The Commonwealth government has tabled its budget for the 2021-22 financial year. The government is counting on a vigorous and sustained burst of consumer spending by Australian households to drive the post-COVID recovery. Yet the budget itself concedes that the main sources of income to finance expanded consumer spending (namely, wages and income supports) will remain weak or even contract. As shown in the Centre for Future Work’s analysis of the budget, these two dimensions of the budget are fundamentally incompatible.

Key results The Australia Institute surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Australians about their attitudes towards tax and budget priorities. The results show that most Australians agree with positive statements about taxation, and would prefer additional government spending to tax cuts or deficit reduction. Seven in ten (69%) Australians agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes’

Implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety will require additional Commonwealth funding of at least $10 billion per year, and there are several revenue tools which the government could use to raise those funds. While the Royal Commission’s 148 recommendations were not explicitly costed, the Centre’s report shows that

The Australia Institute surveyed a representative sample of 511 South Australians about voluntary assisted dying (VAD) in February of 2021.

Australia’s electricity industry constitutes a large and critical component of our national economic infrastructure. The industry produces $25 billion per year in value- added. It employs around 50,000 Australians, paying out $6 billion per year in wages and salaries. It makes $45 billion in annual purchases from a diverse and far-reaching supply chain, that provides the sector with inputs ranging from resources to equipment to construction to services.

The Australia Institute surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,004 Australians about their attitudes towards free and universal childcare.

Budget policy has traditionally advantaged men over women. This paper makes seven recommendations on how to improve women’s economic security and use the budget as a tool to reduce gender inequality.

In 2020-21, Australian Federal and state governments provided a total of $10.3 billion worth of spending and tax breaks to assist fossil fuel industries. The $7.8 billion cost of the fuel tax rebate alone is more than the budget of the Australian Army. Over the longer term, $8.3 billion is committed to subsidising gas extraction,

New research from the Australia Institute Tasmania finds most Tasmanians (63%) want to suspend the expansion of salmon farms in Tasmania, expressing widespread (63.5%) concern that the health of Tasmania’s coastal waters is declining. More than one in two (56.3%) Tasmanians agree the Tasmanian Government is not doing enough to protect the health of our oceans.

What is the Federal Government’s Gas-Fired Recovery Plan? At its most base level it appears to be a series of taxpayer subsidies to export-focused gas companies. The process for allocating these subsidies is secretive, with no publicly available criteria, or even policy documents answering many of the basic questions of what the plan is aiming

The Senate Select Committee on Job Security was appointed 10 December 2020, to inquire into and report on the impact of insecure or precarious employment on the economy, wages, social cohesion and workplace rights and conditions. This includes the extent of insecure and precarious employment in Australia, the impacts of COVID-19 with respect to job precarity and insecurity, the digitally-mediated ‘gig’ economy, and other matters. The Centre for Future Work has made a submission to the Select Committee.

The majority of voters (57.4%) in the NSW state seat of Upper Hunter support former PM Malcolm Turnbull’s call for a moratorium on new coal mine approvals and a remediation plan for existing mines for the Hunter Valley. The Australia Institute surveyed a nationally representative sample of 686 residents in the NSW state seat of

Modelling from the Centre for Social Research and Methods on income, wealth and gender distribution of negative gearing, CGT discount, super tax concessions and excess franking credits shows that these tax concessions overwhelmingly benefit high-income, high-wealth men.

23 new coal projects are proposed in NSW, with total production capacity equivalent to 15 Adani-sized mines. Ten Adanis’ worth of these projects are proposed for the Upper Hunter. Local and international factors mean not all of these projects can proceed. A moratorium should be placed on new coal approvals while a coherent regional planning framework is developed for the Hunter. This framework should be based around a world with net zero emissions in 2050.

In March 2020, the Government lifted almost half a million Australians (470,000) out of poverty, including 75,000 children, by introducing the coronavirus supplement worth $550 per fortnight.

