The Australia Institute Feed Items

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Hayden discuss the election result, Trump’s Hollywood tariffs, and what retail spending figures reveal about the state of economy.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 8 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

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: Hayden Starr, Digital Media Manager, the Australia Institute // @haydenstarr

Show notes:

‘The Reserve Bank played it safe and didn’t cut interest rates in April – and households suffer’ by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (May 2025)

The Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) is urging the government to use its mandate from Saturday’s election to replace climate rhetoric with real climate action.

The network has released its analysis of the election result, concluding that the return of the government “is largely a better outcome than a Dutton-led coalition, where climate change action may have seen significant roll-backs and weakening.”

But the report paints a bleak picture of the Albanese government’s first-term record on climate action.

It highlights the gaping divide between what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at events like the Pacific Island Forum and what his government actually did to help the “Pacific Family”.

PICAN is urging real action on several key climate areas, including:

Stopping Australia’s expansion of – and reliance on – fossil fuels.

Resolving the significant discrepancies between Australia’s climate commitments and climate actions.

Improving Australia’s grossly inadequate pledges on climate change loss and damage.

Reducing Australia’s reliance on questionable and ineffective carbon offset schemes.

Over the last decade for which data is available, salmon industry revenue has doubled from $543 million in 2013-14 to $1,352 million in 2022-23. Total revenue over the decade was $8,779 million.

Meanwhile, tax paid by the three largest salmon farms has been near-zero. The total combined reported tax payments by Tassal, Huon and SeaLord (owners of Petuna) over this period was $51 million. While obviously tax is paid on profits not revenue, that the total tax paid over 11 years by the salmon industry is just 0.6% of revenue suggests either a deeply unprofitable industry or (more clearly) one where Australians are clearly not getting a fair return.

But wait, there’s less.

As we’ve explained before, the $6m paid since 2019 is all from SeaLord, which also has non-salmon farming activities. Following its takeover of Petuna, SeaLord’s revenue increased, but tax payments decreased. This suggests that Petuna’s salmon operations don’t contribute to SeaLord’s tax payments, but actually reduce them.

This election result was anything but a vote for the foreign-owned commercial salmon industry.

Independent MP for Clark, Andrew Wilkie, attributes Labor’s success in Braddon – where Anne Urquhart won the seat off the Liberals – to “enormous pork-barrelling” by the ALP.

Braddon takes in Macquarie Harbour, where huge commercial salmon farms are putting the world-renowned Maugean Skate at serious risk of extinction.

Intensive salmon farming in the harbour remains under review.

In Franklin, the epicentre of the state’s salmon industry, first-time candidate, Independent Peter George, achieved a swing of around 6 percent against Labor.

Mr George focused strongly on fixing the salmon industry’s problems and – while he did not win the seat – he did win the vast majority of votes at booths immediately adjacent to where the industry operates.

“The fact that an independent got over 20 percent of the primary vote. That was a very strong anti-salmon vote,” said Independent Member for Clark, Andrew Wilkie.

“Around 80% of the salmon industry is in southeast Tasmania. People living along the coast of the Franklin electorate live with the daily impact of this industry, including dead and decaying chunks of fish washing up on their beaches,” said Eloise Carr, Director, The Australia Institute Tasmania

“That’s where Peter George won the most votes. He also won a 6% swing away from Labor.”

On this episode of Follow the Money, Chief Political Analyst Amy Remeikis and Chief Economist Greg Jericho join Ebony Bennett to discuss the election result, the legislative priorities of the new parliament and the future of the conservative side of politics.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 6 May 2025 and things may have changed.

Pre-order ‘After America: Australia and the new world order’ or become a foundation subscriber to our Vantage Point series on the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Amy Remeikis, Chief Political Analyst, the Australia Institute // @amyremeikis

Guest: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut

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

Show notes:

There is no such thing as a safe seat | Fact sheet, the Australia Institute (October 2024)

On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis joins Angus Blackman to discuss whether Anthony Albanese’s massive election victory is part of a global “repudiation” of Trumpism and what new Australia Institute polling reveals about Australians’ views on Trump and the alliance.

