Writer
Ian McAuley
Ian McAuley is a retired lecturer in public finance at the University of Canberra. He can be contacted at “ian" at the domain “ianmcauley.com” .
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JOHN MENADUE and IAN McAULEY. The future of globalisation.
Rescuing globalisation from cheer leaders and populists. If we cannot make globalisation work for all, in the end it will work for none. Kofi Annan Last week John Menadue raised the issue of globalisation, welcoming comment from other people in his blog community. As he points out, the rise of Trump in the USA, the Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. The Mounting Case For A Royal Commission Into Banks And Insurance Companies
An overwhelming majority of Australians support a Royal Commission into the finance sector. Ian McAuley explains why. We’re paying too much for a bloated financial service sector.A prominent example is Australia’s largest health insurer, Medibank Private, which in the last financial year absorbed just over a billion dollars of contributors’ premiums in management overheads and Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. Health care and Labor.
In the recent election Labor had fine words on health care – “Labor will ensure that access to health care is determined by your Medicare card, and not your credit card” – but in reality its policy proposals, if implemented, would have been even more destructive of Medicare than the Coalition’s. The Coalition, true Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. Problems of Private Health Insurance.
The PHI industry continues to make two invalid assumptions about private health care. The first is that governments are intrinsically high cost and bureaucratic and that the private sector is unquestionably more efficient. This is patently not true. The least efficient health service in the world, the US, is based on private health insurance and Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. Brexit – retreat to isolationism and discontent of those left behind.
The Brexit vote has given the media a cornucopia of stories – dissent in the British Conservative and Labour Parties, the possible breakup of the “United” Kingdom and turmoil on financial markets. These, however, are distractions from two serious issues that go beyond the events in one European country and in the rarefied world of Continue reading »
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Bill Shorten is right: Malcolm Turnbull is a major threat to Medicare
Labor appears to have rediscovered old values, while the Liberals don’t appear changed one bit. Ian McAuley explains the mire that is the fresh debate on the future of Medicare. Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. A Royal Commission into banking and the private health insurance industry.
In this election campaign the issue that triggered a double dissolution – restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission – has hardly scored a mention. That contrasts with the 1974 double dissolution election, called by the Whitlam Government in response to the Coalition’s use of its Senate power to thwart the government’s most important Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. The difference in the economic policies of the major parties.
In the din of distractions about political trivia, many in the media have lost sight of, or fail to understand, fundamental differences in the economic policies of the two main parties. That is their approach to distribution, or redistribution. Although politicians may accuse one another of heartlessness or of ignoring the poor, almost all politicians Continue reading »
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IAN McAULEY. The more we examine the Coalition’s ‘plan’ to cut corporate taxes, the more is revealed of its economic shortcomings.
The more we examine the Coalition’s proposal to cut corporate taxes, the more is revealed of its economic shortcomings. Many have commented on the inequity of cutting corporate taxes while tightening eligibility for disability support, reducing benefits for new welfare recipients, freezing Medicare rebates, and inadequately funding health and education. Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Are Conservatives better economic managers?
Here’s a short quiz. Over the last fifty years Australia has had 17 federal treasurers. Which two have won the coveted Euromoney “Finance Minister of the Year” award? As a memory jogger, below is a list of treasurers in chronological order. William McMahon (Lib) Leslie Bury (Lib) Billy Snedden (Lib) Frank Crean (Lab) Jim Cairns Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Labor’s policies.
Amid all the political chatter about tensions between Turnbull and Morrison, a possible early election, and the laundering of donations to the Liberal Party, Labor has released a substantial policy document –Growing together: Labor’s agenda for tackling inequality. With a gathering of Labor luminaries – Jenny Macklin (who has main carriage of the policy), Bill Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. The government says that tax cuts are good for workers!
Arthur Sinodinos’ suggestion of a cut to the corporate tax rate doesn’t seem to be the smartest way to start an election campaign. For a start, it’s not clear how such generosity would be funded. Earlier this month there was a flurry of excitement when iron ore prices rose. For a few days the idea Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Chris Bowen and ‘The Money Men’.
Political disunity comes in two forms. One, which we witnessed in the Rudd-Gillard years, is the subtle attack on the authority of the party leader. The other and more serious form is a conflict about policy. Once Tony Abbott announced his intention to hang around it was clear that the Turnbull Government would suffer the Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. The only unifying thread in the Liberal Party is a compulsion to keep Labor out of office.
There is a German saying “The less the people know about how laws and sausages are made, the better they sleep at night”. In his book Credlin & Co (Black Inc 2016), an exposé of the political relationship between Tony Abbott and his loyal Chief of Staff, Peta Credlin, Aaron Patrick of the Financial Review Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley Private health insurance – does the lady protest too much?
Sussan Ley, the Commonwealth Health Minister, has hit out at private health insurers’ bid for a six per cent price increase. In view of the strong support the Coalition has always given private health insurers, such public criticism from a Liberal Party minister may surprise us. As one-time Prime Minister Tony Abbott said “private health Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley, Jennifer Doggett, John Menadue. Private Health Insurance companies are price takers. Prices are set by doctors and hospitals.
