Australia’s student loan scheme, originally called the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), was introduced in 1989. This innovation, now known as the Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) has since been exported around the world. It reflects a new way of thinking of [...]
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The study of the political economy of Australian capitalism begins with Marx’s Capital, Volume I (1867) Chapter 33 ‘The Modern Theory of Colonisation’. In this final chapter, Marx discusses the exportation of capitalist social relations to the global periphery. This required, it is [...]
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In August Laurie Carmichael, former AMWU and ACTU leader, former president of the Communist Party of Australia and one of the architects of the accord, died. In October commemorations of Laurie’s life were held in Melbourne and Sydney. I attended the Sydney event. It was very moving and [...]
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State elections are always about spending promises, but this time not much is being said about how they will be funded.
Last minute costings on individual announcements tend to rely on the general presumption that the state economy will keep growing and somehow produce the needed [...]
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Signed by 124 Labour Market, Employment Relations and Labour Law Researchers
For the last several years, Australian wages have experienced an unprecedented slowdown. Nominal wages have been growing at only about 2% per year since 2015. That’s barely half the traditional pace of [...]
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As featured in The Sydney Morning Herald by Matt Wade, the share of total economic output in Australia that is paid to workers (in the form of wages, salaries, and superannuation contributions) has been declining for decades. Workers produce more real output with each hour of labour (thanks [...]
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In 2014, the Australian federal government repealed a national compliance emissions trading scheme (ETS). This was a world first decision to get rid of flagship climate legislation with no replacement at the time. The ETS ran for only two years (2012-14). It has since been replaced by the [...]
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Reaching the end as a state employee I decided to take a trip to the west coast of Tasmania. It’s a region defined by mines, forests and its isolation from the largest settlements during colonisation. And towns established to service industries have been abandoned and deprived of any [...]
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