This discussion was recorded on Monday 5 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

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

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Host: Angus Blackman, Podcast Producer, the Australia Institute // @angusrb

Show notes:

Polling: Australia-US relations, the Australia Institute (May 2025)

US independence day? Poll shows Australians’ radical shift over Trump, economy, ABC News (April 2025)

On this episode, Paul Barclay talks with the Australia Institute’s climate and energy research director, Polly Hemming. There’s no chance of solving Australia’s biggest challenges—inequality and poverty, environmental destruction, climate change and political disillusionment—if leaders aren’t willing to make big decisions and, as Hemming puts it, ‘stop doing bad stuff’.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday, 18 February 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: Polly Hemming, Director of Climate & Energy Program, the Australia Institute // @pollyjhemming

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

Show notes:

Offsetting Us Up To Fail: The myths of ‘nature markets’ explained by Richard Denniss and Polly Hemming, the Australia Institute (November 2022)

The Coalition is done. As far as repudiations go, it doesn’t get much more brutal than what the nation delivered on Saturday night.

The worst result for the Liberal party since Menzies. Its leader turfed out of the Parliament along with most future leadership candidates. Swings against the party in every jurisdiction and most seats, including crucially, the outer suburbs that were supposed to be the new pathway to electoral relevancy.

There is no need to ask the Coalition, or its supporters in the political landscape such as News Corp, what it thinks needs to happen about anything in the future.

As the result became apparent, commentators from within the Coalition and its media arm were arguing that Dutton lost because he didn’t embrace Trump enough.

It’s hard to tell at this point whether this isn’t just some long term embedded espionage project coming to fruition. Voters didn’t just reject Dutton and his ilk, they consigned them to irrelevancy.

But will Labor? Because we are about to find out whether Labor has the bravery to govern without the approval of right-wingers.

This victory isn’t a thumping endorsement of Labor – it’s a rejection of mask-off, hard-right politics. But history tells us Labor won’t see it that way, and that’s not good for anyone.

Integrity experts, including former judges, ombudsmen and leading academics, have signed an open letter, coordinated by The Australia Institute and Fairer Future and published today in The Canberra Times, calling on the newly elected Parliament of Australia to address weaknesses in Australian political integrity.

The open letter warns that a decade of decline in agencies tasked with securing good governance has led to an integrity deficit in Australian politics and made it harder for Parliament to hold the executive government to account.

The signatories, including former IBAC Commissioner The Hon Robert Redlich AM KC, former Commonwealth Ombudsman Philippa Smith AM, and Geoffrey Watson SC, Director of the Centre for Public Integrity, call on the Parliament of Australia to recognise that the integrity arm of government deserves independence, resourcing and recognition:

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.

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.

This was a unity ticket, minus one.

Liberal ACT senate candidate Jacob Vadakkedathu opposed the move. He said that voters tell him, “we don’t need any more pollies”. It’s easy to offer an argument against more politicians in a cost-of-living crisis.

To be fair to Vadakkedathu, the Liberal Party historically had form on senate representation for the territories.

In the 1970s, Liberals opposed the creation of senate seats for the ACT and NT, arguing that the senate might one day be “swamped” by representatives from other territories like the Cocos Islands, and that it might lose its constitutional character as a “states’ house”. They fought against the measure at three successive elections (including one double dissolution) and forced the matter all the way to an historic, deadlock-resolving joint sitting of the two houses in August 1974.

The idea of “swamping the senate” was laughable then, and even more so now. The quota for ACT and NT Senate elections is extremely high. The Labor Party, the Greens and Independent Senator David Pocock all agree that the ACT’s senate representation should (at least) be doubled.

When presented as a Peter Dutton proposal, 61.7% of Australians support the idea that gas exports should be taxed, 11.0% oppose. When presented as an Adam Bandt proposal, 59.0% support the idea and 12.3% oppose.

Furthermore, more than one in two Australians (55.7%) agree that Australia exports too much gas, 12.6% disagree, and an overwhelming majority of Australians (72.3%) support a parliamentary inquiry into whether Australia is getting a fair share of the profits from selling its gas, 7.6% oppose.

“Australia is awash with gas, and our research shows Australians know it. Forcing the gas industry to prioritise Australians ahead of exports is popular at the ballot box, and if would be foolish for whoever forms Government to miss this opportunity,” said Mark Ogge, Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute.

“With all sides of politics finally recognizing Australia’s gas export problems, the next Parliament will be in a good position to do something about it.

“Our research shows that Australians overwhelmingly support the idea that gas exports should be taxed, irrespective of which political party suggested it.”

Around 80% of Australia’s gas is exported as liquefied natural gas (LNG), the gas industry pays ZERO royalties on more than half the gas exported.

Australia has an abundance of gas. In fact, Australia is one of the biggest exporters of gas in the world, alongside Qatar.

Australia Institute research shows over half (56%) of gas exported from Australia attracts zero royalty payments, effectively giving a public resource to multinational gas corporations for free.

It’s time the gas industry started paying its fair share.

