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• About as many Australians want property prices to decrease in the future (36%) as want them to increase (33%). One in five (18%) want them to stay the same.
• Australians who own an investment property are the only group where the majority (59%) want property prices to increase.
• Three in five Australian renters (60%) want property prices to decrease.
• Two in five Australians who own their own homes, either with a mortgage or outright, want property prices to increase (42% and 45%, respectively).

The post Polling – Hopes for property prices appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Despite the instrumental role the public sector played in navigating the state through the pandemic, weak wage growth and rising inflation have compounded the impacts of austerity, leading to significant reductions in public sector real wages. While the current government’s scrapping of the wage cap and implementation of public sector wage rises has undone some of this damage, most notably the October 2023 wage rises for public school teachers, more repair is needed.

The NSW government has a strong fiscal position with which to manage these challenges. NSW maintains nearly the highest credit rating in the country and relies on revenue bases that are both diverse and stable. Additionally, there is considerable evidence that, if needed, several options are available to increase state government revenue. As the state economy weakens in response to high interest rates and declining real incomes, the state government has the responsibility to contribute to support the economy and broader society, through expansion of public services, repair of public sector wages, and support for the most vulnerable.

The post Solid Foundations, Bright Future appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Most trade associations had some political associations and resources for members, and had made submissions to government or parliamentary inquiries – but the extent of each varied greatly across associations. A minority of associations made political contributions, and only two were found to have produced mandatory standards for members.

Motivated by concern that trade associations might be a “conspiracy against the public”, as Adam Smith warned, the research identified potential misalignment between the conduct of trade associations and the interests of their members, their members’ shareholders, and the public. These include trade associations overstating the contribution of their sector in order to win a social licence to operate; downplaying climate or public health risks; exploiting political connections; and prioritising the careers of the trade association’s staff over the interests of the companies they are meant to represent.

Historical examples show that trade associations in Australia have wielded power and money to frustrate policy reform and win preferential treatment. However, recent failures of trade association lobbying suggests that their influence may be waning.

Better regulation of trade associations could include political transparency measures – like truth in political advertising laws, publishing ministers’ diaries and stricter donation disclosure laws; requiring shareholder approval of memberships and donations; and removing tax deductions for lobbying and political campaigning.

Shareholders and the public as a whole can be reasonably concerned that a company’s trade association memberships are not always in the public interest, or even in the interests of the owners of that company.

The post Trade associations appeared first on The Australia Institute.

NDAs have had the impact of silencing victim-survivors, disguising the actions of perpetrators and covering up the prevalence of sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence and harassment within organisations. At times, this has enabled harassers to remain in the same workplace or move within industries and continue to engage in sexual harassment.

The focus of this submission is on the issues of transparency associated with NDAs and the impact of these agreements on public interest concerns regarding the prevention of sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence and harassment at work. We believe that greater transparency regarding the practices associated with settling sexual harassment claims will lead to greater accountability. This accountability should be supported by legislative reforms that mandate minimum conditions such as those set out in this submission.

The post Submission to Industrial Relations Victoria Inquiry on Restricting Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in Workplace Sexual Harassment Cases appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The average AGL electricity consumer contributes $755 to AGL’s annual profit while at Origin the comparable figure is $595. The Federal Government’s $300 electricity subsidy barely makes up for half of Origin’s rip off and just 40% of AGL’s rip off.

AGL charges electricity consumers more than twice what it charges businesses, while businesses only pay $183.3/MWh, consumers pay $377.1/MWh. At most only about a third of this difference ($70.9/MWh) is warranted by the difference in network costs. On its retail sales, AGL makes profit (pre-tax and interest) of $132.8/MWh from consumers—35% of the retail price. By comparison pre-tax profit is only $9.9/MWh on business sales.

Origin’s consumer charges for electricity are $343.3/MWh, somewhat lower than AGL’s but still over twice what they charge business ($167.3/MWh). The result is that profit on sales to consumers is $100.9/MWh compared to a small loss on sales to business. In addition to contributing massively to Origin’s profit, electricity customers are subsidising Origin’s business customers.

The picture is similar with respect to gas; AGL charges consumers three times what businesses are charged. While consumers pay $38.1/GJ, businesses only pay $11.9/GJ. The difference in network costs for consumers and business is large but not enough to explain the difference, meaning AGL profits are $13.9/GJ for consumers while appearing to make a small loss on sales to business. Origin’s gas charges show a similar pattern with consumer prices being 2.5 times business prices. Origin’s retail profit appears to be $14.5/GJ for consumers and just $1.0/GJ for business.

AGL’s consumer markets segment, which includes both electricity and gas, appears to be generating a return on their net assets of over 100% per annum. These figures suggest AGL and Origin are ripping off Australian consumers through price gouging.

The post Price gouging: AGL and Origin appeared first on The Australia Institute.

By many measures, South Australia has enjoyed the strongest economy of any state in Australia. Its economic growth has been faster in recent years than any state – and in per capita terms, its prosperity has improved twice as fast as the national average. It enjoys a stable, diversified economic base: reflecting a virtuous combination of strong business investment, exports, household consumption, and government spending (both on current services and on capital investment). The state’s labour market has been operating at or near record-low levels of unemployment and underutilization.

Unfortunately, this economic progress has not been reflected in improvements in state-funded public services in South Australia. The proportionate share of the economy contributed by state-funded services and infrastructure investments has been declining since before the pandemic (and is now lower as a share of the state’s economy than any other state). State public sector workers have borne the burnt of this restraint: their wages have lagged far behind inflation, resulting in a painful real wage cut for state employees.

In a new research report, Economist Jack Thrower shows that real wages for state public servants in South Australia have declined by as much as 10% since 2019. This represents a one-tenth reduction in the real purchasing power of their salaries, imposing severe financial stress on tens of thousands of households – and undermining consumer spending and economic growth.

The report also confirms that South Australia possesses abundant fiscal capacity to repair this damage to real compensation for public sector workers. The state government’s core revenues are growing much faster than core expenses, and the budget is projected to return to surplus this year – faster than any other state other than Western Australia. Rebuilding public servant wages to catch up to past inflation should be a vital priority for the state government.

Please read the full report, Economic Prosperity, Public Sector Restraint: Unpacking South Australia’s Economic and Fiscal Advantages in the Shadow of Public Sector Pay Erosion, by Jack Thrower.

The post Economic Prosperity, Public Sector Restraint appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The polling conducted for this report shows that more than three in four Australians (77%) like buying gifts for people at Christmas. However, more than half (52%) would prefer it if people did not buy them gifts for them at Christmas.

One quarter of Australians (27%) expect to receive Christmas presents that they will never use or wear. We estimate the value of these unwanted gifts, many of which will end up as landfill waste, at over $1 billion. This is an increase on the estimated $921 million spent on unused gifts in 2023.

Despite this, our polling shows that almost half of Australians (47%) don’t think about how the gifts they buy will eventually be disposed of.

The post Polling – Christmas waste 2024 appeared first on The Australia Institute.

By contrast, $27 million of public money was spent in 2022-23 by Coal Innovation NSW conducting and promoting research that greenwashes the coal industry, while a publicly subsidised coal industry research fund worth $700 million has more money than it can spend.

The post Greenwashing coal in New South Wales appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Approval for the Woodside’s proposed North West Shelf Extension will lock in this link for the long term, leading to increased costs for West Australian households and companies.

