Australia’s carbon pricing scheme protects the profits of polluters and, as a consequence, has a negligible impact on the carbon emissions emanating from Australian industries. I concentrate on the assistance given to emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries and use a post Keynesian approach to explain that, despite the rhetoric, industries and firms will not move offshore under a carbon price and industry assistance is unnecessary. When assistance is given, profits are protected and could increase in certain industries, which occurred in the comparable European emissions trading scheme. In orthodox economic theory, despite this negligible impact on profits, any method of pricing carbon causes a reduction in emissions because firms seek to adjust technology and factor inputs at the margin and abate until marginal abatement costs equal the carbon price. However, from a post Keynesian perspective, the government’s prediction of a transformed economy and clean energy future will not occur unless the carbon pricing policy reduces the corporate profits of emitting firms. Thus, complementary policies are required to take the burden of reducing emissions off the more symbolic carbon market established. I further argue that a carbon tax without any industry assistance is a preferred approach and that where plant shutdown does occur, carbon emissions around the world will fall and workers could be compensated at a far smaller cost than the adjustment assistance given to industries in the policy’s current form.

The starting point for this article is the excellent article by Professor Marglin on the dangers of climate change. He outlines a broad remedial prescription, a new economics based on ecological concerns and a broadly based cultural revolution to change people’s thinking. We agree with Marglin that the prevailing neoclassical analysis is fundamentally flawed because inter alia it adheres to individuals’ independent (rather than inter-dependent) utility functions. It is argued that ultimately the problem of the ecosystem, and indeed violent threats of mass destruction that we constantly face cannot be solved without the insights that community and spiritual thinking bring us.

Defence procurement is a notoriously difficult and often controversial field of public management. In Australia, problems with schedule and budget overruns have been addressed through business process reforms aimed at tightening control and improving professionalism. However, studies of complex contracting in other contexts show the importance of relational factors of trust, collaboration and risk-sharing. These factors are not encouraged by the predominantly transactionally based contractual environment of Defence. Based on a detailed examination of three case studies, we suggest that there is a disjunct between the types of controls that are applied by Defence and the requirements of delivering complex, long-term projects involving multiple stakeholders. The need for both improved flexibility as well as heightened accountability is evident. We argue that balancing these values involves processes that encourage, rather than discourage, communication, risk-sharing and trust.

Labour markets in Australia have long been segmented by gender and race. This study compares two highly gendered and racially segmented labour markets, home-based family day care workers and garment homeworkers. The comparative cases examine the broader trends of migration, production and consumption that reinforce gender and racial stereotypes, and discourses that underpin representations that women workers are ideally suited to such work. We theorise the gender and racialised inequalities of homework based on the literature on invisibilisation and social reproduction to explore the vulnerable position of migrant women and the consequences of having limited options, such as legal and social protections and any capacity to collectively organise. Our analysis examines the roles and responses of institutions and conceptualises the socio-political factors that affect the characterisation of homework as non-work or as self-employed entrepreneurial activities. By mapping the differing regulatory trajectories of these two groups of homeworkers in terms of regulation and representation, we find both similarities and differences. While garment homeworkers have achieved recognition through legislation and social mobilisation, their circumstances leave them less likely to access such rights. By contrast, the failure to recognise family day care homeworkers, has left them to market forces.

The Economy for the Common Good movement proposes an alternative economic model, which promises to offset many of the detrimental effects of the contemporary labour market. Yet, despite its increasing economic and social relevance in Europe, there is little research on Economy for the Common Good firms and the quality of the jobs they offer their employees. We thus, first, introduce the ideas of this movement and then present findings on workplace characteristics and the well-being of workers. Our results are based on our own survey of Economy for the Common Good employees from 2018 and on the sixth wave of the European Working Conditions Survey. Our analyses offer mixed support for the claims of the Economy for the Common Good – while Economy for the Common Good workers can be found in high-quality work settings, their absenteeism and presenteeism, as well as indicators of control, time pressure, direct participation and financial participation do not differ from other workers when controlled in a propensity score matching approach. Based on our findings and feedback from Economy for the Common Good representatives, we conclude that the introduction of Eonomy for the Common Good ideas might be too recent to see any positive effects, but also that Economy for the Common Good companies should place more focus on their employees’ well-being.

International mobility of capital and competitive pressures are challenging Australian governments to reduce taxes, especially on capital, while conflicting demands, from deregulation, concerns about national savings, and pressures to reform indirect taxes, heighten the need for higher revenues and more progressive taxes.

