We are economists, political-economists and policy specialists in related fields, writing to express our support for active measures to strengthen Australia's manufacturing capabilities and guide investment in critical infrastructure, including measures proposed in the Commonwealth government's [...]
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Neoliberalism changed many things in Australia. Unions are weaker. Inequality is higher. But exactly what changed is often surprising. The state did not shrink. Social spending did not decrease, nor did it become less redistributive. Household wealth has increased rapidly, but largely due to [...]
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COVID-19 temporarily re-made fiscal politics. States responded to the health threat by enacting a sudden and far-reaching contraction of the private sector, partly compensated by an unprecedented expansion of the public sector. The moves proved temporary, with a swift return to fiscal and [...]
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Introduction
The economic impacts of the COVID-19 health crisis have increased gender inequalities in the Australian labour market. With women over-represented in lower-paid, insecure and casual jobs, and shouldering the majority of unpaid domestic and care labour prior to the [...]
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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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Book launch for Wrong Way: How Privatisation & Economic Reform Backfired, edited by Damien Cahill and Phillip Toner
Since the 1980s, successive waves of ‘economic reform’ have radically changed the Australian economy. We have seen privatisation, deregulation, marketisation, and [...]
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Finance is changing our lives. Through mortgages and super we now have more debt, and more savings, then ever before. The expansion of financial markets – what sociologists call ‘financialisation’ – creates new winners and losers. It even changes how we think about social rights. The [...]
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All is not as it seems with the Turnbull government’s proposed changes to higher education funding.
Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham has argued that higher tuition fees, lower direct grants to universities and a reduced HECS repayment threshold for graduates will deliver a [...]
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