This paper examines a number of the deficiencies of the use of the budget balance, or changes in it, as an intermediate target for macroeconomic policy. It draws attention to a number of defensible alternative definitions of ‘the budget deficit’ - which may give conflicting indications of the direction in which the budget balance is moving. It then outlines some of the ways in which alternative measures for effecting a given change in the budget balance may have different effects on the principal objectives of macroeconomic policy. It is pointed out that even if a reduction in the rate of increase in government debt is in itself desirable, it is only after consideration of the costs and benefits of alternative ways of achieving that aim that one can logically decide what policy measures - and what consequent change in the deficit - are appropriate. An appendix draws on some simulations for the UK economy and for the OECD to illustrate how different measures having the same effect on the PSBR may have different relative effects on the various macroeconomic objectives.

The last decade has seen major changes made to the taxation system in Australia. However, these changes have been primarily concerned with income tax reform. Three areas of the tax reform remain outstanding - wealth taxation, State tax reform and commodity tax reform. Wealth taxation has proven a politically sensitive issue subject to little public discussion, a situation not helped by a lack of data on wealth distribution in Australia. State taxation has been the focus of more public debate through a number of Government funded reviews but despite this, few of these report’s recommendations have been implemented. Although the issue of commodity tax reform has been the subject of considerable public debate, it too has resuted in no substantive reforms. This paper argues that until the political dimension of tax reform is taken more fully into account when designing tax reform proposals, the debate on these three tax issues will not move from words to legislation.

This paper examines empirical relationships between government expenditure and private spending in Australia, to see whether government expenditure reduces, or crowds out, private expenditure or encourages it. Particular attention is paid to the effect on private investment expenditure and the possibility of a change occuring in the relationship between public and private is examined. Regression analysis found no significant evidence of crowding out. Public investment was found to compliment private investment in the period before 1974, but not in the period since then.

This paper contains a survey of recent empirical research on the relationship between public capital and private sector production. The implications of these empirical studies for policy debates over the appropriate level of public capital are also examined.

While the 1990s have seen sustained attempts in Australia, on the part of the federal government and others, to encourage firms to adopt International Best Practice, the results so far are somewhat disappointing. Firms find themselves tugged in several different directions, by competitive pressures, by industrial relations shifts, and by the demands for higher levels of quality, timeliness and responsiveness. While they are exhorted to adopt teamwork and other initiatives that go under the rubric ‘Best Practice’, there is as yet little sense of the underlying principles that inform these organisational innovations, nor of the history of their introduction into Australian organisations over previous decades.

In May 1995, under the auspices of the Australian Best Practice Demonstration Program, and the Australian Quality Council, an international colloquium was convened, by myself and Professor Malcolm Rimmer, to help shed light on these issues.

This paper sets out to highlight some of the major sociotechnical and team interventions in Australia from the seventies through to the nineties. The review notes that teamwork interventions have changed over the last two decades and argues that this may be attributed partly to the popularity and influence of Japanese management approaches during the eighties along with changes to the industrial relations institutions. Team interventions associated with earlier sociotechnical and participant design approaches, undertaken in the seventies, concentrated on changing work and jobs as a way to address quality of work life concerns. In contrast, many Australian organisations which are presently implementing teams are linking them to broader organisational design issues, taking into account product flows, customer and supplier focus, product innovation and support systems. It is noted that later-style team interventions are linked closer to an organisation’s strategic goals.

In 1980 Dr F. Emery published a paper discussing the design of socio-technical systems for ‘greenfield sites’. In his paper Emery argued that a new and different paradigm of work, which is based on ‘co-operative, symmetrically dependent relations’, is more easily introduced into ‘greenfield sites’ and that ‘most matters can be negotiated beforehand with trade union officials’ (1980:19&21).

In this paper the author explores the use of socio-technical design in a greenfield plant, and its application in an old, or brownfield plant of the same company. The socio-technical approach is embodied in the new production model being introduced, which is called a high commitment work system Of specific interest is the role of unions in the sites. Two questions are addressed in this respect. Are unions involved in the design and implementation of the socio-technical system? What are the implications for the future of the unions in these two sites?

This paper examines the application of the techniques of economic analysis to occupational health and safety regulations using occupational noise as an example.

The paper explores the extent to which economic impact studies are practically feasible and useful in relation to occupational health and safety legislation. Six studies of the same regulatory change, from four countries were analysed. The results of these studies ranged from a strongly negative to a significantly positive net present value, depending on the assumptions made. The factor which had the greatest influence on these differences was the way in which benefits are costed.

It is shown that in the field of Occupational Health and Safety, economic analysis does not produce a single valid net present value or benefit to cost ratio on which a decision to legislate can sensibly be based. However the analysis can, if properly directed provide useful information on factors which will enable organisations to optimise their response to the regulation and authorities to introduce regulations in a way which does not bear with unreasonable weight on specific sectors of the community.

In the aftermath of the Victorian State election in 1992, the election of a conservative administration and the enactment of new State labour laws, momentum gathered within the labour movement to utilise ILO Conventions as a means of striking down the Victorian laws. The idea was: the ILO to the rescue; that the external affairs power of the Commonwealth Constitution together with legislation based on ratified ILO Conventions might be utilised to salvage some important trade union and related rights.

At different periods in the post-War histories of the Australian and Japanese labour movements, there have been calls for utilising International Labour Organisation Conventions in order to salvage some important trade union rights that those movements have fought to achieve over this century.