Economy
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John Falzon. Time to stand and fight
There are measures in this Budget that rip the guts out of what remains of a fair and egalitarian Australia. These measures will not help people into jobs but they will force people into poverty. You don’t help young people or older people or people with a disability or single mums into jobs by making them 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 »
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Richard Butler. American Greed trumps the American Dream: With help from the referee.
During the last two weeks a Professor from the Paris School of Economics, Thomas Piketty, has been touring the US speaking about his book; Capital in the Twenty-First Century. His audiences have been overflowing. Public television described the reception he has received as reminiscent of that given the Beatles, in their first visit to the Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Part 4. Long-term Fiscal and Social Sustainability and Taxation
Fundamentally there is a problem with the rhetoric from the government and its cohorts such as the Commission of Audit. They insist on describing taxation as a ‘burden’ that should be lightened at every opportunity; thus implying that taxation is somehow illegitimate. On the contrary, however, taxation represents our mutual obligation to one another as Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Part 3. An Alternative and Better Budget Structure
In two previous blogs I have argued that the Government’s Budget broadly got the economics right, but it failed the test of fairness and it attacks our traditional values. In that case, however, what would the alternative Budget structure look like? Fundamentally the Budget should have relied much more on taxation and less on expenditure Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Think tanks, cash for comment and the corruption of public debate.
In recent months we have been partly appalled and partly amused by the urgers and spivs from both sides of politics that have been paraded in Sydney before the Independent Commission against Corruption. Most recently we have seen developers and others using fronts to launder money to hand on to political parties. Even the Young Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Part 2. The Budget and our Values
The Budget is always the clearest guide to a government’s priorities and values. In the present instance, the Coalition Government wants to define this budget as being all about “contribution”. Their rhetoric is that we should all make a contribution towards restoring the nation’s finances. Spreading the burden would be fair and therefore consistent with Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Part 1 The Budget and what it means for Australia’s Future
Each day this week I will be running a series of blogs by Michael Keating on the Budget and its repercussions. The posts will be Australia’s Fiscal Challenge The Budget and our Values A Better Alternate Budget Structure Taxation Federalism I am sure that these five posts will make a substantial contribution to our understanding Continue reading »
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Fran Baum and Sara Javanparast. Demise of Medicare Locals.
Demise of Medicare Locals: impact on community health, partnership and PHC research Fran Baum and Sara Javanparast Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity, Flinders University, Adelaide Tuesday’s budget announced the abolition of the 61 Medicare Locals and that they will be replaced with an unknown but smaller number of Primary Health Networks. Regional Continue reading »
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John Menadue. For some the age of entitlement continues.
Joe Hockey talks endlessly that the days of entitlement are over. They may be over for the unemployed, students, the sick and pensioners – in fact the majority never had days of entitlement. But they are certainly not over for the miners and the financial sector. These two sectors survived unscathed from the budget. This Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Seven dollar GP co-payment – and an unintended consequence
If the co-payment takes effect, it is likely to result in an increase in doctor’s fees. As Ian McAuley has pointed out, the attraction of bulk-billing for the doctor is that it removes the cost of handling and accounting for transactions. The invoice is sent directly to Medicare. Once the doctor is obliged to handle Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Budget: Robin Hood in reverse.
There was a real risk that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey believed their windy rhetoric of the last two years about debt and deficits. Having won the election they have had to face the reality that they have been grossly exaggerating our economic problems. The real risk was that Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey would Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Ignored Budget issues.
Lobby groups and community organizations have provided their take on the Budget – some with a “what’s in it for me” approach, others with a more analytical line. My contribution from the stands is to draw attention to a few aspects which aren’t getting a great deal of attention. 1. Pension indexation. I’m surprised that Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Pay for a GP visit.
The Commission of Audit’s proposal to charge a $5 or $6 fee for “bulk-billed” GP services has little to commend it. But that doesn’t justify knee-jerk outrage from medical and consumer groups, or from the Labor Opposition, for there is no reason why Medicare should not incorporate fixed and limited co-payments. As it stands the Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Increasing the petrol tax is good policy.
It may not be good short-term politics for the Abbott Government but it will be of long-term benefit to Australia if we lift the excise on petrol which has been frozen since 2001. The motor industry will protest. It should be faced down, just as we should have faced down the mining lobby when it Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Penalty rates and Liberal lobbyists.
