselines to be set for every participating polluter. The baseline for a given polluter will be

Facts Fight Back Dr Richard Denniss Foreign aid works Tim Costello Getting the research that matters to the people who matter Mark Ogge The truth about the gender pay gap Anne Summers A culture of resistance Kerrie Tucker Trouble with childcare David Baker Paid to pollute Matt Grudnoff Big business in Australia David Richardson Early

More than one in three families experience difficulties affording childcare despite increased government assistance over the past decade, a new study by The Australia Institute has found. While the government’s two recent announcements have sought to address availability of childcare through more flexible hours and quality through better wages for childcare workers, the Institute’s analysis

Last week, CSR closed a Sydney factory and made 150 people redundant. This was not caused by the carbon price, the mining tax or our industrial relations laws. The simple fact is that the high exchange rate that accompanies our mining boom has made many manufacturers uncompetitive. How much income support should they receive? How

This presentation provides a summary of key findings from research by The Australia Institute into the economic impacts of the mining boom. It gives an overview of the Australian mining sector, including levels of employment, foreign ownership and subsidies, and looks at the consequences of the boom for non-mining industries like agriculture, tourism, manufacturing and

Over the past century thousands of generous Australians have died and left some or all of their estate in a “perpetual trust” to be used for philanthropic goals. But most of the “perpetual trustees” have not been as long-lived as the funds they were managing and many funds were bought up by larger financial institutions

The fact that Gina Rinehart inherited billions of dollars apparently means that people earning $150,000 a year are entitled to feel average. The average income for an employed person in Australia is $58,375.20 a year. The median is $50,076. $150,000 a year is a lot of money. It is not average, it is not middle,

Australian farmers have lost $61.5 billion in export income since the mining boom pushed the Australian dollar to historic highs, a new analysis by The Australia Institute reveals. Still beating around the bush: The continuing impacts of the mining boom on rural exports examines the rural sector’s export income from the beginning of the mining

The government’s obsession with speeding up the mining boom has delivered an exchange rate and a shortage of skilled labour that is devastating the manufacturing industry. Rather than take its foot off the mining boom accelerator or admit that the miners’ boom means a bust for manufacturers, the government is trying to buy itself some

The Australia Institute (TAI) has been researching the economic impacts of mining activity in Australia. This document provides a brief summary of key facts and links to TAI research papers, policy briefs and submissions currently available online. Key facts Mining ‘crowds out’ other industries: The expansion of mining causes a contraction in non-mining industries, particularly

The rapid expansion in the mining industry over the past decade has done more harm than good to Geelong’s economy. Mining has created virtually no jobs in Geelong and has induced a high exchange rate that is crippling Geelong’s manufacturing industry with more than 1 in 8 manufacturing jobs lost over the past six years.

Twenty years of government inaction could lead to curable illnesses like tonsillitis again becoming a massive threat to human health, as the rise of anti-microbial resistant bacteria (aka “the superbug”) threatens to take us back to our pre-antibiotic era, a new paper by The Australia Institute reveals. Culture of Resistance: Australia’s response to the inappropriate

A new analysis by The Australia Institute, a public policy think tank, reveals that over the past decade tourism to Far North Queensland has slumped on the back of the mining boom driving up the Australian dollar. The Institute’s Public Engagement Officer Mark Ogge said the analysis shows that over the past ten years global

It’s very difficult to determine what the right rate of population growth should be, but it’s very easy to determine the wrong one. If there are no spare seats on the trains, no spare beds in the hospitals and no room on the roads then we aren’t ready for the anticipated net migration of 1

‘Mums and dads’ seem to be replacing ‘working families’ as the focus of political concern in Australia. The biggest problem with last week’s hoax media release about Whitehaven Coal, many argued, was its impact on ”mum and dad investors”. The language of mum and dad investors is as widely used as it is meaningless. Gina

The native forest and forest product industries contribute a miniscule amount to the Australian economy (in the order of 0.15% to 0.20% of GDP). Despite this, it has dominated the minds and energies of many politicians and environmental policy makers for decades. Among other things, it helped spark the emergence of the environmental movement in

The Climate Change Authority’s final report on the renewable energy target, which was released yesterday, contains a number of controversial conclusions and recommendations. A standout amongst these is the recommendation that the federal government explore whether making native forest wood waste eligible to participate in the large-scale RET (LRET) would increase the rate of harvesting

This edition of The Australia Institute’s newsletter features: All I want for Christmas …. David Baker The clash between coal and conservation Paola Cassoni Beating around the bush Matt Grudnoff Income and wealth distribution in Australia David Richardson 10th Henry Parkes Oration Prof George Williams And homelessness marches on …. Alison Laird The one early

Our two-speed economy has a two-tiered tax system, with capital-intensive mining companies paying among the lowest rates of corporate tax and the labour-intensive service sector paying among the highest. All companies face the same nominal 30 per cent tax on income but the existence of accelerated depreciation and other tax concessions deliver disproportionately for the

While Australia’s ‘big four’ banks claim to be fiercely competitive a new analysis by The Australia Institute shows that in fact over 53 per cent of each bank is owned by the same small number of institutional shareholders. The rise and rise of the big banks by Senior Research Fellow David Richardson examines the top