Australia’s stance on tax avoidance out of step
The “Double Irish Dutch sandwich” sounds like something questionable you’d find on the menu at backpacker-run cafe. But it’s actually a notorious tax loophole in Ireland which allows huge multinational companies to get away with paying tiny amounts of tax through shifting money between multiple countries.
Bill Shorten and Andrew Leigh for the Sydney Morning Herald
Raise the GST? No thanks. Here’s five better ways to fix Australia’s finances
Raising the GST isn’t a good idea. It’s not even a ‘necessary evil’. It’s a sign of laziness in our policy elite
David Hetherington for the Guardian
Australia should build and maintain its own submarine fleet
In strategically uncertain times, the last thing we should do is kill off our submarine industry.
Stephen Conroy MP for the Canberra Times
The Labour Market Crisis and the Welfare Burden: towards a universal basic income.
Winner of the Per Capita Young Writers Prize, Henry Ward, poses an income system for a true egalitarian society.
How to save the world’s most liveable city
Melbourne is rightly proud of its world-beating quality of life. How a town at the far end of the antipodes rose to become the world’s most liveable city, four years in a row, is a study in good planning and good government.
Equal to our core: making the case for egalitarianism as Australia’s national value
Speech at the launch of the Bachelor of Economics (Advanced), University of Adelaide.
Testing the vitality of the Australian Dream
Contrary to assumptions we are becoming hyper-aspirational and individualistic, our storied egalitarianism may still hold true.
Why being a centrist party hasn’t helped the Lib Dems
They forgot about the importance of competence and trust, and took their existing vote for granted.
James Morris for New Statesman
Shock of the New
Last month in London, Michael Cooney, executive director of the Labor Party’s main think tank, the Chifley Research Centre, called for an end to what he termed “nostalgia for the new.”
Why even conservatives should care about inequality
To Americans, the ideal of a society where anyone can make it is called “the American Dream”. But there’s nothing uniquely American about it. Australia shares this ideal and we must work to achieve it, writes .
Andrew Leigh for The Drum Online.
Melbourne’s choice: San Francisco or Adelaide?
The Victorian economy is at a crossroads. While there is plenty to be optimistic about, there is also significant cause for concern: the state’s unemployment rate has been steadily rising for three years and is now around 7 per cent; the closure of the Ford, Holden, Toyota and Alcoa plants in 2017 or sooner will trigger tens of thousands of jobs losses and see billions of dollars in industrial machinery and infrastructure fall idle.
Korean Free Trade Agreement
The Labor Party is the party of jobs, investment and growth. We have consistently been the party that has supported economic growth, underpinned by a responsible social safety net. We believe in growth combined with fairness. We have been champions of free and open trade that serves the national interest.
For democracy’s sake, give power to the people
A radical experiment in democracy has begun at Melbourne Town Hall. But it does not involve online activism, marching in the streets, or the Occupy Movement.
Rhetoric isn’t enough to stop domestic violence. Here are five real solutions
In Victoria, more than one victim of domestic violence dies every fortnight. There are no quick fixes, but there are some ‘best practice’ pointers which should be followed.
Our Identity Victoria Fundraiser Lunch
The Australian Republican Movement (Victorian Branch) is hosting a fundraising lunch on Saturday 30 August with three highly impressive leading women thinkers, making the case for why Australia should become a republic.
By following the US, Australia consigns future generations to social immobility
Among Joe Hockey’s many mistakes, the most damaging may be his pursuit of American-style job outcomes and intergenerational stagnation here in Australia.
Lessons from Australia
Sometimes we should learn from our sister parties. The Australian Labor party are undoubtedly the closest to us in the world.
John McTernan for Progress Online
CIA might as well learn from Germany’s economy while spying
Something has driven a wedge between the Anglo and the Saxon economies.
Harold Meyerson for the Washington Post
Ever wondered what Greg Hunt really thinks about climate policy?
Identity and values in Indian foreign policy: Modi’s cultural toolkit
Indian civil servants were recently ordered to use only Hindi in their social media statements. This followed Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking his oath of office in Hindi, a break from his predecessor…
Kadira Pethiyagoda for the Lowy Interpreter
Basic Funding Science to Revolutionize [sic] Medicine
This video is the winner in the second annual FASEB Stand Up for Science Competition. This year FASEB asked entrants to create exciting, yet informative, videos to let Americans know how U.S. federal agencies fund biological research.
Being Wrong is Glorious
Being wrong is glorious. In fact, being wrong can have a certain delicious quality. If it is the right type of error, of course.