The Australia Institute welcomes the opportunity to make a submission on the COAG Reform Fund Amendment (No Electric Vehicle Taxes) Bill 2020 (the No EV Tax Amendment).

This briefing note presents data on the gendered composition of the employment recovery since May. It shows women’s jobs returned on a more part-time and casualised basis than for men, and that the influx of women’s lower-earning jobs widened the gender pay gap between May and November 2020. While women were more likely to lose

A study of 33 OECD countries shows that Australia could substantially lift its unemployment payments without any meaningful disincentives for working. The Government has argued that Australia’s internationally low unemployment payments are needed, in part as an incentive to encourage the unemployment to look for and accept work. This briefing note tests the Government’s theory

Gas companies operating in Australia have announced major job cuts through the pandemic. ABS Labour Force figures show that average employment in oil and gas extraction has declined by over 10% from 2019 to 2020, despite record production. If all Australian industries had responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with equivalent job cuts, Australia would have

The Australia Institute made a submission to the “Rapid Assessment Framework” consultation, a process to reform parts of the NSW planning process.

In December 2020, the Senate of Australia launched an important inquiry into the federal government’s proposed Fair Work Amendment Bill.

Core features of the legislation include clarifying and expanding employer power to hire workers on a casual basis, obtain greater flexibility in the use of permanent part-time workers (adjusting hours up or down without penalty, much like casual workers), and exercise greater unilateral wage-fixing influence in enterprise agreement (EA)-making.

The federal government’s omnibus Industrial Relations bill proposes sweeping changes to labour laws which will generally enhance the power of employers to hire workers on a just-in-time basis, and will put further downward pressure on Australian wages (already growing at a record-low rate). One outcome of the bill will be an acceleration of enterprise agreements (EAs) written unilaterally by employers, without negotiation with any union. These non-union EAs will be favoured for several reasons if the omnibus bill is passed: EAs will be exempted from the current Better Off Overall Test, employer-designed EAs will be subject to less scrutiny at the Fair Work Commission, and employers will have less stringent tests to ensure their proposed EAs are genuinely approved by affected workers. All of these changes will lead to a significant increase in employer-designed EAs that reduce compensation and conditions, rather than improving them – signalling a return to the WorkChoices pattern of EA-making.

Australia’s labour market experienced unprecedented volatility during 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting recession. In the first part of the year, employment declined faster and more deeply than in any previous economic downturn, as workplaces were closed to control the spread of infection. Then, after May, employment rebounded strongly. The subsequent recovery has replaced over 80% of the jobs lost in the initial downturn. While considerable ground remains to be covered to complete the employment recovery, the turn-around in the quantity of work has been encouraging.

The Australia Institute surveyed a sample of 1,038 New South Wales residents about their position on whether voluntary assisted dying (VAD) should be available to people with terminal illnesses who are experiencing unrelievable suffering and who ask to die.

The Australia Institute surveyed nationally representative samples of over 1,000 Australians each month from August about what they think the most important national political issue is right now. In every month, more Australians identified the economy as the most important national political issue than any other issue (between 37% and 48%). Health was second-most likely

New research by the Centre for Future Work, commissioned by health care industry super fund HESTA, finds that a planned transition of Australia’s labour market away from fossil fuel jobs could occur without involuntary layoffs or severe disruption to communities—if governments focus on a planned and fair transition. That transition needs to include: a clear, long-term timeline, measures to facilitate inter-industry mobility and voluntary severance as fossil fuels are phased-out, and generous retraining and diversification policies.

A new study on the proposed Mulga Rock uranium mine in Western Australia relies on optimistic price and exchange rate forecasts. Details of claimed cost reductions have not been published, but costs still appear high relative to international competitors.

New research has confirmed that climate change is contributing to the growing problem of heat stress in a wide range of Australian workplaces.

2020 marks the twelfth annual Go Home on Time Day, an initiative of the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute that shines a spotlight on overwork among Australians, including excessive overtime that is often unpaid.