There is no gas shortage

The gas industry loves to pretend that we have a shortage of gas. The reason? To use as cover to open new gas fields, most of which will feed their export plants.

We thought we’d better make an ad for that too.

New Australia Institute polling shows that more than twice as many Australians support a power-sharing arrangement in the next term of parliament as oppose one (41.7% vs 19.7%).

And, among Independent and Other voters, more say that independent and minor party MPs holding the balance of power should support the party they believe can negotiate the best policy outcomes for Australia (47.8% and 49.8% respectively) than any other option.

An overwhelming majority (70%) of Australians think that the Senate should review and scrutinise every government policy on its merits, while just 12.2% think that the Senate should support every policy the government took to the election.

Twice as many Australians support an arrangement in the new parliament where the major party shares power and responsibility with crossbench parliamentarians as oppose it (41.7% vs 19.7%). 38.6% don’t know/not sure.

• ALP voters (47.5% support, 11.8% oppose), Greens voters (62.2% support, 5.0% oppose), Independent voters (47.9% support, 10.4% oppose), and Other voters (48.2% support, 14.0% oppose) all strongly support a powersharing Parliament
• Conversely, Coalition (29.6% support, 34.7% oppose) and One Nation voters (28.4% support, 31.4% oppose) oppose power-sharing arrangements more often than they support them

If independent and minor party MPs hold the balance of power after the federal election:

What is a fund?

There is no singular definition for a “fund”; governments regularly refer to a lot of very different things as “funds”. What they have in common is allowing governments to announce big numbers (“we will create an $20 billion fund!”) without spending that amount of money.

I’ll explain why by looking at two categories of funds that governments create: investment funds and investment vehicles. There are overlaps between these categories and all sorts of financial shenanigans, but I’ll keep it simple (ish).

Investment funds

An investment fund is a government investment account, usually involving investments in something like the stock market. Let’s think of it as a bank account that earns interest. Creating an investment fund generally doesn’t have much effect on the budget balance (deficit or surplus): if I take out a $1,000 loan and put it in a bank account, my financial position hasn’t changed (I have $1,000, I owe $1,000, netting out to $0).

Sometimes, governments design funds so that the interest (investment returns) they earn goes to something specific. An example of this type of fund is the Albanese Government’s $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. Despite constant mentions in the media, this did not directly spend $10 billion on housing; the government basically created a bank account, labelled it “housing”, and then (after negotiations) committed to spend about $0.5 billion each year, a small fraction of $10 billion initially deposited in the account.

Students of communications, humanities and the arts are particularly bad off since the Morrison government came up with the controversial Job-ready Graduates package (JRG) in 2020. JRG increased the cost of law and commerce courses by 28% and saw the cost of humanities subjects more than double. At the time, ministers argued that price incentives would redirect students to STEM, nursing, teaching and other areas.

Before JRG, fees for degrees were justified by some combination of the cost of teaching (for example, teaching dentistry is more expensive than history) or the graduate’s expected earnings (for example law and business graduates tend to earn more than those in creative arts and social sciences). JRG tossed away these justifications. Arts subjects are cheap to teach, and graduates have relatively lower earnings.

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.

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:

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.

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 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.

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.

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 . 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.

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.

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 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.

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)

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.

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.

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)

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?

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:

On Sunday in Hobart over 6,000 people protested against the harmful practices of foreign owned salmon industry in Tasmania. The Australia Institute’s Tasmanian director, Eloise Carr, spoke to rally participants about recent changes to national nature laws and how the Institute has raised this issue with the UN.

Seventeen civil society organisations have written to UNESCO and the IUCN asking for World Heritage Centre officials to visit Tasmania to assess the damage the salmon industry is doing to Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area.  This would be a huge international embarrassment, but it needs to happen. Macquarie Harbour and the endangered Maugean Skate are running out of time and options.

The Australian government has weakened the nation’s environmental laws for its own cheap, domestic political purposes. It was rushed, mismanaged, completely devoid of scrutiny, and rammed through parliament in the dead of night, with the support of the opposition, while Members of Parliament were focused on the federal budget.

The world is watching in horror as the Australian government puts World Heritage wilderness and a globally renowned native species – also recognised for its World Heritage value – at risk of extinction. It is shameful, and the world must hold the Australian government to account.

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:

The research, supported by the Human Rights Law Centre and Whistleblower Justice Fund, shows support is consistently high across all voting intentions, including Labor, Coalition, Greens, and One Nation.

Public support for protecting whistleblowers has surged by 12% in under two years.

