Australia has a de facto national target of net zero emissions by 2050. But Australian government projections suggest we are not on track to achieve this target, with emissions reductions in the electricity sector being undermined by a lack of progress in the rest of the economy.
A recent OECD report claims Australia’s superannuation system has some of the lowest fees of any pension system in the world. But the report is based on flawed data that misses much of the story.
read more The curious case of the missing superannuation fees
Do some people have too much influence over public policy in Australia? Grattan’s 2018 report Who’s in the room? showed that access and influence are heavily skewed towards the businesses and unions that have the most to gain (and lose) from policy decisions. And this blog post shows that older people, and men, were heavily over-represented in submissions to the 2015 Tax White Paper. Treasury received 870 formal submissions to its 2015 review of the tax and transfer system.
There is no good news for private health insurers in the quarterly health Insurance statistics released today.
read more More of the same in private hospital insurance data
The private health insurance industry likes to warn Australians of a doomsday scenario. Don’t believe it.
Looser macro-prudential rules, rather than the federal election result, appear to be driving a rebound in house prices in Sydney and Melbourne.
read more What’s driving the rebound in house prices since the election?
A recent McKell Institute report makes unsupportable claims about how superannuation interacts with wages to justify higher compulsory super contributions. McKell’s analysis doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Here’s why.
read more McKell makes unsupportable claims about superannuation and wages
Since the early 1990s, higher education statistics have defined someone as of low socio-economic status if they are from a region classified in the lowest 25 per cent in Australia according to the ABS Index of Education and Occupation. Wouldn't it be better to pay more attention to areas that for whatever reason have low university participation rates, even if quirks of the Index of Education and Occupation formula give them SES ratings that disqualify them from low-SES rewards?
Low income earners are struggling with high housing costs and there are widespread calls for governments to help. But the last major effort, the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS), was fundamentally flawed.
read more Learning from past mistakes: lessons from the National Rental Affordability Scheme
The Federal Government has introduced new repayment thresholds for people with HELP debt. The new thresholds mean that most people with HELP debt will pay less each year, and the Government will recoup less debt each year than they would have under the previous system.
read more Most people will pay less under the new HELP thresholds