Grattan Institute

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.