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On April Fool’s Day, the Reserve Bank board decided not to cut interest rates, citing uncertainty about the economy.

At the time we criticised the decision arguing that not only were there enough signs that the economy was faltering and households were hurting, but that given the announcement of Donald Trump’s tariffs two days after the April RBA meeting, the board should have met again, rather than wait till the 20th of this month to make another decision.

Today’s retail trade figures highlight just how badly the RBA has misread the economy.

In the board’s statement in April, they noted:

“Household consumption growth had started to recover in the December quarter, underpinned by the ongoing pick-up in real household incomes. While some of this recovery in consumption appeared to reflect price-sensitive consumers concentrating spending in promotional periods during the December quarter, the pick-up in spending growth among components not affected by sales events suggested there had been a genuine improvement in underlying momentum. More recent indicators signalled that some of this pick-up had been sustained.” [our emphasis]

Well, today’s retail trade figures show the complete opposite. There was no genuine improvement, nor any sense of sustained pick-up in retail turnover.

The Hubei Association is an Australia-wide community association for those from the Hubei province, whose capital city is Wuhan… the very place where COVID-19 started. How deep does that rabbit hole go?! Somebody please get our best pundits on the case!

Neither campaign ultimately took up the Association’s offer of assistance.

The issue came up in during a regular segment featuring Liberal campaign spokesperson Jane Hume and O’Neil herself on the Seven network. Hume remarked to the minister that there “might be Chinese spies handing out” her how-to-vote cards, but the Liberals had “dozens, thousands, hundreds of young people” on the hustings.

The campaign, which appears to have run out of serious policy, seems to be resorting to a back catalogue of redbaiting and dog-whistling from Cold War-era electioneering. But the history of fearmongering about foreign interference in Australian elections runs deeper.

The Coalition doggedly promised to cut 41,000 public servants in Canberra. Public service minister and Labor’s ACT Senate candidate Katy Gallagher said the number of public servants was “about right”, but as the ABC pointed out, she “did not rule out cuts altogether”.

Her exact words were: “there may be some changes across departments and agencies as programs finish and other priorities ramp up”.

There’s an obvious question here: if there’s still room for greater efficiency in the public service, what good does the annual efficiency dividend on the public service do?

The efficiency dividend was brought in by the Hawke Government in 1987. It forces government departments and agencies to find enough savings and efficiencies in their operations to accommodate a 1% cut in their budget each year.

It’s been around for nearly forty years now, and governments dial it up or down depending on whether they think there’s political advantage in it. But whichever way you look at it, they haven’t worked as intended.

The Wrap with Amy Remeikis

If the polls, the trend, and the vibe are all right, then voters are about to give the Albanese government another chance.

But you can feel the reluctance.  The only question that seems to remain is whether Labor will govern in its own right, or as a majority.

From the moment he became opposition leader, Anthony Albanese planned on becoming the first prime minister since John Howard to be re-elected.  He wants three terms. The old adage went that if you change the government, you change the country, but Albanese has been around politics long enough to know that’s no longer enough.

If you want to truly change the country, you need about a decade. That gives you time to refresh the statutory appointments, map out foreign relations, change the public service and shift the values of the nation.  It’s an easy criticism that Albanese has no long term plans – he obviously does.

On Thursday, he told reporters he was not a revolutionary, but a reformer and maybe, if his gamble pays off, history will judge him as such.

But his reforms are set at a glacial pace. And the world? Well that’s moving much faster.

And if Albanese and Labor don’t do something with power to measurably improve people’s lives this time around, they risk losing it all.

Editor’s Note:  At a recent Portland City Council Committee hearing, two city commissioners challenged No More Freeways assertions that the Oregon Department of Transportation’s $1.9 billion Rose Quarter is actually building a roadway wide enough to accommodate 10 lanes of traffic, not just merely an additional auxiliary lane in each direction.  Bike Portland pointed out that these Councilors are placing their “blind faith” in the assertions of ODOT staff.  The record of this project shows that ODOT staff hasn’t earned anyone’s trust when it comes to accurately and honestly disclosing the width of this project. This matters because the project will be massively more costly, generate more traffic and more pollution than ODOT claims, and will worsen the quality of life in adjacent neighborhoods.

For more than six years now, ODOT has been concealing and willfully misrepresenting its plans to build an eight- or ten-lane freeway through Portland’s Rose Quarter. ODOT staff has known for years that it planned to build a 160-foot wide roadway through the Rose Quarter, and intentionally hid that information from the public and either lied or misled the public in its answers to direct questions about that basic fact.