The extension would also lock in massive export demand for onshore gas … for decades. The limits on onshore gas exports are not legislated and provide little protection.

If the government approves the 50-year extension, it risks locking in a structural change to the WA gas market which will not be possible to wind back.

Note: The text box of Figure 2 in this report was corrected on 6/12/2024

The post Why WA energy prices have tripled appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Climate of the Nation 2024 shows that Australians are not only concerned about the climate crisis, they feel negative about the future in the context of climate change and that their government is not doing enough about it.

50% of Australians think the Australian Government is not doing enough to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Climate of the Nation 2024 brings into focus not just how Australians feel about climate change, but also what they expect their leaders to do in response to it.

This year’s survey shows that, while Australians continue to be underwhelmed by a lack of tangible action by the Australian Government to prevent and adapt to the worst impacts of climate change, they have not abandoned the expectation that government policies should protect the community, not industry profits.

The post Climate of the Nation 2024 appeared first on The Australia Institute.

• Over one in two (58%) Australians support stopping fish farming in areas where it is putting the Maugean skate at risk of extinction, over three times as many as those who oppose the action (17%).
• The majority of Australians across all voting intentions except One Nation voters, support stopping fish farming in areas where it is putting the Maugean skate at risk of extinction. Support is highest among Greens voters (74%), followed by Labor (58%) and Coalition (54%) voters.

The post Polling – Maugean skate appeared first on The Australia Institute.

He says it meets his election promise to ban political donations in South Australian elections.

In November, a revised version of the bill was introduced to Parliament.

The post South Australian political finance changes appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Most Australians (71%) support federal legislation to protect the right to peaceful protest.

The post Polling – Right to protest appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The Australia Institute surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,008 Australians between 23 and 30 August 2024, asking a range of questions about growing food, food waste and food security.

Some 361,000 tonnes of food waste, equivalent to seven Sydney Harbour Bridges, are diverted from landfill each year by composting and worm farming in food-growing households.

Key Findings

• Over four in ten (45%) Australians grow some of their own food, or around 9 million Australians.
• The most common reasons to grow food were to access food that is healthy (69%) and to save money (60%).
• The overwhelming majority (81%) of Australians who grow some of their own food do so in their own backyard; the next most popular locations were a verge garden (28%), the front yard (19%) and on a balcony (13%).
• Two thirds of growers (67%) say that growing food makes them feel happy and relaxed, and half (51%) say that it makes them feel healthy.
• The overwhelming majority (84%) of Australians who grow some of their own food grow vegetables, and over half (55%) grow fruit trees and herbs.
• Almost two in three (64%) growers say that growing food has helped them understand and reinforce the role of composting and worm farming in diverting waste from landfill. Two in three (67%) growers also compost, use a worm farm, or use both. Extrapolating across Australia, this means that three million households grow food and compost or worm farm, diverting at least 361,000 tonnes of waste from landfill each year, equivalent to seven Sydney Harbour Bridges.
• Of those Australians who do not grow their own food, almost two thirds (64%) of are interested in doing so. Younger Australians are more likely to want to grow their own food, with almost four in five (78%) Australians aged 18–39 saying they are interested in growing their own food.
• The most common factors stopping Australians from growing their own food is space, with more than three in five (61%) identifying lack of space as a barrier.

The post Grow your own – 2024 appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The Australian labour market has remained relatively strong over 2024 although interest rate rises have pushed unemployment to over four per cent. Recent growth in wages has not been enough to take pressure off household budgets, or to offset the major reductions in real wages that occurred following the COVID pandemic. Across the economy, large numbers of workers want more paid work hours. However, the underemployment problem co-exists with overwork and with unpaid overtime that contributes to the loss of substantial amounts of income for working households.

During the past two years there has been a great deal of public attention and debate about a right to disconnect from work outside work hours. New “Right to Disconnect” laws came into effect in August 2024. While it is early days, these laws could already be having a positive impact including through raised awareness that workers should be free to enjoy their personal time without work demands. Our research indicates that unpaid overtime hours were fewer in 2024 than in previous years, both pre- and post-COVID pandemic years.

Unpaid overtime
On average, employees reported they performed 3.6 hours of unpaid work in the week of the survey, equivalent to       10.9% of total working hours.  This unpaid overtime equates to 188 hours per year per worker, or almost five standard 38-hour work weeks.

•  If  unpaid overtime were valued at median wage rates, this means the average worker is losing $7,713 per year or $297 a fortnight.
• At the economy-wide level, this equates to more than $91 billion of lost income per year.

The personal and social costs of unpaid overtime, through working outside of normal hours, include negative consequences for health and wellbeing and relationships:

• Four in ten workers report physical tiredness (42%) and feeling mentally drained (40%)A third of workers experience stress or anxiety (32%), and one in four experienced interference with personal life/relationships (29%).One in five workers experience disrupted sleep (22%).
  • One in three workers (36%) indicate that unpaid overtime is either expected or encouraged in their workplace.
•  The most common reason for working outside scheduled work hours is too much work (41%), with the second most common reason being staff shortages when other staff are absent or on leave (31%).

Dissatisfaction with working hours
Across the whole labour market, almost half of all employed workers (45%) are unsatisfied with their working hours – wanting either more or fewer hours.
o One in three workers (32%) reported that they wanted more paid hours. This desire was especially strong among workers in casual jobs (51%). Over four in ten workers (43%) aged 18 to 30 years of age wanted more paid hours.
o Just over half of workers (55%) indicated their hours were about right.

To calculate how much pay you are losing through unpaid overtime go to our unpaid overtime calculator at gohomeontimeday.org.au

The post Taking up the Right to Disconnect? Unsatisfactory Working Hours and Unpaid Overtime appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Just 5% disagreed.

The post Polling – Parliamentary scrutiny of electoral law changes appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The PALM scheme is often presented as one that is advantageous to all parties involved: Australian industries enjoy access to short-term labour, while PALM workers are able to send home the Australian dollars they earn, thus also providing a benefit to their home countries’ economies.

In reality, the economic benefits of the scheme are weighted in Australia’s favour. The amount of money that PALM workers spend in Australia—on accommodation, expenses, tax and superannuation—is greater than the amount they are able to send home, meaning that Australia’s economy benefits more from their labour than their home countries’.

The post PALM visas, superannuation and tax appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Electric vehicle policies in NSW appeared first on The Australia Institute.

At present, the decarbonisation of Australia’s bus fleet is focused on two competing technologies: electric buses that run on battery power (BEBs), and those powered by hydrogen fuel cells (FCEBs). However, the choice between these technologies is clear, because BEBs have several key advantages over FCEBs:

• FCEBs are between 15 and 32 times more expensive to run than BEBs;
• If run on green hydrogen—which is produced from water with renewable electricity, thus producing no greenhouse gases—FCEBs use more than three times more renewable electricity than BEBs;
• If they are run on hydrogen produced from fossil fuels, FCEBs produce significantly more greenhouse emissions than BEBs: the latter produce between 22.8% and 98.8% less CO2-equivalent than the former.

Hydrogen buses are a costly dead end, as shown by numerous failed hydrogen bus trials around the world. Meanwhile, BEBs have proven time and again to be an ideal, mature technology to drive the decarbonisation of public transport. They should be rolled out in Australia without further delay.

