Publications
Here you can find articles or essays which I have written and which have been published elsewhere
‘Super for housing’ is a souped-up first home owners grants scheme – and it won’t help any more than first home owners grants have
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Housing, Publications | 24th September 2024The Hobart Mercury published an op-ed article on 24th September about the Liberal-National Coalition’s proposal to allow people to withdraw funds from their superannuation (retirement income) savings accounts in order to assist with the purchase of a first home.
Independent Review of Tasmania’s State Finances
Publications, Tasmania | 19th August 2024Saul Eslake’s review of the financial condition of Tasmania’s public sector, pursuant to an agreement between the Premier of Tasmania and the three Parliamentary Members of the Jacqui Lambie Network.
Distribution of GST Revenue: the Worst Public Policy Decision of the 21st Century to date.
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 4th February 2024Saul Eslake: An essay about the consequences of the Morrison Government’s decision (supported by the then Labor Opposition and continued, indeed extended, by the current Albanese Labor Government) to change the way in which the revenue from the GST is carved up among Australia’s states and territories, at the behest of Australia’s richest state, Western Australia.
A new dawn over stormy seas
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 23rd May 2022Article commissioned by The Conversation suggesting (at the risk of ‘jumping the gun’) a way in which the new Labor Government might be able to secure a mandate for more ambitious economic reform next time around.
Who are the ‘better managers’ of Australia’s economy?
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 21st April 2022Article originally published on John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations site on 21st April 2022, asking whether either of Australia’s major political parties can credibly claim to be “better economic managers” than the other.
The costs and consequences of ‘small business fetishism’
Australian Society and Politics, Economic Policies, Publications, Taxation, The Australian Economy | 10th December 2021Article published in the December 2021 edition of Agenda, the journal of the Australian National University’s School of Economics.
Old wine in new bottles: more ‘rent-seeking’ from South Australian manufacturing interests
Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 17th September 2021There’s a new lobby group pleading for preferential treatment for manufacturing in the name of ensuring ‘sovereignty’, a word of which the present Federal Government is especially fond. But it boils down to the same old rent-seeking that has been a feature of Australian manufacturing policy for most of the past 120 years. (Full text […]
This is a recession – we’re just not calling it one
Economic Policies, Publications, The Australian Economy | 9th September 2021Op-ed published in the Australian Financial Review of 9th August 2021 – arguing (1) that we are in a recession now, irrespective of whether we have two consecutive quarterly contractions in real GDP, and (2) that although it shares some of the ‘responsibility’ for this second recession, the federal government’s fiscal policy response to it […]