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Our governments know a lot about us. They hold data on how much we earn, how much tax we pay, our health records, business earnings, even whether we have a fishing license.

As we saw during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, data on the spread of the virus and the pace of the vaccine rollout was vital for keeping us safe and holding our governments to account. Government data is also essential for informed public policy debates, and it’s invaluable for researchers and others who advocate for better public policy.

But a lot of government data in Australia is locked up behind closed doors. And when governments do make data available, it is often published in ways that are difficult to understand and unwieldy for researchers to use.

In this special Grattan Podcast, Grattan data specialist Tyler Reysenbach is joined by Adam Sparks, a Senior Research Scientist with Western Australia's Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, and Matt Cowgill, Senior Economist at SEEK, to talk about how our governments could get better at data, and how things could be improved in ways that would improve public policy and, ultimately, the lives of all Australians.

Last year, the federal government struck a Housing Accord with the states. Together, they committed to build 1 million new, well-located homes across Australia over the next five years.

But sky-rocketing rents have turned up the heat on governments to do much more. Last month, National Cabinet responded. The new target is 1.2 million homes over five years, with the federal government offering financial rewards to whichever states do the most to get us towards the new target. And the Prime Minister and the Premiers also promised a better deal for renters.

Will it be enough? In this special Grattan Podcast, our housing experts Brendan Coates and Joey Moloney unpack the National Cabinet package, explain why it’s important, and identify the next challenges for policy-makers as they struggle to make housing more affordable for more Australians.

Grattan Institute CEO Danielle Wood delivered the annual Giblin Lecture in Hobart last week. A partnership between the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian branch of the Economic Society of Australia, the lecture is named for the eminent Australian economist, Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin.

Danielle used the occasion to issue this plea: “Let’s drop the petty generational warfare, and work together to ensure that the Australia we leave to our children is better than the one we inherited.”
And she set herself this tough task: “I want to explore the issues that young people tell us are keeping them up at night, and let them know why this has happened but also what we might as a nation do about it.”
In this special edition of the Grattan Podcast, we present a recording of Danielle delivering the lecture, complete with slides.

The 2023 NAPLAN school test results released this week show that 1 in 3 Australian students are not on track with their learning.

The results also reveal deep inequities in Australian schools, with more than half of disadvantaged students performing below expectations.

In this special Grattan Podcast, our NAPLAN specialists Anika Stobart and Nick Parkinson discuss why Australia is performing so poorly, and what governments should do to turn this around so all students have the literacy and numeracy skills they need to have their best chance in life.

Dubbed by some as the “world’s worst electric vehicle policy”, Victoria introduced a per-kilometre charge on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in 2021. EV drivers were so riled up about the charge that they headed to the High Court to fight it. We’re now awaiting the High Court’s decision, which will determine whether state governments have the constitutional authority to impose the tax.

But is it really such a bad policy? And, more broadly, why is Australia so far behind other countries in making the switch from high-polluting petrol and diesel vehicles to EVs?

In this latest Grattan Podcast, our transport experts Marion Terrill and Natasha Bradshaw discuss the implications of the High Court case for revenue-raising, electric vehicle take-up, and the future of road-user charging.

Grattan Institute’s work on housing policy keeps coming back to one basic idea: Australia needs more housing in the areas where people want to live and work.

So why hasn’t Australia built enough homes to keep prices under control? Because of the land-use planning regulations that dictate what gets built where. Those planning regulations have a status-quo bias. They give too much say to people who oppose development or change – the so-called ‘NIMBYs’, or ‘Not-in-my-backyard’.

Enter the ‘YIMBY’ movement: enthusiastic young people who say ‘Yes-in-my-backyard’.

In this special Grattan podcast on Australia’s housing crisis, our Senior Associate, Joey Moloney, and guests Jono O’Brien and Melissa Neighbour from the YIMBY movement discuss this grass-roots movement that aims to revolutionise the housing debate and make it easier for young Australians to get a roof over their heads.