Higher education changes: the case in favour

A few weeks ago I republished an excellent article on the Government's poorly conceived and executed higher education "reforms" from Stephen Parker. His was a cogent and spirited attack on "ideology in search of a problem". The justifications of the reforms by the government amount to little more than confused rhetoric, attempting to "spin" away the mean-spirited dogma.

John Quiggin has also provided a spirited and cogent attack on the "reforms".

In contrast, Ian Young (Vice Chancellor at ANU) attempted to fill the intellectual void with a flawed attempt in support of the reforms in front of the National Press Club a month or so ago.

Now Glyn Davis (Vice Chancellor at Melbourne University) has made an attempt to justify the elite universities' support for the reforms - it seems it is all simply a desperate attempt to shore up funding in the face of the continuing erosion of Commonwealth funding. Well, at least he's honest! Nevertheless, he makes some useful points.

Expanding the GST would hit the ‘middle’ and women the hardest

Patricia Apps is a professor of Public Economics at the University of Sydney, and one of Australia's best tax policy analysts. This article on the redistributive effects of the GST (originally published in The Conversation) highlights the negative consequences for tax incidence and economic participation from broadening the GST.

While I don't disagree with her analysis, I have a relatively minor quibble about her policy conclusion—broadening the GST base (and not increasing the rate) to improve the efficiency of the tax is worth doing for its own sake. However, we need to acknowledge Professor Apps' analysis and accompany GST broadening with reforms to the income tax and transfers system which, not only address the redistributive problems of broadening the GST, but also improve the progressivity in the tax and transfer system and remove the distortionary effects of that system on workforce participation.

What Professor Apps' article does highlight, is how poor is the quality of taxation analysis and debate in this country. To the extent that she shines a light on simplistic (even sloganistic) notions of tax reform, her article is commended for your reading pleasure.

Boards fail on strategic focus

An interesting article in the January 2015 edition of The Harvard Business Review by Dominic Barton and Mark Wiseman, Where Boards Fall Short: most boards aren’t delivering on their core mission of providing strong oversight and strategic support for management’s efforts to create long-term value.

Why the federal budget is not like a household budget

This is a timely article from Warwick Smith (research economist at the University of Melbourne) on the simplistic and misleading view that many in the public and the Parliament (and, alas, many economists) have of Government budgeting.

Managing Government finances is very different from managing a household Budget, and confusing the two approaches leads to poor public policy. The key differences include:

• Governments can compulsorily levy their income from taxpayers according to its needs, albeit that there may be some political pain and economic implications which may impose some limits
• Governments can (and do) print money (creating income out of nothing), with the only limits being balancing the inflation and exchange rate effects
• the need to balance budgets is a myth, which harks back to the days when currencies were backed by the gold standard

Higher education changes a ‘fraud on the electorate’

This is an excellent article on the Government's poorly conceived and executed higher education "reforms" from Stephen Parker, Vice Chancellor at the University of Canberra, and one of the only University leaders to speak out against the proposals.

Public sector performance measurement and reporting

The Victorian Auditor-General has recently published a report which documents the lamentable nature of public service performance reporting, not just in Victoria but across all Australian jurisdictions.

The role of rice in the food security of Asia

It was a pleasure to read an authoritative survey on food security recently. Peter Timmer is an Adjunct Professor at the Crawford School of ANU and was previously at Harvard.

Timmer's article, Food Security in Asia and the Pacific: The Rapidly Changing Role of Rice, is a survey of the changing role of rice in the food security of Asia, the behavioural dimensions of food security, and policy approaches.