Kate Brennan for the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture
The monarchy and Australia’s image abroad
As you return to work after the Queen’s Birthday long weekend, take a moment to reflect on how this holiday looks to the rest of the world. What message does Australia’s continuing attachment to the monarchy send to bemused tourists, international students and overseas business partners?
Melissa Conley Typer for The Interpreter
Where Did the Christians Go? Conservative Complicity after Budget 2014
A budget is a moral document, and reflects the values of its designers. But morality – as they say – is in the eye of the beholder and values always exist in a hierarchy, with some values being valued more than others. So the Coalition Government will crow about the righteousness of their budget, while their political opponents will denounce it as an assault on justice and fairness.
Brad Chilcott for ABC Religion and Ethics
Letter from … Sydney
Balmain is an inner-Sydney state constituency with 50,000 voters. Traditionally Labor heartland, it has changed under gentrification and its vote is now unusual in that it falls almost exactly into thirds – split between the Liberals, Labor and the Greens.
Tamsin Lloyd for Progress Online
Window may have closed for Australia Post to go private
In the 20 decades that Australia Post has been running Australia’s mail service it has never seen a challenge on the scale of the one it is now facing.
Reconciliation Day: more than just a sleep-in
The Queen’s Birthday long weekend has little relevance to Australians beyond being a day to sleep in. It should be replaced with a national Reconciliation Day that coincides with the landmark Mabo High Court ruling, writes Adam Collins.
Adam Collins for The Drum Opinion
Per Capita Tax Survey 2014
There has been a marked turnaround in Australians’ attitudes to public spending and tax over the last 18 months. Between 2010 and late 2012, our views of the tax system became steadily less generous – we felt increasingly that we were paying too much tax and our support for public spending, while high, was falling.
Rhys Muldoon’s Man About Town: It’s time to be free of the Commonwealth
Yes, citizens, it is our Queen’s birthday once again, and it is our duty to celebrate as loyal subjects. Shall we dress as chimney-sweeps or cheerful cockneys in pearl-button suits?
Rhys Muldoon for the Sydney Morning Herald
How to end the great Australian blame game
Eleven days before the federal budget, the mostly Liberal premiers sat around the COAG table in Canberra with the new Liberal Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. They had dinner together. Some even went jogging together. But Abbott made no mention of what was coming.
Australians shouldn’t have to choose between growth and fairness
Equality of opportunity must remain an Australian value. We have to equip people to participate in the economy so they can access the benefits of growth. This budget won’t achieve it.
Senator Penny Wong for The Guardian
Left given new weapon to wield
Just prior to Easter, my inbox brought news of a dangerous new work circulating clandestinely in the left-wing political underground – Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
Dennis Glover for the Australian Financial Review
A happy country is a socially mobile one
Every minute detail of Joe Hockey’s maiden budget is now exposed and being carefully dissected. Yet surpluses, deficits, levies and breaks – these are all just means.
Sam Crosby for the Sydney Morning Herald
George Brandis, the dangerously divisive attorney general
From kickstarting a dramatic decline in legal assistance funding to having scant to say about attacks on the rule of law, Brandis’ first moves as attorney general are alarming
More women in work key to productivity
It is sometimes said that the “big-ticket items” on Australia’s economic reform agenda have been tackled.
Clare O’Neil for The Australian
The Spirit Level authors: why society is more unequal than ever
Five years after The Spirit Level, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that research backs up their views on the iniquity of inequality.
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett for The Guardian
The creeping barrage of political language
By trying to redefine our understanding of “fairness” and “poverty”, the Australian conservative movement is paving the way for its pro-business, anti-welfare agenda.
David Hetherington for The Drum
Australia’s NDIS reform recognises that disability could affect any of us
With the NDIS, Australia’s disability care system will be transformed from one of the most backward in the developed world to among the very best. This is Labor’s revolutionary moment.
Without welfare, my life would be different. Maybe yours too
No one ever ran a front page story to announce the fact that a single mum was able to buy school shoes thanks to welfare, but those hidden human stories are out there and too often forgotten.
Left and patriotic go together like Paul Kelly and Liberace?
As Australia Day draws near, many of us on the political Left experience a sense of unease.
Murray Watt for the Brisbane Times
Tony Abbott’s austerity-like measures will hit poorer communities the hardest
The extreme budget cuts put forward by the Abbott government will hit communities like mine especially hard, greatly heightening the risk of future rising joblessness.