Some would have us believe that if Australian voters do not give one party a majority tomorrow, the nation faces a period of instability, even chaos.

But history tells us there is nothing to be afraid of.

In fact, power-sharing parliaments can be effective and successful.

New research from The Australia Institute analyses 25 Australian elections where no one party won a majority.

What would the negotiations to form government look like? Who would be in the cabinet? Who would be speaker? Who would introduce legislation? How would it be scrutinised?

The report, Forming Power Sharing Government, (attached) examines all these issues and many more.

Key findings:

The paper identifies five things to expect from power-sharing negotiations:

• Negotiations may take time
• Negotiations usually draw on many years of parliamentary experience
• Agreements take a variety of forms
• Agreements may be with the unsuccessful major party, too
• Crossbenchers do not have to go with the party that wins more seats

Across power-sharing parliaments, crossbenchers have negotiated for:

It’s not often that an opinion writer has the good fortune to elicit serious commentary from respondents of the caliber of Christopher Caldwell, David P. Goldman, Helen Andrews, John DiIulio, and Jeremy Carl. I’ve read with admiration the work of all five commentators for many years and have books by four of them on my shelves. I’m grateful to them for taking the time to respond and share their knowledge and practical wisdom.

Christopher Caldwell, I take it, is generally favorable to the idea of granting legal status to the millions of illegals in the country who do not have criminal records. But he worries, and rightly so, that the compromise I propose would be unable to clear the hurdles presented by the U.S.’s existing civil rights regime—hurdles that activist judges would likely multiply. In practice, legal residence combined with amnesty for past misdemeanors would turn into “a euphemism for a program of settlement,” or “an immigration program that dare not speak its name.”

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss bracket creep, tariffs and the Aussie dollar, and the great silence about revenue in the federal election campaign.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 1 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Watch the Australia Institute’s Election Night Live on YouTube, Facebook or our website.

Order ‘After America: Australia and the new world order’ or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute and Centre for Future Work // @grogsgamut

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Show notes:

Weirdly for a party that has been criticising the ALP for being big spending, and putting pressure on inflation, the coalition announced that both 2025-26 and 2-26-27 would have bigger budget deficits.

They countered this by forecasting smaller deficits in the final two years of the forward estimates – but one of those year will be after the next election so it is less a forecast and more some numbers that no one thinks there is any hope of being accurate.

So where are the big “savings”? They estimate they will save $17.2bn over 4 years from cutting 41,000 public servants from Canberra.

Apparently, this will not involve cuts or voluntary redundancies or frontline staff or anyone from Defence or security agencies. As Jack Thrower noted, given in December 2024 there were only 69,438 APS jobs in Canberra, once we exclude those areas we are left with 46,293 jobs. So the Coalition costing assumes that nearly 90% of Canberra’s APS will resign over five years. If the Dept of Health counts as frontline, then we’re assuming 99.2% of people quit, and we know the Coalition loves the War Memorial, so if that is also excluded the Coalition is now assuming that over 100% of the remaining public servants will resign.

There was no costing on the nuclear power other than to note it will all be off-budget in a fund, because apparently a nuclear power plant that have no commercial viability will deliver a return on their investment.

Over the course of an election campaign punctuated by about-faces and flip flops, one constant has been Peter Dutton’s use of “clear” and “very clear” in his press conferences.

Based just on the transcripts on his website, he says he’s been clear or very clear on average 3 times per day.

But on April 24 he knocked it out of the park with a score of 23 at a doorstop interview in New Town:

On electric vehicles: “there’s no change in the policy and no, we’ve been very clear.”…“We’ve been clear about that and we’ve been clear in relation to the policies on the EVs.”

On Trump: “We’ve been very clear about what this election is about and it’s about who has the strength of leadership to stand up for our interests.”

On AUKUS: “I think I made clear what I was saying about it.” When prompted further, he said “Well, we can clear it up later, but I’ve gone through it a few times.”

If you’re still not clear on the Coalition’s policies, it seems you’ve only got yourself to blame!

The post This election, Peter Dutton has been repeatedly very, very clear appeared first on The Australia Institute.

On the ABC’s vote compass survey of more than a quarter of a million people, about 12% rank it as their number one concern. Overall it’s in the top four, above housing, health and immigration.

“So why is it receiving so little attention? Perhaps it is because everyone has decided this is the ‘cost of living election’,” said Stephen Long, Senior Fellow and Contributing Editor at The Australia Institute.

“Fair call – but the reporting, commentary, and much of the campaign rhetoric largely ignores the significant role climate change plays in driving up prices.”

