Submission to Senate Standing Committees on Economics inquiry into the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Accountability and Fairness) Bill 2023 [Provisions].

Despite the claims to the contrary by the Northern Territory government, development of the Beetaloo Basin’s gas resources will be of little benefit to Territorians. Modelling used by the NT government itself shows that the development of the Beetaloo Basin will not diversify the NT economy, aid the transition to net zero emissions, provide cheap

New research confirms that corporate profits in Australia, despite recent moderation, remain well above historic norms, and must fall further in order to allow a rebuilding of real wages in Australia that have been badly damaged by recent inflation.

Avoiding the worst impacts of climate change demands urgent action. This urgency ought to be driven by fulsome and transparent information. Current economic modelling by the CCA could be an important contribution to this task, if done properly and shared with all.

The Australia Institute made a submission to the Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications’ inquiry into the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023. The Australian Government has provided no economic or environmental justification for the proposed Nature Repair Market (NRM). Instead, it has repeatedly referred to, and quoted figures from, a report by consultants PwC

Australia’s light duty vehicle fleet is among the least fuel efficient in the world, using 24% more fuel per kilometre travelled than the UK. If the UK’s modest standards could be met here, Australian drivers would save $13 billion a year in fuel costs and overall transport emissions would be 17% lower.

If NSW had adopted Queensland’s progressive coal royalty system in 2021-22 it would have raised an additional $2.8 billion. For 2022-23 this figure is estimated at between $4.2 billion and $6.2 billion.

Australian coal export revenue increased by $73b, or 186% in 2021-22. Between $21b and $39b of this is directly attributable to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Biased inputs, questionable assumptions, and the misleading presentation of model results lead to overinflated estimates of the economic impacts of the closure of the ABCC

Labour costs have played an insignificant role in the recent increase in inflation, accounting for just 15 percent of economy wide price increases while profits have played an overwhelming role, accounting for about 60 percent of recent inflation.

The Australian retail, financial, and online advertising markets are all highly concentrated in Australia. As the last 20 years of attempts to increase competition in these sectors has shown, there is no silver bullet to address the market power of dominant firms in Australia. That said, there is clear consensus that new firms, and new

Firms like Woolworths would have still seen profit growth if they paid all of their workers a five percent pay rise and did not increase prices.

Wage growth played no significant role in the recent surge in inflation and, as the analysis shows, maintaining real wages across the entire economy as distinct from merely maintaining the minimum wage in real terms would have a trivial impact on the price level even if firms seek to recoup all of a nominal wage rise as further price increases.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg have stated repeatedly that their government’s approach to stimulus spending in the wake of the covid crisis was for ‘temporary and targeted’ measures to boost economic activity in the short term without creating ‘structural pressure’ on the budget. For example, in announcing first of three stimulus packages

The Coalition government has committed $7.4 billion to the construction of new dams and water infrastructure in Australia, the vast majority of which will be spent in North Queensland even though only 1.1% percent of Australians live in that region and 97 percent of agricultural production occurs outside of that region.

Proposals to halve the beer excise would cost around a billion dollars over the next five years and undermine policies to reduce the abuse of alcohol.

The Morrison Government’s ‘technology not taxes’ approach to climate change policy is little more than new branding for an old strategy – a strategy pioneered by the Howard Government back in the 1990s. Rather than introduce a carbon price, mandatory energy efficiency standards or restrictions of fossil fuel consumption or extraction, the Howard Government pursued

The Morrison Government has released a ‘whole of economy plan’ to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. While they are yet to reveal the underlying economic modelling on which the plan was based, it is still possible to consider the plausibility of the results of the modelling even when the assumptions behind the modelling remain

While it has been widely rumoured that the cost of securing National Party support for Scott Morrison’s commitment to net zero could be up to $20 billion in in budget spending for projects in National Party seats, the real cost of the deal is, according to an analysis of various recent climate change modelling done

Rarely, if ever, has an Australian Prime Minister relied on statistical modelling as heavily as Scott Morrison. Modelling by the Doherty Institute is the sole piece of evidence on which the Prime Minister has formed the view that it is ‘safe’ to significantly reduce the social distancing measures that have helped Australia keep its death

The effectiveness of TTIQ is likely to be dependent upon case numbers, but current modelling does not take this into account. As cases rise to unplanned levels, current TTIQ assumptions undermine Doherty modelling of Phase 2.

The latest Intergenerational Report (IGR 2021) reveals that the Treasury Department is more pessimistic about the medium-term outlook for productivity growth in 2021 than when they released the 2015 IGR. In fact, the IGR 2021 reveals Treasury currently believes that none of the Coalition Government’s major reforms introduced since 2015 have had any impact on

Budget incentives to increase investment are expensive, poorly targeted and will do little to improve productivity

Since the middle of 2020, the Australian economy has recovered strongly. By many measures, the recovery to pre-COVID levels looks to be almost complete. But have the gas and gas processing sectors had much to do with it? An analysis of the data suggests the gas industry effectively made no contribution to the economic recovery,