2 April 2025

Cowardly politics is robbing our children blind. It’s time to be brave

We find ourselves in an election campaign framed by immediate cost-of-living issues, with the principal contenders pandering to an electorate they believe to be interested in nothing else.

21 November 2024

“A nation based on mercantilist plunder”

Australia has a reputation for egalitarianism. It is not deserved.

26 April 2023

Australias remarkable current account surplus

In recent years, commencing in the pre-COVID period, Australias balance of payments has consistently recorded a surplus on the current account. This has confounded some commentators, especially those who followed the compelling debt and deficit (and especially the twin deficits) narrative that emerged in the mid-1980s. Does it mean that that narrative should no longer haunt Australian policy makers? Or is there something even more concerning at play?

27 September 2021

Ken Henry: The interests of the most disadvantaged are not being served by our tax system

Those who care about distributive justice cannot ignore the extraordinary intergenerational inequity inherent in our present tax system.

29 March 2020

KEN HENRY supports Pearls and Irritations.

Pearls & Irritations should be a priority resource for anyone with an interest in public affairs who would prefer to hear the voice of experience.

1 March 2020

KEN HENRY. A longer term look at the labour market.

The unemployment rate is relatively low and the participation rate relatively high. So the employment ratio is close to historically high levels. But that doesnt tell us everything we need to know about the strength of the labour market.

19 February 2020

KEN HENRY. Tax reform in 2020.

Largely because of the budgetary impact of the global financial crisis, we missed the opportunity a decade ago to fix the Australian tax and transfer systems.

12 January 2020

KEN HENRY.-In these dreadful times,spare a thought for the wombat.

The iconic wombat has faced numerous challenges since white settlement of the Australian continent. And the events of recent months have elevated several threats.

8 December 2019

KEN HENRY. The political economy of climate change

Myopia, loss aversion and free-rider problems undermine the provision of public goods, including global public goods like climate change mitigation. Its easy to understand why climate policy has been a failure in Australia. But what happens when the central case of long-term projections, something outside of the bounds of what has been considered probable in the near-term, comes crashing into the present? Thats what our politicians were dealing with through 2006, following several years of drought. Eventually, entrenched positions were abandoned. Could we see this happen again?

9 May 2015

Ken Henry. Fairness, opportunity and security.

The policy series Fairness, opportunity and security begins on Monday May 11. I cant recall a poorer quality public debate, on almost any issue, than what we have had in Australia in recent times. Ken Henry In December 1983 the $A was floated and restrictions on the free international movement of capital were abolished. On 1 July 2000 a broad-based goods and services tax replaced a plethora of highly inefficient, inequitable and unintelligible indirect taxes. These events bookended an extraordinary period of policy reform that opened up the Australian economy, transforming just about every aspect of microeconomic and macroeconomic policy...