Australia Institute research shows a direct connection between climate change and the cost of living.

1 . Make it illegal to lie in a political ad

Rival claims of misleading advertising from both sides of politics are the inevitable consequence of the absence of Truth in Political Advertising laws.

Almost 9 out of 10 Australians (89%) support Truth in Political Advertising laws, according to research from the Australia Institute.

It’s far from an outlandish idea. In fact South Australia has had truth in political advertising laws for almost forty years. The ACT has had similar laws since 2020. They work.

If the Government and Parliament are serious about addressing misinformation and improving debate, they could pass truth in political ad laws in time for the next election.

2. Reform negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount

The combination of these tax concessions for housing investors has inflated house prices well beyond incomes and made it harder for people to buy a home to live in.

Reforming these two would rebalance the housing market by reducing demand from investors and make it easier for first time buyers.

These two tax concessions are also enormously skewed towards the wealthiest Australians: the richest 10% reap more than half of the benefits.

It’s hard being young in today’s economy. Rising house prices lock increasing numbers of young people out of homeownership, while those lucky enough to have entered the housing market are now struggling under high interest rates. For many, university is more expensive than ever, and the time taken to repay HECS debts just keeps rising.

But what is often ignored is that young people, including many adults, are also directly discriminated against by Australian employment law: they can be legally paid less for the same work under the ‘junior rates’ system.

Junior rates make a real difference to young Australians’ standard of living. Consider an 18-year-old having just left home and renting: at the time of writing, the average asking rent for a two-bedroom unit in Sydney is about $727 per week, or $363.5 per bedroom.

1. Uni graduates pay more in HECS than the gas industry pays in PPRT

University used to be free but is now more expensive than ever. After graduating with an arts degree a young Australian will now repay the government around $50,000.

Meanwhile, Australia is one of the world’s largest gas exporters, but multinational gas corporations pay almost nothing for Australia’s gas. Uni graduates now pay back much more in student debt (HECS/HELP) repayments than the gas industry pays in Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT). In 2023-24 Australians paid more than 4 times on HECS/HELP than gas companies did on PRRT.

The drilling is part of gas exploration program by US oil and gas corporation ConocoPhillips in a sensitive marine environment off the west coast of Victoria and north west coast of Tasmania.

An oil spill could have devastating consequences for the marine environment and coastal communities in Victoria and Tasmania.

The drilling is unnecessary.

Key points:

• More than two-thirds of Australia’s east coast gas is exported.
• Around 100 PJ (which is more gas than Victoria, NSW, South Australia, Tasmania and Queensland use for electricity) is uncontracted gas, being exported to the lucrative global spot market ahead of supplying Australians.
• Gas exporters use more gas just running their export terminals than Australians use for electricity, manufacturing or in households.
• Any additional gas supplied to eastern Australia from this project will simply allow an equivalent amount of gas from other gas fields to be exported.
• Potential peak demand shortfalls in Victoria can be solved by electrification and pipeline upgrades.
• Australia gets little out of gas exports. None of the giant, predominantly foreign-owned, projects exporting gas from eastern Australia have ever paid corporate tax and do not pay resources tax.

“This dangerous oil and gas project is completely unnecessary. Australia doesn’t have a gas shortage. We have a gas export problem,” said Mark Ogge, Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute.

I’ve decided that it no longer makes sense to call myself “pro-life.”

This isn’t because I changed my mind about abortion. Becoming a father only intensified my belief that parents’ obligation to protect and provide for their children begins morally, and should begin legally, at conception.

But that’s no longer what the label “pro-life” means.

Spend long enough defending your “pro-life” beliefs, and you’ll eventually hear that you’re not really pro-life unless you support bike lanes, corn subsidies, and a return to the gold standard.

I exaggerate, but only slightly. Here’s a partial list of things you can’t support if you want to hold onto your “pro-life” card (according to people I’ve encountered on the internet):

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Richard Barnard, Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley and Richard Medhurst. These are some of the canaries in the coal mine for what is to come in the West as the region’s elite quickly becomes Israel’s international police. Medhurst joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about his own experiences in the United Kingdom and Austria, where federal agents and police arrested him and searched his home under draconian counterterrorism laws.

“I was just trying to tell the truth as best as I could with the facts that we had at that time and that's it. And I think they're trying to make an example out of me, definitely,” Medhurst tells Hedges.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton constantly talk about governing ‘for all Australians’, trotting out slogans like ‘no-one left behind’.

The truth is, hundreds of thousands of Australians are falling further behind every day and neither leader seems to care.

