Welcome to the Per Capita blog! Here you'll find all the thoughts and ideas we just had to get out there immediately, as well as the winning entries of our Young Writers Competition and other bits and pieces.
Blog
October 26, 2023

Per Capita Statement on the Voice Referendum Result
Per Capita was disappointed by the result of the recent referendum on the Voice to Parliament. To the First Peoples of this country, we mourn with you. The Voice was conceived by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart at the First Nations National Constitutional Convention in ... Read more
Blog
October 3, 2023

Welcoming the government’s new definition of Full Employment
Last week the Albanese Government released its White Paper on Employment, announcing that it is “placing Full Employment at the heart of our institutions and policy frameworks.” After years of advocacy, Per Capita welcomes the Albanese Government’s new definition of ‘Full Employment’ and celebrates the commitment to an economic policy that can now be understood ... Read more
Blog
October 3, 2023

“The economic benefits of labour law / workplace relations reforms” – A New Work Relations Architecture Book Launch
Senior Economist for Per Capita, Margaret McKenzie, spoke at the launch of the AIER’s latest book, New Work Relations Architecture, in Melbourne (September 2023). “I feel like a very privileged interloper as the economist amongst the lawyers – can’t say ugly duckling any more! – in contributing to the New Work Relations Architecture edited ... Read more
Blog
August 30, 2023

Per Capita Statement on The Voice Referendum
In 2017 First Nations delegates gathered at Uluru and issued a Statement from the Heart, calling for Voice, Treaty and Truth. We at Per Capita believe, as Professor Marcia Langton put it, that people’s lives improve when they get a say. We therefore unreservedly support a Yes vote in the coming Referendum for a First Nations’ Voice to Parliament ... Read more
Blog
August 11, 2023

You could be homeless – National Homelessness Week 2023
Can’t find somewhere to live? Can’t pay for it? Get out! That means you! Who? As many renters and mortgage holders grapple with rapidly rising housing costs, the thought that you might join the 1 in 200 who are homeless is increasingly on people’s minds: 122,000 of us were recorded as homeless on census night ... Read more
Blog
July 3, 2023

When it comes to housing wealth, being a man pays dividends
By Matt Lloyd-Cape and Lucy Tonkin. Open a newspaper on any day and you’ll be met with a new story about Australia’s housing crisis. How older women are the fastest growing cohort to experience homelessness, or that female heads of lone parent households are most likely to experience significant and prolonged housing stress. But we ... Read more
Blog
June 19, 2023

Aus/US partnership for an energy revolution
When I arrived in the US a few weeks ago to begin a study tour on the opportunities that Australia has to build our industrial profile within the American renewable supply chain, I was filled with optimism and excitement. Not only because this was my first international trip in nearly a decade but also because ... Read more
Blog
May 25, 2023

Gaslighting and Negative Gearing: Why calls for the irrelevance of negative gearing are greatly exaggerated
By Matt Lloyd-Cape Director, Centre for Equitable Housing at Per Capita It has become something of a trend among some economists to ask that we all please get over negative gearing. Last week the economist Chris Richardson wrote in The Age that reducing tax breaks for investors are “distractions much more than they are solutions” ... Read more