The post Why batteries trump hydrogen for buses appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Although Westpac is the naming rights sponsor of the rescue helicopter, Westpac provides less than 10% of its total funding.

The results show that:

• Only 7% of residents in NSW correctly identified less than 10% as the amount Westpac contributes to the running of the rescue helicopter.
• 93% thought it was higher, including almost half of NSW residents (48%) who thought Westpac contributed half or more of the cost of running the rescue helicopter.

The post Polling – Northern NSW rescue helicopter appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Major floods in eastern Australia pushed insured losses in 2022 to a record $7 billion, almost double previous records. Perhaps more alarmingly, since 2013, insured losses in each year have exceeded the combined losses of the five years from 2000 to 2004.

Modelling from The McKell Institute estimated that the direct cost of natural disasters in Australia could reach $35 billion per year (in 2022 dollars) by mid-century, an average of more than $2,500 per household per year. However, such averages hide more than they reveal. In areas at high risk of extreme weather events, insurance costs are multiples of national averages.

Research from the Actuaries Institute shows that nearly one in eight households – 1.25 million people – suffer home insurance affordability stress and pay more than four weeks gross income on home insurance premiums. One in 20 households pay more than seven weeks of gross income on home insurance. In other words, these households work from New Year’s Day almost to the end of February, simply to pay their home insurance.

In northern Western Australia, home and contents insurance costs on average $4,395 per year, which is more than double the $1,779 per year cost for Australians in the southern two thirds of the country. It is also significantly more than the $3,069 that the average Australian household spends on electricity in a year. In the Northern Territory average premiums are $2,922, and in North Queensland $2,918, roughly 60% higher than the rest of the country.

Even considering only capital city insurance costs, the cost increases are significant, and place significant pressure on inflation. Over the past 35 years insurance costs in every capital city have vastly exceeded the increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). In Brisbane, insurance costs rose by more than five times CPI, while even in Melbourne, where the increase has been lowest, the rise in insurance costs was still 2.8 times CPI.

Figure 1 below shows how insurance costs in capital cities have exceeded the increase in CPI over the last 35 years.

The profitability of home insurance has declined significantly with many insurers and underwriters making substantial losses.

The most obvious policy response is to address climate change, both mitigating its magnitude and adapting to its impacts. Beyond this, specific policies to engage with the insurance market may be required but will need to be carefully calibrated and regularly reviewed. The Morrison Government’s $10 billion fund to help address insurance affordability in cyclone-affected areas appears to have had only modest impact, with the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission reviews of the fund, finding:

“It still may be some time before the full effects of changes to prices and choice are seen across the industry, and it may be difficult to isolate the effects of the pool from the range of other factors impacting insurance markets.”

Careful policy responses will be required to ensure that Australians can insure their homes in a way that is equitable, affordable and without unintended consequences.

The post Premium price: The impact of climate change on insurance costs appeared first on The Australia Institute.

In their latest reporting year, the big four banks made aggregate pre-tax profits of $44.6 billion.

The big four banks rank among the top seven listed companies in Australia when ranked by their profit.

If ranked by capitalisation the big four banks are among the top six listed companies.

Among their activities, these high profits reflect the high profit margins (1.59%) applied by the big four banks to owner-occupier housing loans, which are higher than the profit margins of all banks (1.24%).

Between them, the big four banks extracted approx $17.6 billion profit from households with owner-occupier home loans in 2023-24.

That means the profit on owner-occupied housing loans is 39.5% of the big four’s total profit while those loans are just 24.6% of their business.

Australia Institute research shows the big four banks take profit of approximately $9,130 in the first year from households with an average owner-occupier home loan.

This is $761 each month, or $176 per week, from homeowners.

Over the life of an average 30-year loan, that will amount to $200,880. This is almost 35% of the average
mortgage.

The post Profit in home lending appeared first on The Australia Institute.

This submission draws together insights from several Australia Institute reports to make several overarching recommendations, including the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies; tax reform to manage the harms of larger cars and encourage active transport; and a clear timeline to phase out the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles.

The post Submission: Transport and Infrastructure Net Zero Roadmap and Action Plan appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The Australia Institute surveyed a representative sample of 1,041 Queensland residents about whether they support 12 policies introduced by the Queensland Labor Government.

The results show that:

• Each of the 12 policies is supported by most Queenslanders.

• The net effect of each of the 12 policies is to make Queenslanders more likely to vote for the Labor Government.

The post Polling – Queensland Labor policies appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Most importantly, this Bill will make it harder to assess actions which have a significant detrimental impact on the environment – in this case, the potential extinction of the endangered Murgean skate, which can only be found Macquarie Harbour in Tasmania.

The post Submission – Inquiry into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Reconsideration of Decisions) Bill 2024 appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Implementing a whistleblower rewards system would provide regulators with a new and effective tool in reducing white-collar crime across Australia. These rewards would uncover ongoing white-collar crime and deter future crimes by breaking down trust between current and potential conspirators. Additionally, a revenue contingent fine payment system would allow regulators and courts to award fines based on actual damage caused, without affecting the financial viability of offending businesses. By reducing the prevalence of white-collar crime, a whistleblower rewards system would help rebuild Australia’s damaged social fabric, enhance the integrity of its economy, and help ensure its democracy is not undermined by corporate misbehaviour.

The Australia Institute’s research into democracy & accountability is kindly supported by the Susan McKinnon Foundation.

The post Whistleblowing While You Work appeared first on The Australia Institute.

As part of a broader research initiative investigating the human costs of the crisis and the impact of austerity on Australian workers, the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1014 adults living in Australia about their household income and the costs of living.  The results show that:

• Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents felt their wages had grown slower than prices over the previous year.
• Over half of respondents (53%) said their household’s financial situation was worse that it was two years ago.
• The cost of living crisis has had differential impacts. Because it has affected lower-income Australians most severely, the cost of living crisis has exacerbated inequality.
• Respondents identified higher grocery prices as the most visible source of the increased cost of living. Six out of 10 (60%) of respondents identified groceries as the purchase where they have most noticed higher prices followed by utilities (21%) and transport (7%).
• There was strong support for measures across a broad range of policy areas to address the costs of living. 64% of respondents said it was very important to lower utility costs to reduce cost of living pressures. 64% said it was very important to increase supermarket competition, 60% to lower medical costs, and 58% to increase the pace of wages growth.

The respondents to this survey supported a suite of policy initiatives designed to both reduce the cost of living, and to increase wages and income supports. In their view, addressing the cost of living crisis requires a multi-dimensional approach, rather than a singular reliance on high interest rates to slow inflation.

The report is published by the Centre for Future Work in conjunction with a one-day symposium it is hosting in Melbourne on 17 October on the crisis in living standards in Australia, and how to address it through greater investments in wages, public services, and affordable housing and energy.

The post Doing it Tough appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Yet, despite the huge amounts of gas produced in WA annually, recent media reports claim the state is heading for a gas shortage.

How can WA be running short of gas when it is a globally significant producer?

Woodside’s North West Shelf Extension proposal is of particular concern as it would extend the life of Australia’s largest LNG facility for 50 years.

Despite the scale of this extension, approval is being sought without the project identifying gas supply sufficient for its LNG production capacity.

