Events

Please join us for a Labour Law Seminar on A Wage-Price Spiral: What are the Chances? presented by Dr Iain Ross AO.

The presentation discusses wage-price spirals, beginning with definitional issues and historical evidence in Australia and internationally. It then turns to the episode of stagflation in the 1970s and 1980s in Australia and the structural factors that contributed to those episodes. The central point is that the labour market framework of today is very different to that of the 1970s and 1980s. The overall thesis is that there is no evidence of the emergence of a wage-price spiral in the present circumstances and recent data suggests such an outcome is unlikely. I conclude by pointing to the importance of productivity and the potential challenges for wages policy and social cohesion presented by the adoption of artificial intelligence.

Dr Ross’s keynote address will be followed by a panel discussion with Josh Bornstein (The Australia Institute) and Katie Sweatman (Kingston Reid).

Job-ready Graduates gave universities new flexibility over how they used Commonwealth supported places. Separate allocations for sub-bachelor, bachelor and postgraduate places were merged into a single flexible fund. Drawing on interview research with university leaders and officials and empirical analysis of enrolment trends, this presentation will explore university responses to this new flexibility. The impact of Job-ready Graduates funding rates will also be examined. The seminar will conclude with discussion of how the new ATEC-driven funding system might affect university strategies.

This seminar is available in person and online.