A conversation with Health Program Director Stephen Duckett and Senior Associate Matt Cowgill. Australia should introduce a Medicare-style universal insurance scheme for dental care, so all Australians can go to the dentist when they need to. It would cost $5.6 billion a year and should be phased in over 10 years.

A conversation with Senior Associate Kate Griffiths and Associate Carmela Chivers. Once a year, the Commonwealth releases information on Australia’s political donations system – who donates to political parties and how much? The data isn’t timely but the information contained in this data dump does give clues as to who is funding Australian democracy and who our political parties are most reliant on.  Read the article in The Conversation on the 2019 data release: https://grattan.edu.au/report/whos-in-the-room/ Read the report Who's in the Room? Access and influence in Australian politics: https://grattan.edu.au/news/tasmanias-gambling-election-shows-australia-needs-tougher-rules-on-money-in-politics/

Event Podcast: In this Forward Thinking event, Grattan Institute’s budget, energy, and transport and cities experts considered the issues in their policy area and nominate the choices that would really make a difference to NSW’s future. The discussion drew on Grattan’s State Orange Book, which identifies policy priorities for state and territory governments across the nation.

Event podcast: Two million Australians delay or miss out on dental care each year because of cost. What should be done? Part of the answer is improving the value of existing public dental services. But part of the answer is that the Commonwealth should expand its role and establish a universal dental scheme paralleling Medicare. This Policy Pitch heard about both of these approaches.

Event podcast: 200,000 Victorian customers lost power on 25 January 2019, begging the question: is this the new normal? To answer this question, Grattan Institute's Guy Dundas was joined at this Policy Pitch event by Paul Austin from the Australian Energy Market Operator, the body that manages the electricity market, and Suzanne Falvi from the Australian Energy Market Commission, the body that sets the energy market rules.

A conversation with Energy Fellow Guy Dundas and Senior Associate Lucy Percival. The idea that electricity supply is less reliable with more renewables is wrong. Almost all outages are caused by problems in transporting electricity, and have nothing to do with how the power was generated. It’s also a dangerous idea, because if politicians panic and intervene in the market, power bills could rise even higher.

Event podcast: At this Capital Ideas event, moderator, ANU Energy Change Institute Director Ken Baldwin and our panel, Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood, Warwick McKibbin from ANU and the BCA’s Jessica Wilson discussed if there is any prospect of credible energy and climate change policy in Australia before the next election.

Event podcast: Every year Grattan Institute releases a summer reading list for the Prime Minister. It recommends books and articles that the Prime Minister, or any Australian interested in public debate, will find both stimulating and cracking good reads. Melbourne-based journalist Madeleine Morris joined Grattan Institute CEO John Daley in Melbourne to discuss how this year’s titles illuminate some of Australia’s most important debates.

A conversation with CEO John Daley and Fellow Brendan Coates. The conventional wisdom that Australians don’t save enough for retirement is wrong. The vast majority of retirees today are financially comfortable, and our modelling shows this is likely to be true for most in future. This has big implications for policy.

Event podcast: Following the release of our State Orange Book 2018, this Policy Pitch event, featuring a number of Grattan Institute Fellows and Program Directors, examined some of the policy recommendations from ten years of Grattan Institute reports and outline what state and territory governments should do to improve Australia

Event podcast: At this Forward Thinking event, Dineli Mather, a Pro Vice-Chancellor at Deakin University, Phil Lewis, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Canberra, and the Grattan Institute’s Ittima Cherastidtham discussed if higher education is still a good option for young people. Which courses are the best insurance against poor employment outcomes?

At this State of Affairs event Marion Terrill from the Grattan Institute, Matt Collins, who’s leading the Queensland Government’s Cities Transformation Taskforce, and moderator Steve Abson, who is Chief Executive of the Infrastructure Association of Queensland explored the state of Queensland’s cities and where to from here.