We risk becoming a society of ‘rational fools’, where citizens value government services, but governments lack revenue to fund them. Taxpayers see the system as unfair and see others dodge taxes; tax resistance increases, and the revenue base further declines. Rational behaviour from an individual viewpoint is foolish from a communal perspective.

Deficiencies in the tax system must be remedied to break the cycle. The inability to raise adequate revenue is fundamental. Federal/state financial imbalance is intrinsic to the problem and must be addressed. Removing opportunities for ‘tax shirking’, and addressing major inequities and concessions in direct taxes would improve prospects for indirect tax reform. Increasing overall progressivity by asset or inheritance taxes would balance regressive effects of indirect taxes.

It would be difficult to maintain that prevailing theories of industrial relations have been able to comprehend the tendencies that emerged in the recent world economic crisis (Sapelli 2008). State of the art discussions and scientific predictions circulating in Europe shortly before the crisis were dominated by functionalist theories. According to these approaches, the European monetary union and the liberalisation process should have brought about, through a mechanical institutional and social adjustment, a convergence in the behaviour of individual actors and especially the behaviour of the collective bodies through which interest groups are organised. These views, which failed entirely to perceive the approaching crisis, affirmed the universal validity of so-called neocorporatist concentration.

Australia, and before Federation, the colonies, have long histories of tariff protection. However, by the end of this century tariffs for imports of most commodities will have been lowered to negligible levels. This paper briefly examines the history of the tariff and the changing structure of assistance to manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s. As the tariff has been dismantled, a variety of alternative measures have been implemented. Thus, while the ‘old’ protectionism of tariffs on imports has been discredited, a ‘new’ form of protectionism — much to do with providing assistance for exports — has arisen to at least partially take its place. The protective effects of many of these measures is far less apparent and possibly more deleterious than the tariffs they replace.

Governments’ economic policies need to be based on a coherent view of the role of innovation and productivity in sustaining growth. This article analyses advice on fostering innovation from Australia’s main statutory economics adviser, the Productivity Commission. It argues that the Productivity Commission’s comprehensive 2007 report, Public Support for Science and Innovation, contributed to a policy vacuum hampering government support for innovation for nearly a decade. First, within the Productivity Commission’s understanding of innovation was a contradiction between its required policy targeting criteria and the impossibility of meeting these criteria. Second, the resulting stance on innovation policy was at odds with research and theory on the drivers of innovation and hence growth – particularly innovation systems theories and those based on evolutionary economics. The ensuing innovation policy vacuum suggests that the Productivity Commission placed the abstract ideological ‘purity’ of neoclassical economic theory above empirical exploration of how government can best support Australia’s future economic development. Since late 2015, moves to fill this policy vacuum have included a Senate inquiry, a government department restructure, and the creation of a new Innovation and Science statutory advisory board. Whether these initiatives foster sustained innovation will depend on the extent to which they adopt approaches based on innovation systems or evolutionary economics, and transcend the static neoclassical mindset espoused by the Productivity Commission.

Judicial interpretation of statute law in common-law countries means that the judiciary may mediate the social impact of legislation. In the case of the protection of labour rights in India, this article examines the extent to which the judiciary acts independently from the government of the day, and the extent to which court judgements are swayed by prevailing administrative policies. Specifically, to what extent have economic liberalisation and labour market flexibility policies influenced court decisions in cases challenging worker dismissals? Drawing on a review of 270 judgements delivered by the Supreme Court of India and the state High Courts between 1950 and 2010, a relationship is traced between a shifting pattern of Courts’ judgements and policy changes initiated by the Indian government in response to economic conditions. The objective of the study is to understand the effect of a structural shift in the economy on the cases of consented and contested decrees related to dismissal of workers under the relevant laws in India. It is found that the specific statute has not greatly changed through legal reforms, but the judiciary’s interpretations of it have changed over six decades based on dominant socio-political currents, in tune with government economic policies. This raises profound questions about judicial independence in defence of labour rights.

In investigating recent changes to the automotive industry production process, such as modularisation, our work emphasises the process of fragmentation of production as a configuring element of inter-firm power relationships, and as an explanatory element in working conditions. From a theoretical framework focused on power relations, we analyse by way of a selected case study how the capabilities of companies and their network positions, together with the agency of labour, shape the power relations that influence the evolution of working conditions. The study does indeed find relevant changes to inter-firm relationships, for example, within networks of assemblers and suppliers, but without a consequent re-balancing of power. This finding serves to explain differences in the evolution of working conditions between distinct companies, these conditions being fully functional to a strategy for profitability and thus difficult to reverse.