Growing inequality is having a huge impact on children and older people.

The Australian Council of Social Service notes that one in eight (13.4%) live in poverty. This includes 761,000 children. We know that being in poverty as a child has lifelong impacts, even if the child is later lifted out of poverty.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Australia is a rich country.

Australia Institute research showed that the COVID supplement, a $550 per fortnight payment to welfare recipients, lifted 650,000 people out of poverty, including 120,000 children.

This shows that poverty is a policy choice. If governments choose to, they could end child poverty and ensure that all older people have a dignified retirement.

Rather than tackle inequality, tax concessions and other tax loopholes are making it worse. Tax concessions worth tens of billions of dollars per year go overwhelmingly to the rich, while those who need government support the most are told that increases to welfare payments are unaffordable.

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Trimming the Ivy | The Roundtable Ep. 265

During this election campaign, both major parties have tried to make it very clear that concerned about our spending on defence.

Over the past term, the Labor Government increased funding by $50 billion, increasing total spending to 2% of GDP. It is forecast to continue to grow to 2.3% of GDP by the mid-2030s. The Coalition thinks that is not enough, and has promised to increase it to 2.5% of GDP in 5 years and 3% in 10 years.

With all this concern about defence spending, you would think Australia was either at risk of imminent invasion or was spending far less than our peers. But the evidence shows that neither of these is true.

Australia has an outsized spending on defence. In dollar terms, Australia is the 12th biggest spender on defence. We spend more dollars on defence than Canada, Israel, Spain, or the Netherlands.

If we look at the top 20 biggest spenders on defence as a percentage of GDP, Australia still ranks 12th. This puts us ahead of China, Italy, Germany, and Japan.

Were Australia to increase its defence spending to 2.3% of GDP, we would be the ninth biggest spender on defence and the military. Australia would be devoting more of its economy to defence than France and Taiwan, and on a par with the United Kingdom. If Australia went to 3% of GDP, as the Coalition has promised, we would pass India, South Korea, and be closing in on the United States.

Do we really believe as a nation that our security needs are more urgent than South Korea, a country that is still at war with North Korea?

Australia is a rich country that can afford anything that is a priority. Dispelling myths about our economy helps Australians make choices about what kind of country we want to be.

On this episode, Dr Richard Denniss joins Paul Barclay to discuss the importance of truth in democracy, the myths that mining is Australia’s economic ‘backbone’ and that Australia can’t ‘afford’ nice things, and how making you feel powerless is part of the strategy of the powerful.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 30 January 2025 and things may have changed since the recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Dr Richard Denniss, Executive Director, the Australia Institute // @richarddenniss

Host: Paul Barclay, Walkley Award winning journalist and broadcaster // @PaulBarclay

Show notes: 

Australia’s small mining industry, the Australia Institute (December 2024)

The careful deliberation would pay off: despite the slow start, the Gillard minority government would go on to pass legislation at a higher daily rate than any other Australian government.

17 days is far from the longest wait: after the 1922 election, it took 53 days of negotiations for the Nationalist and Country parties to agree to form coalition government.

The deal proved enduring; the coalition between these parties, or their respective iterations, has survived for over 100 years with only brief interruptions.

In fact, a wait of a couple of weeks or more is typical even in modern times.

The Australia Institute has compiled details of the 25 power sharing parliaments elected since 1989 at the federal, state and territory levels.

Most negotiations took 15 days or more. Last year, the Tasmanian Liberal Government took 32 days to strike an agreement with independents.

Australia’s post-election negotiations are short compared to many other countries. While Gillard and Abbott were negotiating back in 2010, Belgium was on its third month of a record 541 days of government negotiations. This is unusually long, but months-long government formations are the norm in many developed countries.

The last Spanish government negotiations took almost four months.

In this new Australia Institute podcast, Walkley Awar-winning broadcaster and host Paul Barclay asks contributors to the book What’s the Big Idea? about their big picture thinking on how we can change Australia for the better.

Featuring interviews with Dr Richard Denniss, Louise Adler, Bob Brown and more.

Order What’s the Big Idea: 32 Ideas for a Better Australia now via the Australia Institute online store.

The post TRAILER | Introducing What’s the Big Idea? with Paul Barclay appeared first on The Australia Institute.

As election day approaches, former Fairfax Chief Political Correspondent Professor Mark Kenny joins Glenn Connley to discuss the performances of Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton on the campaign trail, plus Australians’ response to Trump’s return, on this episode of Follow the Money.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 29 April 2025 and things may have changed.

Follow all the action from the federal election on our new politics live blog, Australia Institute Live with Amy Remeikis.

Guest: Mark Kenny, Professor of Australian Studies and host of Democracy Sausage, the Australian National University // @markgkenny

Host: Glenn Connley, Senior Media Advisor, the Australia Institute // @glennconnley

Show notes:

‘Could Dutton’s suburban strategy still work?’ by Mark Kenny, The Canberra Times (April 2025)

Election entrée: Early voting in Australia by Skye Predavec, the Australia Institute (April 2025)

A new Discussion Paper by The Australia Institute concludes it’s time for a major shake-up in the way they are run.

Australian universities are overseen by Vice-Chancellors who are paid vast sums of money, yet they are presiding over a sector which is failing staff, students and the broader community.

Australian uni students are paying more than ever for degrees while staff-to-student ratios are soaring.

For example, degrees in areas like Law, Society and Culture are 700% more expensive than they were in 1990 (the year after the HECS/HELP scheme was introduced), while staff-to-student ratios have gone from 1-to13 in 1990 to more than 1-to-22 today.

Professor John Quiggin, Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland, suggests seven key reforms:

With the federal election just days away, Everybody’s Home is calling on the next government to make a huge investment in public and community housing, as a new report underscores the stark reality of the housing crisis.

Anglicare’s Rental Affordability Snapshot for 2025 released today shows across Australia there were:

• No rentals (0%) affordable for a person on Youth Allowance
• Three rentals (0%) affordable for a person on Jobseeker
• 28 rentals (0.1%) affordable for a person on the Disability Support Pension
• 165 rentals (0.3%) affordable for a person on the Age Pension.
  

Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize said the housing crisis won’t end without a huge investment in social housing. 

“The housing crisis is one of the most pressing issues facing Australians today and will be front of mind for many as they cast their votes this week,” Ms Azize said.

“People want an end to soaring rents, poor rental standards, and insecure housing. They want relief from housing stress and the constant threat of homelessness.

In March 2020, the world shut down, and many workers were afforded a privilege they’d never had before. Like the CEOs who’ve since ginned up panic over “productivity” concerns, they began working from home. And wouldn’t you know it? An analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that “remote work substantially contributed to productivity growth during the pandemic.”

For those of us who value workers’ rights, the news is similarly positive. Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report found that “remote workers have the highest levels of engagement and life satisfaction.”

Forbes reported in 2022 that a survey of over 12,000 workers found that those who worked from home were “20% happier on average than those who didn’t have the ability to work from home.”

Getting a university education in Australia has gone from being a modest expense to something that is now much more costly than was envisioned when HECS was introduced in 1989. Fees for degrees such as Law and Society and Culture are over 700% higher than they were in 1990 – far more expensive than if fees had risen with inflation.

While you might expect to get a better education for more money, that isn’t the case.  Across the sector, staff-student ratios – a key measure of quality – have gone from under 1:13 in 1990 to over 1:22 today – a 42% decrease in the number of academic staff per student.

The changes that started the upwards trajectory of university fees were justified in part by the idea that teaching costs were increasing. Since then, the actual number of staff that universities employ to teach students has shrunk.

Under the original 1989 HECS system, student contributions were modest: only $1,800 per year, no matter what the student was studying. These contributions increased annually in line with rising costs for the university. The system was partially deregulated in 1996 by the Howard Government and different courses were priced differently, a decision justified on the basis of:

What is this thing called “merit”? And what role did it play during the recent but hopefully bygone age of elite college dominance, runaway financialization, and the rise of competitive blame-shifting? This is the puzzle proffered by Nicholas Lemann in his 1999 book The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy: Why should competition for slots at a tiny number of selective colleges play a substantial role in how young people come to fill lucrative private sector jobs?

The American meritocracy was created in the mid-20th century by academic administrators such as war gas chemist and sometime Harvard President James Conant not to staff Wall Street but to find the best and the brightest to fill vital government and scientific positions.

We can think about how merit selection can and should work for these few and demanding positions by riffing on the 1943 Warner Brothers propaganda short The Rear Gunner. The small and folksy Burgess Meredith was the star, while the tall, slim, and handsome Ronald Reagan was in a supporting role.

It is yet to hold a public hearing. Its decision regarding the Robodebt referrals was subject to adverse findings. And its findings so far have been limited.

Reform is needed if the NACC is to win the confidence of the Australian people.

It comes as new polling research from The Australia Institute, undertaken in collaboration with the Human Rights Law Centre and Whistleblower Justice Fund, finds Australians overwhelmingly support a Whistleblower Protection Authority.