Reform

A more forceful, top-down approach might be the solution to Australia's housing crisis.

Oh boy. Another year, another GST carve-up that led to a flurry of complaints from the states that ’lost out’. This time it was the NSW and QLD Labor governments that were the most vocal, with NSW facing a $310 million cut, while QLD lost $469 million. For context, that’s a total revenue cut of around 0.25% and 0.55% in 2024-25 for each state, respectively – closer to a Budget rounding error than a major policy decision.

I’m going to venture out beyond our borders today because what’s happening in Argentina is quite possibly the wildest reform experiment the world has seen… ever. And believe it or not, the results could offer some important lessons for Australia.

Andrew Leigh delivered a great speech to the Economic Society of Australia in Canberra last week (alas I was not in attendance), in which he outlined his ‘Ten Lessons for Economic Policymakers’ in detail.