Writer
Michael Keating
Michael Keating is a former Secretary of the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Finance and Employment, and Industrial Relations. He is presently a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
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Michael Keating. Is there a trade-off between equality and efficiency?
A critical policy issue has always been whether greater equality inevitably comes at a cost to the economic growth. For example, historically economists have typically believed that there is a trade-off between increased equality and efficiency. Even those economists who favour policies to improve equality have generally acknowledged that the transfers involved could reduce incentives Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Greece’s Predicament
The front page news story for weeks now has been what is happening to Greece and what will happen. The markets, the various authorities and the media all treat Greece’s predicament as if it were solely a matter of excessive debt. Therefore austerity is justified as being essential to bringing the debt back under control, Continue reading »
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Michael Keating, Luke Fraser. Infrastructure: Improvement or Impoverishment?
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. To paraphrase Paul Keating, right now every galah in the pet shop seems to favour more infrastructure spending. The current Prime Minister wants ‘to be remembered as a Prime Minister who built the roads of the 21st century’. The business community is Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Improving Productivity.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. After more than seventy years of ever increasing living standards Australians have come to expect further such increases as their right. But these increasing living standards are for the most part dependent on increases in productivity. So as Nobel Prize winner, Paul Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Improving Employment Participation
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. The rate of employment participation and the productivity of those employees together determine the average per capita incomes of Australians, and therefore our living standards. In addition, being employed creates many of the social contacts and sense of self-esteem that are vital Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Future of Federalism
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Six months ago Tony Abbott announced that he wanted to ‘create a more rational system of government for the nation that we have undoubtedly have become’. A worth aspiration, but what does it mean in reality? Fundamentally there are two contending doctrines Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Taxation Reform
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great American jurist, is reputed to have said, ‘I like to pay taxes. In this way I buy civilisation.’ However, in contrast to Holmes’ noble ideal, too often today we hear people railing about the burden of taxation, Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Fixing the Budget – Part 2
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. The previous article on fixing the Budget concluded that the Government’s plan to balance the Budget by 2019-20 was not really credible. It relies too much on unsustainable increases in taxation as a result of bracket creep, and too many of the Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Fixing the Budget – Part 1
Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. According to the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, the ‘timetable back to a budget surplus is unchanged from last year’. Furthermore, the Government is asking us to believe that unlike the savage and unfair spending cuts in last year’s budget, now it can all Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Role and Responsibilities of Government.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Different possible conceptions of the responsibilities and roles of government are an important backdrop to the policies that will be examined later in this series of articles. The purpose of the present article is to show that despite the ideological debate between Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Tax Reform 2015
According to the Government its first objective for tax reform is lower taxes. A responsible government would, however, first consider what revenue will need to be raised to efficiently fund the sorts of services that our society expects. Of course, opinions may differ on what level of service provision is appropriate, and how it should Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The 2015 Intergenerational Report
Purpose of the Intergenerational Report The Intergenerational Report (IGR) should be an important document. It purports to tell us what the Australian population, economy and Budget could look like in forty years time. Of course no-one really knows what the economy will look like in forty years time. Instead the IGR tells us how fast Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Financial System Inquiry. Part 3: Investor protection and other matters.
I am reposting Part 3 of this important series by Michael Keating which was posted during the holiday period. John Menadue Investor protection It is now more than 15 years since the present regulatory system was established for the financial system. The basic presumption underpinning that approach to regulation has been that proper disclosure should Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Financial System Inquiry. Part 2: Superannuation and Retirement Incomes
I am reposting Part 2 of this important series which you may have missed during the holiday period. John Menadue. Australia’s retirement income system is based on three pillars: A means-tested age pension funded from general revenue which alleviates poverty by guaranteeing a base level of income support for retirees Compulsory saving through the superannuation Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Financial System Inquiry. Part 1: Resilience of the Financial System.
I am reposting this important article in case you missed it during the holiday period. John Menadue With its budget stalled the Abbott Government has often appeared to be floundering and devoid of any long term economic plan or strategy. But this appearance may be deceptive. In fact the Abbott Government has established major inquiries Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Government’s mid-year budget update. Part 2.
Where to from here? So what is the Government’s strategy to return the Budget to return to surplus as the government has promised over the medium term? The May Budget was almost universally criticised for its unfairness. While restoring fiscal health of the nation may require sacrifices, the evidence clearly showed that in the May Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Government’s mid-year Budget Update. Part 1.