The spike in support has been recorded just one year after the imprisonment of military whistleblower David McBride and amid the ongoing prosecution of tax office whistleblower Richard Boyle. The polling research also reveals that the majority of Australians believe these prosecutions should be dropped.

Despite strong, widespread and increasing public support for stronger whistleblower protections from voters, both major parties have failed to make commitments for reform ahead of the May 3 Federal Election.

In February 2025, the Whistleblower Protection Authority Bill was introduced to Parliament by Senator David Pocock, Senator Jacqui Lambie, Dr Helen Haines MP, and Andrew Wilkie MP.

This anti-corruption legislation would provide protections to whistleblowers and aid government agencies in combating corruption. The polling research reveals that 84% of Australians support the establishment of a whistleblower protection authority.

“In Australia, whistleblowers exposing alleged war crimes or unfair treatment of small businesses face years of jail time,” said Bill Browne, Democracy & Accountability Director at The Australia Institute.

If the current election campaign feels long and sluggish, that may be because there have been few meaningful announcements.

The 2025 election campaign is scheduled to run for 37 days. This makes it roughly average for campaigns over the past thirty years.

However, public holidays and long weekends can shape campaign behaviour and impact voter engagement. The 2019, 2022 and 2025 elections all coincided with the Easter long weekend as well as ANZAC Day. (No federal elections from 1996 to 2016 coincided with a nationwide long weekend or public holiday.)

Public holiday dates over the Easter long weekend vary from one state to another, but as political scientists have shown, the four-day interruption to the campaign sees lower public interest, reduced media coverage and the voluntary suspension of some campaign activity.

With public holidays and long weekends excluded, 2025 is the shortest campaign of the past thirty years at just 32 days of proper campaigning. That includes polling day. It also includes the 22 April 2025, a day on which the major parties suspended their campaigns as a sign of respect for the late Pope Francis.

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.

However, it is likely that those voters’ stories are being told by journalists who cannot relate to the struggles of Australians living in the commuter belt.

New analysis by The Australia Institute reveals that more than half of Australia’s eight and a half thousand journalists live in electorates classified by the Australian Electoral Commission as “inner metropolitan”.

The report, Where Do Journalists Live?, concludes that Australia’s news media – which has already seen a sharp decline in local outlets – is not well placed to cover an election that is likely to be decided in key battleground seats where so few of its journalists reside.

The environment doesn’t care who’s in government — but Australians should. If we want to avoid catastrophic climate and biodiversity collapse, the next parliament has a clear path forward.

Here are five urgent, evidence-based actions ready to go.

No new fossil fuel projects

Australia’s fossil fuel projects are already contributing to climate change. New projects will add to the impact.

Every new fossil fuel project locks in emissions for decades. Every year we delay deeper cuts, we shrink our chances of a liveable future.

Australian governments continue to approve coal and gas developments, and there are around 100 more ‘under development’ according to government sources.

Australia does not need to approve new gas and coal projects for energy. In fact, most of Australia’s gas and coal is exported to other countries. But no matter where in the world it is burned, it still contributes to the climate change Australians want to avoid.

On this episode of After America, Dr Prudence Flowers joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the Trump administration’s attempts to ‘re-masculinise’ the American economy through tariffs, its efforts to undermine trans and reproductive rights, and how culture wars are playing out in Australian politics.

1800RESPECT is the national domestic, family and sexual violence counselling, information and support service. Call 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732, chat online or video call via their website.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 17 April 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

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

Guest: Prudence Flowers, Senior Lecturer in US History, Flinders University // @FlowersPGF

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

Show notes:

Australia exported more thermal coal in the last quarter of 2024 than it ever has before.  (See chart below)

Just last week, Santos’ Barossa gas project was approved, despite it being the most emissions-intensive gas export project in Australia and possibly the world.

Meanwhile, the Minister is yet to make a decision on Woodside’s proposed North West Shelf gas expansion, which would have devastating consequences for the environment and the Murujuga Rock Art.

“This record expansion of fossil fuels has been facilitated by an ALP government that was elected to take action on climate change – not accelerate it,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“Australia needs fewer coal and gas mines, not more.

“Today’s proposal from the Greens to prevent new fossil fuel projects demonstrates how the next Parliament could act immediately.

“No new laws are needed. The Minister has the power to stop new fossil fuel projects right now.”

Australia Institute research shows coal and gas emissions are still rising, wiping out progress from renewables. Any further approvals will lock in climate damage for decades.

This was the lowest for a winning candidate in 2022, closely followed by the winning candidate in Nicholls, National MP Sam Birrell, who won with 26% of the primary vote.

