Yes, the government does believe what companies do you to online

How often have you had trouble cancelling a subscription to a streaming video site or some other service? When you’re trying to do something online, how often have you ticked a box to say you’d read the terms and conditions, when you hadn’t?I do it all the time. And my guess is that almost everyone else does too. Why? Because the site won’t let you get on with making a restaurant booking or buying something until you do.You don’t...

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Inflation: workers being unreasonable, or bosses on the make?

When you think about it clearly, the case for minimum award wages to be raised by 5.1 per cent is open-and-shut. So is the case for all workers to get the same. This wouldn’t stop the rate of inflation from falling back towards the Reserve Bank’s 2 to 3 per cent target zone.But if, as seems likely, the nation’s employers contrive to ensure that this opportunity is used to continue and deepen the existing fall in real wages, the...

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Cutting real wages will help inflation, but weaken the economy

At last, as the election campaign reaches the final stretch, we’ve found something worth debating. Anthony Albanese has found his spine and supported a big rise in award wages, while Scott Morrison says a decent rise for the masses is a terrible idea that would damage the economy.First the politics, then the economics. My guess is history will judge this to be the misstep that did most to cost Morrison the election. Successful...

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Budget is a guide to who's a Morrison mate and who's not

Despite all the accusations being hurled at Scott Morrison, to my knowledge he’s never done what so many election-winning leaders do and promised to “govern for all Australians”. A promise not made, and thus not broken. All governments tend to look after their party’s friends and supporters, but Morrison has made this a defining feature of his reign.There was a brief period early in the pandemic when he was in all-in-this-together...

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It’s not business-bashing, it’s the public’s moment of truth

With the federal election campaign being fought over which side will do the better job of re-regulating the banks, the energy companies and business generally, big business seems to be going through the stages of grief. It’s reached denial. According to the Australian Financial Review, the Business Council of Australia is most put out that the Morrison government has yielded to pressure from Labor and some Nationals to support...

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Indigenous small business is on the rise

It’s the season of good cheer, so let me give you some good news: we’re not making the progress we should be in Closing the Gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, but when it comes to increasing the ranks of Indigenous small-business people we’re doing surprisingly well. The number of Indigenous owner-managers is conservatively estimated to have increased by 32 per cent between 2006 and 2011, and by 30 per cent...

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Sorry, small business has no special sauce for jobs

Scott Morrison is surely on a winner with his decision to step up pursuit of jobs and growth by bringing forward the time when small and medium businesses have their company tax rate cut to 25 per cent. Certainly, it’s likely to be a popular decision, not just with the owners of the more than 3 million businesses who’ll be paying a bit less tax, but also with a lot of ordinary voters. After all, as everyone knows, small business...

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Business lobbies sell out Aussie shareholders

One thing we've learnt from this election campaign: whoever's interests our business lobby groups represent, it's not Australian shareholders. That's clear from their vociferous defence of Malcolm Turnbull's hugely costly promise to cut the company tax rate from 30 to 25 per cent, even though our system of dividend imputation means local shareholders have little to gain from the cut. Local shareholders would have the present...

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Media get budget wrong

As an exercise in media manipulation, this week's budget scores top marks. The government's spin doctors managed to convince the media it was a "stimulatory budget" when it was actually mildly contractionary. With financial markets trading virtually continuously, the old need to lock the media up on budget day until the markets had closed disappeared decades ago. The only reason for continuing the practice is to maximise the...

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