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Matthew Higgins

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the latest wages data, the likely impact of Trump’s tariff policies on Australia, and why the Reserve Bank are running out of excuses not to cut interest rates.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 14 November 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

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

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

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

Show notes:

‘It’s time for the RBA to admit its fears of a wage-price spiral were misguided – and cut interest rates’ by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (November 2024)

How Governments Can Help with the Cost of Living, the Australia Institute’s Policy School

On this episode of Follow the Money, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Co-President of the Club of Rome, joins Ebony Bennett to discuss phasing out fossil fuels, the false narratives being peddled about the green transition, and why addressing inequality is fundamental to tackling the climate crisis.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 24 October 2024 and things may have changed since recording.

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

Guest: Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Co-President of the Club of Rome // @SDDecleve

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

Host: Alice Grundy, Research Manager, Anne Kantor Fellows, the Australia Institute // @alicekgt

Show notes:

Earth for All – A Survival Guide for Humanity, The Club of Rome (2022)

The Limits to Growth, The Club of Rome (1972)

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Reporting from Israel in the aftermath of October 7th demands guts and courage. Censorship, rouge military personnel and an entire state hellbent on their goals of national security and ethnic cleansing spells a nightmare for journalists seeking to expose the truth. This nightmare became a reality for Grayzone reporter Jeremy Loffredo, who was detained in Israel in solitary confinement for three days after reporting on the Iranian missile attacks on October 1.

Loffredo joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to review his reporting covering Israel in the U.S., the Occupied Territories and Israel itself—as well as his frightening detainment by the occupying forces. 

Following in the tradition of parentheses bill names, which attempt to frame how a bill is thought about by voters and therefore prevent closer looks, the Electoral (Accountability and Integrity) Amendment Bill 2024 seeks to amend the state’s donation laws.

The reforms are being billed as a way of removing political donations from election campaigns and ending political fundraising during state election campaigns. In place of those donations, the Australia Institute estimates between $15 million and $20 million in public funding will be shared among political parties and candidates for elections.

The government says it will “restructure the public funding model, increase administrative funding, introduce an advance payment scheme, amend party registration and nomination requirements” and insert new definitions into the legislation, including for the term, ‘donation’.

All of that sounds great.  Attorney-general Kyam Maher says it will “help to ensure power is kept in the hands of voters and give both established and new voices an equal footing in state elections”.

What does it actually do? 

Here is where we get to those pesky details. Director of the Democracy and Accountability Program at The Australia Institute, Bill Browne, has taken a pretty long look at the bill and found some small print the big headlines haven’t gone into.

Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Daniel Mangrum, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw

A video released by President elect Donald Trump in which he cribs plans from the Heritage Foundation evil manifesto, Project 2025, to explain how he’d like to destroy the trans community has been shared again by conservatives on social media.

Workers holding Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) visas can be the difference between fruit being harvested or left to rot on the vine.

But, in return for the critical work they do to keep some sectors of our agriculture industry afloat, PALM visa holders pay more tax than Australians doing the same work and find it almost impossible to access their superannuation.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese consistently talks about being part of a “Pacific Family”, lauding the PALM program as a key component of that close regional relationship.

But this new report finds the PALM program is in urgent need of reform if Australia is to truly treat these workers like family.

The Wrap with Amy Remeikis

Well, that was quite the week, wasn’t it?

We wouldn’t blame you if you’re feeling a little bit flat.  While many people may have thought they were prepared for a Trump victory, thinking it and seeing it happen are two very different things.  Moo Deng may have tried to warn us Trump was heading for a conclusive victory, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t still hopes America would choose differently.

And while there are concerns over how Trump will handle domestic concerns, particularly for immigrants, women and minorities, the result of this election doesn’t just change the United States – it has ramifications for the world.

The world order as we know it looks set to be turned on its head.

Trump hasn’t been shy in expressing his love of the fossil fuel industry, something which clearly resonated with Australia’s Gina Rinehart who was spotted at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago as one of the soon-to-be 47th president’s “special people”, which will make meeting the world’s climate goals even more difficult.

Rinehart believed she was on the winner’s ticket from the beginning – she met with the Trump campaign the first time round in 2016, after which she urged the Australian government to adopt his economic policies.

Fast forward eight years and Australia’s richest woman hasn’t changed her tune, telling the Australian newspaper early last week “the world would be better off with more leaders like Trump”.

Yet quality, affordable care remains inaccessible for many families. Since the last increase in government subsidies a year ago, fees have increased faster than inflation and wages.

But what if the government offered early childhood education in the same way it offered school education? Reforming Australia’s approach to early childhood education would increase the size of the economy by $168 billion and allow the government to collect an additional $48 billion in revenue.

Both sides of politics know the benefits of early childhood education: high-quality childcare improves educational outcomes for children, and low-cost or free high-quality childcare also increases labour force participation by providing parents the opportunity to return to work. Access to affordable and quality care is also integral to family violence prevention and response.

Despite the clear value for children, families and the broader community, early childhood education in Australia is often run by private, for-profit providers that drive up fees and have contributed to the creation of childcare deserts across the country. Early childhood education centres are also difficult to staff sustainably, with many workers underpaid and undervalued.

But the solutions being offered mainly focus on increasing childcare subsidies in the hope of reducing the cost for families even though this doesn’t work.

Matteo Crosignani, Thomas Eisenbach, and Fulvia Fringuellotti

After a period of relative stability, a series of bank failures in 2023 renewed questions about the fragility of the banking system. As in previous years, we provide in this post an update of four analytical models aimed at capturing different aspects of the vulnerability of the U.S. banking system using data through 2024:Q2 and discuss how these measures have changed since last year.

Introduction

Climate messaging has a distribution problem. We need new tools for a new era of climate communications. Always put the audience first. A lot of climate content is only reaching existing supporters. That’s because it doesn’t align with the values of audiences outside the progressive base, and because it’s delivered via news, which many audiences just aren’t consuming.

This interactive guide, How to Reach New Climate Audiences, by Harmony Labs (in partnership with Earth Alliance) dives deep into audiences based on what they value, the media they engage with, the voices that speak to them, how they relate to climate, and the storytelling approaches that resonate.

This research invites climate communicators to start with audience values (based on Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values) and engage people where they are, organically and authentically, in addition to relying on traditional messaging strategy or approaches.

The techniques they use to think about reaching audiences are useful to any issue area.

Introduction

This article shares the lessons learnt from organizing for narrative change based on the case study of the Yes on 15 Schools and Communities First – Prop 15 campaign in California.

This article was originally published by NPQ online, on May 24, 2022. It is used with permission.

Read Article

How can community groups shift narratives? A ballot initiative campaign from 2020 provides some important lessons. That year, community organizing groups and labor unions across California launched a campaign to take on the corporate loophole in Proposition 13 and reclaim billions of dollars for public schools and public services.

They knew they faced an uphill battle. Proposition 13, or Prop 13—the 1978 ballot initiative that capped property taxes in the state and set the stage for the presidency of Ronald Reagan two years later—has long been described as the “third rail” of California politics.