-
Economics
- Banking & Finance
- Employment & Unemployment
- Future of Work
- Gender at Work
- Gig Economy
- Industry & Sector Policies
- Inequality
- Infrastructure & Construction
- Insecure & Precarious Work
- Labour Standards & Workers' Rights
- Macroeconomics
- Population & Migration
- Public Sector, Procurement & Privatisation
- Retirement
- Science & Technology
- Social Security & Welfare
- Tax, Spending & the Budget
- Unions & Collective Bargaining
- Wages & Entitlements
- Young Workers
- Climate & Energy
- Democracy & Accountability
- Environment
- International & Security Affairs
- Law, Society & Culture
December 2013
Biting the land that feeds you
The New Acland coal mine is a controversial project 157km west of Brisbane, Queensland. It is located next to the township of Acland and 10km from the larger centre of Oakey. The mine is controversial because of its location in an agricultural area and the impacts it has on the local community, farms and health.
Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project Submission
The Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project is a proposal to mine up to 60 million tonnes per year of thermal coal from the Galilee Basin in Queensland, for export via associated rail and port infrastructure. As the project will have a major impact on the local and potentially global environment, an environmental impact statement,
November 2013
SUBMISSION: The MRRT should not be abolished
Submission to the Senate Inquiry into Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013.
Is fracking good for your health?
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Australia needs to change the way it uses energy and many of those changes will be taking place over the next decade. Our current reliance on coal is unsustainable, while Australia’s considerable reserves of unconventional gas – tight, shale and coal seam gas (CSG) – are raising controversy after being
Warkworth Consent Modification 6
In November 2013 The Australia Institute made a submission on the application to modify the consent conditions of Rio Tinto’s Warkworth mine, near Singleton in the Hunter Valley, NSW. This modification allows the mine to expand into areas that the Land and Environment Court had disallowed, as the economic benefits of doing so did not
October 2013
What Australians don’t know about CSG
Coal seam gas (CSG) is a controversial way of extracting natural gas. While many Australians hold strong views against it, a surprising number are only vaguely aware of the issue. In addition to feeling generally uninformed, many people also express unease about CSG because of the controversy surrounding it. A survey conducted by The Australia
August 2013
Coal and gas mining in Australia
Mining has always been an important part of the Australian economy. What has changed is the unprecedented scale and pace of its expansion. This is already irrevocably altering the Australian landscape and affecting food production, water security and communities across the nation. The coal seam gas fields approved to date in Queensland will cover tens
July 2013
$2.9 billion CSG surcharge
Gladstone’s manufacturing industry is likely to pay up to $2.9 billion more for gas over the next 10 years than it otherwise would have, as a result of gas exports from Curtis Island.This is on top of the impacts of the resource boom already being felt by the region’s manufacturing industry, including the high Australian
Logging or carbon credits
For several decades, the alternative commercial and economic uses and management of Australia’s native forests have generated considerable debate. In the past five years, this debate has sharpened as the native forest sector has contracted in response to increased competition in international and domestic wood product markets. New carbon markets are also emerging that could
Cooking up a price rise
Gas prices in eastern Australia are going to rise substantially. These price rises are not driven by a lack of supply but rather by an increase in demand. Once the eastern Australian gas market is connected to the world gas market, domestic gas producers will be able to sell at the world netback price –
June 2013
Climate of the Nation 2013: Australian attitudes on climate change
The Climate Institute has been measuring the ebbs and flows of Australian attitudes to climate change and its solutions through its Climate of the Nation research and reports since 2007.
Pouring more fuel on the fire
The federal government is pouring an extra half a billion dollars into taxpayer-funded subsidies to the mining industry, research by The Australia Institute has found. The Institute’s new paper Pouring more fuel on the fire reveals the booming sector has been propped up even further over the past year and now receives $4.5 billion from
April 2013
Electricity and privatisation: what happened to those promises?
Electricity prices are a major contributor to cost of living pressures and a major cause of concern for Australian consumers. While the carbon tax has recently been depicted as the main culprit in electricity price increases, electricity prices have been increasing rapidly for the past two decades. The cost of electricity increased by 170 per
February 2013
Still beating around the bush
Since the beginning of the mining boom Australia’s rural sector has lost $61.5 billion in export income. This includes $18.9 billion in 2011-12 alone. These losses have occurred because the mining boom has forced the Australian dollar to historic highs. The damage the mining boom is doing to other sectors has created what has been
December 2012
Tasmanian Forest Agreement 2012: Who is the winner?
