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t is generally accepted that productivity growth is a major source of economic growth and welfare improvement. Labour productivity has accounted for roughly half of the growth in per capita GDP in the OECD over the last two decades, with the other half primarily accounted for by increases in labour utilisation, that is, changes in the demographics, unemployment and labour force participation rates. For this reason, productivity is of vital interest to economists and policymakers. An understanding of technical and efficiency change, two key factors in productivity growth, is thus important in policy decision-making. Academics and policy makers continue to debate the relative contributions of shocks and policy changes impacting on population growth, capital accumulation, microeconomic behaviour and technological advance. Different policy settings impact on both aggregate performance and the productivity of sectors and factors. This paper presents an analysis of the relative growth performance of Australia, New Zealand and Ireland concentrating on the underlying components of labour productivity, particularly efficiency change and technical change. Such analysis is important to policy decisions of countries seeking to improve their relative international position and outlook. It is important that policymakers identify sustainable productivity changes (largely driven by technological change) separately from measured productivity change. This separation facilitates assessment of the extent to which technology adoption and diffusion contribute to a productivity catch-up. This work is similar in many respects to rec ent studies undertaken by the OECD (2004a), but with important methodological differences introduced by Margaritis, Fare and Grosskopf (2005). The individual contributions of industry productivity growth and sectoral composition to aggregate productivity are also considered. The novelty of the productivity measurement and analysis used by Margaritis, Fare and Grosskopf is that it ‘derives from a decomposition of the growth in labour productivity in terms of (a) technical change both neutral and biased, (b) efficiency change, and (c) capital accumulation’. Each component’s contribution to the growth in labour productivity can then be assessed. The paper proceeds as follows. We outline the relative economic growth performance of Australia, New Zealand and Ireland over the period 1979-2002,

ecently we published an article in this journal (Farr and Buurman, 2003) applying the economist's concepts of equity to the Australian Child Support legislation.Part of the intent of that article was to show that an analytic approach, originally established in the study of taxation, could be usefully applied to Child Support.

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Research income income poverty. is on below financial Income that disadvantage of poverty a designated is defined in Australia poverty as living line. has in focused a However, household mainly income whose on income poverty. Income poverty is defined as living in a household whose income is bel w th f a esignated p erty line. Ho ev r, n om poverty may provide only a limited understanding of financial disadvantage. Concepts such as subjective poverty, expenditure poverty, deprivation and financial stress are designed to overcome perceived inadequacies in the concept of income poverty. A major point of the submission by the Department of Family and Community Services (DFCS, 2003 :xi) to the Senate (2004:xvii, 18-20) inquiry into poverty was that financial disadvantage was too narrowly defined by income. Deprivation and financial stress are measures of households' financial situation that may complement income poverty (McColl, Pietsch and Gatenby, 2001). Saunders (1996) pointed out that income is at best an imperfect indicator of living standards. Travers and Richardson (1993) argued that financial disadvantage is better measured by several indicators, such as deprivation and financial stress, as well as income. Therefore, there is an implicit assumption that the different indicators are tapping the same underlying concept of poverty or financial disadvantage, but all do so imperfectly. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of financial disadvantage by analysing several of its indicators in addition to the commonly used measure, before-housing income poverty. The additional indicators are afterhousing income poverty, subjective poverty and financial stress. The paper examines the extent of financial disadvantage in Australia according to these four indicators, mobility in and out of financial disadvantage, and the interrelationships between indicators. The relationships between the indicators and a range of demographic, sociological and economic factors are also examined. Before-housing Income poverty is defined as living in a household with disposable income, after adjusting for household composition, below a designated poverty line. After-housing measures adjust household disposable income and thus the designated poverty line for housing costs. Subjective poverty is defined as judging one's level of prosperity as 'poor' or 'very poor'. Individuals and households in financial stress are not coping financially; they have difficulty in meeting their financial obligations and may seek financial assistance from others. Income poverty, subjective poverty and financial stress are by no means the only indicators of financial disadvantage. Other indicators include expenditure poverty which, similar to income poverty, is defined as expenditure levels less than a designated level (DFCS, 2003:92; Saunders, 1997; Saunders, 1998); relative deprivation, defined as the 'enforced lack of perceived social necessities

