Grattan Institute

In June 2020, Grattan Institute published a report called COVID catch-up: helping disadvantaged students close the equity gap. What we didn’t know was the impact this report would go on to have across Australia. One year later, half-a-billion dollars of funding has been dedicated to tutoring programs from both NSW and Victorian governments, and students are now getting the very real support they n...

Australia’s vaccine rollout has been a train-wreck. Missed deadlines. A lack of transparency. Not to mention, expensive. And data published by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald suggest that a third of Australians are hesitant about getting vaccinated. A lack of information and confusing messages about who can get vaccinated, where, and when, have left everyday Australians reluctant to get the jab....

With Australia's borders closed because of the pandemic, it's no wonder that migration is at an all-time low. Yet the COVID crisis provides a unique opportunity to reset Australia's skilled migration program. Listen to Economic Policy Program Director Brendan Coates, and Senior Associate Will Mackey, in conversation with Kat Clay, Head of Digital Communications about their new report: Rethinking p...

Taxpayers end up paying too much for major road and rail projects in Australia because governments don’t drive a hard bargain on contracts with the big construction firms. But what can governments do to make sure they get the best bang for the taxpayer's buck? Join Marion Terrill, Transport and Cities Program Director, Owain Emslie, Senior Associate, and Lachlan Fox, as they discuss infrastructure...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – for wonks that is. The Federal Government will soon release their May budget. But with economic recovery high on the agenda in the wake of COVID-19, you might be wondering where the government will be spending big – or slashing costs. Listen to Danielle Wood, Grattan CEO, in conversation with Kat Clay, Head of Digital Communications, on what the upcoming...

Australia has a new Minister for Women’s Economic Security in Jane Hume. But with an enormous gender gap in lifetime earnings between men and women, the significant job losses for women during the pandemic, and some women facing poverty in retirement, it’s hard to know which issue to start with. Listen to Rebecca Joiner, Tom Crowley and Kat Clay discuss how to fix the lifetime earnings gap.

All of us at some point in our lives have reaped the benefits of Medicare – whether that’s bulk billing a doctor’s appointment or receiving a more serious hospital procedure for free. When Medicare was introduced in the early 80s, the Minister for Health Dr Neal Blewett described it as ‘a simple, fair, affordable insurance system that provides basic health cover to all Australians’. But what about...

Achieving net-zero emissions sometimes sounds like an unachievable dream. With the political football of climate policy, and the current reliance on gas and coal-fired electricity sources, you’d be forgiven for becoming despondent about Australia ever getting to net-zero. But, at least in the electricity sector, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Join Kat Clay, Head of Digital Communications,...

Chances are, if you’re on the market for a new property, or are trying to sell, you might have noticed how bonkers the Australian property market is right now. Queues of thirty people at open inspections isn’t unheard of in metropolitan areas, and prices are skyrocketing due to demand. It’s an unexpected outcome - the start of the COVID pandemic saw predictions that house prices would fall 10-to-2...

At the start of March, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety released its final report into aged care and laid out an extensive plan to overhaul the aged-care system. There’s no doubt that aged care must be reformed. But with an overwhelming number of recommendations, where do we even begin? Listen to this informed discussion with Anika Stobart, Associate with the Grattan Health P...

COVID has compounded the effects of career breaks for women. Just six months out of work can add another $100,000 to the average $2 million lifetime earnings gap between men and women with children in Australia. This International Women’s Day, listen to Danielle Wood, CEO, Kate Griffiths, Fellow, and Tom Crowley, Associate, on how the COVID recession has affected women, now and into the future, an...

It’s no exaggeration to say that COVID-19 has changed how we travel forever. Now that offices are reopening, many people are driving to work in order to avoid public transport. But do any of us want to go back to the office after discovering the flexibility of working from home? Or maybe, you’ve just decided to join the lycra clad brigade of MAMILS on their bikes. However we commute, it’s almost c...

Australia’s border closure was one of the Morrison Government’s best decisions in responding to the pandemic. It was a big decision, but the right one. Tight border controls have given Australia the best of both worlds: little community transmission and a domestic economy largely unencumbered by COVID. Now, Victoria has just emerged from a five day lockdown caused by a breach in hotel quarantine....

