Almost half a billion dollars will be cut over four years from a program that helps pay overhead costs for Australia’s researchers, according to a national mini-budget released on Monday. The Federal Government’s…
Each year the budget is like an annual health check on a patient with many complexities. In a black coat, not a white one, the august Treasurer reports the nation’s temperature, provides much-needed tonics…
Much of the budget analysis over the past week has concentrated on the shuffling of expenditure for 2012-13 back to this financial year in order to achieve a surplus. It’s true that $17.6bn of such transfers…
“Class warfare” is an emotive term that would seem to belong to a bygone age when there also existed, as in the minds of many people, something called the “class struggle”. It would seem strange that in…
The idea that Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan have launched a “class war” in Australia through last week’s federal budget is a huge joke. I don’t believe The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell even…
It’s an old joke, but hard to resist around Budget time. That is, that economic forecasting was invented to make astrology look respectable. Over the past few days we’ve heard a lot about how notoriously…
To quote American baseball manager Yogi Berra, it was “déjà vu all over again” last night when I listened to Tony Abbott’s budget reply. I was back in the 1970s but without the big-collared shirts and…
The Treasurer Wayne Swan has described the 2012 Budget yesterday as “a Labor budget to its bootstraps”, and commentators have variously seen it as “a big taxing, big spending budget, including a big increase…
Labor’s budget continues a path set since 2007. It shows the technocratic skill of a government clever at policy detail; but also one unable, or perhaps unwilling, to challenge the economic straitjacket…
Reporting on the federal budget has been replete with commentary about “cuts” to foreign aid. But the fact is that the aid program was not cut in any meaningful sense of the word. In nominal terms, aid…
Anxiety gave way to relief across universities last night after Labor handed down a higher education budget that maintained indexation and delivered a $120 million increase to the overall research budget…
A $23-million “efficiency dividend” on administrative costs at CSIRO will inevitably affect the quality of scientific research at Australia’s national science agency, staff association president Michael…
The 2012 budget came at a particularly challenging time for Labor. The government has sought to achieve two distinct (if related) political goals: bolster Labor’s “economic management” credentials and…
The 2012 federal budget offers to return a modest surplus of $1.5 billion over the financial year 2012-2013, with the hope of further surplus budgets in the following years. In normal circumstances, this…
Last night’s budget contained an important step towards realising a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), with $1bn allocated over the next four years. Of these funds, $342.5 million will pay for…
Government budgets are increasingly becoming more political documents. This has been particularly evident with the federal government’s pledge to return the budget to surplus. However, budget numbers are…
“Walk into the local pet shop and the resident galah will be talking about microeconomic reform.” So Paul Keating once famously quipped about the significance of the government’s microeconomic reform agenda…
The government has postponed its foreign aid target by a year as part of its 2012 Federal Budget, but has announced a raft of new measures to monitor the effectiveness of Australia’s aid programs. The…
The Federal Budget includes $515.3 million dentistry package that will go some way to easing some of the problems with dental care in Australia. Of this total, $345.9 million will be used to treat patients…
Labor has made a $5 billion pitch to true-believers with a $1.5 billion surplus, cash hand-outs and tax breaks for low- and middle-income earners in the federal budget. And the opinion-makers are on the…