Simon Cowan

They will build very few homes, with minimal effect on housing affordability.

The government has tried to have its cake and eat it too.

The tide of good times is flowing out and we're about to face the junk we dumped in...

There is simply no reason to believe that anything else will happen.

A message for the government: this is not the give and take we want.

This deal is the very definition of the phrase 'picking winners'.

The government’s planned Future Made in Australia Act is just the latest example of its desire to revive failed policies of the past. Having once ridiculed the Liberals for pining for the 1950s, Labor is now lifting its economic policy from the same era. Although doubtless more information will be provided in the budget, and in the act itself, we can already see what Labor intends - and what consequences will surely follow. First, the government has announced hundreds of millions of dollars of s…

Ken Henry has issued another call this week for government to pick up the long-abandoned tax reform agenda and run with it. In a speech reflecting in part on the journey of tax reform this century, he noted the last successful tax reform in Australia was actually developed last century, when Howard and Costello finally got the GST to the finish line. However, we can only hope the government ignores Henry’s call. Tax reform is seriously needed - as Henry urges - but in the current policy environm…

Despite strenuous protests from the business community, it is hardly surprising that Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke’s economically-damaging Closing Loopholes IR law passed recently. The left is in the political ascendancy, and many of them cling to long outdated paradigms for industrial relations. They may be well-meaning, but they clearly do not understand the adverse economic consequences of their policies. The gig economy organically grew from new technologies that allowed win-win…

This week’s news the Coalition will meekly roll over and accept Labor’s massacre of the stage three tax cuts shows yet again how weak their commitment to tax reform really was. The fact is both the government and the opposition richly deserve to be hauled over the coals for this policy debacle. It is now clear Labor never intended to honour its repeated and explicit commitment to allow the legislated tax cuts to come into effect. These assurances were merely weasel words, designed to delay any…