A conversation with the contributors to the Grattan State Orange Book 2018. State and territory governments can do more to improve the lives of Australians. In many cases, states are different because their governments adopted better policies. Every state should learn from the others and do better.

A conversation with School Education Program Director Peter Goss and Fellow Julie Sonnemann. Our new report card on NAPLAN results reveals big differences between the states on students’ learning progress through school. Governments should investigate why students make more progress in some states, to identify teacher practices and school policies that produce the best results

Event podcast: Marion Terrill from the Grattan Institute, Peter Mares, a journalist and migration expert who’s just published a book on housing policy, and Miriam Slattery, who heads Strategy and Partnerships at the City of Melbourne and is a transport enthusiast, explored the state of Melbourne and where to from here at this Policy Pitch event.

Event Podcast: In the last two years we’ve seen actions by Governments and others to improve the security and reliability of our power system. Grattan Institute, in partnership with the State Library of South Australia, hosted a public policy forum to discuss what we’ve learned and how things look for the coming summer where AEMO’s Audrey Zibelman, ElectraNet’s Steve Masters and Grattan’s Tony Wood shed light on how the system is shaping up.

A conversation with Transport Fellow, Hugh Batrouney. Australia’s urban commuters have little to fear from population growth, if recent experience is any guide. The average commute distances and times barely increased over the five years to 2016, even as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane’s populations grew strongly.

A conversation with Program Director Danielle Wood, Senior Associate Kate Griffiths and Associate Carmela Chivers. Powerful and well-resourced business groups, unions and not-for-profits are influencing policy to serve their interests, sometimes at the expense of the public interest. Stronger checks and balances on lobbying, donations and access would make our politics cleaner and fairer.

A conversation with Higher Education Program Director Andrew Norton and Fellow Ittima Cherastidtham. The graduate gender pay gap in Australia is narrowing, with more women in paid work than ever. Women’s earnings generally outpaced men’s over the past decade. But the pay gap remains large – and the labour market remains tough for young graduates.

Energy policy has played a central role in the removal of another Australian Prime Minister, highlighting our inability to integrate energy and environmental policy. What policies and market structure do we need in this new world and how will they balance energy prices, reliability and emissions? Our panel of experts, including Chloe Munro, Ross Garnaut and Michael Brear, threw light on these questions in the final Future Energy Series of public policy forums for 2018.

Event podcast: this Policy Pitch event looked at the different ways special interest groups – including business, unions and not-for-profits – seek influence over policy. Do political donations buy access? Which groups lobby the most? And who spends the most on public campaigns?

Event podcast: This Forward Thinking event looked at the different ways special interest groups – including business, unions and not-for-profits – seek influence over policy. Do political donations buy access? Which groups lobby the most? And who spends the most on public campaigns?

A conversation with School Education Program Director, Peter Goss on school funding. Do state schools get a fair go? How much should governments give to non-government schools? And how can we assess ‘fairness’ amid all these competing demands and all this heated politics?

A conversation with Health Program Director, Stephen Duckett. A new Code of Conduct for doctors has been drafted by the Medical Board of Australia. Entitled Good Medical Practice it covers issues for the medical profession in Australia such as the fees they charge, the way they deal with patients, and the ethics they practice. But have they got it right?

A conversation with Stephen Duckett on his latest report. Australia could save $1.5 billion a year on health spending by improving the safety of patient care. Safer hospital care doesn’t just reduce harm to patients, it saves money for taxpayers and frees up beds so other patients can be treated.

A conversation with Senior Associate, Greg Moran. Understanding the size of the costs of complications is important because it can help show that investing in patient safety can actually improve the bottom line. We discuss Grattan’s recent work estimating the costs of hospital complications and some of the challenges involved in this analysis.

Event podcast: At this Policy Pitch event, Dr Amanda Kenny, the Violet Marshman Professor of Rural Health at La Trobe University and Dr Hal Swerissen, Fellow, Grattan Institute discussed the state of play for primary care in Australia and options and recommendations for the future.