In Groom, independent Suzie Holt received 8% of the vote on first preferences, putting her in fourth. She finished in second place with 43% after leapfrogging One Nation and Labor on preferences.

The only candidate to win from third place in 2022 was the Greens’ Stephen Bates in Brisbane.

It is relatively recent that Independents and minor parties benefited most from Australia’s voting system.

Until the 1980s, it was the Coalition who mainly benefited from preferential voting. From 1949 to 1987 Coalition candidates won 106 races where they were behind on first preferences, with Labor taking only seven.

The lowest ever primary vote for a winning candidate in a federal election was received by the National (then Country) party’s Arthur Hewson in 1972, who won McMillan from third place with just 17%. Preferences from independent, Democratic Labour Party, and Liberal voters allowed him to beat Labor on the final count with 52%.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the Coalition’s defence spending announcement, why Australia needs bravery from policymakers, and the latest debate between Jim Chalmers and Angus Taylor.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 24 April 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

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

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:

Australia Institute research shows that subsidies for luxury imported utes costs the Federal Budget $250 million per year.

Almost every large, dual-cab ute on the market is exempt from the luxury car tax because utes are “designed mainly for carrying goods and not passengers”.

But everyone knows most of these vehicles rarely leave the bitumen of our suburbs and rarely carry anything more than the weekly shopping or children for the school drop-off.

“Big dumb utes make our roads more dangerous, cause more pollution and reduce the government’s ability to fund social services,” said Richard Denniss, Executive Director of The Australia Institute.

“Basic economics says to tax things you want less of and subsidise things you want more of, yet Peter Dutton seems to want less electric vehicles and more American-style utes on our roads.

“The Coalition says it’s scrapping the EV tax break – which it supported up until Monday – because people who buy electric vehicles can afford them. Surely the same should apply for big utes.”

The post Silence on big ute subsidies as Coalition backflips on EV’s appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Election campaigns are when political parties tell us their priorities – they will structure their campaigns around certain themes, all designed to show voters that they are listening and they care.

But these priorities are often limited by notional and often arbitrary lines about what can be afforded to be done. Before the Budget this year, for example, the Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said: “as Finance Minister, I probably get a hundred good ideas for one that we can do.”

Because election commitments are accompanied by costings, voters can get a real sense of what political parties truly think are their priorities – and how much they are willing to spend when something is for them a priority.

Across the community, there is serious concern about the prevention of domestic and family violence. Until today, it hasn’t really featured in the campaign. So far in the campaign, Labor have promised $8.6 million in additional spending to tackle domestic and family violence. While today the Liberal Party has just announced a $90 million policy.

How much is that money? Surely it is sizeable given for example Peter Dutton said this morning that “most every measure in this space is supported on bipartisan basis because everyone accepts the fact that the scourge of violence and domestic violence, financial coercion and every aspect in this debate is completely and widly unacceptable in our society and we should do everything together to try to defeat it and work toward a better outcome for individuals and for our country as well.”

Earlier this year, Business Council of Australia president Geoff Culbert told the AFR that Australia is “permanently in election mode” and our three-year term limits are “too short”. The prime minister and opposition leader both say they support four-year terms, though they’re not willing to chance their arm on a constitutional referendum to make it happen.

In the last 25 years, Australia has had eight (soon to be nine) federal elections. If that sounds like heavy going, spare a thought for generations past. From 1950 to 1975, Australians voted in 15 federal elections, including four separate half-Senate elections.

This is to say nothing of the four separate referendums held between 1950 and 1975, compared with just one in the period from 2000 to 2025.

When Gough Whitlam joked that he was enjoying a rare “non-election year” back in 1985, he had a point.

Australia is a low tax nation, and this has left Australians with higher rates of poverty, poorer services and crumbling infrastructure.

If the government raised as much revenue as the average tax take of advanced nations in the OECD, it would have an extra $135 billion a year.

That could be used to improve infrastructure, deliver better education and health services and fast-track the shift to a low-emissions economy.

The Australia Institute proposes a range of changes to the tax system that are already at the centre of policy debate. Some are supported by current members of parliament, while others have been major party policy in the past. They are well-known by policy practitioners and popular with voters.

Such changes would not mean higher taxes for the vast majority of Australians, but would instead be done in ways which will make Australia fairer and safer.

We could:

• Cut fossil fuel subsidies and end the gas industry’s free ride.
• Reform negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.
• Close the tax loopholes for superannuation and luxury utes.

Such reforms to the tax system could raise between $12 billion and $63 billion a year: