The change of leadership in China in 2012 brought with it an intensive crackdown on bribery and corruption, both at home and abroad. This has resulted in the downfall of numerous officials, both low and…
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The same deep forces that were behind the election result in Queensland are being played out in Canberra. The Australian people want, although most won’t admit it, higher taxes – either now or in the future…
Though markets had somewhat priced in an Australian interest rate cut yesterday, many analysts and commentators were still left surprised. The rate had not been cut for 18 months. Over that period commentary…
For a number of reasons, now is not a good time to be Australia’s federal treasurer. The resources boom has lost its mojo, the economy is faltering and the dollar is falling along with the terms of trade…
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently commented that if employees “don’t want to work on a weekend, fair enough, don’t work on a weekend … But if you do want to work on a weekend — and lots of…
When the federal government asked the Productivity Commission (PC) to conduct a review into certain aspects of workplace laws, it argued a “root and branch” inquiry was urgently needed. As everyone gears…
There continues to be a lot of discussion about the future of tertiary education in Australia. Should fees be deregulated, places capped, interest on student loans charged at the bond rate? And on, and…
The CAMA RBA Shadow Board is a project by the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, based at the ANU, which asks industry and academic economists what interest rate the Reserve Bank of Australia should…
Coles and Woolworths spent much of 2014 defending their behaviour in court. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) brought several actions against one or both of them throughout the…
With oil prices on the decline, and analysts predicting record profits for the 2014/15 financial year, Qantas and Virgin Australia are under increasing pressure to abolish fuel surcharges and lower their…
It’s no secret that companies including Apple, Google, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb and Ikea seem to pay less than their fair share of tax in Australia. Despite booking huge revenues from sales to Australian customers…
Australia’s federal government has made a major political error, possibly terminal, in asking the Productivity Commission (PC) to inquire into industrial relations. Before the 2013 election, the strategy…
How much debt is Queensland really in? How much of that debt can past Labor governments bear responsibility for, and has the current Liberal National government cut or added to it? And how does Queensland’s…
Since 2009, the economic situation of Greece has helped expose the architecture and policy regime problems of the European Union and the eurozone. On Sunday the Greek electorate rebelled against the self-defeating…
While in Davos representing Australia at the World Economic Forum, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has enthusiastically extolled the virtues of the Global Infrastructure Hub as a way of funding an…
Under Australian law, changes to the GST are said to be not permitted unless the states agree to the changes. In reality, the GST lock-in mechanism is legally meaningless and unenforceable, though it may…
Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week was important for both policy and political reasons. In it, Obama argued for a more egalitarian “middle-class economics”. In the process, he prepared…
Value added tax (VAT), virtually non-existent before 1960, has been the predominant form of consumption tax since the mid-1980s. Given that more than 160 countries now have a VAT, it is hardly surprising…
The Productivity Commission’s five issues papers, released yesterday, are the latest step in the government’s inquiry into the link between industrial relations (IR) legislation and productivity. Despite…
The release of the Productivity Commission’s five issues papers on Australia’s workplace relations framework has already fanned inevitable claims from the federal opposition and unions that it will pave…
Author’s update, January 29: In the week since this article was published (on January 23), Labor has moved to address the funding “black hole” in its plans to reduce Queensland’s debt, mainly by adopting…
Journalists, editors and executives at the highest levels in the Australian news media have known for decades that the industry excludes, marginalises and stereotypes women both as sources of news and…
The European Central Bank is due to decide whether and how to undertake quantitative easing (QE) via large-scale purchases of government debt on secondary markets. For Germany - as the Eurozone’s largest…
Australia’s latest GST debate may be the political version of The Magic Pudding. We stubbornly believe that a bigger pot of GST revenues will regenerate – in whatever flavour is desired – like Alfred the…
Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey claims taxpayers are already paying 50 cents in the dollar of their income to the government and that bracket creep will push the average income earner into the second top…