Myths abound about the impact penalty rates have on employment and services.
Australia’s tax and transfer system is highly progressive and benefits more people than is generally acknowledged.
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The Productivity Commission has just released a timely new working paper that sheds light on how Australia’s tax and transfer system functions to distribute income across the population both at a point…
Treasurer Joe Hockey has asked the Productivity Commission to review intellectual property.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Echoes of WorkChoices? The Coalition is keen to avoid any whiff of the failed policy, but some of the Productivity Commission’s recommendations have a strong flavour of it.
Cafe workers are among many that stand to lose Sunday penalty rates.
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The Productivity Commission has recommended paring back Sunday penalty rates, more consideration to economic circumstances in setting minimum wages, and a new form of statutory employment contract.
Only 7% of lump sums taken from super are used for a holiday.
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Despite the government windfall on offer, changing the age at which people can access their super is likely to unfairly hit retirees with lower super balances.
The great Australian success story of Frank Lowy and many others like him would not have happened had Australia not accepted penniless refugees.
AAP/Dean Lewins
The problem with auctioning immigration places is that it puts the focus on short-term revenue-raising, rather than immigration’s more important medium- to long-term nation-building role.
Differences in personal resources and capabilities mean that the most vulnerable Australians find the legal system inaccessible.
AAP/April Fonti
Many of the Productivity Commission’s proposals derive from assumptions that the funding of these services should ensure minimal interference, with a classic, market-based model for meeting “demand”.
The Productivity Commission’s focus is less on quality early learning and more about where to put the kids while the folks are at work.
AAP
The long-awaited report to government by the Productivity Commission on Childcare and Early Childhood Learning is a disappointment for the sector. The report ignored what leading experts in education and…
Choosing the Productivity Commission to review industrial relations could prove politically embarrassing for both Workplace Relations Minister Eric Abetz and Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
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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…
We still know very little about the link between industrial relations and productivity.
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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 Productivity Commission has attempted to move beyond the WorkChoices rhetoric.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
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…
A debate about penalty rates ought to involve the cash economy.
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Amid the ongoing debate over the future of penalty rates, a subtle but important issue also deserves to be examined: their impact on Australia’s “cash economy”. The Fair Work Commission is currently reviewing…
The Productivity Commission rightly identified widespread concerns that Australia’s civil justice system is too slow, too expensive and too adversarial.
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The Productivity Commission raised a few eyebrows when it called for an additional A$200 million for legal assistance services to disadvantaged Australians, who are “more susceptible to, and less equipped…
Incoming Director of the Australian Institute of Business and Economics at UQ, and Professor of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Macquarie University
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne