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Last month, Marco Rubio’s State Department executed a sweeping restructuring plan to implement an America First foreign policy. Although many offices were eliminated or combined, a few new ones were created. Among them is the Office of Natural Rights.

Its name has provoked predictable harrumphing from establishment commentators who feel “human rights” is the only acceptable term of art for diplomacy. While they are right that the terminology is significant, they are blind to the vital reality the State Department has recognized: without human nature there are no human rights. If our rights are not grounded in a shared nature, they are founded simply on the will of the government. If the government grants us more rights at one moment, it may arbitrarily retract them at the next.

The Trump Administration has observed this phenomenon with great alarm. JD Vance argued that this is Europe’s greatest threat in his now-famous Munich speech, and the State Department weighed in with an official article shortly thereafter. U.S. officials are rightly concerned about natural rights abroad, not because they are Republicans, but because they are Americans. The recognition of natural rights is the foundation of our own government.

But will the Albanese government spend the next three years using its thumping majority to lead bold reforms or deliver damp squib solutions?

Next week’s productivity roundtable will reveal which path the Prime Minister intends to tread, and so far, it looks like all it’s set to do is weaken environment laws and delay big tax reforms until after the next election.

Between the Treasury advice leaked to the ABC and the Prime Minister ruling out any major tax reforms before the next election, the government poured a bucket of cold water on any real excitement building for the productivity roundtable.

And the productivity roundtable has a big job ahead of it. Australia doesn’t just have a productivity problem, it has a revenue problem.

Australia is one of the lowest-taxing countries in the developed world. In fact, if Australia collected the OECD average in tax – not the highest amount, just the average – the Commonwealth would have had an extra $140 billion in revenue in 2023-24.

The elephant in the room is that it is business that has the biggest influence on productivity. Certainly, it has a much bigger impact than workers, who typically get the blame when things go wrong.

The factor that most shapes how productive workers are, we must remember, is the technology they work with. It is management that is responsible for the decisions about what technology a business introduces, and how. Workers often do not have much of a say.

It is not workers who make the decisions about how much money is available for investment. It is not workers who make the decision about which particular technologies to buy, install and use. It is not workers who decide how much money should be allocated to the training of workers to use the new technology, or how those workers should be deployed. It is management.

Sure, there is lots of evidence that, when workers have a say at work, productivity is higher. But managers often don’t give them a chance to have more than a token say, if they have any say at all. Any attempts by governments to legislate that workers decide or influence decisions on those matters are opposed by business bodies in Australia.

Previous Australia Institute analysis shows the gas policy mess created by Australian governments allowing virtually unlimited exports of gas from eastern Australia has led to a tripling of gas prices and doubling of wholesale electricity prices.

The analysis shows that incremental and technocratic attempts to fix the problems have failed, and that the ACTU proposal would solve these problems. It would:

• Increase domestic gas supply by providing a strong incentive for gas companies to supply uncontracted gas to Australian customers rather than selling it on the global spot market.
• Reduce domestic gas prices by significantly increasing the supply of gas to the domestic market.

Importantly, unlike the other technocratic policies, the ACTU proposal could not easily be gamed by the gas industry, which has run rings around the government for decades.

Billions of dollars in tax breaks that push up house prices and lock people out of a home must be wound back to tackle the housing crisis and productivity, a group of housing sector advocates, economists, and union leaders have urged the government.

In a letter to the Prime Minister and Treasurer, the group has called for negative gearing and the capital gains tax (CGT) discount to be on the table at this week’s economic reform roundtable, with savings to be invested in building public and community housing.

The letter has been signed by Everybody’s Home national spokesperson Maiy Azize, ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie AO, The Australia Institute Chief Economist Dr Greg Jericho, and ACTU Secretary Sally McManus.

Negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount are locking Australians out of secure, affordable homes. Reforming these would:

• Reduce inequality and rebalance the housing market
• Redirect billions into building new public and community housing
• Improve productivity by diverting capital to more productive uses.

Everybody’s Home national spokesperson Maiy Azize said: “Every year, billions of taxpayer dollars are handed to property investors through negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, with everyday Australians paying the price.

World-renowned climate analyst and Senior Research Fellow at The Australia Institute, Ketan Joshi, has crunched the numbers and found that, despite claims of a shortage or crisis, Victoria is, in fact, a net exporter of gas.

Data from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water clearly shows that gas consumption has been declining in Victoria for years, which has led to an oversupply. It’s being driven by soaring gas prices (caused by exports) and legislation forcing Victorians to electrify their homes at a faster rate than any other state.

“Victoria exports way more gas than it consumes,” said Ketan Joshi, Senior Research Fellow at The Australia Institute.

“The Australia Institute recently produced a video of a massive gas drilling rig near the iconic 12 Apostles. Projects like this simply don’t make sense. They are unnecessary.

“Despite all the breathless claims of a gas shortage in Victoria, federal government data shows the true picture, that there is an oversupply.

“To top it off, demand for gas in Victoria is at its lowest level in a generation – and falling – as high prices and regulations force people to electrify their homes.

“The last time gas use was this low in Victoria, Dirty Dancing was in the cinema and Rick Astley cassette tapes were selling like hot cakes.”

Australia Institute research has found that a fund, paid for by big polluters responsible for climate change, would save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year.

The research found that a levy of $30 per tonne of carbon pollution caused by coal, oil and gas production would have raised $44 billion this year alone.

The South Australian and federal governments have, so far, pledged $28 million of taxpayers’ money in response to the algal bloom, which is being driven by rising sea temperatures due to climate change.

It’s having a devastating impact on sea life, tourism, fishing, and other marine industries.

“As it stands, South Australian communities, families and business owners are being left to foot the bill for this crisis, and that simply isn’t good enough,” said Noah Schultz-Byard, a South Australia-based Director at The Australia Institute.

“State and federal governments have been caught flat-footed in their response to this algal bloom tragedy.

“If the government had a National Climate Disaster Fund at the ready, so that they could quickly roll out the level of support that is actually needed in these communities, it would be a very different story.

“Currently, regular Australians are paying for climate-related disasters through higher taxes, increased insurance premiums, and lost income.

Canberra is in the grip of Abundance fever, a virus that threatens to overwhelm public policy with a diagnosis of overregulation.

For those afflicted, the treatment is to maintain the status quo, but with the sheen of progressivism.

The Abundance agenda is being presented as a panacea for all of America’s problems, and therefore also Australia’s problems. It’s shaping next week’s productivity summit, as policy wonks, institutional heads, journalists and most government MPs hold up the Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson book as the new bible.

In America, the authors have been invited to speak at Democratic retreats as the answer to their woes, even as polling, the New York mayoral primary and the exasperated hair-pulling of millions of Americans say they’d much prefer Bernie Sanders’ socialism. But why change when you can do more of the same and call it abundance?

There are some thoughtful arguments in the book, but the crux of it boils down to “everything would be just fantastic and problem-free if we just cut the red tape that was holding back all that abundance we could be throwing around”.

The report – Three Ways Australia Can Tax Wealth Better –  comes on the eve of Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ Economic Reform Roundtable, which recognises the growing need to raise more tax revenue to pay for things like health services, schools, housing, the NDIS, defence, and many, many more essential public services.

Key findings:

• A 2% wealth tax on people worth more than $5 million (excluding the family home and superannuation) would raise $41 billion per year.
• The reintroduction of an inheritance tax (which operated in various forms at a state and federal level in the 1960s and 70s) would not only reduce intergenerational inequality, it would raise $10 billion per year.
• And the government would raise an extra $19 billion a year if it scrapped the capital gains tax discount, which would have the double benefit of making property more affordable for those currently locked out of the market.

“Australia is a low-tax country that does not do a good job of taxing wealth. It is one of the few developed economies in the world which has neither a wealth tax nor an inheritance tax,” said Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist at The Australia Institute.

“Correcting this would raise huge amounts of extra revenue for essential services and ease growing inequality in Australia.

Recently, we published a video showing a huge new gas drilling rig in Victoria, within sight of the 12 Apostles – a globally recognised tourist hotspot. As Dr Emma Shortis says in the video:

“We are putting our coastlines at risk to extract gas we don’t even need. Australia already produces way more gas than we use….Australia doesn’t have a gas shortage. We have a gas export problem”

Despite the undeniable numbers here, a ‘gas shortage’ is still put forward as one of the most common rationalisations for building massive new gas exploration and extraction sites, like the monster off Victoria’s coast.

A little-known data set buried in Australia’s government energy accounts lays it out quite nicely, and quite dramatically.

You may have seen something like this before in our charts, like here. But we’ve discovered recently that you can also zoom down into the state level, and see which regions of Australia have the most significant oversupply problem for fossil gas.

On Saturday afternoon, I began asking the Mastodon community to support Free DC Project, the organization spearheading the fight for DC’s rights to govern itself and to be free from Trump’s authoritarian martial occupation. As of this writing, we have already raised over $2000. Join the campaign here.

The fight to gain and protect Home Rule in the District of Columbia, and for the District's statehood, has a long history. But the fight for DC’s political autonomy connects to a bigger role the nation's capital has played for centuries in the great American struggle to realize the promise of the Declaration of Independence.

With Mark Carney’s rightward economic turn on spending (save for the military), tax cuts, and natural resource development, Canadian progressives are left struggling for a vision of the alternative. However, there are whole progressive movements south of our border that can help to develop that vision. Canadian progressives need to start paying attention.

At the 2025 Panamerican Congress held August 1-2 in Mexico City, progressive legislators from Nunavut to Tierra Del Fuego discussed what they have been doing to advance the well-being of their citizens and build solidarity across borders. The government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, host of the Congress with her Morena parliamentary group, touted the ambitious and transformative social programs they have pursued to massive public approval. Legislators from Colombia, co-leading the Hague Group, called to defend international law in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Others observed the fight against far-right extremism; even progressive House Representatives from the United States, such as Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez, and Rashida Tlaib could at least show their bruises in their struggles against fascism.

Progressive governments in the Global South should show Canadians how to build a vision for a good society, where transformation for the wellbeing of all Canadians is the goal.

Andrew Beck argues that America needs to revive the ideal of assimilation if our country is to survive as a country. It must not have its distinctive culture washed away by the influx of immigrants coming from many different cultures and religions. New Americans, he believes, should not only pledge allegiance to the nation’s official creed, as enshrined in its founding documents and laws, but also defer to its dominant culture and way of life, including the majority religion, Christianity.

There is much to agree with in this view, which Beck is at pains to distinguish from “Christian nationalism,” whatever that is. The message of assimilation, as it used to be practiced in the 20th century, was that we Americans were proud of what we had built in this country. We assumed that foreigners were coming to America to share our freedoms and prosperity, and we were eager for them to know why America was free and why it was prosperous. Prejudices they might have brought with them, in favor of monarchy or against private property, for example, should be left behind at Ellis Island. The main instrument of assimilation was public schools, which accepted their responsibility to teach what it was to be American.

Does a Hindu statue in Sugar Land, Texas, threaten America’s stability and cohesion? Andrew Beck thinks so. He wants the government to “curate or protect the dominant and preferred culture of its historic people.”

In a column I wrote to which Beck responds, I suggested America’s Christian culture is not imperiled by a lone statue in a community like Sugar Land, where Christianity and churches are quite strong. Recalling the U.S. Nazi Party based in the community where I lived during my 1970s boyhood, I extolled the U.S. Constitution for protecting free speech—even for the “absurd and the hateful,” which is “parcel to our freedom from despotism.” The Constitution, I argued, “expresses a providential trust that if truth and virtue are free to argue their case, they can in the open market of ideas survive and even prevail, at least to a certain extent, in our fallen world.”

Beck evidently has less providential trust in the power of truth and virtue, warning that “What you elevate in the public eye is what you encourage the people to idealize in their hearts.” He asks, do “we want immigrants to be looking backwards at what they left? Or looking forward to what they now are privileged to inherit?”

Beck surmises that my evident indifference about Hindu idols reveals my wider complacency about the “cost of pluralism.” He warns:

On August 10, Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif wrote:

“To Whom It May Concern: The occupation is now openly threatening a full-scale invasion of Gaza. For 22 months, the city has been bleeding under relentless bombardment from land, sea, and air. Tens of thousands have been killed, and hundreds of thousands wounded. If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop. Please share this message and tag everyone who has the power to help end this massacre. Silence is complicity.”

Within hours, Al-Sharif was assassinated by the Israeli military in a targeted attack.

Al-Sharif was one of 184 Palestinian journalists murdered by Israel since 2023. He was one of tens of thousands of Palestinian fathers murdered by Israel since 2023 — a figure that will rise as forced starvation threatens millions.

Roughly half of the Palestinians killed by Israel were children. The deliberate massacre of children is unprecedented, as is the record number of reporters killed.

The Opposition Leader can’t tell you yet what the Liberals would do on housing or cost of living, or energy or climate, or how they would tackle the disruption tsunami from AI, or how they would position Australia in the shifting geopolitical space – that’s all “under review”.

But she can tell you that whenever the Coalition next wins government – at best a prospect for 2031, assuming the Coalition as we know it still exists then – it will “un-recognise Palestine”.

So the first policy priority for a future Coalition government would be going through the process of un-recognising a nation’s statehood in at least six years’ time, and this is something everyone is supposed to treat very seriously.

Yet it made headlines across Australia. Why? What does it possibly matter what the Coalition claims it would do in the 2030s? What is the rationality for thinking this is remotely serious, or even remotely possible?

Sure, it signals the Coalition has not shifted one iota on recognising a genocide, but we knew that. And a serious opposition would not pretend it has any role here other than to say what it supports or doesn’t support.

Pretending that there is any reality in which a government in the 2030s sticks to a commitment made in 2025 based entirely on emotion and political expediency is the epitome of delusion.

Christopher Wolfe’s thoughtful essay on Booker T. Washington, leisure, and work stirred some fond memories, from years ago, of making a friend by reading a book.

He was an old black man, and I was an old white man. We were both native Angelenos and had been just about old enough to drive when the Watts riots broke out in 1965. But that was half a century and a lifetime ago, and we hadn’t known one another. Los Angeles is a big place, home to many worlds. Now we were white-haired professors, reading a book together, and we became friends. His name was Kimasi, and he has since gone to a better world.  

We were spending a week with a dozen other academics reading Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, Up from Slavery. Washington was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia, just a few years before the Civil War began. He gained his freedom through Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory in the war. With heroic determination, he got himself an education and went on to found the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, where he remained principal for the rest of his life.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt and Elinor discuss the RBA cutting interest rates five weeks too late, Australia’s biggest bank posting its biggest profit ever in an uncompetitive banking sector, and why Albanese seems to be putting a damper on expectations ahead of the economic roundtable next week.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 14 August 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

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

Host: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff.bsky.social

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

Show notes:

‘Climate and the Economic Reform Roundtable’ by Jack Thrower and Rod Campbell, the Australia Institute (August 2025)

‘Solving the crisis: Raising the living standards of Australian workers’ by Lisa Heap, the Australia Institute (August 2025)

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

When changes to the EPBC Act were fast-tracked through Parliament earlier this year, The Australia Institute flagged that it would likely lead to the extinction of the endangered Maugean skate. The skate is an ancient species with links to the dinosaur era and can only be found in Macquarie Harbour.

“When Murray Watt became the Environment Minister, he said the salmon industry needed to lift its game on sustainability,” said Eloise Carr, Director, The Australia Institute Tasmania.

“But this decision protects the commercial salmon industry and condemns the skate to extinction.

“All of the baby skates that have hatched in captivity come from eggs fertilised in the wild. It is not a captive ‘breeding’ program, it’s a captive rearing program. That means if the skate becomes extinct in the wild, it is over for the species.

“Tasmanians have just elected independent Peter George, with the third-highest vote in the state. He was elected due to his work to protect the marine environment.

“It is clear Tasmanians are sick and tired of government inaction to address the harmful effects of the foreign-owned salmon industry on Tasmanian waterways.”

The post Minister backs foreign commercial fish farms over endangered native species appeared first on The Australia Institute.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

One of the most stark examples of the expanding tide of authoritarianism worldwide was the 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh, an Indian journalist and activist, allegedly assassinated by a far-right religious group in India for her fearless journalism.

The analysis finds that climate change and productivity are inextricably linked, concluding that any genuine economic plan for the future would be incomplete without taking into account the impact of climate change.

The National Climate Risk Assessment, yet to be released to the public, includes important forecasts, modelling and information for consumers and investors about the severity and cost of weather extremes and natural disasters.

The Australia Institute analysis outlines the impact of climate change on the cost of insurance and food, which are among the main contributors to the high inflation that has dominated the global economy for the past three years.

“Australians should see the truth of the climate risks we face before the government locks in a 2035 emissions reduction target,” said David Pocock, Independent Senator for the ACT.

“Setting an emissions reduction target without knowing the extent of climate risk would be like planning a road trip without having access to a map.

“This kind of assessment isn’t an optional extra; it’s at the core of helping us protect the people and places we love.”

“Climate change is going to drive down productivity in all sorts of Australian industries. Extreme weather events will drive up costs and reduce output in industries ranging from agriculture and construction to tourism and the health sector,” said Richard Denniss, Executive Director at The Australia Institute.

Nicholas Bloom, Jonathan Hartley, Raffaella Sadun, Rachel Schuh, and John Van Reenen

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.

The Crooks in DC | The Roundtable Ep. 280

We are pleased to announce that nominations are now open for the 2025 Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) Richard Higgott Journal Article Prize. The prize is awarded annually for the best article published in the broad field of International Political Economy (IPE) by an Australia-based academic.

The prize will be awarded to the best article published in IPE as deemed by a selection committee of IPE scholars. The award will be given to any article in IPE, understood in a pluralist sense to include the political economy of security, geography, literature, sociology, anthropology, post-coloniality, gender, finance, trade, regional studies, development and economic theory, in ways that can span concerns for in/security, poverty, inequality, sustainability, exploitation, deprivation and discrimination.

The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is one of the most interesting and controversial novels of the 20th century. Which is why it’s good news that Vauban Books, a small publishing house, is coming out with a new edition, complete with a fresh translation by scholar Ethan Rundell. English-language copies of the book, first published in the U.S. in 1975, have been passed around like samizdat. The Camp of the Saints became popular again in the 2010s, but the rightsholders refused to reprint it until Vauban managed to secure the rights.

The Camp of the Saints depicts mass immigration destroying European civilization. In the novel a gigantic flotilla of boats filled with destitute Indians sets course for France to seek refugee status. After much handwringing, the government allows them to land rather than take the only other option available, which is to massacre them. France—and very quickly all of Europe—turns into a dystopian Third-World slum.

Raspail’s novel was written in the 1970s when the “boat people” fled Vietnam for Europe. The book caused an enormous sensation—it was a bestseller in France and the U.S., and eventually globally. Many have hailed it as a great and important work of prophecy. But, predictably, it was then and is now denounced as a horribly racist screed that only white supremacists would be interested in reading.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Richard Denniss joins Ebony Bennett to discuss why the constant search for the centre ground doing Australians harm, why bipartisanship can actually be bad, and his new essay, Dead Centre.

Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.

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

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

A chance to be brave: understanding Australia’s election result, Follow the Money, the Australia Institute (May 2025)

Theme music: Pulse and Thrum; additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

Senior Economist Matt Grudnoff said while the cut in the official cash rate from 3.85% to 3.60% will provide long-overdue relief for mortgage holders, it should have happened five weeks ago.

“Borrowers should have been celebrating back-to-back cuts today,” he said.

Mr Grudnoff says the drawn-out period of high interest rates achieved its goal months ago – and is now doing more harm than good.

“Interest rates are still restrictive. They’re still weighing the economy down and causing unnecessary pain for borrowers,” he said.

“Headline inflation is at 2.1%. The underlying rate, which moves more slowly than the headline rate, has fallen every quarter for the last year. Unemployment is up and economic growth has almost completely stalled.

“How far do rates need to fall before they are no longer weighing the economy down? That figure is generally considered to be around 3%. So, we still need another two or three 0.25% cuts on top of today’s cut, before rates aren’t dragging the economy down.”

The post Rate cut welcome – but borrowers are still behind appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Where do capabilities end and dynamic capabilities begin? Unpacking the “dynamic” nature of capabilities

By Ruth Puttick and Fernando Monge

As we develop the Public Sector Capabilities Index, a question we have been asked is, What are ‘dynamic’ capabilities? And how are they different from ‘ordinary’ capabilities?

In this post, we explain how dynamic capabilities differ from operational ones and why the distinction matters.

Why dynamic capabilities matter

Stating that governments are facing complex problems is a well-rehearsed argument. City governments are having to balance large-scale shocks, such as those caused by geopolitical conflicts or health crises, with managing the demands of day-to-day delivery, often with fiscal constraints.