Our Research

The record-slow pace of wage growth in Australia’s economy is not just making it difficult for families to balance their budgets, it also threatens severe long-run damage to Australia’s superannuation retirement system.  That’s the finding of new research from the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute.A key factor behind the wage slowdown in Australia has been the aggressive measures implemented by employers in recent years to su...

The Australia Institute Tasmania and Unions Tasmania launched the inaugural Tasmanian Jobs Survey in June of this year. We invited Tasmanians to complete a survey about their employment status, their union membership (if any), their household budget and disposable income and how work affects their life. The survey began May 1st 2017 and ran until August 31st. 919 people answered the survey and were recruited online, through social media and offli...

Around the world, governments are recognising the benefits of wide-scale electric vehicle use and are supporting their uptake through policy. Thanks to its compact geography, Tasmania would encourage people to purchase electric vehicles by providing even just a handful of public vehicle charging stations. This paper explores two options for providing coverage to a large part or most of the state, with three or six charging stations. These op...

When the Climate Institute has closed its doors, The Australia Institute was honoured to be selected to carry forward some of The Institute’s work as part of our new Climate & Energy Program. One of the important initiatives being carried forward under The Australia Institute’s Climate & Energy Program is the Climate of the Nation report on attitudes to climate change, released annually by the Climate Institute. Huge amounts of...

The McArthur River zinc-lead mine in the Northern Territory imposes significant environmental costs on the local community. Claims that it could produce government revenue of over $1.5 billion are based on flawed economic modelling that estimates tax revenues over a 1,000 year period.

Political donations in Australia are difficult to monitor as many go unreported. Only donations over $13,000 are disclosed to the Australian Electoral Commission. The majority of donations are likely to be under this disclosure threshold or hidden through other means, such as through associated entities or party fundraising events.Despite these shortcomings, the disclosures that do exist allow for analysis of which companies make major, disclosed...

Australia’s mining industry is 86% foreign owned and has spent over $541 million in the last ten years on lobbying Australian governments through its peak lobby groups, which are dominated by foreign interests. Spending on lobbying by individual mining companies is not public information, but would bring this number up significantly.This report finds that:Total revenue of mining lobby groups over the last 10 years is $541,275,884, with the Minera...

What we do and don’t know about mines, closures and rehabilitation in Victoria.Little data is available to the public on the clean-up from the mining boom. State government agencies often lack basic information on how many mines are in operation, with still less published on closures and abandonments. 

This paper, by Dr Andrew Carr of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, looks at where this sense of bipartisanship came from, how it operates and assesses its impact. While seemingly an innocuous idea — that our two major parties should seek agreement or cooperate in a spirit of unity — the reality today is far more corrosive.A default approach of bipartisanship restricts policy creativity and accoun...

Associate Professor Appleby has argued that a federal ICAC should have the discretion to conduct public hearings in ‘cases where public concern surrounding an allegation of corruption that it rises to a crisis of confidence in government’, demanding an immediate assurance that a robust investigation is underway.Recent survey research indicates that there is already something of a crisis of public confidence in government in this country. The Scan...