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Politics of Pressure: how government intervention left us short of gas
Introduction Australia’s natural gas sector has transformed dramatically between 1975 and 2025. What began as a series of isolated gas …
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Taxing Tobacco into Illegality: how split responsibilities and high excise created Australia’s tobacco wars
Executive Summary Australia’s tobacco control policy has reached a breaking point. For decades, bans on advertising and steady excise increases …
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Childcare in Australia: A New Approach
Executive summary Several well-known bodies, from the Productivity Commission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Minderoo Foundation and …
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Keeping Budgets on the Rails: Rules for Fiscal Responsibility
Executive Summary Fiscal rules are numerical limits to one or more of government spending, revenue, deficits and debt. Their use …
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CIS Newsletter: Why power prices keep climbing – The hidden costs behind the crisis
Australians were told that renewable energy would bring cheaper power. Yet, electricity bills remain high, with many households struggling to …
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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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Submission to Senate Education and Employment References Committee
Despite good intentions, Australia’s Early Childhood Education and Care system has expanded well beyond its original purpose as a work …
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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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Black market lit up by backfiring ciggies tax
Jacking up the price of a product usually ensures that less of it is sold. That can be a good …
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Tip from a friend: Australia’s economy is in a slow race to ruin
Sometimes it takes outsiders to say the obvious but unwelcome things: high spending, low growth and red tape are hurting us. Why does Labor fail to see it?
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Why the war on wokeness is actually killing conservatives in Australia
Australian conservatives — however much they might be impressed by the way MAGA has fought back against woke ideas — would do well to understand that a successful movement cannot be defined forever by what it opposes.
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Confessions of an Industrial Relations Club reporter
A half-century on from stagflation, outdated workplace rules and union monopolies remain the biggest barrier to reversing the Australian economy’s slipping productivity and wealth.
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Double the debt and half the fiscal clues
The Labor government’s early surpluses now look like a flash in the pan and the budget is back to a deficit – which is set to deepen.
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A good budget means setting some rules and adhering to them
There is a long history of fiscal rules, but the overall record is patchy, with governments lacking the fortitude to stick to rules when the going got tough.
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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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From $43B to $70B: The NBN Disaster and Off-Budget Deception
Ever wondered how governments keep massive spending hidden from the public eye? In this eye-opening video, we dive into the …
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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 …
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 ...