Writer
Ross Gittins
Ross Gittins is the Economics Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.
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Authors who write with insight and experience
I read the daily Pearls and Irritations email without fail. Continue reading »
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Maybe only a recession will fix macroeconomic management
In the economy, as in life, it helps a lot if you learn from your mistakes. Or, if you’re in public life, from the mistakes of your predecessors. Continue reading »
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Students count cost of epic fail
Successive federal governments have propelled a ‘backdoor privatisation’ of Australian universities. It’s shameful. Continue reading »
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If you care about future generations, you should support ‘nature positive’
The most pressing problem we face is climate change. It’s even more important than – dare I say it – getting inflation down to 2 per cent by last Friday. But we mustn’t forget that climate change is just the most glaring symptom of the ultimate threat to human existence: our continuing destruction of the Continue reading »
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Reserve Bank has squeezed us like a lemon, but it’s still not happy
Let me be the last to tell you the economy has almost ground to a halt and is teetering on the edge of recession. This has happened by design, not accident. But it doesn’t seem to be working properly. So, what happens now? Until we think of something better, more of the same. Continue reading »
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This budget will make us better off now, worse off later
It’s said you can tell a government’s true priorities from what it does in its budget. If so, the top priority of Anthony Albanese’s government is not to have any priorities. Continue reading »
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Labor deploys ‘security’ to protect bad policy from proper scrutiny
Politicians are increasingly using the word to justify bad policy initiatives and fend off criticism of their decisions. Continue reading »
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Rent-seekers put their hands out as budget looms
Last week we got a reminder that, among its many functions, the federal budget is the repository of all the successful rent-seeking by the nation’s many business and other special interest groups. Unfortunately, it added to the evidence that the Albanese government knows what it should do to manage the economy better, but lacks the Continue reading »
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Greedy businesses deserve part of blame for cost of living crisis
The nation’s economists and economist-run authorities such as the Reserve Bank have not covered themselves in glory in the present inflationary episode. They’ve shown a lack of intellectual rigour, an unwillingness to re-examine their long-held views, and a lack of compassion for the many ordinary families who, in the Reserve’s zeal to fix inflation the Continue reading »
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Podcast: Time for radical tax reform on climate change, housing affordability
In the first of Pearls and Irritations’ new podcast series, Peter Martin interviews Ross Gittins on 50 years at the Sydney Morning Herald and the radical tax reform necessary to address climate change and Australia’s housing affordability crisis. Continue reading »
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It’s on PM to make tax cuts fair
Anthony Albanese risks being the man who did what Scott Morrison couldn’t – easing the tax burden of the rich. Continue reading »
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Australia has so far resisted American populism and dysfunction. This is why
Trumpian populism has not yet taken hold here. Why? Perhaps because this country’s not quite as unequal as others. Continue reading »
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Paying tax is good and, for better government, we should pay more
On Friday, a former top econocrat did something no serving econocrat is allowed to do, and no politician is game to do: he set out the case for us to pay higher, not lower, taxes. Continue reading »
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Nine ‘planetary boundaries’ set the limits of global economic freedom
One of the most important developments in economics is something in which economists had no hand: the identification of the environmental limits which humans, busily producing and consuming, cross at their peril. Continue reading »
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Business should serve, not enslave
It is time for government to get the suits back under control and manage the economy for the benefit of us all. Continue reading »
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We won’t fix inflation while economists stay in denial about causes
Led on by crusading Reserve Bank governors, the nation’s economists are determined to protect us from the scourge of inflation, no matter the cost in jobs lost. Continue reading »
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Numbers fail to add up for central bankers in fight against inflation
The ground has been shifting under the feet of the world’s central bankers, including our own Dr Philip Lowe, the outgoing chief of the Reserve Bank. This has weakened the power of higher interest rates to get inflation down. Continue reading »
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Grim Reaper is catching up with the Baby Boomers, waving bills
Having witnessed the last days of my parents and in-laws, I don’t delude myself – as they did – that I’ll be able to avoid being carted off to an old people’s home. Sorry, an aged care residential facility. Continue reading »
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Big business cries poor on wages even as profits mount
Don’t believe anyone – not even a governor of the Reserve Bank – trying to tell you the Fair Work Commission’s decision to increase minimum award wages by 5.75 per cent is anything other than good news for the lowest-paid quarter of wage earners. Continue reading »
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This is the budget of a government that wants to be loved by everyone
The best word for this budget is “complacent”. There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s keeping us from getting further into trouble. But it’s doing little to deal with the many troubles we already have: the transition to renewable energy, declining home ownership, the rental crisis, and problems with Medicare and education. Continue reading »
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How squabbling pollies let miners wreck our economy
A speech by former Treasury secretary Dr Ken Henry last month was reported as a great call for comprehensive tax reform. But it was also something much more disturbing: an entirely different perspective on why our economy has been weak for most of this century and – once the present pandemic-related surge has passed – Continue reading »
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Albanese is just pretending to be tough on emissions
Labor talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk. Last week’s ‘‘final warning’’ from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and the Albanese government’s refusal to be moved by it – should be a gamechanger in our assessment of Labor’s willingness to do what must be done. Continue reading »
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Lowe’s secret inflation fear: big companies’ price-setting power
Despite the grilling he got in two separate parliamentary hearings last week, Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe’s explanation of why he was preparing mortgage borrowers for yet further interest rate increases didn’t quite add up. There seemed to be something he wasn’t telling us – and I think I know what it was. Continue reading »
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Blindly following our political masters? Pearls and Irritations can help
Pearls and Irritations provides informed alternative perspectives on policy issues to those provided by the conventional-thinking mainstream media. Continue reading »
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An apology to my grandkids for not fighting in the war of our times
While I was on holiday, I noticed a tweet that left me in no doubt about the subject of my first column back. It said: “I genuinely think the next generation will not forgive us for what we have done to them and the world they will have to live in.” Continue reading »
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Better, not smaller government: confessions of an econocrat-watcher
Econocrats have spent too long struggling ineffectively to achieve smaller government, while doing little about what should be their real concern: not smaller government, but better government. Continue reading »
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Labor will struggle with deficit and debt until it raises taxes
There’s something strange about the recent federal budget. It reveals remarkably quick progress in getting the budget deficit down to nearly nothing. But then it sees the deficit going back up again. Which shows that, as my former fellow economics editor Tim Colebatch has put it, Rome wasn’t built in one budget. Continue reading »
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Why Albanese needs to protect capitalism from capitalists
One of the first things Anthony Albanese and his cabinet have to decide is whether the government will be ‘‘pro-business’’ or ‘‘pro-market’’. Continue reading »
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Planes, trains and autocues: Pollies on script with wasteful vote-buying plans
The capacity of our politicians to take a good economic policy idea and pervert it into a partisan waste of taxpayers’ money never ceases to appal. Continue reading »
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Scott Morrison’s budget report card: could do a hell of a lot better
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s determination to win elections exceeds his commitment to businesslike management of taxpayers’ money. Continue reading »
