The CIS is often a lone voice calling for smaller government and espousing the benefits of individuals and communities taking responsibility for their lives. Your financial support means that we can employ the best minds to examine the big issues affecting Australia and offer sensible and timely solutions.

We would like you to meet a few members of the CIS research team and read about what they are working on – your donations have allowed them to continue their important and impacting work.

Dr Oliver Hartwich and Dr Stephen Kirchner are Research Fellows with the Economics Program (pictured top left).

In timely appointments, both Oliver and Stephen joined the CIS last year. Throughout their careers, Stephen as an academic and businessman in Australia and Oliver in London working for a think tank, they kept in touch with the CIS after their first contact at the CIS’ Liberty and Society student conference. Stephen’s field of expertise is monetary policy and his blog ‘Institutional Economics’ is one of the most respected economics blogs in the country. Oliver Hartwich has both an economic and legal background and has been influential in debates about government town planning and housing affordability in the UK.

Both Stephen and Oliver have been in high demand over the last six months to comment on the state of the economy and the government’s response to the recession. They have also spent a lot of time defending capitalism and the free market system and making sure that the important lessons from past economic reforms are not forgotten.

As well as their important work on big picture economic issues, both have been doing specific research. Oliver’s report on the car industry, With No particular Place to Go: The Federal Government’s Ill-Conceived Support for the Australian Car Industry, exposed the federal government’s plans for ongoing subsidies to Australia’s car manufacturers as unsustainable and ineffective. The report received considerable media attention both in Australia and internationally.

Stephen’s Policy Monograph Capital Xenophobia II, left CIS well placed to participate in the debate on Chinese direct investment in the Australian mining industry. This was followed by Bubble Poppers: Monetary Policy and the Myth of ‘Bubbles’ in Asset Prices, arguing that monetary policy should not be used to actively manage asset price cycles.

Both economists are determined to keep pressing the case for the free market. The CIS believes it is important to counter the prevailing notion that more government control of the economy is justified and beneficial.

Dr Jeremy Sammut and Jessica Brown work in the Social Policy Research Program (pictured middle)

Jeremy Sammut is a published historian whose insightful political and policy analysis has continued Professor Peter Saunders’ legacy of skewering nonsense and nanny state government policies such as taxing alcopops and GP superclinics. He is currently undertaking research into Australia’s health care system. Jessica Brown has been a lone voice in debates about paid maternity leave and family joblessness. Jeremy and Jessica are both involved in a child protection project, where future research will include options for reforming the dysfunctional foster care system.

In addition, Jeremy is working on a response to the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission’s Report, which will argue that a national health and hospital voucher system is the best way to fulfil the commission’s three key reform objectives: economic efficiency, person-centred care, and long-term sustainability. The CIS has also recommended that management of hospitals should be given back to local community boards in a paper called Radical Surgery: The Only Cure for NSW Hospitals.

Jessica’s report Breaking the Cycle of Family Joblessness recommends a multi-pronged approach including tax and transfer payment reform, tough welfare to work rules, and ‘pro-jobs’ employment policies to prevent the next generation of disadvantaged young Australians falling into the welfare trap. She is collaborating with Luke Malpass on a comparative study of welfare policies in Australia and New Zealand. They will examine the evidence underlying the assumption that the rich have been getting richer while the poor get poorer.

Jessica is also examining intergenerational welfare dependency and attitudes to work and welfare among disadvantaged Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. She will be assessing the effectiveness of income support payments for non-working parents and looking at options for reform.

Sara Hudson is a Policy Analyst in the Indigenous Affairs Research program (pictured above right with Djambawa Marawili)

Sara Hudson was a policy advisor for the New Zealand Department of Labour before joining CIS. Her background is in criminology and anthropology.

Following the success of the Helen Hughes’ book, Lands of Shame which had a direct influence on the recent changes in Indigenous policy in the Northern Territory, Sara is determined to expose, through evidence and rational argument, that the real ‘gap’ lies between those who are on welfare and those who are not, and is not related to ethnicity at all. For example, she has found that the cause of poor educational outcomes is the appalling schooling in remote areas and not Aboriginality. Sara has also been examining the disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous homeownership rates and has found that differences are due largely to where people reside. Those Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders living and working in mainstream society have similar levels of homeownership as all other Australians.

In the year ahead, the Indigenous Affairs Research program will continue to focus on Indigenous labour-force participation as this is the principle determinant of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander income, health, housing and social characteristics. Intrinsic to labour force participation is the issue of adequate education and health resources. Without essential literacy and numeracy skills many Indigenous people are denied the opportunity to participate in employment. Dependent on welfare and public housing, these Indigenous people suffer much lower life expectancy rates than Indigenous people living in mainstream society. The Indigenous Affairs Research team is working hard to convince government that throwing money at the Indigenous issue without implementing proper reform does not work.