This is a fundamental difference between this project and all previous LNG projects in WA.

By locking in a major source of export demand without sufficient new supply, the NWS Extension has a strong incentive to attempt to redirect domestic gas for export.

This could permanently destabilise the WA domestic gas market.

The post Gas in WA: Exports appeared first on The Australia Institute.

• 67% of Australians say that public hearings should be held under either unlimited circumstances or when a public hearing would be in the public interest, more frequently than the current legislation stipulates.
• 15% of Australians think public hearings should be limited to when a public hearing would be in the public interest and in exceptional circumstances only, as the current legislation stipulates.
• Only 1% of Australians think public hearings should not be permitted at all.

The post Polling – National Anti-Corruption Commission public hearings appeared first on The Australia Institute.

●      4,350 ongoing jobs in wind tower manufacturing, and thousands more in input industries, especially steel

●      Output of over 800 towers per year, with cumulative value of up to $15 billion over the next 17 years

●      Incremental demand for up to 700,000 tonnes of Australian-made steel per year, creating a foundation for the recapitalization of Australian steel plants with carbon-free technologies

●      Avoiding 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions thanks to reduced sea shipping of imported wind towers

Wind energy manufacturing represents a prime opportunity to apply the new policy tools of the federal government’s Future Made in Australia manufacturing strategy.

The report makes several recommendations, including:

• The federal government in co-operation with state governments and industry should commission an engineering and financial study into the optimal location, plant size, plant playout, advanced production equipment and minimum scale of output required to establish competitive tower manufacturing on the east coast of Australia (where onshore and offshore wind farm activity will be intense for decades).
• State and federal government local content plans for renewable energy generation should prescribe specific proportions of domestic content in private and public procurement of wind energy equipment – harmonised across states to improve efficiency in domestic wind tower manufacturing.
• A public-private planning authority should be established to strengthen linkages between investments in renewable energy supply and parallel investments in green steel production, using steady demand for wind tower manufacturing (and resulting supply of non-carbon electricity) to validate investments in decarbonised steel production.
• The Scope 3 emissions embodied in imported towers (both in offshore manufacturing and then shipping of those towers to Australia) should be fully reflected in decisions regarding sourcing.

The post An Industrial Strategy for Domestic Manufacturing of Onshore and Offshore Wind Energy Towers and Equipment appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The failure to fully fund public schools is clearly a case of false economy. The relatively small amounts of money ‘saved’ in the near term, are more than offset by long-run underperformance according to numerous indicators: school attainment and completion, productivity, GDP, and fiscal balances. The Commonwealth government is leaving money on the table, with its failure to fully meet SRS funding requirements.

The post Leaving Money on the Table: Foregone Economic Gains from Continued SRS Underfunding appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Submission to Validation (State Coastal Policy) Bill appeared first on The Australia Institute.

There has been limited progress since the report’s publication.

Though a 2020 report prepared for the Council of Attorneys-General (CAG) recommended raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 without exceptions, this never made it to CAG for consideration and few jurisdictions have made progress in this direction.

In the jurisdictions that have made progress, these reforms have often been scaled back, accompanied by expanded police powers over children, or may even be reversed.

The post Submission: Inquiry into Australia’s youth justice and incarceration system appeared first on The Australia Institute.

There are only two ways to make housing more affordable. Either the supply of housing is increased relative to demand, or you the demand for housing is decreased relative to supply. If a housing affordability policy does not relatively increase supply or decrease demand, then it will not make housing more affordable. The problem with the current housing policy settings is that they incentivise demand but do little to increase supply.

We recommend the following:

• Restrict negative gearing to newly built housing.
• The capital gains tax discount should be scrapped, and capital gains should be taxed
  like other types of income.
• Macroprudential policies should be explored to reduce households access to credit
  for buying residential investment property.
• The government should not pursue policies that preference one group of home
  buyers by allowing them access to more funding.

The post Financial regulatory framework and home ownership appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Impact of fire ants in Queensland electorates appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The results show that:

• The most common barrier to attending music events is cost, with three in five 16–25-year-olds (59%) selecting it as a barrier, and 35% identifying it as the most significant barrier.
• Two in three young Australians (64%) say that attending music events is important to them, while 30% say that it is not.
• Four in five young Australians (81%) support government programs for young people to plan, develop, and deliver music events.
• Four in five young Australians (80%) say that a $200 government-funded voucher would increase the number of music events they attend.
• Young Australians are most likely to discover new music via music streaming services (61%), followed by YouTube (54%) and TikTok (52%).

The post Polling – Young Australians’ participation in live music appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Submission to the Tasmanian Integrity Commission consultation on: The use and misuse of public resources in parliamentary elections’ appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The government presents two basic rationales for expanding gas production: that more gas-fired generation capacity is needed to facilitate the transition to a renewable grid, and that more gas production is required to address potential shortfalls (“supply gaps”) in domestic supply. Neither of these rationales are supported by evidence. Nor, indeed, are they supported by the government’s own modelling—or the Future Gas Strategy itself.

So why is the Strategy so insistent that Australia needs to produce more gas? There is a third, unspoken rationale at work here: the idea that it is in Australia’s economic interest to continue producing gas and selling it to the rest of the world. This reasoning underpins the Strategy’s repeated claims that gas will be needed to power the growth of Australian manufacturing, and that one of the Strategy’s six “guiding principles” is an assurance that “Australia is, and will remain, a reliable trading partner for energy, including Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)”.

Given the ongoing damage that consumption of gas continues to wreak on the atmosphere, this is blind short-termism at best and deeply cynical at worst. For Australia’s LNG export facilities to continue working at full capacity, the rest of the world would have to resign itself to something in the region of 2.4°C to 2.6°C of warming. Such a scenario would not just be calamitous for millions of people around the world—not least in the Pacific region—it also stands in direct defiance of the scientific consensus on climate change, and the government’s own climate pledges and policies.

Similarly, the Future Gas Strategy’s preferred domestic demand scenario is that with the highest continued domestic gas usage. This level of domestic gas consumption would make it impossible to achieve net zero emissions by 2050—again, a direct contradiction to official government policy.

Despite the green-tinted language in which the Strategy sets out its vision of the future, that future is anything but green. It’s a future in which sea levels rise, extreme weather events increase in frequency, bushfires lay waste to the countryside—and gas companies make money hand over fist thanks to Australia’s refusal to confront the consequences of its greed and short-sightedness. This is not a future in which anyone wants to live, and it is not a future we should bequeath to the world.

The post What is the case for more gas? appeared first on The Australia Institute.

This is because the public funding provisions in the Bill are based on the number of MPs a party has in the South Australian Parliament, rather than on the level of public support enjoyed by a given party or candidate, or on how many South Australians are party members.

If the Bill passed, independent candidates and minor parties that lack parliamentary representation would receive little or no public funding at all – and, in addition, they would be capped in how much private money they can raise. This would leave some minor parties in a situation where they would neither receive public funding nor be eligible for private funding, a “funding trap” that would make it impossible for them to operate.

An alternative public funding system, called “democracy vouchers”, could better achieve the Bill’s objective of removing private money from South Australian elections while also putting incumbents and new entrants on a level playing field; encouraging parties and candidates to engage with the public ahead of an election; and leaving it for the public to decide how much money is spent on public funding. Australia Institute polling research shows that Australians would be much more likely to participate in a donation voucher scheme than to make a private donation to a political party.

