The Unworkable Solution: An Economic Assessment of a Cashflow Tax for Australia
Executive Summary Australia faces persistent economic challenges. Productivity growth has slowed, business investment is uneven, and real wages have lagged …
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An economic walk on the supply side
This is an edited version of Michael Stutchbury’s keynote address to the 2025 Freedom to Choose Conference Australia is a …
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Our Prosperity is Slipping Away: Submission to Economic Reform Roundtable
Introduction As Reserve Bank deputy governor Andrew Hauser noted last year, it can be easy to forget just how …
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Addressing Australia’s Productivity Problem. CORE Blueprint to Unshackle Productivity
Introduction There is no one action that will lift Australia’s dwindling productivity growth; it is a measure determined by a …
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The Productivity Problem. Australia’s Growth Slump Is Undermining Prosperity
Executive summary Concern over Australia’s slow rate of productivity growth is justified as it is essential to the nation’s prosperity. …
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Leviathan on the Rampage: Government spending growth a threat to Australia’s economic future
Executive summary The rising trend of government expenditure in Australia has long been present but has received new impetus from …
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Submission to Heritage NSW
This submission argues that NSW’s heritage legislation has serious flaws. In particular, costs of listing are not compared with benefits. …
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Economic challenges ahead for the government
The re-elected federal government faces a long list of economic challenges, some of them created or exacerbated in its first …
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How to vandalise savings: the new superannuation tax
Introduction The Albanese Labor government’s new tax geared to individuals’ total superannuation balances was unveiled in March 2023, failed to …
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CIS Newsletter – EOFY
Count on CIS to bring early numeracy screening to Australia Australia has a maths problem — and it’s not just …
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Productivity Commission piles in to Labor’s schizophrenic war on big business
Industry Minister Tim Ayres rightly says that Australia is in competition for global capital as he throws taxpayer money at …
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The hard truth: why the government should let this smelter fail
If Tomago meets the criteria for a taxpayer bailout, then so do thousands of other businesses. The government will be back in the business of propping up unviable companies (if it ever really left).
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Here’s how to fix poverty without taxing the rest of us more
The fact is, the more tightly assistance is targeted at those in need, the lower the overall cost to the taxpayers, and correspondingly the greater efficiency (in terms of reducing poverty) you see for every dollar spent.
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Pump the brakes, Hastie. Let me explain how wrong you’ve gotten it
In reality, it was taxpayers and consumers who were being held hostage: by government who funnelled billions of dollars to the car industry, and by big business and big unions who made sweetheart deals to distribute their ill-gotten subsidies.
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Keep raiding our super and you’ll only create a smaller, meaner country
Rumours are swirling that the government may reconsider its superannuation tax changes that will hit those with balances above $3 million with new taxes, including taxing unrealised capital gains. Abandoning this policy change would be the right call: the supporting rationale for it is weak and largely incoherent.
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Australia’s housing push is bipartisan
The Liberal party has two traditions, conservatism and support for free markets. Normally, those movements are allies. But housing policy is an unusual issue on which they diverge.
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This war on grandparents’ savings has to end
As the government continues to ponder its next moves on taxation, debate has yet again turned to the issue of …
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The end of cash for diagnosis? Now that would be a good thing
The Albanese government’s plan to divert children with mild developmental delays out of the NDIS marks the most significant reform to the scheme since its birth.
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Productivity roundtable’s uncertain impact. What was the point?
Surely it was not the 10 supposed reform directions, some of which contradict the others in practice (eg tax reform).
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Summit must end national complacency about Australia’s prosperity
The Economic Reform Roundtable should commit to making Australia an aspirational and enterprise-driven, high-growth nation bursting with investment opportunities.
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Peter Costello on the Legacy of Reform and the Road Ahead
From economic reform and rising government spending to cultural shifts and the decline of liberalism, Costello reflects on the ideas …
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Coalition’s vision for economic & productivity reform | Sussan Ley & Michael Stutchbury
At this Centre for Independent Studies lunch forum on 20 October 2025, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley delivered a major address …
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Consumer Choice, Risk & Safety with Fred Roeder and Michael Stutchbury
Where is the line between risk and regulation? In this episode of The Stutchbury Sessions, Fred Roeder from the Consumer …
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How Australia Lost Its Economic Edge
Australia’s economy is slowing. Productivity has flatlined, debt is soaring, and growth has frozen. What caused one of the world’s …
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Housing Reform in NSW & New Zealand | Chris Minns, Chris Bishop & Peter Tulip
At this Centre for Independent Studies forum, NSW Premier Chris Minns and New Zealand Housing Minister Chris Bishop hosted CIS …
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How to vandalise savings: the new superannuation tax | Robert Carling
Australia’s new superannuation tax will target balances over $3 million. Yet, what seems like a modest reform does not just …
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Free Trade vs Tariffs: Jobs, Security, and the Cost of Living
Leading economists, historians, and policy experts delve into the complex world of tariffs, free trade, and their impact on global …
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The Answer is Productivity | Tom Switzer
To avoid a crisis, Australia should embrace sound market economics.
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Less Crowded Houses. NZ’s housing policy success and implications for Australia
While house prices in Australia went up by more than 8% in 2023, prices in New Zealand fell by more …
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Solving the housing crisis | Stuart Donovan
How can Australia tackle its housing affordability crisis? What lessons can we learn from New Zealand’s successful upzoning policies? In …
Frequently Asked Questions
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) structure makes mistakes likely. It concentrates responsibility on one fallible individual, the Governor, answerable to a Board of non-experts, with little requirement to explain or defend decisions in detail. Arguments are subject to little scrutiny, either internally or externally. More fundamentally, the RBA has a culture that places a low priority on getting the answers right. As a result, mistakes are frequent, persistent and costly. Among several examples, the RBA recently placed higher priority on stabilising household debt than on its conventional goals of unemployment and inflation. Previously, it targeted the current account deficit. Read more ...
Inflation is rising around the world, the sting in the tail of the pandemic economic stimulus packages unleashed by governments in 2020. The narrative thus far is that this inflation spike is transitory, even if a little more persistent than first thought. It is expected to moderate as consumer price pressures ease and markets rebalance after the large positive demand shock and surge in consumer spending of the past 18 months. Read more ...