There is a campaign underway to cut weekend and holiday penalty rates particularly in the restaurant and hospitality industries. True to form the Australian Financial Review says that weekend penalty rates are a relic of times past. A report leaked to the ABC indicates that the government will ask the Productivity Commission to undertake a Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The cost of abolishing the Mining Tax
Just when the mining tax looks like raising some worthwhile revenue, the Coalition proposes to abolish the tax. The Rudd Government made a mess of the Resources Super Profits Tax (RSPT). We know from the Henry Tax Review and other commentators that such well-designed rent-based taxes are likely to be more efficient and even out Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Taxes – public or private
The Commission of Audit has recommended that a Medicare levy surcharge be applied to individuals earning more than $88,000 a year and $176,000 for families. This is designed to force high income earners to take out private health insurance. This is one of the most economically stupid and dangerous proposals that I have seen for Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Commission of Audit and facing the wrong way.
Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey have been leaking confusing stories in the lead-up to the budget. A consistent theme however is that they must take tough action because of all the problems left by the previous government. They also need to justify the exaggerated rhetoric they used during the election campaign. A lot of it Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Do our governments spend too much or do they raise too little in taxation?
This a repost and provides a summary of the submission that Ian McAuley, Jennifer Doggett and I made to the Commission of Audit. John Menadue The Minister for Health, Peter Dutton, has said that we must reduce waste and cut costs in health. (I responded to this in my blog on 3 February “Cutting waste Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley- Picketty and the gap between rich and poor. Inequality of wealth is the problem rather than the inequality of income.
The Observer/Guardian carried a recent story/review about Thomas Picketty’s address to the Institute of New Economic Thinking in Toronto. The story was headed “Capitalism simply isn’t working and here are the reasons why” The story draws also on a recently published book by the French economist Picketty “Capital in the 21st Century” The newspaper story Continue reading »
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John Menadue. AMP excess and dud products.
I have posted several blogs on how powerful insiders bend governments to their will. Just think of the power of the polluter lobby, the mining lobby, the health lobby, the gambling lobby and the hotel lobby. But the superannuation lobby is probably the most powerful and the most lucrative gravy-train of all. The superannuation industry Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Things are improving.
Héctor Abad Faciolince, El Espectador, Colombia, 29 December 2013, http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/el-espantoso-mundo-vivimos-columna-466312 Summary: The world we live in is frightening, but it is less frightening than it used to be. One of the best definitions of the word, “intellectual” that I have read is: “a person who has studied beyond his own capacities”. There are those incapable Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Tony Abbott in Japan
Tony Abbott has just completed his visit to Japan. The media has been full of stories about the improvement particularly in agricultural exports from Australia to Japan. It should all be taken with a grain of salt. There have been some improvements particularly for our beef exports but the hype and spin does not obscure Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Inequality in Australia.
A Financial Review article on March 24 claimed “Inequality in Australia has not deteriorated over the last 25 years, according to Reserve Bank of Australia research that undermines claims the gap between rich and poor has worsened” The essence of the argument is that while, between 1993-94 and 2009-10, the distribution of income has become more unequal, Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Privatising Medibank Pte – who cares?
This is a repost from 28 November 2013. My own view is that all the private health insurance companies, including Medibank Pte are parasitical and undermine Medicare. The only important political issue in my mind is whether the policy holders who have contributed over decades to Medibank Pte should receive appropriate recompense rather than Continue reading »
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John Menadue. An enormous financial heist is underway.
We saw the enormous power of the mining sector when the foreign-owned mining companies forced the Rudd government to ignominiously back down on its super profits tax. For less than $20 million in an advertising and public relations campaign the miners secured for themselves tax savings of over $60 billion. The public interest was surrendered Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Gina Rinehart and the age of entitlement.
It is a bit rich for Gina Rinehart, with the enormous privileges she has inherited, to be telling us that we all need to work harder, cut taxes and curb wasteful government spending. Born on third base, as baseball enthusiasts would understand, does give a very jaundiced view of yourself and others. There is a Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Carbon Tax and Flat-Earthers.
Despite all the political rhetoric and hysteria, the evidence is mounting almost daily that the carbon tax is largely working as planned and that its impact on electricity prices is quite small, particularly compared with the ‘network costs’, the poles and wires, which have been the main drivers of increased electricity prices. But the flat-earthers Continue reading »
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Daniel Brammall. Financial advisers and the conflict of interest.
In December last year the new government announced how it was going to ‘make financial advice more affordable’ by amending the previous government’s ‘Future of Financial Advice’ (FOFA) proposals (1). Recall that the FOFA legislation was introduced in response to hundreds of millions of dollars of Australians’ savings being lost in the corporate collapses of Continue reading »
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