Grattan Institute aspires to contribute to public policy in Australia as a liberal democracy in a globalised economy. Our work is objective, evidence-driven and non-aligned. We foster informed public debate on the key issues for Australia through both public events and private forums engaging key decision makers and the broader community. Twitter: @GrattanInst
Yesterday was a sorry day in the long history of health reform in Australia. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Reform Council issued its five year score-keeper’s report on health reform progress…
Most companies that live and breathe the online revolution are not tech startups, but smart smaller firms that use online tools to run their core business better: to cut costs, reach customers and suppliers…
The federal budget reignited debate over federal-state relations with a decision to cut $80 billion funding for the state responsibilities of schools and hospitals over the coming years. So how can federal-state…
In contemporary Australia, post-school education is necessary for most well-paid jobs. And so who gets access to education is important. University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis echoed many people’s…
It was only seven years ago, but it seems like a lifetime; then-opposition leader Kevin Rudd was promising to end the “blame game” in health-care funding. Fast forward a few years, he’d received a report…
Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first budget creates a clear path almost to a surplus. Our children will pay much less for current spending. Real political courage was required to get this far. But the budget also…
The Abbott government has announced a A$20 billion medical research “future fund”, to help discover what Treasurer Joe Hockey calls the “cures of the future”, paid for with money generated as a result…
The “massive infrastructure gap” prime minister Tony Abbott has set out to fix does not exist, according to new analysis of state and territory budgets by the Grattan Institute. The analysis found states…
There are some good ideas in the Commission of Audit report. Unfortunately they’re buried in so much else that it’s hard to find them. For a report focused on the costs and benefits of government, it shows…
The Commission of Audit’s proposals about GP co-payments are just that, proposals. They are not government policy, nor should they be. Some aspects of the Commission’s recommendations are good. But the…
The National Commission of Audit has made 86 recommendations with a focus on the federal government’s 15 biggest and fastest-growing areas of spending. Health is near the top of the list, with the Commission…
Education minister Christopher Pyne has given his strongest indication yet that university fees will be deregulated, removing the cap on what universities can charge students. In a speech at The Policy…
And so the university fees debate starts again. Over the last few days, several university leaders have come out in favour of increasing fees to fund a better higher education system. A government commitment…
Like a movie zombie, a policy idea that should have died has arisen from the dead and is likely to feature as a cost-savings measure in next month’s budget. The idea is simple: most GP patients should…
Employees are the public hospital system’s most valuable resource, and its biggest cost. Wages account for nearly 70% of recurrent hospital spending. To keep hospital care affordable in a time of rising…
In the lead-up to the May budget, the seemingly inexorable rise in health spending has unleashed a “sustainability panic”: rhetoric that health system costs are out of control and drastic measures are…
A Grattan Institute report I co-authored highlights student debt costs, with the finding that the government could save $800 million a year by retrieving unpaid debts from deceased estates and students…
The government could save A$800 million a year by recovering unpaid student loan debts from deceased estates and students who have moved overseas, a new report from the Grattan Institute has found. “Doubtful…
From the days of the gold rushes, to the banking and mining booms of the last 15 years, Australians have long worried that most of the world’s innovation was happening somewhere else. Did our good fortune…
Public hospital spending has been the single fastest-growing area of government spending over the past decade. As governments, policymakers and economists put health spending under the microscope, it’s…