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As we look to 2021 to be a better year than 2020, perhaps one of the shocks of Covid-19 has been how quickly our freedoms and liberty have been crushed under the weight of health dictates. It’s been done for our own good—that is, to keep us all safe from a silent, unseen enemy killer.

With luck, we will emerge from the Covid crisis this year with freedoms being returned. One fear, however, is that once governments, whether of left or right persuasion, taste the seductive power of authoritarianism, they become addictively hooked. There’s nothing some bureaucrats love more than the scent of their own power first thing in the morning. More...

In 1970, when the Apollo 13 space mission suffered a major malfunction, the astronauts immediately declared to mission headquarters in Houston, Texas: ‘Houston we’ve had a problem’. Here’s a clip from the 1995 Tom Hanks’ movie on Apollo 13 in which he makes the declaration.

Recognising and admitting to a problem is the first, most critical step to fixing it.

Just a week ago Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan finally declared ‘we have a problem’. But, wow, has that declaration been a long time coming! More...

This year we have been highlighting the unfair treatment of self-employed people by the ATO. We’ve been doing a lot of work talking to politicians from all parties, senior public servants and the media. Self-Employed Australia continues to support and assist those who are under ATO attack.

Now we need your help. More...

On Friday ‘The Trump’ becomes US President leading to, who knows? Meanwhile, Putin outmanoeuvres everyone as the master puppeteer of the Syrian ‘solution’. Ultimately it’s about oil? Chinese President Xi Jinping is the star attraction at the Davos capitalist soiree. That’s unsurprising! Based on purchasing power comparisons, China is now the world’s largest economy. The British pound is travelling south due to Brexit. Several pending elections in European countries could well see further disintegration of the EU.

From these snapshots the only thing we can say about economic certainty is that we live in a period of economic uncertainty! So do global forces make us powerless? No! More...

Yesterday, The Australian carried an article reporting that the AMWU wants to ‘represent’ independent contractors. The article quoted Ken Phillips (our Executive Director) who said: More...

The co-writer of the brilliant Yes Minister series, Anthony Jay, passed away this month, aged 86. No doubt he would have loved to have written a script based on the current Australian superannuation ‘reform’ debate.  

First, watch this short clip about how bureaucrats control their ministers. Hilarious!  More...

You may remember the ATO was calling to have scrutiny of its behaviour curtailed and a Parliamentary Inquiry was conducting hearings. We put in a submission saying “no way! The ATO can’t be a law unto itself. It needs to be scrutinized, particularly for small business people.”

Fortunately, good sense has prevailed. Just before the election was called the Parliamentary Committee released its report. The Committee recommended continuing ATO scrutiny. That’s absolutely essential if small business people are to receive some chance of fair treatment from the ATO.  More...

There’s a pretty dispiriting battle going on at the moment between the big superannuation funds over who gets to control the billions of dollars of ordinary workers’ superannuation money.

The Assistant Treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer, is trying to bring in superannuation fund disclosure laws that were actually urged by Labor’s own 2010 review into superannuation. Here’s the Treasury discussion paper on superannuation disclosure. More...

According to ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips, the Turnbull government is setting itself up for policy and political failure. This is because of the way the government has responded to the report by Justice Heydon into union corruption released last week.

Justice Heydon’s report details widespread corruption in unions and businesses. Yet the Turnbull government’s almost gleeful response hammers only unions. This response reflects political stupidity. It has opened itself to a campaign which suggests  that the Coalition is anti-worker and runs a political protection racket for corrupt employers. More...

Australians tend to look down on developing countries, viewing many of them as suffering from wide-scale corruption. We think of Australia as relatively clean. We have independent authorities that root out and investigate corruption. Where corruption is found, we see it as the bad behaviour of individuals and not something that’s inbuilt into our social, legal, political, governance and business systems.

However, ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips has recently written a series articles for Business Spectator that put a different view. He argues that there’s plenty of evidence that, in Australia, we have corruption ingrained in key institutional arrangements. Our corruption is undertaken at a highly sophisticated level and is even given ‘legal’ cover. It sits under our noses but we choose to ignore it. More...