Hours, Not Dollars: Rethinking the cost-of-living debate
Executive Summary Public debate about the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ often confuses nominal price increases with declining affordability. This paper argues that …
-
-
Future No Longer Made in Australia: How we lost our low-cost electricity advantage
Trouble has been brewing in Australia’s smelting paradise over the last two decades, as rising energy prices, carbon charges and foreign competition have taken their toll
-
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 …
-
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 …
-
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 …
-
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. …
-
From Measuring to Merely Meeting: Productivity Commission misses mark on Closing the Gap
Why, despite decades of expenditure on Aboriginal affairs, do solutions to ‘Closing the Gap’ in life outcomes for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people remain elusive?
-
Jumpstart Productivity: New modelling pinpoints better tax cut program
Treasury modelling of the government’s tax changes make the strange assumption of no behavioural change, leading them to ignore economic …
-
Taxploitation II: Tax Reform for Incentive,Productivity and Economic Growth
This volume brings together papers on different aspects of tax reform published by the CIS over the past five years. …
-
The RBA had no choice but to tighten the screws
The government has been rightly blamed for fuelling the inflation flames with too rapid growth of its own spending. This has come not just from the federal government but from several state governments as well.
-
Economic exceptionalism is dead – and rate cuts died with it
Jim Chalmers doesn’t have a central bank governor to blame for his forward misguidance or for his complaint that monetary policy may be “smashing the economy”.
-
Do we entrench our advantages or let them slip?
We’re not in danger of becoming a banana republic, like Paul Keating warned in 1986. But we are losing our exceptional prosperity and sliding back into the pack of other less prosperous developed economies.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 …
-
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).
-
Government’s spending surge a threat to productivity
As we get closer to the productivity roundtable that the government hopes will solve all problems, various players are tipping their hand as to what they want the focus to be.
-
Productivity stakes couldn’t be higher at roundtable
Productivity must trump politics in Labor’s second term
-
‘NIMBYism is a cancer’: Bragg outlines housing policy vision with Peter Tulip & Michael Stutchbury
Senator Andrew Bragg and economist Peter Tulip join Michael Stutchbury for a wide-ranging conversation on Australia’s housing crisis, the politics …
-
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 …
-
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 …
-
The Answer is Productivity | Tom Switzer
To avoid a crisis, Australia should embrace sound market economics.
-
On Liberty EP25 Education reforms to boost productivity
Hosted by CIS Research Fellow, Glenn Fahey. In this webinar, Glenn spoke with Peter Achterstraat AM, the inaugural NSW Commissioner …
-
Bill English: The Productivity Puzzle – Q&A
-
Bill English: The Productivity Puzzle – What the Government Can Contribute
-
How loss of cheap energy pressures wage system | The Stutchbury Sessions
You can listen to The Stutchbury Sessions on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM or listen on your browser. Episode Transcript: …
-
Iron, Ideas, and Abundance: Supply Side Mistakes and Lessons | The Stutchbury Sessions
You can listen to The Stutchbury Sessions on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM or listen on your browser. Episode Transcript: …
-
Why Australians Vote for Big Government | The Stutchbury Sessions
You can listen to The Stutchbury Sessions on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM or listen on your browser. Episode Transcript: …
-
Our Prosperity is Slipping Away | The Stutchbury Sessions
You can listen to The Stutchbury Sessions on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM or listen on your browser. Episode Transcript: …
-
Submission to Productivity Commission’s Investing in cheaper, cleaner energy and the net zero transformation Interim Report
The Productivity Commission’s statement that careful emissions reduction policy design will enable gains in productivity and living standards is unfounded. …
-
The Need for Reform of Land Use Policy: Submission to the Productivity Commission
This submission focuses strongly on the housing affordability aspect of Australia’s productivity. Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Australia’s …
-
Submission to Productivity Commission – Draft report: Introducing Competition and Informed User Choice into Human Services
The Productivity Commission (PC) released a draft report proposing reforms to increased competition, contestability and informed user choice to human …
-
Submission to the Productivity Commission 5 year productivity review: Increasing Australia’s Future Prosperity
The submission by CIS Research Fellow Michael Potter argues: An excellent productivity boosting agenda is contained in a speech by …
-
Submission to the Productivity Commission on the Preliminary Findings Report: Introducing Competition and Informed User Choice into Human Services: Identifying Sectors for Reform
To improve Indigenous outcomes, there needs to be better management of overall funding and a strategy to coordinate how programs …
-
Productivity Commission Inquiry Into Introducing Competition and Informed User Choice into Human Services: Submission in response to issues paper
The Human Services Inquiry is ‘examining policy options in the human services sector that incorporate the principles of competition, contestability …