Amidst the controversy over Julie Bishop’s Guardian interview earlier this week, many of the interesting facts about foreign policy under a putative Coalition government were lost. Notably, the opposition’s…
The 2013-2014 Federal budget includes billions of dollars allocated to transport, including a new Melbourne rail tunnel. At the same time the Victorian State government has plans for a different tunnel…
In last night’s budget reply, Tony Abbott crowed he will “put the house back in order” and that the “budget will be in better hands under a Coalition government than under Labor”. It was a very measured…
In his federal budget reply speech, opposition leader Tony Abbott announced that a putative coalition government would maintain the revised tax-free threshold and other associated carbon tax compensation…
A recent article in The Conversation’s Health Rationing series endorsed the government’s decision to extend the BreastScreen program to women aged 70 to 74 (from 50 to 69), based on the results of a 2009…
More than a decade ago the federal treasury produced the first Intergenerational Report (IGR), warning of the challenges facing the Australian economy due to demographic change. The IGR warned that the…
Tony Abbott has promised a Coalition government would keep the income tax and pension compensation Labor has given even after it scraps the carbon tax. The pledge, made in his budget reply, is a major…
With the legislation now through both houses of parliament, The National Disability Insurance Scheme, or DisabilityCare, is law, and will quickly become a defining feature of Australia’s social policy…
The last Labor budget has seen the top half of the Education Revolution fizzle. The ideals that powered the 2009 Gillard policies are in fragments. Demand-driven higher education will survive until the…
It has been pretty difficult to get too excited about the latest budget – it is a lame Swan effort from a dying government. It will mostly be remembered as a monument to fiscal irresponsibility. The budget…
When it comes to welfare spending in the budget, the federal government has given with one hand and taken with another. Funding for support of disability services (NDIS) and schools the (Gonski reforms…
Budget night has come and gone again. For those sad folks (I count myself among them) who follow tax and fiscal policy obsessively, it’s the most glamorous night of the year. But the budget does matter…
Discussion of the federal budget has featured much doom-mongering. This is exemplified by forecasts of a A$6-8 billion black hole in 2015-16, when the carbon tax switches to an emissions trading scheme…
Last night’s federal budget had few big spending items, but one standout area was the A$9.8 billion school funding reform. With most states still yet to sign on to the package, the budget papers reveal…
Regardless of the result of the next election, the ALP will hold an inquiry into what went wrong. How on earth, they will ask, could a government presiding over low unemployment, low inflation, low levels…
Health took a back seat in this year’s federal budget. While the proportion of money being spent on health is increasing in 2013-14, the bulk of it is due to spending commitments made in previous budgets…
When assessing some of the assumptions underpinning Wayne Swan’s 2013 federal budget, two things spring to mind: the Henry Tax Review and the notorious inaccuracy of forward estimates. History shows it…
As you may have noticed, the 2013 federal budget is out and, despite his best efforts, Euromoney’s “2011 Finance Minister of the Year” Wayne Swan has missed his earlier predicted budget surplus by almost…
The decision to link the Australia’s carbon price to the European Union emissions trading scheme has wiped A$6 billion from the federal budget. Treasurer Wayne Swan has dealt with that loss of revenue…