Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Former treasury boss Ken Henry has fessed up to helping dumb down debates about tax and budgets to lists of winners and losers. He says what matters is what wins rather than who.
If Australia is to meet its net zero targets it must move fast and build massive industrial infrastructure. But those projects are provoking fierce hostility. Is there a way through the green dilemma?
Addressing a Tax Institute event on Thursday, Henry said the Australian tax system “is not capable of raising sufficient revenue to fund the activities of government. Certainly not today. Far less at any time in the future.”
Ken Henry on ABC 7.30 Thursday night. “We have not been able to satisfy customer expectations, nor community expectations. As I said, for that, we are deeply sorry.”
ABC
We get defensive when the social order we have become accustomed to is challenged. We attempt to protect ourselves through projection, denial, games, blame, or rationalisation.
Treasurer Joe Hockey plans to reignite the economic reform debate early next year, but will he tackle the bigger-picture changes many economists have called for?
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
In November 1990, then treasurer Paul Keating announced that Australia was in recession – and that it was “the recession we had to have”. Today, there are growing calls for serious, structural economic…
A myopic focus on short-term cyclical business cycles has meant successive governments have failed to carry much needed structural reform.
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com
No sooner had Treasurer Wayne Swan accused the Europeans of “mindless austerity” a month ago than he embarked on a resolute but most likely counter-productive search for cost savings in the coming May…
The Business Council of Australia’s Jennifer Westacott has called for a debate over the role of Australia’s public service.
The provocative address by Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott to the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) International Congress in Melbourne yesterday achieved something…