• Print
  • Email

Government Spending

economic-policy-govt

Governments spend taxpayers’ money on a wide range of programmes from education to defence and from welfare to infrastructure. Yet there can be too much of a good thing, and some government spending is just wasteful. How can we ensure that taxpayers are getting value for money?

Publications

  1. TARGET30: Reducing the burden for future generations

    David Murray AO, Maurice Newman, Simon Cowan | 01 Jul 2013 | Policy Forum

    TARGET30 is a campaign promoting smaller government and cutting government spending to less than 30% of GDP in the next 10... Read More...

  2. Saving Medicare But NOT As We Know It

    Jeremy Sammut | 30 Apr 2013 | TARGET30 Research Papers

    High growth in health spending is the area of public expenditure that will unsustainably increase the size of government... Read More...

  3. TARGET30 SNAPSHOT: Saving Medicare But NOT As We Know It

    Jeremy Sammut | 30 Apr 2013 | TARGET30 Snapshots

    High growth in health spending is the area of public expenditure that will unsustainably increase the size of government... Read More...

  4. After the Welfare State: Politicians Stole Your Future … You Can Get It Back

    Tom Palmer | 08 Apr 2013 | Occasional Papers

    History, economics, sociology, political science, and mathematics are the tools to understand and evaluate welfare states,... Read More...

  5. Tax Welfare Churn and the Australian Welfare State

    Andrew Baker | 27 Mar 2013 | TARGET30 Research Papers

    The welfare state currently consumes $316 billion a year; however, much of this spending is not targeted at those who need... Read More...

View All

Opinion & Commentary

  1. Moral mission of small government

    Greg Lindsay | 27 Jun 2013 | The Australian Financial Review

    Regardless of which party wins the election in September, the new government will have much more important issues to deal ... Read More

  2. Taxpayer money wasted chasing film productions

    Gene Tunny | 20 Jun 2013 | The Drum

    Should the Australian public be supporting Hollywood productions with only dubious benefit to Australia?... Read More

  3. It's time to put the break on corporate welfare

    Simon Cowan | 23 May 2013 | The Drum

    Corporate welfare for a favoured few - like Australia's car manufacturers - cannot be justified.... Read More

  4. Gillard Deal Risks NDIS Timebomb

    Andrew Baker | 13 May 2013 | The Australian Financial Review

    In its eagerness to lock in the funding and governance arrangements for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), ... Read More

  5. Only a super-style savings system now will help Medicare survive

    Jeremy Sammut | 30 Apr 2013 | The Australian

    THE intergenerational reports have told us repeatedly that escalating government spending on health is unsustainable in an ... Read More

View All

Ideas@TheCentre

  1. Why we should support car workers (find new jobs)

    Simon Cowan | 12 Jul 2013

    Government should support workers transition to competitive industries and abolish corporate welfare....

  2. Freedom and smaller government

    Simon Cowan | 28 Jun 2013

    The issues that we as a society face have only arisen because government has moved away from its core roles....

  3. Ignoring the writing on the wall

    Alexander Philipatos | 28 Jun 2013

    The ACTU is oblivious to the fact that wage cuts in the automotive industry are a necessary part of the drive to become competitive....

  4. Corporate welfare still milking government cash cows

    Simon Cowan | 14 Jun 2013

    Industry assistance doesn’t achieve the goals it’s supposed to, and should be reduced....

  5. The elusive budget surplus

    Robert Carling | 17 May 2013

    The idea that we will have a balanced budget by 2015-16 should be met with healthy scepticism....

View All