Treasurer Joe Hockey expects unemployment to rise and business investment to fall. He plans to shed 16,000 public sector jobs into a labour market that Treasury says is softening. Indeed, Treasury states that the proportion of people who are employed or looking for work will continue to fall, “reflecting the expectation that employment growth will

John Howard is the Ronald Reagan of Australian politics. While Reagan is deified by modern Republicans for his fiscal conservatism, in reality he oversaw big increases in government spending. But because he took from the poor to deliver to the rich they love him all the same. 

Economics textbooks have a pretty depressing story to tell aspiring business owners. It can be summarised as, “Don’t bother. You will never make any money and even if you do, your success will attract new competitors who will push your price and profits down.” But don’t worry, no one pays economists for the accuracy of

Despite the skill of individual musicians, orchestras still need a conductor to bring the whole performance together. It is one thing to know how to play the horn, but someone needs to decide when the best time to honk it is. This week the Abbott government sounded like an orchestra without a conductor – there

You only get one chance to make a first impression and, if you are treasurer, you only get one chance to deliver your first budget. Joe Hockey has been talking up his determination to make savage cuts and “end the age of entitlement” for months but, with public support for the Abbott government continuing to

Like buying a house, it’s easy to get a free trade agreement if you don’t care what you get or how much you pay. Since coming to office, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has closed a number of free trade agreements in record time, and it shows.  The so-called free trade agreement with Japan ensures Australia

Productivity is easy to define, hard to measure and impossible to predict. But there is a big difference between how much we talk about something and how much we understand about it. For economists, productivity refers to the amount of output that can be produced per unit of input. Profit, on the other hand, fluctuates

Like his decision to spend $5 billion a year on a new paid parental leave scheme, Tony Abbott didn’t seek cabinet approval to restore knights and dames to Australian society. While Joe Hockey might want to end “the age of entitlement”, the Prime Minister certainly seems to feel pretty entitled to do as he pleases.

Like Qantas, the problem with the Commonwealth’s budget is a lack of revenue. If Qantas were to increase fares by about 3 per cent they would be back in the black, but for the time being at least, Alan Joyce has his eyes set on maintaining market share rather than maximising profits. Similarly, the Commonwealth budget

Tony Abbott recently described the people who take the chainsaws to Tasmania’s native forests as ”the ultimate conservationists”.Seriously. In his speech to the 2014 Forestworks Dinner, the Prime Minister claimed that because the loggers’ future income depends on the availability of trees, they – and not the derided greenies – are the true custodians of

The economy has become a symbol for politicians to exploit rather than a system for them to manage. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s recent speech about Tasmania highlights that talking about the economy is something politicians like to do, but making good economic decisions has become an optional extra. While Mr Abbott claims that no government

Santos has been salivating at the prospect of selling gas for two to three times the domestic price for years. But as the big pay day draws near, the company has started blaming protesters, who oppose the harm that gas exploration does to farms and forests, for the impending price rises; the same price rises

Despite the Abbott government carrying out their commitment to slash tens of thousands of public-sector jobs and the pride taken in the deterrence effect of the death of an asylum seeker on Manus Island, our deputy prime minister in waiting, Barnaby Joyce, describes $300 million from taxpayers to his constituency as proof that we are

The review of the Renewable Energy Target is the latest move from a Prime Minister whose actions on climate change don’t match his words, writes Matt Grudnoff in this open letter.

The government’s industry policy is a complete mess. They can’t seem to decide if they want to crack down on corporate welfare or spend big on industry development.   The high Australian dollar is going to continue to put manufacturing businesses under stress. Claims for assistance will keep on coming and the government is deeply

Would you support a trade agreement that prevented the Australian Government from requiring genetically modified foods to be clearly labelled? According to a recent survey by The Australia Institute, 73 per cent of South Australians would not. How about a trade agreement that allowed Australian television stations to show fewer Australian-made TV programs? According to

Class war, it seems, can only be declared on those who have the least. When laws are reshaped to pour money into the pockets of those with the most, however, it is more polite to call it tax reform.

The gap between the retirement incomes of men and women will never be solved by information campaigns, decision-making tools or new websites. Women earn around 17% less than men who perform similar work. Women are far more likely than men to take time out of the workforce early in their lives to raise children. Women

If you haven’t heard about the growing campaign for fossil fuel divestment, and what it means for both your retirement funds and for the global economy, it’s time to pay attention – because now even the World Bank is on board. At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim called for

Tony Abbott tore through Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd (again) but now, according to the polls, Bill Shorten is the most effective Opposition Leader in history. Abbott’s Coalition is the least popular new government on record and they haven’t even passed a horror budget yet. Incumbency used to be seen as a great

In the old Chinese proverb, the frog in the well thinks he knows everything about the world, based on the little patch of sky he can see. The view from the bottom of an open-cut coalmine might be a little wider than that of a well, but NSW Minerals Council chief executive  Stephen Galilee’s discussion of the role

It’s an election year in Indonesia and, like some Australian politicians, there are Indonesian politicians who are willing to put a surge in the polls ahead of sound policy. And like some of their counterparts in Australia, there are Indonesian politicians who think the easiest way to get a surge in the polls is to

Chinese mining company Shenhua has quite a battle on its hands.  It has loudly and proudly promised employment, investment, and royalties for the Gunnedah region, if its Watermark coal project goes ahead, but locals are publicly calling “foul” on Shenhua’s claims. Residents have managed to stuff the NSW government’s letterbox full of appeals against the

Bundaberg is experiencing a flurry of exploratory drilling for coal deposits. The local mining sector is buzzing, and its investors are trumpeting the region as Queensland’s newest coal centre.  They promise jobs, money, and a shiny white rabbit from under their hard hat! The Bundaberg community isn’t convinced.  They fear the coal mine expansion will

Mining industry lobby group the NSW Minerals Council this week released yet another report on mining’s importance to the NSW and regional economies.  Not surprisingly, the report contains lots of big numbers.   But this report, like many before it, is a case of ‘‘what’s true isn’t surprising and what’s surprising isn’t true’’. Let’s start

If Barry O’Farrell was serious about reducing alcohol-fuelled violence on Sydney streets there are solutions. He could regulate opening hours, increase the price of alcohol sold late at night or even set a maximum blood alcohol level for people in public places and empower the police to undertake random breath testing on our streets and

Sooner or later, the Abbott government will have to stimulate the economy using fiscal policy – just like the Rudd government did in response to the global financial crisis and the Howard government did in 2001. That was the key message to come from the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), released by treasurer Joe

Children who use the “but everyone else was doing it” defence don’t usually get very far. I remember my mother retorting: “If everyone else was sticking their head in an oven, would you do that too?” But while sharing risks may not be a great idea for kids, it is, it seems, the most popular way

I think that politicians work hard. I still think that even after Tony Abbott announced that the House of Representatives will sit for only 72 days next year. But the issue isn’t whether they work hard, it’s what they work hard on. Click below to read more of this article published in The Canberra Times.

Free trade is overrated and collective ownership is underrated. It’s not the lefties and the greenies saying that, that’s what the Coalition government and some of the biggest businesses in Australia are saying. While most people pretend to support free trade “in principle”, in practice most of them lose their enthusiasm.