There are also problems with the Bill’s limits on spending, which do not account for the advantages of incumbency. Further, the Bill would make spending caps mandatory for all candidates while not restricting third parties at all. The danger is that this means candidates could be incapable of countering expensive campaigns from third parties.

The Bill should not be passed in its current form.

The post Money and power in South Australian elections appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Collecting sensitive information from blood analysis is restricted under Australia’s privacy laws. This is because the mishandling of this information can have a substantial detrimental impact on those who have provided the information. Requiring workers to submit to blood analysis is just one example of how organisations are now routinely collecting sensitive information from workers, sometimes without adhering to the requirements of privacy laws. Other examples include using fingerprint and facial recognition software and sensors that collect physiological and psychological data about workers.

The protection from arbitrary interference with a person’s privacy is a fundamental human right. Interfering with this right, by collecting sensitive personal information, should occur in limited circumstances and only where necessary. However, this report shows that some organisations in Australia, are not treating the collection of sensitive information from workers as an exception. They are collecting sensitive information as a routine step in their employment processes.

The findings of this report raise concerns about power, privacy, fairness, and the potential for discrimination in the practices being adopted by some organisations. These findings also show that Australia’s current privacy and workplace relations laws do not adequately address these concerns. Amendments to Australian privacy laws are currently being considered by the Australian Government with reforms likely to be put before the Australian Parliament before the end of 2024.

This report examines the need for new provisions within either or both privacy or workplace relations laws that set out the rights of workers to protect their sensitive information. It argues that regulation should be geared towards, not only protecting workers’ rights to privacy, but to providing a disincentive to organisations hoarding and misuse of the personal and sensitive information of workers.

The worker-centric approach called for in this report includes:

• the development of one system of regulation to protect the privacy concerns of all workers regardless of employment status or work context
• defining the collection of workers’ personal and sensitive information as high risk requiring both specific and detailed justification for the collection of this information and the genuine informed and affirmative consent of workers
• the establishment of a tripartite mechanism to assist the regulator to develop and manage processes for dealing with the privacy and related human rights concerns of workers
• the use of codes and frameworks, developed via a tripartite mechanism, to set out when and how workers’ information can be collected and used
• the development of an easy to access, and timely, worker centered mechanism to address concerns about the collection and use of workers’ information.

The post No Blood – No Job appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Wealth and inequality in Australia appeared first on The Australia Institute.

State and federal governments have suppressed civic participation by penalising non-violent protests, stonewalling requests for information, insulating political parties from the consequences of declining membership and silencing dissenting public servants.

The Australia Institute’s body of research on democratic participation provides a starting point for reform efforts, but these efforts will be futile unless governments and parliaments stop suppressing and start encouraging civic participation.

The post Inquiry into civics education, engagement, and participation appeared first on The Australia Institute.

“Petroleum resources are owned by the community and a royalty is a purchase price for the resource. The community expects a fair return for the loss of its non-renewable petroleum resources.”

This rhetoric does not reflect reality. While the community might expect a fair return for the loss of its resources, in many cases it gets no return at all, fair or otherwise.

Australia has ten facilities that export gas as liquified natural gas (LNG). Six of these projects—both of the Northern Territory’s facilities and four of the five operating in Western Australia—pay no royalties, either state or federal. These facilities represent 56% of Australia’s gas export capacity. This means that all the gas exported from the NT, and more than half the gas exported from Australia, is given for free to the companies exporting it.

The monetary value of this gas is enormous. The total value of LNG exports over the last four years is estimated at $265 billion Australia-wide, $37 billion of which was exported from the NT. All of the NT’s LNG exports were royalty-free and Australia’s royalty-free exports totalled $149 billion. To put this another way: in the last four years alone, Australians have given away the gas that made $149 billion worth of LNG, for free.

The billions of dollars in forgone revenue each year from effectively giving away Australian gas for free could be invested in a sovereign wealth fund (as it is in Norway) or used to raise productivity and increase living standards of Australians by funding schools, hospitals, renewable energy, and other needed public infrastructure.

The gas industry does not make a fair contribution to the community. The Australia Institute recommends:

• A comprehensive inquiry into the mismanagement of Australia’s gas resources;
• The application of a royalty to all gas produced in Australia.

The post Australia’s great gas giveaway appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Analysis of NEM data suggests that annual forced curtailment for 2023-24 was around 4,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh). This represents around 9.3% of Australia’s total annual wind and utility solar generation.

A possible source of flexible demand for this generation is residential off-peak hot water. Off-peak systems account for around 30% of Australian household hot water systems. They are designed to use power overnight, a period when electricity demand has historically been lowest, but during which coal-fired generators have kept producing electricity regardless.

Today, off-peak times could be redefined, and off-peak systems reorganised to consume renewable electricity during the middle of the day, when there is an abundant supply of renewable electricity. Research by the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney estimates that switching off-peak hot water to the middle of the day could have provided around 4,000 GWh of flexible demand in 2020—coincidentally, almost the exact level of renewable curtailment in 2023–24.

Off-peak electric hot water systems were an innovative solution to the changing circumstances in the rapidly evolving state-based electricity networks in Australia from the 1950s onwards. While the problems faced by the electricity system of the 2020s are different to those faced in the 1950s, off-peak hot water systems could again play an important role in addressing those problems.

Just as large commercial buildings have the potential to shift a significant amount of the electricity they use for heating and cooling to times of day when there is an abundance of renewable energy, off-peak hot water systems also represent a significant opportunity to shift household electricity demand. If off-peak hours were moved away from the time of day dominated by coal-fired electricity and towards the time of day when the sun is shining brightest, curtailment of solar power supply could be reduced significantly.

The post Off-peak hot water in the 21st century appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The results show that:

• Three in five (60%) Australians oppose public funding of political parties and candidates. Only one in four (27%) Australians support public funding.
• A majority of voters for all political parties oppose public funding.
• Seven in ten (71%) Australians oppose increasing public funding for political parties and candidates. Only one in six (18%) Australians support increasing it.
• A majority of voters for all political parties oppose increasing public funding. Opposition was highest among voters for One Nation (92%), the Coalition (78%) and Other/Independent candidates (71%).
• Earlier polling research finds that Australians would be more likely to use an alternative public funding system, “democracy vouchers” (39% are likely), than to donate under the status quo (16% are likely).

The post Polling – Public funding for political parties and candidates appeared first on The Australia Institute.

While utes are necessary to a range of occupations, their proliferation, particularly of larger heavier models, damages the environment, damages roads, and incurs a range of other costs on society. A key example of this incentivisation is an exemption from Luxury Car Tax (LCT), which applies to essentially all utes.

Large vehicles impose considerable costs on society, from their higher carbon emissions and rates of road damage to serious safety concerns. The Australian Government should ensure that these costs are accounted for by properly taxing and regulating these vehicles, starting with removing the LCT exemption for utes. These policies would curb the growth in expensive and damaging vehicles in Australia and limit the use of utes to legitimate commercial purposes rather than personal luxuries.

The post Luxury Car Tax and the Ute Loophole appeared first on The Australia Institute.

This briefing note formed part of The Australia Institute’s submission to consultation on the Commonwealth Government’s Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive.

