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• Government Spending

Governments spend taxpayers’ money on a wide range of programmes from education to defence and from welfare to infrastructure. Yet there can be too much of a good thing, and some government spending is just wasteful. How can we ensure that taxpayers are getting value for money?

Left’s faux fairness puts opportunity society at risk
Tom SwitzerMay 13, 2019AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW

  There are economic battles you think you’ve won, only to discover you need to...

Budget 2019: Why the long-term tax cuts should be fast-tracked
John HumphreysApril 4, 2019PP19

The centrepiece of the 2019/20 budget was a proposed doubling of the income tax cuts...

The Budget and Global Economy
Tom Switzer, Simon Cowan, Peter CostelloApril 4, 2019

Australia’s longest-serving Treasurer. Peter Costello delivered 12 budgets — 10 of them surpluses — and...

Why Socialism always fails
Steven KatesMarch 15, 2019Spectator

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial Who’s Afraid of Socialism laid out the case that...

Only fiscal discipline will protect us
Leonard HongMarch 15, 2019Ideas@TheCentre

Former Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan’s valedictory speech hailed the legacy of his stimulus package (but...

I, Mechanical Pencil: Why a socialist economy can never work
Steven KatesFebruary 6, 2019PP14

Socialism brings poverty and oppression. The ignorance of so many as to why only a...

Australia’s post-pandemic public debt: is there still a problem?
Robert CarlingFebruary 5, 2024PP54
This report provides an update of the public debt situation and outlook based on the...
infrastructure, building, blowout, tax
Bungles, Blowouts and Boondoggles: why Australia’s infrastructure projects cost more than they should
Grahame CampbellNovember 23, 2023OP198
A large amount of taxpayers’ money, state and federal, is expended on large scale infrastructure...
Cohort of losers: generational burden of government Covid response
Gigi FosterJune 13, 2023AP49
In the Covid era, many policies were defended on the basis that they would help...
The ‘national conversation’ on budgets, spending and tax
Robert CarlingMarch 23, 2023PP49
There is a wide-ranging agenda of issues to which this paper aims to make a...
PP45 Image Australia's debt
A Sea of Red: Tracking Australia’s debt iceberg
Robert CarlingMarch 21, 2022PP45
The increase in debt raises economic policy issues of major concern. It is reducing fiscal...
The MMT Hoax
Tony Makin, Gene TunnyMay 27, 2021PP41

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a supposedly new macroeconomic paradigm, but it is essentially a...

Alarm bells ringing on more interest rate pain
Michael StutchburyMarch 18, 2026DAILY TELEGRAPH
Australians were losing faith that the combination of Labor’s economic policies and the RBA monetary...
Blame diagnostic inflation for the NDIS’ $10b Autism bill
Steven SchwartzMarch 5, 2026AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW

As recently reported in The Australian Financial Review, autism costs the National Disability Insurance Scheme...

The RBA had no choice but to tighten the screws
Robert Carling, Michael StutchburyFebruary 6, 2026THE CANBERRA TIMES
The government has been rightly blamed for fuelling the inflation flames with too rapid growth...
The only things going up now are the prices
Robert CarlingFebruary 3, 2026DAILY TELEGRAPH
The decisions that made higher rates unavoidable were taken in Canberra. If inflation is the...
Economic exceptionalism is dead – and rate cuts died with it
Michael StutchburyJanuary 31, 2026AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW
Jim Chalmers doesn’t have a central bank governor to blame for his forward misguidance or...
Tip from a friend: Australia’s economy is in a slow race to ruin
Michael StutchburyNovember 29, 2025THE AUSTRALIAN
Sometimes it takes outsiders to say the obvious but unwelcome things: high spending, low growth...
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Submission to the Independent Review of the Australian Public Service
Simon Cowan, Eugenie JosephAugust 1, 2018
Submission to the National Commission of Audit
Alexander Philipatos, Jennifer Buckingham OAM, Jeremy Sammut, Robert Carling, Simon Cowan, Stephen Kirchner, Trisha JhaApril 1, 2014T30.08

The federal government’s Commission of Audit (CoA) was established in 2013 to review the performance...

Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Bill 2012
Andrew BakerJanuary 25, 2013

Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Bill...

Submission to the COAG Select Council on Disability Reform on NDIS ‘eligibility and reasonable and necessary support’ criteria
Andrew BakerSeptember 10, 2012

Submission to the COAG Select Council on Disability Reform on NDIS ‘eligibility and reasonable and...

Submission to Native Title Leading Practice Agreements Discussion Paper 2010
Helen Hughes, Mark Hughes, Sara HudsonNovember 30, 2010

The Native Title process is only one of the processes returning land to traditional owners....

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