Michelle Grattan talks with Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher about the week in politics, including coronavirus, the Biosecurity Act and panic-buying, as well as the Australian economy.
The idea there is no government fate worse than debt is misleading at best.
Australia’s budget bottom line has been assisted by the price of iron ore, which spiked in 2019 as a result of the tailings dam spill disaster near the town of Brumadinho, Brazil, in January.
Antonio Lacerda/EPA
Charter of Budget Honesty aside, we can expect assumptions that stretch credulity so the Australian government can maintain its surplus forecast.
In a speech on Wednesday night, Morrison will insist this bring-forward does not mean the government is panicking about Australia’s economic conditions.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Following increasing calls for stimulus to be injected into the economy, the government will outline an infrastructure bring-forward of A$3.8 billion over the next four years.
The economy is weak, but it isn’t a crisis. Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy addresses Senators on Wednesday.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Record low interest rates will almost certainly drive up property prices. But they will also drive down unemployment and boost investment generally.
The most obvious reason for wage stagnation is the decline in unionisation over the past three decades. But you won’t hear that from government economists.
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Two Queensland-based experts discuss what so many politicians and pundits get wrong about the Sunshine State – and what its citizens are crying out for.
There’s a retro quality to Stage 3 of the Coalition’s tax plan, one the parliament ought to carefully consider before saying yes.
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The Stage 3 cuts would make Australia’s income tax system the least progressive in 60 years.
The decline in household net wealth over the past 12 months is the third in the past 30 years. The other two were connected to the global financial crisis.
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Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
The Reserve Bank cut interest rates on Tuesday because we weren’t spending or pushing up prices at the rate it wanted. On Wednesday we might find things are worse than it thought.
The German model of balancing shareholder interests on company boards with worker representatives is again attracting interest in the US, Britain and Australia.
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Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation e Wes Mountain, The Conversation
All you need to know about the 2019-20 federal budget in our simple at-a-glance graphic.
A theme in Frydenberg’s speech was that the government was taking its initiatives all “without increasing taxes”.
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The government wants this election to be all about tax. The tax cuts you will get, now and later. And the “higher taxes” that Bill Shorten would impose.
It’s a bit of a mystery how the government has made net debt disappear, but there are clues.
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