A conversation with Hal Swerissen and Stephen Duckett on their latest report. Primary care policy needs an overhaul to ensure all Australians, especially the poor and the elderly, get the best possible health care. Many poorer Australians can't afford to go to a GP when they need to or a dentist when they should, and people in rural and remote areas find it too hard to get to a pharmacist or medical specialist.

Event podcast: At this Energy Futures event ACCC Chair Rod Sims, Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood and Dr Leslie Martin from The University of Melbourne's Department of Economics and the Centre for Market Design, discussed the ACCC report, its recommendations to governments on solutions and the expectations we should have for real improvements in the short to medium term.

A conversation with Transport Fellow, Hugh Batrouney. Australia is growing – and most of the growth is happening in the capital cities. So are we building enough infrastructure to cope? Are we building the right infrastructure? And are we making the best use of the infrastructure we already have?

Event podcast: At this State of Affairs event, Stephen Duckett, Health Program Director at Grattan Institute presented data on the costs of complication rates and potential new strategies to reduce adverse events based on a forthcoming report on hospital safety.

Event Podcast: At this Policy Pitch event, School Education Fellow, Julie Sonnemann and a panel of experts discussed the difficulties of achieving evidence-based teaching at scale and how to implement critical reforms, such as tailored teaching and new specialist teacher career pathways.

A conversation with Energy Program Director, Tony Wood and Associate Lucy Percival. Wholesale electricity prices rose by 130 per cent between 2015 and 2017. But governments can’t fix the problem, because most of the price rises are caused by issues beyond their control. Politicians should tell Australians the harsh truth: high electricity prices are the new normal.

Event podcast: At this Capital Ideas event, Grattan Institute’s CEO John Daley and the CEO of the Financial Services Council, Sally Loane discussed the possible futures for Australia’s super system.

A conversation with Higher Education Fellow, Ittima Cherastidtham. What factors may make it more likely that you will drop out of uni? What things can you do to increase your chances of successfully completing uni? And is ATAR still a relevant guide to student performance?

Event podcast: At this Policy Pitch event, the panel discussed the reasons students leave university without completing, and what universities are doing or can do to ensure students get the best outcome from their higher education experience.

A conversation with Energy Program Director, Tony Wood. Energy has become one of the great barbecue-stoppers of Australia. Electricity and gas bills are soaring, energy supplies seem to be less reliable than they used to be, and if you really want to start an argument around the barbeque, say you’re in favour of coal-fired power, or that you want nothing but renewables such as wind and solar.

A conversation with Budget Policy and Institutional Reform Program Director, Danielle Wood and Fellow, Brendan Coates discussing this years budget announcements. Also featuring Transport Program Director, Marion Terrill and Higher Education Program Director, Andrew Norton.

Event Podcast: At this Energy Futures Seminar, ESB Chair, Kerry Schott, Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood and Tim Nelson from AGL as they explained, discussed and debated these issues. The Forum was moderated by Jennifer Hewett from the Australian Financial Review and was hosted by the Melbourne Energy Institute, Grattan Institute and the State Library of New South Wales.

Event podcast: At this Policy Pitch event, the panel looked at how current generations are faring in retirement, and what kind of retirement we can all expect in the future. They discussed the policy levers such as the Super Guarantee, superannuation draw-down rules, retirement ages, and the level and means testing of the Age Pension. And they explored the trade-offs that these involve for spending before retirement and for government budgets.

A conversation with School Education Fellow Julie Sonnemann. Following the release of the recommendations from the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, we ask what Gonski 2.0 has found, why it has received a cold reception among some in the industry and how the implementation of Gonski’s findings should be managed. Links to research discussed in this podcast: Goss, P., Sonnemann, J., Griffiths, K., and Chivers, C., 2016, Circuit breaker: a new compact for school funding, Grattan Institute: https://grattan.edu.au/report/circuit-breaker/

Event podcast: In this State of Affairs event, Julie Sonnemann, Grattan Institute School Education Fellow, along with a panel of leading policy thinkers explored: What is needed to lift educational outcomes at scale; what are the benefits, challenges and risks of Commonwealth interventions; and, where should the Commonwealth focus its efforts, and why?

