John Wilkinson surveys the evidence on the role and character of the NSW tourism industry in a national context, and the opportunities and constraints faced by the industry.

Incomes earned by those on the basic wage or just above have increased far less than house prices have increased, during the last 25 years, yet governments have largely withdrawn from providing housing for people encountering housing difficulties. Instead, writes John Wilkinson, they have turned to providing modest rent assistance to those on low incomes...

The recent drought has focused attention on government assistance schemes for primary producers. John Wilkinson examines the emergence of government assistance and how political attitudes towards it have changed during the twentieth century. He also looks at what schemes of assistance are currently available for producers in the midst of the current drought.

'Horizontal fiscal equalisation' was originally devised as a principle for distributing federal government grants to the states and territories, but has now become the basis for apportioning GST revenue. There has been considerable agitation on the part of New South Wales and Victoria, for horizontal fiscal equalisation to be abandoned, and replaced by a per...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The agricultural sector is relatively small but contains certain well-performing areas (pp.1-12,23-24). In recent years, there have been substantial changes in the organisation of the sector (pp.14-16,17,20). Large-scale overseas companies are assuming a greater presence in Australian agriculture as the sector is transformed into agribusiness (pp.17-18). Certain problems, occurring within this transition, remain...