Grattan Institute

A conversation with Higher Education Fellow, Ittima Cherastidtham. More than 50,000 students who started university in Australia this year will drop out. Part-time students are particularly at risk. Policy makers should do more to reduce the number of young people who leave university with nothing but debt and regret. Read the report: https://grattan.edu.au/report/dropping-out/

A conversation with Budget Policy and Institutional Reform Program Director, Danielle Wood and Australian Perspectives Fellow, Brendan Coates. The announcement of Labor’s plan to abolish refunds of unused imputation credits for retirees in late March sparked significant confusion in the media, and in turn many Australians, about the economic effects and who would actually pay. Danielle and Brendan...

Event podcast: In this Policy Pitch event, Stephen Duckett, Health Program Director at Grattan Institute presented data on the costs of complication rates and potential new strategies to reduce adverse events. He was joined by Associate Professor Jill Sewell, chair of the Victorian Clinical Council and Dr Linda Swan, Chief Medical Officer for Medibank to discuss how strategies might work in the pu...

Event podcast: Electricity network costs continue to be an area of significant focus for consumers, government, regulators and media, as well as network businesses themselves. In some cases, claims have been made that network prices are paying for investments the value of which has since been questioned. Experts from Grattan Institute, Powerlink and the Melbourne Energy Institute debated and explo...

A conversation with Australian Perspectives Fellow, Brendan Coates. In early March, economists Ross Kendall and Peter Tulip from the Reserve Bank of Australia released The Effect of Zoning on Housing Prices. In this podcast, Brendan discusses the findings from the paper and the subsequent reactions to it. Links to research discussed in this podcast: Ross Kendall and Peter Tulip, The Effect of Zoni...

A conversation with Grattan Senior Associate, Kate Griffiths. State governments have spent up to $20 billion more than was needed on the electricity grid. Customers are paying up to $400 more for their power each year than they should. They should get a rebate, or governments should write down the value of the assets to reduce electricity bills.

A conversation with Budget Policy and Institutional Reform Program Director, Danielle Wood and Associate Carmela Chivers. Protest politics is on the rise in Australia, and the main cause is collapsing trust in politicians and the major parties. If the major parties and politicians want to rebuild trust with voters, they'll need to change the way they do politics. Read the report: https://grattan.e...

Event Recording: Innovation and Science Australia has just released its plan for Australia’s innovation, science and research system, Australia 2030: Prosperity through Innovation. How big is the opportunity for Australia? Who really benefits from rapid innovation? Should policymakers follow ISA’s recommendations? At this Policy Pitch event, a panel that included the authors of the report used the...

A conversation with Australian Perspectives Fellow, Brendan Coates. Australia’s retirement income system is not working for the poorest Australians, who are disproportionately women. Australia has a persistent gender gap in retirement savings and incomes. This means that women, particularly single women, are at greater risk of poverty, housing stress and homelessness in retirement.

Event podcast: Innovation and Science Australia has just released its plan for Australia’s innovation, science and research system, Australia 2030: Prosperity through Innovation. How big is the opportunity for Australia? Who really benefits from rapid innovation? Should policymakers follow ISA’s recommendations? At this Forward Thinking event, a panel that included the authors of the report used t...

A conversation with Grattan CEO, John Daley and Australian Perspectives Fellow Brendan Coates about their latest report. Low interest rates, policy changes and restrictive planning have doubled house prices in 20 years. It's time for governments to open the gate to more housing and stem rising public anxiety about housing affordability.

Event podcast: in this Policy Pitch event, a panel of transport and infrastructure experts explored: How bad congestion is across Melbourne; at what point we should consider new strategies to manage congestion, including congestion pricing; and, if a government were to introduce congestion charging, what principles should guide the scheme.

Event podcast: In this Capital Ideas event, Dr Peter Goss, Grattan Institute School Education Program Director, hosted a panel of leading policy thinkers to explore what is needed to lift educational outcomes at scale, what are the benefits, challenges and risks of Commonwealth interventions and where should the Commonwealth focus its efforts, and why?

Event podcast: In this Forward Thinking event, a panel of experts will discussed if the demand driven system be restored. Its supporters argue that it increased access to higher education, fixed skills shortages caused by too few graduates, and encouraged innovation in teaching. Its detractors argue that admission standards fell, that we now have too many graduates, and that it cost taxpayers far...

A conversation with School Education Fellow, Julie Sonnemann. The Commonwealth should not use the extra money it is spending on schools as an excuse to intervene in school education. The danger is that the 'Gonski 2.0 Review' could be used as a platform for Commonwealth interventions that sound good, but don't actually help on the ground.

A conversation with School Education Program Director Pete Goss. The "gap" between Indigenous and other school students is even bigger than official figures show. Grattan research reveals that Year 9 Indigenous students in very remote areas are five years behind in numeracy, six years behind in reading, and seven-to-eight years behind in writing. Even in the cities and regions - where most Indigen...

A conversation with Health Program Director, Stephen Duckett. One in nine patients who go into hospital suffers a complication, and the risk varies dramatically depending on the hospital. An extra 250,000 patients would leave hospital complication-free each year if all hospitals lifted their performance to match the best 10 per cent of hospitals. A Grattan Institute Report Podcast.

A conversation with Health Program Director Stephen Duckett and Fellow Hal Swerissen. February 1, 2018 marks the 34th anniversary of the beginning of Medicare. How did it begin, how has it been used politically and what challenges will it continue to face?

A conversation with Energy Fellow, David Blowers. Australia’s electricity sector is in crisis, or something close to it. But electricity shortages are just one part of the story - for most Australians a more visible and perhaps crucial part of this crisis is our ever-increasing electricity bills and everyone wants to blame someone else for the problem. Is there a single factor responsible for our...

A conversation with Australian Perspectives fellow, Brendan Coates and Associate Trent Wiltshire. Unsurprisingly, housing affordability continues to remain in focus for media, politicians and researchers. In recent weeks, two papers have been released discussing regional housing supply and demand in Australia and housing accessibility for first home buyers. Here are the papers discussed on the pod...

Event podcast: at this Policy Pitch event, Grattan Institute launched our annual Summer Reading List for the Prime Minister at the State Library Victoria. Melbourne broadcaster Sally Warhaft joined Grattan Institute CEO John Daley in Melbourne to discuss how this year's titles illuminate some of Australia’s most important debates.

A conversation with Grattan Program Director Jim Minifie, Senior Associate Cameron Chisholm and Associate Lucy Percival. The widely held belief that powerful firms control the Australian economy is a myth. But where a few firms dominate markets, such as in the supermarket and banking sectors, they earn higher profits.

Event podcast: This Forward Thinking event explored the widening economic and social divide between Australia’s cities and regions. What are the economic forces at play? What are the effects on the social fabric of the nation? And what if anything should governments do to bridge the divide?

A conversation with School Education Program Director, Pete Goss. Australia’s school education system is not fit for purpose, and we need to rethink the way we teach students, support teachers and run schools. To halt the decline, we should make the system more adaptive.

Event podcast: Energy policy in 2017 has been constantly in the media headlines, driven by the reality of the impact of high prices and security uncertainty and the ongoing, intense politicisation of energy and climate change policy. The chair of the Energy Security Board, Kerry Schott, and the chair of the ACCC, Rod Sims, came together for our last Energy Futures forum for 2017 to reflect on 2017...