A conversation with Higher Education Fellow, Ittima Cherastidtham. More than 50,000 students who started university in Australia this year will drop out. Part-time students are particularly at risk. Policy makers should do more to reduce the number of young people who leave university with nothing but debt and regret. Read the report: https://grattan.edu.au/report/dropping-out/

A conversation with Budget Policy and Institutional Reform Program Director, Danielle Wood and Australian Perspectives Fellow, Brendan Coates. The announcement of Labor’s plan to abolish refunds of unused imputation credits for retirees in late March sparked significant confusion in the media, and in turn many Australians, about the economic effects and who would actually pay. Danielle and Brendan cut through this debate and shed some light on exactly what this policy will mean and who it will impact. Links to research discussed in this podcast: Brendan Coates and Danielle Wood, The real story of Labor’s dividend imputation reforms, published by Inside Story, March 2018 https://grattan.edu.au/news/the-real-story-of-labors-dividend-imputation-reforms/ Daley, J., Coates, B., Young, W., and Parsonage, H., Age of entitlement: age-based tax breaks, 2016, Grattan Institute https://grattan.edu.au/report/age-of-entitlement/ Daley, J., Coates, B., Wood, D., and Parsonage, H., 2015, Super tax targeting, Grattan Institute https://grattan.edu.au/report/super-tax-targeting/

Event podcast: In this Policy Pitch event, Stephen Duckett, Health Program Director at Grattan Institute presented data on the costs of complication rates and potential new strategies to reduce adverse events. He was joined by Associate Professor Jill Sewell, chair of the Victorian Clinical Council and Dr Linda Swan, Chief Medical Officer for Medibank to discuss how strategies might work in the public and private sectors.

Event podcast: Electricity network costs continue to be an area of significant focus for consumers, government, regulators and media, as well as network businesses themselves. In some cases, claims have been made that network prices are paying for investments the value of which has since been questioned. Experts from Grattan Institute, Powerlink and the Melbourne Energy Institute debated and explored these challenges in this first of our Energy Future Series for 2018.

A conversation with Australian Perspectives Fellow, Brendan Coates. In early March, economists Ross Kendall and Peter Tulip from the Reserve Bank of Australia released The Effect of Zoning on Housing Prices. In this podcast, Brendan discusses the findings from the paper and the subsequent reactions to it. Links to research discussed in this podcast: Ross Kendall and Peter Tulip, The Effect of Zoning on Housing Prices, March 2018 https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2018/pdf/rdp2018-03.pdf John Daley, Brendan Coates and Trent Wiltshire, RBA research shows that zoning restrictions are driving up housing prices, published in The Conversation, 8 March 2018 https://grattan.edu.au/news/rba-research-shows-that-zoning-restrictions-are-driving-up-housing-prices/

A conversation with Grattan Senior Associate, Kate Griffiths. State governments have spent up to $20 billion more than was needed on the electricity grid. Customers are paying up to $400 more for their power each year than they should. They should get a rebate, or governments should write down the value of the assets to reduce electricity bills.

A conversation with Budget Policy and Institutional Reform Program Director, Danielle Wood and Associate Carmela Chivers. Protest politics is on the rise in Australia, and the main cause is collapsing trust in politicians and the major parties. If the major parties and politicians want to rebuild trust with voters, they'll need to change the way they do politics. Read the report: https://grattan.edu.au/report/a-crisis-of-trust/

Event Recording: Innovation and Science Australia has just released its plan for Australia’s innovation, science and research system, Australia 2030: Prosperity through Innovation. How big is the opportunity for Australia? Who really benefits from rapid innovation? Should policymakers follow ISA’s recommendations? At this Policy Pitch event, a panel that included the authors of the report used these questions to form the basis for an engaging discussion on innovation policy.