The post Hope and hydrogen – Australia’s hydrogen export charade appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Money and power in Tasmanian elections appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The likelihood of shared power in the Commonwealth parliament has increased as the major party vote has declined significantly since the end of World War 2, and the 2022 election marked the lowest combined vote for the two largest parties since the Great Depression. It also yielded the largest House of Representatives crossbench ever.

Despite occasional fearmongering about ‘hung’ parliaments, minority government and “coalitions of chaos”, the reality is that power sharing governments are common in Australia. Governments often need to secure the support of other parliamentarians, whether through the formal, albeit secret, coalition agreements between the Liberal and National parties or various arrangements with independents and minor party MPs.

Independents and minor parties upend the old certainties of political life. Predictive tools like the Mackerras pendulum do not capture contests outside of the two major parties, and
what is a “safe” or “marginal” seat seems to be inverted for independents and crossbenchers.

This necessitates a more mature and nuanced analysis of both electoral outcomes and the contribution of crossbenchers and their roles, just as the electoral success of the Labor Party
in the 1890s and 1900s forced the political class to reckon with the political labour movement. Power sharing has always been a feature of parliamentary democracy, but the details are always changing.

The post Power sharing in Australian parliaments appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Despite this, the industry has significant influence in the state.

The post The oil and gas industry in South Australia appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training Inquiry into the Digital Transformation of Workplaces appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The new regime of workplace delegates’ rights is very likely, overall, to increase the voice of employees, and thereby have positive consequences, over the long run, for pay and conditions, union membership, workplace cooperation, grievance resolution and productivity. However, the effects of new rights for paid union training leave depend very much on union responses, in particular on their subsequent reliance on classroom versus informal training and the ‘follow up’ of classroom education.

The post Employee voice and new rights for workplace union delegates appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The Australia Institute recently conducted polling to determine community attitudes towards child poverty in Australia. This polling found that respondents were overwhelmingly supportive of government measures to reduce child poverty, including:

• Four in five (83%) Australians support the Commonwealth Government regularly measuring and reporting on poverty rates in Australia.
• Four in five (81%) Australians agree that income support payments should be set at a rate that do not cause any child in Australia to live in poverty.
• Australians are highly concerned that Australia has a high child poverty rate compared to other developed countries (69%), its impact on children’s health and lifespan (83%), and on education and employment outcomes (85%).
• Demographics were not a factor that influenced respondents’ opinions about child poverty.

Without an official measure of poverty it is difficult to address the problem. Our polling shows that most Australians want the Commonwealth Government to measure poverty, and that most also support policies that would reduce rates of child poverty. It is time for the Commonwealth Government to hear these calls, raise income payments to a rate that would pull households out of poverty, collect and publish data on poverty that would inform policymakers and keep poverty on the agenda, and take transformative action towards permanently eliminating child poverty.

The post Ending child poverty in Australia appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Key Findings

• Two in three Australians (65%) are not prepared to pay anything extra to have nuclear power in the mix.
• Only one in 20 Australians (4%) are prepared to pay more than $500 per year to have nuclear power in the mix.
• One in five Australians (19%) are prepared to pay up to $250 (13%) or up to $500 per year (6%) to have nuclear power in the mix.
• Across the four large states, between 61% and 69% of residents are not prepared to pay anything extra to have nuclear power in the mix.
• Most Australians are not prepared to pay anything extra to have nuclear power in the mix, regardless of voting intention.

The post Polling – Willingness to pay for nuclear appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Although subject to market prices, cooperative dwellings in Sweden, Norway and Denmark are some of the most cost-efficient, good quality, well-maintained and secure forms of housing.

The post Housing cooperatives: an answer to Australia’s housing shortage? appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Respondents were asked if they think the Federal Government is doing too much or too little to secure the release of Australian citizen Julian Assange.

• One in three Australians (34%) think that the Federal Government is doing too little to secure the release of Julian Assange, the single most popular choice.
• Australians are more likely to answer “Don’t know / Not sure” (31%) than that the Federal Government is doing the right amount (24%) or too much (11%).
• Three times as many Australians think the Federal Government is doing too little to secure the release of Assange as think it is doing too much (34% vs 11%).
• Labor voters are as likely as Australians overall to think that the Federal Government is doing too little to secure the release of Assange (33% vs 34%).
• The single most popular response among Labor, Coalition, Greens and One Nation voters is that the Federal Government is doing too little.

The post Polling – Prosecution of Assange appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Reform is needed to ensure these concessions are limited to those who really need them. The income level or super balance at which tax concessions cut out should be lowered. This would lead to significant savings in forgone revenue, reduce inequality, and significantly increase the ability of the Commonwealth Government to properly fund the age pension system.

The post Who benefits? appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Polling – Anti-siphoning laws appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Gas industry claims debunked appeared first on The Australia Institute.

However, over the last three decades initiatives to deliver competition and contestability to public services, namely through privatisation, outsourcing and deregulation, have repeatedly failed both economically and socially.

This submission, using a framework built on neoclassical economic principles, demonstrates how each failed attempt to add ‘competition’ and ‘contestability’ to a traditionally public service could have been predicted and avoided.

The post Privatised Failure appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Australia has ten facilities that export gas as liquified natural gas (LNG). Six of these projects—four of the five operating in Western Australia, along with both of the Northern Territory’s facilities—pay no royalties, either state or federal. These facilities represent 56% of Australia’s gas export capacity. This means that more than half the gas exported from Australia is given for free to the companies exporting it.

The monetary value of this gas is enormous. The total value of LNG exports over the last four years is estimated at $265 billion. Exports of LNG based on royalty-free gas were valued at a total of $149 billion. To put this another way: in the last four years alone, Australians have given away the gas that made $149 billion worth of LNG, for free. $111 billion worth of this royalty-free LNG was produced in Western Australia.

The billions of dollars in forgone revenue each year from effectively giving away Australian gas for free could be invested in a sovereign wealth fund (as it is in Norway) or used to raise productivity and increase living standards of Australians by funding schools, hospitals, renewable energy, and other needed public infrastructure.

The gas industry does not make a fair contribution to the community. The Australia Institute recommends:

• A comprehensive inquiry into the mismanagement of Australia’s gas resources;
• The application of a royalty to all gas produced in Australia.

The post Australia’s great gas giveaway appeared first on The Australia Institute.

To respond to the growing textiles waste problem, the Commonwealth has proposed policies intended to create a ‘circular economy.’

However, a genuinely circular economy depends on drastically reducing the rate at which textiles are produced and consumed, banning the export of textiles waste, and investing in Australia’s capacity to manufacture and recycle better alternatives domestically.

This paper discusses how textiles waste is generated and discarded in Australia, and the policies needed to create a ‘circular economy’ for textiles. Australia’s addiction to cheap textiles, many of which are derived from fossil fuels, has global consequences. The rapid production and overconsumption of textiles – particularly ‘fast fashion’ – creates obstacles to the reuse and repair of textiles, and our inability to reuse or recycle them domestically means we continue to rely on exporting textiles waste to landfills, waterways and beaches far from Australian shores.

The post Textiles waste in Australia appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The results show that most of these policies have widespread support across Australia.

The post Polling – Australian attitudes to ACT policies appeared first on The Australia Institute.