Since the Australian union movement’s representational peak in the mid 1970s, the industrial, economic and political landscape has considerably changed While the election of the Hawke Government in 1983 provided much cause for optimism among the union movement, the experience of the 1980s decade has proven to be cathartic. This paper examines the union movement’s response to the changes of 1980s; examines the development of the Accord and details the ongoing implementation of strategies for its restructuring.

This article charts and analyses the change path and various transformations of Malaysia’s state-owned enterprise, the Federal Land Development Agency, from its establishment in the 1960s to the present. The analysis supports arguments that the model of the developmental state, based on planned public/private cooperation, provides an alternative policy prescription to that of sole reliance on the self-regulating market. The Federal Land Development Agency is shown not only to have survived but also to have thrived as an economic development arm of the Malaysian state, successfully adapting to the changing environment in which it operates. To delineate the changes, a framework of punctuated equilibrium is utilised as it best captures the instances of rapid discontinuous change and the periods of incremental change and relative stability.

A number of proposals for reducing unemployment in Australia focus on cuts or freezes in award wages. Typically, such proposals include (often vague) proposals to offset some of the distributional consequences by top-ups or other adjustments to the tax/transfer system. This paper examines the available options and concludes that, given the current structure of the social security system, there are serious obstacles to the most common ones such as the NIT or the EITC. There is a case for further reducing tax burdens on low wage earners, but options in this area tend to be very expensive and/or require targeting on a family needs basis

This article compares the productivity and employment performance of the Australian and Irish economies over the 1990s, with particular emphasis on the different approaches to the role of information and communications technologies (ICT). Whereas Australia’s performance is characterised by the application and diffusion of ICT across a number of sectors, with indirect productivity and employment effects, Ireland has become a major producer of ICT products and services in its own right. The article traces the implications of these approaches for the pattern of growth and employment in both economies and also indicates their limitations. Ireland’s approach is limited by dependence on foreign investment, embodying externally generated technologies, though this is now being addressed by a policy interest in R&D support and the development of industry clusters and networks. On the other hand, Australia faces growing and possibly unsustainable deficits in its current account, driven by imports of knowledge-intensive goods and services, notwithstanding recent improvements in the terms of trade associated with higher prices for primary commodity exports.

The KEF developed its identity, role and activities in the face of challenges to employers quite different to those that marked the history of employer associations in western countries. Only in recent years have economic and political developments generated perceived threats from unions and pro-labour legislative proposals. Instead, the KEF had to find ways of attracting, holding and uniting members in the absence of these threats. The result was a very limited organisation operating at low levels. As those threats emerged more fully through Korea's democratisation process, the KEF responded to pressures to raise its profile, broaden its activities and sharpen its identity. In seeking to attract and retain members and to develop internal cohesion, macroeconomic and macro-political developments have been of crucial importance, as has the central role of large employers among the KEF membership.

This paper examines the changes taking place in Australian industrial relations. It takes as its starting point the policy objective of improving workplace productivity and examines the impact of reforms on this objective using Lewin’s framework for the analysis of change and a mining operation as a case study. The paper suggests that the reforms are only facilitative and this exposes a reliance on management for the achievement of the policy objective. The dominance of managerial perspective changes the fundamental nature of the industrial relations system and raises several important policy considerations, in particular issues relating to the recognition of trade unions.

In the light of the financial consequences of longevity, the potential for widening living standards as the population ages, and the perception of an increased burden by the working age population, recent policy changes in New Zealand appear far from ideal. For nearly twenty years, the retirement system has comprised just a universal state pension, called New Zealand Superannuation, and voluntary unsubsidised private saving. The decision in the late 1980s to promote tax neutrality for saving was critical to attaining a cost-effective, adequate, equitable and sustainable retirement income for all in an uncertain future. Nevertheless, a level playing field was only partially achieved and by the early 2000s, large imbalances in the economy were apparent. Strident calls to promote saving gradually undermined the accord around tax neutrality for retirement saving leading in 2007 to the re-introduction of tax incentives for certain types of saving, and other types of state intervention in private provision. This paper examines how the twenty year experiment with tax neutrality is coming to an end and the implications this has for the support of an aging population experiencing increased longevity.