The Treasurer Wayne Swan has described the 2012 Budget yesterday as “a Labor budget to its bootstraps”, and commentators have variously seen it as “a big taxing, big spending budget, including a big increase…
Carers lose out in the current welfare system.
Flickr/dominikgolenia
Almost 50 cents of every dollar spent by governments in Australia goes on social spending – either social security or health and community services. This week’s tax forum must reform the system, as the…
Children of separated parents have higher rates of emotional problems but it doesn't mean these families are bad for kids.
By George Patton, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute
The mental health and well-being of Australian children is deteriorating and this is caused by a breakdown of two parent families, according to a report released today by University of Sydney Law Professor…
Without the truly important issues on the agenda, October's tax forum will achieve little.
AAP
Debates around tax are too often seen as marginal to real life and not very interesting.
October’s tax forum offers an opportunity to challenge this misconception and do some hard thinking about what…
It's time to give people a hand up through welfare.
Flickr/sidkid
As a senior public servant I became increasingly frustrated that too many government initiatives, always well meant and often well implemented, simply ended up compounding the problem of passivity and…
Australia has one of the lowest poverty rates for families in work in the OECD.
Flickr/adwriter
One of the most hotly debated features of Budget 2011 was the freezing of thresholds for some family payments. This has been described positively as a “war on middle class welfare” and negatively as punishing…