When considering WA’s tiny and shrinking revenues from oil and gas, it is important to remember that WA is an internationally significant gas producer. If it were a country, WA would be the world’s third largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), behind only the USA and Qatar. The multinational companies that export LNG from WA made revenue of $56.3 billion in 2022-23, more than WA Government revenue ($43.6 billion in that year).

Despite the volume of gas produced and the huge export revenue, WA Government figures show that the WA community sees very little in return.

The gas industry has ripped of Western Australians for too long. The WA and Australian governments have an opportunity to raise far more money from oil and gas production

The post Budget revenue from WA gas exports appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Effective policy measures available to the NSW Government in the short term include: an immediate end to logging of koala habitat; establishment of the Great Koala National Park without generating carbon credits; and climate policy that reduces absolute greenhouse gas emissions such as a moratorium on fossil fuel projects.

The post No delay, no excuses, no carbon offsets appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Our team of researchers at the Centre for Future Work has parsed the budget, focusing on its impacts on work, wages, and labour markets. Please read our full briefing report.

The post Budget 2024-25: Resists Austerity, Reduces Inflation, Targets Wage Gains appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The first nine recommendations to strengthen democratic architecture are identified as the highest priorities, with remaining reforms in this section recommended for action during
this term of Parliament. Several of these have draft legislation prepared or can be addressed quickly as soon as Parliament returns. The Australia Institute’s nine principles for fair
political finance reform are included. Actions to improve the functioning of, and representation within Parliament, have been proposed.

The post Democracy Agenda for the 51st Tasmanian Parliament appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Beyond the 2023–24 budget year, total budgeted fossil fuel subsidies over the longer term have reached $65 billion.

This longer term total is 16 times the balance of Australia’s Disaster Ready Fund, and 6.5 times greater than the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF). The Federal Government’s share of this total is $54 billion, or 5.4 times the HAFF.

Australia is not taking serious action on climate change. Instead, the majority of its governments continue to subsidise the fossil fuel industry and greenwash their poor climate policies. Cutting fossil fuel subsidies would not only help achieve genuine reductions in emissions, but would save money that could be spent on public services.

But the coming months bring new opportunities to change course. Budgets will soon be passed for the 2024-25 financial year, and elections will be held in the ACT, Northern Territory and Queensland. A federal election is due in the next 18 months. The costs of Australia’s fossil fuel subsidies, both financial and environmental, and the opportunities that their phase out could present, should be front and centre of Australian policy debate.

The post Fossil fuel subsidies in Australia 2024 appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Key points:

• The FTCS clearly meets the World Trade Organisation’s definition of ‘subsidy’, as the tax refund represents ‘government revenue that is foregone or not collected…such as tax credits’.
• Organisations that explicitly call Australia’s FTCS a subsidy include the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Energy Agency (IEA), International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Overseas Development International (ODI) and Oil Change International.
• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not mention the FTCS specifically, but IMF fossil fuel subsidy estimates include the impact of the FTCS.
• The OECD has called for the elimination of the FTCS.

The post Australia’s Fuel Tax Credits and the debate over fossil fuel subsidies appeared first on The Australia Institute.

In this paper we propose reforms that could improve the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax (PRRT). Currently the government is proposing a deduction cap limited to 90% of assessable PRRT income. The deduction cap is far too small to make a material difference to PRRT revenue over the long term. We propose instead two stricter caps of either 80% or 60%.

While a stricter cap of either 80% or 60% is preferred to the government’s current proposal, it remains a least-best solution. We propose the Commonwealth Government tax also investigate introducing a true windfall profits tax. Such a tax would raise much greater revenue but would still be a modest return relative to large industry profits and revenue.

The post A stronger PRRT cap appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Federal taxes paid by Chevron, Exxon, Woodside and Shell raise less money than beer excise.

Just 0.7% of the state’s workforce is employed in oil and gas extraction.

The gas industry enjoys large public subsidies. According to the WA Government, without its $8 billion in subsidies to the North West Shelf project, the project would not have proceeded. Its support was “massive and integral”. Subsidies continue, particularly through investment promotion and infrastructure provision.

The gas industry clings to its social license by exaggerating its economic benefits and hiding its negative economic impacts. In WA, the industry’s close links to government and media outlets ensure that its spin is rarely contested.

The post Gas in WA: the economy appeared first on The Australia Institute.

However, the NZEA Bill turns a blind eye to the vast majority of workers who will be impacted by the transitions caused by climate change and climate policy. The Act also strategically sidesteps Australia’s subsidies and expansion plans for fossil fuels exports which will increase the number of workers who will eventually need to transition out of these industries.

To be effective in achieving its stated goals, the powers of the NZEA would need to expand to both prevent the development of new fossil fuel projects that will increase the number of workers requiring transition support, and to strengthen the NZEA’s ability to plan and coordinate the unfolding transition.

The post No Jobs on a Dead Planet appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The argument that Australia is over-reliant on income tax relies on narrowly defining income tax that mistakenly excludes SSCs. These social security contributions are levied by almost all developed countries to assist in the funding of a wide range of social benefits which can include unemployment benefits, accident, injury and sickness benefits, old age, and disability pensions, as well as the provision of various hospital and medical services. Importantly they act similar to income tax, in being levelled as a percentage of income earned (often just on employment earnings). SSCs are categorised as taxes on labour income by the OECD.

Claims that Australia is over-reliant on income tax do not stand up to scrutiny. Australia sits well below the OECD average when it comes to both income taxes and the amount of tax collected overall.

The post Income tax in Australia’s tax system appeared first on The Australia Institute.

In order to pursue such potential benefits governments should measure and incentivise demand flexibility in buildings.

The post Buildings as batteries appeared first on The Australia Institute.

“This is not a serious proposal to address energy challenges in Australia and NSW,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“The assessment documents include no discussion of how this defunct power station can suddenly become viable using a highly uncertain fuel source. There is no discussion of levelised costs, electricity market strategy or a host of other issues that a genuine proposal would have.

“The environmental impact statement has vastly underplayed the greenhouse gas emissions and other potential environmental impacts that the project could have, not least what a large new customer for woodchips would mean for logging operations.

“This project should be rejected and allow community, regulatory and investor focus to return to viable, sustainable renewable energy projects.”

The post Submission on restart of Redbank Power Station appeared first on The Australia Institute.

This analysis shows that RIFA will cost Australia more than $22 billion by the 2040s. This means that it is less costly to spend $200 million or even $300 million per year every year for the next ten years (which would be a total of between $2 billion and $3 billion) to eradicate RIFA now.

We suggest that one of the reasons that the eradication plan has gone underfunded is that the latest cost-benefit analysis – commissioned by Biosecurity Queensland of Department of
Agriculture and Fisheries, titled Assessing the Impacts of the Red Imported Fire Ant and published in 2021 – downplays the economic case for urgent action.

The post Red imported fire ants – the benefits of avoiding a national disaster appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The NSW Government review into Section 83C of the Education Act 1990 (NSW) is a timely addition to the broader discussion on school funding in Australia. Many private
schools in NSW receiving government funding or tax concessions appear to be operating in breach of the relevant legislation that requires them not to operate for
profit, to pay wages in line with market values, and with expenditure that is not required for the operation of the school. Examples include:

• Cranbrook School, which spent $125 million on a five-story sandstone building that contains a double-height orchestra room, 267-seat theatre, and Olympic-sized indoor pool;
• The Scots College, which in 2019 paid a reported $29 million to renovate a library so that it would resemble a Scottish Baronial castle; and
• The King’s School, which paid $15 million to buy six hectares of land next to Lane Cove National Park for staff and student camps.