Are you worried the age pension won’t exist in Australia by the time you retire? Turns out you’re not alone – more than half of Australians are worried about the pension disappearing. Watch Brendan Coates, Household Finances Program Director, in discussion with Kat Clay, Head of Digital Communications, and why you might not need to be worried about the pension disappearing.

With the recent release of data from the Australian Electoral Commission, political parties in Australia collectively received $168 million in income for the last financial year. Yet more than half of the funding for the major parties remains secret. In this week's podcast, Institutional Reform experts Kate Griffiths and Tom Crowley discuss where the money is going, what it does, and how to reform...

Climate change policy is in for a rocky ride in 2021. And sometimes it’s hard to make sense of where Australia stands on climate change. How are emissions going? And what do our politicians need to do to get to net-zero emissions by 2050? Listen to Tony Wood, Energy Program Director, discuss the year ahead for climate policy in Australia, and his latest piece in the Griffith Review, titled Remakin...

Listen to CEO Danielle Wood, in discussion with renowned journalist and broadcaster Geraldine Doogue, as we reveal our top six thought-provoking, diverse, and relevant books and articles from 2020. It’s been an extraordinary year, and these are extraordinary reads – not only for the Prime Minister, but for all Australians interested in public policy. Featuring an introduction by CEO of State Libra...

2020 was an enormous year for Australia, but it's also been a big year for the Grattan Institute. We've seen bushfires, the coronavirus crisis, and the huge fiscal and societal effects of the pandemic. In a special podcast, Grattan Institute CEO, Danielle Wood, reflects on the year that was, the enormous impacts that Grattan has had on public policy, and the future of our research for 2021. To don...

Australia is getting hotter, and Australians’ health is being harmed. Our health sector must do more to adapt to the reality of climate change. This podcast discusses Grattan's last report for the year, Climate change and health: preparing for the next disaster, with Will Mackey, Senior Associate, and Kat Clay, Head of Digital Communications. Read the report: https://grattan.edu.au/report/climate-...

In 2020, the out of sight, out of mind attitude to older Australians had deadly consequences. By the end of Australia’s second wave in October 2020, there had been about 2,000 COVID-19 cases and 680 deaths in residential aged care – mostly in Victoria – accounting for about 75 per cent of Australia’s COVID-19 death toll. This rate of deaths in residential care is much higher than many comparable c...

Last week the Victorian Government announced a $5.4 billion dollar Big Housing Build, billed as a ‘landmark investment in social housing.’ The plan will build more than 12, 000 new homes in Victoria, including more than 9300 new social housing properties, and upgrades to existing public housing facilities. Likewise Western Australia, Tasmania, and NSW have all announced social housing building pro...

Far from fuelling the recovery from the COVID recession, natural gas will inevitably decline as an energy source for industry and homes in Australia. Listen to Tony Wood, Energy Program Director, and Guy Dundas, Energy Fellow, bust the three biggest myths around a gas-led recovery in their latest report: Flame out: the future of natural gas in Australia. Hosted by Kat Clay, Head of Digital Communi...

Australian governments are currently fast-tracking transport projects, hoping for an infrastructure-led recovery from the COVID-19 recession. But our infrastructure pipeline is already bulging with several megaprojects underway across the country. And the history of such projects in terms of cost is not great. Governments have often ended up spending millions - and even billions - more on these pr...

This week Victoria reached 0 COVID cases and 0 deaths – in what has affectionately been dubbed ‘Donut Day’. It’s been a hard-won road with the dramatic shutdown of the entire state for 112 days. Hospitality, retail and the arts have been hard hit, not to mention the tragic deaths and illnesses due to the virus itself. But in reaching zero, Victoria has achieved a world first. No other place in the...

With this week’s release of the historic 2020 Federal Budget, economic stimulus seems to be all about high-vis and hard hats. But what about the hardest hit? In this podcast, three Grattan Institute experts give their extended take on what can only be described as one of the most significant budgets of our generation. Listen to Danielle Wood, Grattan's CEO, Marion Terrill, Transport and Cities Pro...