What does it say about the government’s fiscal performance? The headline news is that the Budget deficit for the current fiscal year, 2014-15 has blown out by $10.6 bn from $29.8 bn in the Budget to $40.4 bn in the Mid-Year Economic and Financial Outlook (MYEFO) released on Monday. Over the four years to 2017-18 Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The politics of the Medicare co-payment
The adjustments that Tony Abbott announced to the Medicare co-payment are presumably intended to remove this particular ‘barnacle’. According to Graham Richardson, that self-styled political expert writing in the Australian, Abbott’s parliamentary colleagues ‘are breathing huge sighs of relief … that the Medicare co-payment has been so restructured that it scarcely exists anymore’. Really? Are Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Capitalism and the Economy.
As both John Menadue and Ian McAuley have argued in recent posts there are good social reasons for governments to intervene to modify the outcomes from a purely capitalist economy. Right now rising inequality and taxation avoidance by companies and wealthy people are priority issues that should be addressed. It is also possible that the Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Rebalancing government in Australia. Part II
Taxation Reform and Vertical Fiscal Imbalance Another third and final reason for national government pre-eminence over the States in our federal system is of course the national government’s domination of taxation, widely described as ‘vertical fiscal imbalance’ or VFI. Paul Keating called VFI the glue that holds our nation together, but for the States and Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Rebalancing government in Australia. Part I.
The Future of Federalism Tony Abbott recently announced that he wants ‘to create a more rational system of government for the nation that we have undoubtedly become’. As Abbott describes it, achievement of this more rational system is dependent on developing a consensus based on ‘a readiness to compromise and mutual acceptance of goodwill’. Understandably the Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The mining tax debacle
Tony Abbott has finally achieved another “triumph” with the end of the mining tax. Of course mining royalties continue, and have even been increased recently, and oil and gas are subject to a similar sort of resource rent tax that Abbott decried when it was applied to mining. No doubt the mining industry, their largely Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Budget Choices
Faced with the rejection of a significant part of its Budget, the Government is reportedly looking around at alternative compromises. Essentially the Government wants to ensure that the Budget is balanced by 2017-18. Consequently if some of the present savings are rejected the Government wants to insist that alternative expenditure cuts are adopted or there Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Government Concedes and Declares Victory
For months the government and its various spokesmen in the Australian have been warning us that the nation faces a catastrophe if the Budget does not pass the Parliament intact. Essentially we were told that there was ‘no alternative’ if economic progress and certainty were to be maintained. Indeed Paul Kelly, to the considerable delight Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Australia’s productivity performance.
For most of our history too much of Australian business was focussed on rent seeking, rather than the creation of wealth. Manipulating government to obtain protection, or other forms of favoured treatment by way of regulation or taxation, was far too often pursued as the easiest way to increase profitability. While the economic reforms of Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. An alternative budget strategy – part 3
Part 3. An Alternative Budget Strategy The previous comment in this series showed that there are alternatives to the Government’s particular strategy for restoring a Budget surplus over the next four years. In particular, it was shown that action to protect the revenue could raise around $42 billion in 2017-18. That is about 2¼ per Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. An alternative budget strategy – Part 2
Part 2. An Alternative Budget Strategy In the previous part of this comment, I suggested that the Budget did need to return to surplus over much the same time path as intended by the Government. There is nothing new in that, and as previously noted, Labor also had the same intention when it was in Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. An alternative budget strategy – Part 1
In May this year I posted five articles by Dr Michael Keating on the economic and social consequences of the recent Hockey budget. Over the next three days I will be posting three follow-up articles by Michael Keating on an alternative budget strategy. Dr Michael Keating was formerly Secretary of the Department of Finance and Continue reading »
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An Alternative Budget Strategy by Michael Keating
In this blog in May this year I posted a five-part series by Michael Keating on the government’s May budget and the economic and social consequences. There has been a great deal of discussion and confusion, particularly in the senate, over this budget. This has caused Joe Hockey only a few days ago to warn Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Part 5. Federalism
The Government’s Commission of Audit, which preceded this Budget, recommended that policy and service delivery should as far as practicable be the responsibility of the level of government closest to the people receiving those services, and that each level of government should be sovereign in its own sphere, with minimal duplication between the Commonwealth and Continue reading »