The Weekly Pint

Australia feeling the heat

The Biden administration had re-entered the Paris Agreement and done so with gusto. They will now cut their emissions by half from 2005 levels by 2030 while Australia seems content with a paltry 26–28%. The Australia Institute thinks that great short-term ambition will smooth the transition and looking back at the report from the Australia Academy of Science it is hard to argue.

50+ days and still no plan for aged care

The Royal Commission into Aged Care was handed down at the start of March and the Government has yet to respond. If they aren’t sure the Grattan Institute has some clear next steps and it would only cost $10 billion a year.

Gender quotas and parliament

Even the coalition are now discussing whether quotas work to get more women in Parliament. According to the Parliamentary Library 7 of the top 10 countries with the highest representation of women in a lower house have quotas. Cuba stands at the top with no quota requirements. I guess it is go quotas or go communism?

Royal Commissions — Australian for talk-fest

Royal Commissions are called for national issues where systemic failure exists (and sometimes for political reasons). But we sometimes assume they will fix the problems. Looking at the continued Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 30 years on from the royal commission research from the ANU “there is an urgent need for substantive implementation of the 339 recommendations under the critical watch of a First Nations monitoring body.”

An end for JobKeeper but not mid-tier business confidence

A survey from KPMG has found that mid-tier businesses are confident with only 1/3 expecting the end of JobKeeper to cause a significant economic decline. Of course large businesses are probably sad to see the end of JobKeeper with Andrew Leigh leading the charge on businesses that took JobKeeper and paid massive CEO bonuses.

What do you do when Chinese-Australian ties are strained? Use the skills you have

The Lowy Institute is worried that Chinese-Australians in the public service are being overlooked at a time when expertise in Chinese language and are in high demand. Better recruitment and skills matching are just some of the ways suggested in the report.