On 1 July 2018, workers in several retail and hospitality industries will experience a second reduction in the penalty rates they receive for working on Sundays and public holidays.  The reductions were ordered by the Fair Work Commission, and follow an initial reduction imposed on 1 July 2017. Employer representatives argued that by reducing labour

Australia’s manufacturing industry is at a crossroads.  After years of decline, the sector has finally found a more stable economic footing, and many indicators point to an expansion in domestic  manufacturing in the coming years.  Manufacturing added almost 50,000 new jobs in the last year – making it one of the most important sources of

Australian taxpayers have been overcompensated for bracket creep and there is no need for further income tax cuts to reduce its effects. The government uses bracket creep to justify the income tax plan outlined in the 2018 Budget. The government claims that bracket creep is having a negative impact on the economy and income tax

Inequality is getting worse in Australia with the income share of the top 10% growing at the expense of everyone else. On Monday 18 June, The Australia Institute, Australia21 and the former Treasurer, the Hon Wayne Swan MP, jointly hosted a roundtable discussion in Parliament House on dealing with economic inequality in Australia. The report was

This paper examines the government’s 2018 personal income tax proposals by presenting a distributional analysis of the tax cuts and then looking at some general tax principles and considerations that we can use to assess the present proposals. We begin in the next section by outlining exactly how the government intends the tax cuts to

The analysis looks at the average change in disposable household income compared to the average change for the whole of Australia in 2024–25, which is the first year the income tax cuts would be fully implemented. The biggest winners from the tax cut are wealthy electorates in Sydney and Melbourne. As shown in Table 1,

This factbook reviews eleven different dimensions of job security in Australia, and documents a clear and multi-faceted deterioration in the overall stability of work in the period from 2012 (the peak of the resources investment boom) to the present.

In the 2018 Budget, the government announced a radical plan to reshape the income tax system over the next seven years. While the first stage of the plan largely involves tax refunds for low and middle income earners, stage two and three would remove the 37 per cent tax bracket – and, as a consequence,

Leading up to the budget there has been a good deal of concern over the status of the NDIS, also known as DisabilityCare Australia. It is important to understand just what is going on and how secure the funding might be.

The centrepiece of the budget is an enormous income tax cut over seven years. This is unusual because the budget papers only show the impacts of policy changes over four years. What is also unusual is that the big parts of the tax cuts start in the fifth year, just outside the budget’s forward estimates

Public sector austerity has become a “policy fad” in Australia, at all levels of government. Its hallmarks are unnecessary public sector wage caps, outsourcing, downsizing, privatisation and the imposition of so-called “efficiency dividends” which allegedly drive productivity growth but in reality cut spending and reduce the quality of public services. These policies of austerity are

Lock the Gate asked The Australia Institute for assistance in estimating the potential employment impacts of increased mine rehabilitation in Queensland. This relates to the Mineral and Energy Resources (Financial Provisioning) Bill currently before the Queensland Parliament. Lock the Gate hope this bill, if passed and implemented, will reduce the mine rehabilitation ‘deficit’ in Queensland:

For at least five years now, Australia’s labour market has demonstrated signs of a structural shift that has undermined traditional patterns of wage determination, and eroded the quality and security of work. The economic and social consequences of this sea change in the world of work are severe and far-reaching: flat real wages (the worst

Promotion of large-scale irrigation in the West Kimberley ignores the lessons of the East Kimberley. Census data shows that despite huge public subsidy in Ord irrigation, the major employers in both regions are health, education and services. Tourism, carbon farming, renewable energy and high-value niche agriculture are also avenues of potential development.Discussion paper

Of the tax cuts in the 2018 Federal Budget, Australian women get half the tax cut of men. New research today by The Australia Institute shows about two thirds of the benefit of the income tax cuts proposed will flow to men, while previous spending cuts have mainly disadvantaged women.

A large post-Budget poll of the division of Longman shows the proposed flat personal tax rates are rated as unfair and company tax cuts remain deeply unpopular among voters due to head to a by-election in the seat of Longman. The Australia Institute commissioned ReachTEL to conduct a survey of 1,277 residents across the federal

The Coalition government’s 2018 budget features a plan to cut personal income taxes for many Australians over the next several years. The government claims it wants to reward lower- and middle-income wage-earners with tax savings.  However, the biggest personal tax reductions would not be experienced until 2022 and beyond (after at least two more federal elections).  And the biggest savings go to those with incomes over $200,000 per year (the richest 3 percent of tax-filers).

A new report from the Australia Institute shows the recently announced 23.9 tax-to-GDP cap is entirely arbitrary, and that a strict tax cap with no policy change will severely limit choices in Government spending. The report shows 23.9 per cent is the average tax-to-GDP ratio between the introduction of the GST and the Global Financial

This report critically responds to the call for fiscal austerity and public sector downsizing, being made in response to the emergence of fiscal deficits in Western Australia (WA). Those deficits arose in the wake of the slowdown in mining activity and corresponding deceleration of employment and economic growth. Many observers immediately conclude that the only

The Community Development Program (CDP) is remote Australia’s Work for the Dole (WFD) and “job assistance” scheme. In place since 2015, it operates across almost 75 percent of Australia’s area, an area with a population of just 304,000 people. Indigenous people are over 80% of the CDP’s 34,000 participants. In other words, CDP participants are

Workers compensation benefits in New South Wales were dramatically reduced in 2012 by a newly-elected state government, citing an alleged financial crisis in the system.  Benefit payments (adjusted for inflation) declined 25 percent in just five years – and some cuts are still being imposed on injured workers and their families (including some losing benefits

A new national poll has asked 1,557 Australians what they think large companies are likely to do with a company tax cut. A majority (61%) of respondents think that increasing worker’s pay would be the very bottom of the list of priorities for large companies receiving a tax cut. 63% think increasing executive pay, and

A large national poll of 1,557 Australians, released today by think tank The Australia Institute, has shown 64% of people want more public spending funded by tax revenue. Just 11% want lower taxes and less public spending. Two-thirds (64%) said they would prefer more public spending, funded by more tax revenue, and less inequality. Only

OECD data shows Australia raises less tax revenue than almost all developed countries [Full report see PDF below] Australia is a low-taxing country. While tax debate in Australia tends to focus on tax rates, with endless comparisons of different countries’ rates of different taxes, these debates ignore the fact that Australia raises far less tax

A new proposal for a portable training system for disability support workers under the NDIS would help to ensure the program achieves its goal of delivering high-quality, individualised services to people with disabilities. The proposal is developed in a new report from the Centre for Future Work. Under the plan, disability support workers would receive

The continuing decline of Australia’s official development assistance Reports suggest that Australia’s aid spending, already at record lows, could be cut further to 0.18% of Australia’s Gross National Income. This would make Australia’s aid contribution proportionately lower than that of Greece. 

The present submission questions the Business Council of Australia’s (BCA) Commitment to increasing investment, employment and wages in the event that the outstanding tax cuts are legislated. We looked specifically at the 10 corporate CEOs who made the commitment on behalf of their companies and found some half of those paid no tax. One wonders what their commitment could possibly mean.