Repost from 22/10/2015 On Tuesday the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released its report on private health insurance. Private health insurance (PHI) was also in the news a day later with the standing down of the CEO of Medibank Pte, the largest PHI company. The ACCC report has been a regular report since 1999, when Continue reading »
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Jennifer Doggett, Ian McAuley, John Menadue. Four Corners: No wonder we’re wasting money in health care – we got the incentives wrong
Repost from 06/10/2015. A recently-aired ABC Four Corners program aptly titled “Wasted” exposed three areas of unnecessary, ineffective and outright dangerous health interventions, in knee, spinal and heart surgery. The show’s host, Norman Swan, presumably extrapolating from the findings in those three areas, claimed that waste could be as high as 30 percent of all Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Economic Management, Lobbyists and the Coalition Government.
On Abbott’s political departure David Marr wrote in The Guardian “Within days of his fall he’s looking like a prime minister Australia once had a long time ago”. Most people and organisations who have given him unwavering support ever since his narrow win as Opposition Leader in 2009 were remarkably quick in endorsing Turnbull’s judgement Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Refugees and German redemption.
Imagine if Australia were to open its doors to 240 000 refugees. That’s twenty times our offer to take 12 000 Syrians, or around the same number as our total annual immigration in all categories. It’s what Angela Merkel’s offer of 800 000 places would come to if scaled to Australia’s population. Although some may Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. The ABC and a second chance.
Current Affairs Most reasonable people would be fully behind Mark Scott’s spirited defence of the ABC “as a public broadcaster, not a state broadcaster”, reminding us that “at times, free speech principles mean giving platforms to those with whom we fundamentally disagree.” Tony Abbott’s reaction to Zaky Mallah’s remarks on Q&A is comparable to the Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Inequality matters
Policy Series Australia has a reputation for egalitarianism, as a country where, in comparison with Old World countries, wages were good and, to quote Lawson, where people “call no reason to call no biped lord or sir”. Up to around 1980, Australia’s distribution of income was becoming more equal, but since then inequality has been Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley and Miriam Lyons – Governomics.
Current Affairs Governomics Melbourne University Press have just published Governomics. The book is about the role of government and the importance of the public sector. The day after Governomics was launched Geraldine Doogue interviewed Miriam Lyons and Ian McAuley on the ABC Radio National program Saturday Extra. The case for government In a fightback against the “small government” obsession, Ian Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Role of government
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Australia to the 1980s – Government at the commanding heights For almost 200 years, from 1788 to the early 1980s, governments held the commanding heights of the Australian landscape. The Australia in which I came of age, the Australia of the 1950s Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. If the government wants price signals, it should stop supporting health insurance.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has declared the Medicare co-payment proposals “dead, buried and cremated”, but two related ideas behind it live on: Medicare is becoming “unaffordable” and our universal health system should morph into a program reserved for the poor. The government’s original justification for the co-payment was to bring more “price signals” into Medicare. Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. The speech that Tony Abbott almost delivered to the National Press Club.
Was this a spoof? There are ‘claims’ that the following speech appeared on the websites of the Liberal Party and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on the day that Tony Abbott gave his speech to the National Press Club, but it was taken down as soon as it was found that the Prime Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Pyne on education funding.
A good friend is someone who, when you’ve had too much to drink at a Christmas party, ignores your protests and takes your car keys to prevent you driving home sozzled. You’re surely grateful the next morning. When he gets back to the Adelaide’s leafy eastern suburbs and has regained his composure, Christopher Pyne might Continue reading »
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Is capitalism redeemable? Part 9: Restoring a moral voice
It is easy to allocate blame for our apparent entrapment in bad public policy. Tony Abbott’s truculence, disregard for reason, inflexibility and broken promises all come to mind. As does the blatant partisan stance of the Murdoch media. Those who look for more general causes draw attention to dysfunctional party structures, an adversarial parliamentary system Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Is capitalism redeemable? Part 8: Inequality’s downward economic spiral
Let’s start with what looks like a self-evident proposition. “Countries with right-wing or neoliberal governments spend less on social security than countries with more left-inclined governments.” It’s a proposition university lecturers put to students of public economics, and the smarter students usually recognize that there’s a trick in it. Harvard economists Dani Rodrik and Alberto Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Is capitalism redeemable? Part 7: Inequality – a shameful waste
“Australia’s program to increase world growth seems to be to cut social security benefits from the poor.” When Geraldine Doogue asked Malcolm Fraser to comment on Abbott’s G20 agenda, that was his summary of the present Government’s economic policy Unfortunately, ministers such as Hockey and Cormann may not understand the sarcasm in his comment, because Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Is capitalism redeemable? Part 5: When finance goes its own way
One of the world’s most useful social institutions is money, but it’s hard to think of it in its social context. To understand the social value of money, think of a world without money, or a country where, through recklessness the currency has been debased, as happened in the hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic in Continue reading »