To arrest growing inequality in our school system, we recommend that:

• All schools – including private schools – be required to table in state parliament an annual report that includes details of school income broken down by funding source, and an itemised list of expenditure including the salaries paid to individual senior managers.
• The tax deductions given to private school building funds should be removed.
• The facilities of private schools should be made available for community groups to use outside of school hours.
• As a condition of receiving public funding, private schools should have to disclose an itemised list of the salaries they pay senior executives.

The post Funding a fairer education system appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Supermarket profits have increased in recent years and there is now evidence that margins have also increased. Food retailers are an important and significant part of household’s weekly expenses, with low-income households spending a bigger proportion of their income on food. This means that food inflation is a particularly important pain point for Australia’s
most vulnerable households.

The current cost of living crisis makes investigating the lack of competition and pricing behaviour of food retailers very relevant. We hope the following insights and policy recommendations will be useful to help reform this essential market.

The post Supermarkets or super mark-ups? appeared first on The Australia Institute.

• The enormous advantages enjoyed by incumbent MPs and established political parties;
• The way in which donation and spending caps favour major parties;
• The lack of transparency and effective regulation around political finance;
• NSW’s failure to implement measures used successfully elsewhere in Australia, including the state’s continued use of optional preferential voting, and its lack of truth in political advertising laws.

The Australia Institute’s research into truth in political advertising laws is kindly supported by the Susan McKinnon Foundation.

The post Submission – Review of the 2023 NSW election appeared first on The Australia Institute.

We argue that the government should:

• Adopt a stricter cap of either 60% or 80%, or
• Reform the PRRT regime to ensure any windfall gains are taxed.

Our polling demonstrates that stricter caps would have much greater support than the 90% proposed. The concern that any changes to the cap would continue to play into the hand of the oil and gas industry accountants however could be countered by reforming the PRRT so that whenever the rate of return on the funds employed exceeds a certain threshold the liability would be triggered. This supports our recommendation that the government pursue a PRRT regime that would ensure any windfall gains are taxed, given such gains are not expected or included in investment decision taxing them would not affect investment decisions.

These recommendations would also meet the demands of the more than 10,000 people who have signed the Australia Institute petition calling for the repair and increase of the PRRT to address this imbalance and ensure the Australian people get a fair share of the windfall profits from our own natural resources.

The aim of the government should be not to shift PRRT return from a later period to earlier, but to deliver bigger returns, always.

Given the great needs within the community for stronger government services, infrastructure and benefits, the government needs to be able to raise more revenue to fulfil spending commitments into the future.

Given the role the oil and gas industry in producing emissions that lead to rising temperatures and climate change, we also argue the government has a moral responsibility to ensure that the industries which are causing the most damage to the climate pay a greater level of taxation given the large costs required to transition the economy to net zero.

Recently, Professors Rod Sims and Ross Garnaut of The Superpower Institute proposed a “carbon solutions levy”, which they estimate would raised in the order of $100 billion in its first year. Such a level of revenue should be the amount the government is contemplating. In such a context the average $600 million extra revenue estimated to be raised by these proposed changes to the PRRT is woefully inadequate.

The post Submission – PRRT: Delivering fairer and bigger returns, always appeared first on The Australia Institute.

• Seven in 10 Australians (69%) support an end to native forest logging on public land across Australia, including 37% who strongly support an end.
• Only one in five (19%) oppose an end to native forest logging across Australia.
• There is majority support for ending native forest logging across Australia in Western Australia (71%), NSW (70%), Victoria (66%) and Queensland (68%).
• There is majority support for ending native forest logging on public land across Australia from all major voting intentions, with highest level of support from Labor voters (79%), followed by Greens voters (76%), Coalition voters (62%), One Nation voters (61%) and Independent/Other voters (57%).

The post Polling Research: Ending native forest logging across Australia appeared first on The Australia Institute.

• An overwhelming majority (84.6%) of voters agree truth in political advertising laws should be in place in time for the next federal election, with almost 7 in 10 (69.7%) of voters strongly agreeing. Only 4.9% of voters disagree, 10.5% didn’t know or weren’t sure.
• 7 in 10 voters (70.8%) say the NACC should be able to hold public hearings in any circumstance, or when a hearing is in the public interest. Only 15.9% say the NACC’s power should be limited to holding public hearings in exceptional circumstances, which is currently the case.
• Two-party preferred: 65% Simon Kennedy (LNP) vs 35% Martin Moore (GRN) based on respondent allocated preferences.
• First preferences: 53% Simon Kennedy (Liberal Party), 17% Martin Moore (Australian Greens), 12% Roger Woodward (Independent), 8% Natasha Brown (Animal Justice Party), 6% Simone Francis Gagatam (Sustainable Australia Party), 4% Vinay Kolhatkar (Libertarian), including the redistributed Undecided voters.
• Nearly one in four respondents (24.5%) have not decided their first preference vote in the upcoming by-election.

The post Polling – Cook By-Election: Integrity Reform appeared first on The Australia Institute.

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Key findings of the report include:

• Last year’s decision, which lifted the minimum wage by 8.65 per cent and other award wages by 5.75 per cent, offset some but not all of the effects of recent inflation on real earnings for low-wage workers.
• At the same time, inflation fell by 3 full percentage points.
• There has been no significant correlation between rises in the minimum wage and inflation since 1997.
• Raising wages by 5 to 10 per cent this year would offset recent inflation and restore the pre-pandemic trend in real wages for award-covered workers.
• Even if fully passed on by employers, higher award wages would have no significant impact on economy-wide prices.
• A 10 per cent increase in award wages could be fully offset, with no impact on prices at all, by just a 2 per cent reduction in corporate profits – still leaving profits far above historical levels.

“Australia’s lowest paid workers have been hardest hit by inflation since Covid. There is a moral imperative to restore quality of life for these Australians and this analysis shows that there is no credible economic reason to deny them,” Jericho said.

“It’s vital the Fair Work Commission ensure that the minimum wage not only keeps up with inflation, but also grows gradually in real terms – as was the trend before the pandemic.

The post The Irrelevance of Minimum Wages to Future Inflation appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The post Submission to the Reserve Bank Reforms 2023 bill appeared first on The Australia Institute.

This paper looks at several changes that could stop public funds from being funnelled to the oligopoly of academic publishers.

Key Findings:

• Australia’s public research institutions funnel an estimated $1 billion into the pockets of private academic publishers every year. Institutions spend $300 million on journal subscriptions alone.
• One‑off access for a single article can cost between AUD $30 and $500.
• Australia’s Chief Scientist has proposed a plan to pressure publishers to slash their exorbitant publishing and subscription fees, but it does not go far enough.
• The Australia Institute is recommending reforms to how funding bodies award research grants. These include:
  • Revising grant criteria to reward publication in open access journals with much lower publishing fees.
  • Trialling a lottery-based system for the allocation of grants to reduce the emphasis on publication in grant applications.
  • Introducing grants specifically for researchers committed to open-science principles;
  • Encouraging the rapid publication of research results through preprint servers.
  • Encouraging the development of institutional repositories focused on publishing original research.

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