The results of this year’s Survey can be organised into four main groups. Firstly, the public believes we have a revenue problem rather than a spending one. We need to fund more spending rather than cutting our spending to match our revenue capacity. Overwhelmingly the public says they wish to see more spending on public...

This discussion paper emerges from a series of events held by Per Capita with Melody Barnes in February 2016. Melody Barnes served as Assistant to US President Obama and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council from 2009 to January 2012. Ms Barnes is now the Chair of the Aspen Institute’s Forum for Community...

Throughout the developed world, there has been a trend over recent decades towards union consolidation. In rare cases, as in Australia in the early 90’s, this was a conscious movement-wide strategy, supported by legislation and even government funding. There were nearly 200 federally registered unions in 1988, a figure that fell by two-thirds over the...

Australia has witnessed a remarkable shift in public attitudes to public spending and tax over the last two years. We no longer feel overtaxed. We want more spent on public services, especially health and education, and we are willing to pay more tax to enable that. These sentiments were first revealed in the 2014 Per...

Population, participation and productivity. These are the ‘three Ps’ which feature in Australia’s intergenerational reports as the means to ameliorate the negative economic implications of an ageing society. The 2015 Intergenerational Report (IGR) invoked the three Ps as a means to resolve the government’s self-described ‘challenge of change’. The challenge of change narrative is based...