On 22 November 2012, the timber industry and environmental non-government organisations released the Tasmanian Forest Agreement 2012 (TFA). The agreement includes a number of components, the most significant of which are the support for the creation of an additional 504,012 ha of forest reserves, a reduction in the high quality sawlog guarantee from 300,000 m3
Carbon credits from Western Australia’s multiple use public native forests: a first pass assessment
The object of this report was to analyse the carbon credits that could be generated by stopping all harvesting in the public native forests covered by the Conservation Commission of Western Australia’s Draft Forest Management Plan 2014-2023 (FMP forests). These forests cover an area of ~850,000 ha and have produced 300,000-500,000 m3 yr-1 of logs
November 2012
Beating around the bush
Summary Since the beginning of the mining boom Australia’s rural sector has lost $43.5 billion in export income. This includes $14.9 billion in 2010-11 alone. These losses have occurred because the mining boom has forced the Australian dollar to historic highs. The damage the mining boom is doing to other sectors has created what has
August 2012
Measuring Fugitive Emissions: Is coal seam gas a viable bridging fuel?
With increasing awareness of the dangers of climate change, the world is hunting for other forms of power generation that produce lower emissions of greenhouse gas. While gas is not a zero emissions energy source, it has come to be seen by some as a ‘bridging fuel’. In Australia an increasingly important source of gas
James Price Point: An economic analysis of the Browse LNG project
The Western Australian government together with Woodside proposes to build the Browse LNG precinct on James Price Point in the Kimberley region of Western Australia (WA). The evidence to support the state government’s claim that the precinct will deliver economic benefits is virtually non-existent. Indeed, a close reading of the scant evidence that is available
June 2012
Climate of the Nation 2012: Australian attitudes on climate change
This Spotlight Report provides an objective benchmark of attitudes to the issue of climate change in 2012 in Australia and a rigorous analysis, qualitative and quantitative, of the pros and cons of climate change and its solutions.
May 2012
Submission on Arrow Energy’s Gladstone LNG Plant proposal
Arrow Energy plans to build a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant in Gladstone to export coal seam gas (CSG) from its reserves in the Surat and Bowen Basins. This construction project is proposed to occur at the same time as a large number of other projects in Gladstone such as the Yarwun Alumina Refinery Expansion,
April 2012
Pouring Fuel on the Fire
The mining industry is receiving substantial assistance from Australian taxpayers worth more than $4 billion per year in subsidies and concessions from the Federal Government alone. Amazingly, this is at a time when the industry is earning record profits. Significantly, these subsidies and tax concessions do not even include the cost of providing the mining
Too much of a good thing? The macroeconomic case for slowing down the mining boom
The Australian mining boom has been driven by rapidly rising world commodity prices. Put simply, the world is now willing to pay much higher prices for our coal, iron ore, gold and other resources than they were 10 years ago. For example, gold prices have risen from about 400 $US/ounce in 2004 to about 1600
March 2012
Job creator or job destroyer: An analysis of the mining boom in Queensland
On the back of record high commodity prices the mining industry in Australia is experiencing an unprecedented period of expansion. The value of our mineral exports has increased to the point where they now make up more than half of the value of all our exports. This increase combined with the huge inflow of capital
February 2012
CSG economic modelling
Santos is planning to mine the coal seam gas reserves of North West New South Wales and, as elsewhere with coal seam gas projects, has encountered substantial local opposition. Action groups such as ‘Save Liverpool Plains’ and ‘Lock The Gate Alliance’ have initiated lobbying and protest action. However, Santos has recently released a report entitled
December 2011
An analysis of the economic impacts of the China First mine
The proposal by Waratah Coal to build one of the world’s largest coal mines which will transport its coal through the Great Barrier Reef, in the middle of a mining boom, and at a time when the world is attempting to reduce greenhouse gasses has obviously not been without some controversy. However, despite the obvious
November 2011
Carbon Bloating: The unintended consequences of giving away free permits to big polluters
The Gillard Government recently passed legislation which will, for the first time in Australia, see big polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions through a price on carbon. While the introduction of a carbon price will not in itself drive a substantial reduction in Australia’s emissions, it does begin to build the necessary policy infrastructure
September 2011
Mining the truth: The rhetoric and reality of the commodities boom
“The future is in our hands, and it will be defined by the way we handle the current minerals boom. Get it wrong, and we falter. Get it right, and we set the nation up for decades to come.” Prime Minister, the Hon. Julia Gillard The Australian economy, like all modern economies, is diverse and
August 2011
Mining Australia’s productivity
The recent debate about productivity trends in Australia has revolved around the reported decline in labour productivity growth. For example, the new Secretary of the Treasury, Dr Martin Parkinson recently stated: “Australia’s productivity growth, measured in terms of both labour productivity and multifactor productivity, has slowed, and there is little reason to believe it will