Australia can attract much needed venture capital funding through its Significant Investor Visa system, but only if a proposed new system is designed well.
George Brandis shocked the arts sector – and particularly the Australia Council – with his overhaul of the allocation of arts funding.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
The more the 2015 arts budget is examined the less sense it makes. The changes contribute little strategically or politically – they just make an entire sector nervous. And culturally, they will improve nothing.
Despite its purported dullness, this year’s budget still has bite.
Selbe/Flickr
After the controversy surrounding the GP co-payment last year, delivering a boring or “small-target” budget this time around was clearly deliberate. But we shouldn’t gloss over it too quickly.
More mines, more roads, as the government puts its drive towards economic development ahead of all else.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Amid talk of paths to surplus and investing in infrastructure, both sides of politics seem to have forgotten Australia’s longstanding responsibility to govern sustainably, and not just for the economy.
A swing and a miss: instead of taking its own advice to ‘have a go’ in its second budget, the government is like the captain who sends in a nightwatchman instead of himself.
AAP/Tony Ashby
Joe Hockey’s second budget has two large deficits: the fiscal one, plus the lack of a coherent and creative plan for Australia. The Abbott government failed to ‘have a go’ at building the future.
Cuts to funding in education and research shows a lack of planning for the future.
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You could be forgiven for thinking that education was left largely untouched in Tuesday’s federal budget. But the tinkerings to last year’s education budget still mean a “fail” for education funding.