Australian external resources. controls farmers, They are or and legal bound private restrictions by land-owners common over law in the that general, way provides they face for use a range a natural wideof Australian external controls or legal restrictions over the way they use natural resour es. They are bound by common law that provides for a wideranging Duty of Care (DofC) to avoid directly injuring other people or their property (Bates, 2001). In addition, farmers have obligations under the various state environmental protection acts that govern the actions of all industries. Over and above these general obligations, farmers' management actions are constrained by provisions within various State land protection acts, and those who operate on crown pastoral leases confront a further array of land use controls that vary between states and territories (Productivity Commission, 2002). Despite the extent of the existing explicit legal obligations imposed on farmers, there appears to be a widely held view that, for a number of reasons, the current level of conservation and environmental protection undertaken on privately managed rural land is not consistent with the efficient management of the resources involved. The Productivity Commission (2003) provides a useful summary of this issue. As a result there is a view in policy circles that Australia as a whole is under-investing in the conservation of important resources such as biodiversity, land quality and water quality. In exploring ways that the deficit in conservation can be redressed some groups have suggested that the legal obligations of farmers to protect or improve the environment should be extended. In general terms, they argue that the current legal DofC that farmers and other land managers have to prevent damage to the natural resource base is too limited and should be extended by statute law. For example, the then Industry Commission (1998:75) argued that the extended DofC, '... should require those responsible to take all reasonable and practical steps to prevent harm to the environment'. More recently, the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage (2001), the Wentworth Group (2003), the Victorian Catchment Management Council and Department of Sustainability and Environment (2003), and Young, Shi and Crosthwaite (2003) have discussed the possibility of redefining and extending the legal land management obligations of farmers. Young, Shi and Crosthwaite (p. 3), take the following position:

hould the interest paid by landlords on loans used to finance the purchase of rented houses and apartments be tax deductible? There is widespread agreement that interest payments should be deductible at least up to the amount of the landlord’s ‘net rent’ — meaning the actual rent, minus all expenses other than interest payments. In this paper, we revisit Australia’s controversial ‘negative gearing’ (NG) arrangements, under which investors can also deduct negative cash flows — defined as the excess of interest payments over earnings net of depreciation and other non-interest expenses — from their other taxable income. We focus on NG of investments in rental housing, but the principles apply also to other investments, such as equities and bonds. Apart from a brief hiatus in 1985-87, NG has been a feature of the Australian tax system for many years. It is one of the few exceptions to Sieper’s dictum that, ‘[t]ax law is as inclined to deny tax-payers full loss-offset as economists are inclined to recommend it’ (Sieper, 1986:286). Indeed, it is a double exception: not only does Australian tax law allow it, but many economists and other commentators have recommended that it should be denied, on the ground that it is a tax loophole designed to steer revenues away from the Treasury. For example, Colebatch (2003) states: Tax Office statistics show that in 1999-2000, 54 per cent of rental housing landlords claimed to be operating at a loss. They wrote off their entire rental income against tax, plus $3 billion of losses, saving themselves tax of more than $1 billion — which in effect, is then paid by other taxpayers. Criticisms of NG have recently been intensified by the view that it has also contributed to an unsustainable property boom. Gittins (2003), for example, refers to ‘the negative-gearing loophole on which this whole rocky edifice [the property boom] is built.’ The Reserve Bank of Australia (2003) has noted that Australia’s tax treatment of rental property is out of line with that in other developed countries and has urged ‘others more expert in tax matters than the Bank’ to examine ‘those areas where the treatment in Australia differs from that commonly seen overseas.’ In fairness, it should be noted that the Bank’s submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry on First Home Ownership, from which these comments are taken, makes it very clear that they recognise the general validity of NG. Their

uperannuation has had a chequered history in Australia.From its beginning early in the mercantile history of Australia, when banks used their employee provident funds as 'golden handcuffs' to keep employees loyal and honest, until the 1980s, superannuation remained essentially the preserve of senior whitecollar male employees (McKeown, 2003).Along the way, some interesting abuses were perpetrated by employers for personal gain.Such abuses included 'cherry-picker' funds where employers of short-term employees set up selfmanaged funds, contributed funds for employees including themselves and claimed tax deductions to reduce taxable incomes and tax liabilities.However, under the terms of the trust deeds, only long-term employees could benefit and thus only the employers qualified.The employers then paid the majority, if not all, of the invested funds to themselves (McKeown, 2003).Things began to change for the better in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s.Two forces of change stand out.First, the union movement and the Federal Government agreed to a series of Prices and Incomes Accords which were designed to increase rewards to employees but to restrain inflationary pressures.In Accord Mark II, wage rises were traded for superannuation contributions.Employers then objected to subsequent Industrial Commission rulings and, on appeal, the High Court of Australia in 1986 (160 CLR 341) decided that superannuation would be regarded henceforth as a condition of employment.Second, in order to try to overcome a looming budgetary problem caused by the ageing of the population, the Federal Minister for Social Security in 1989 released a retirement incomes policy which had three pillars -compulsory superannuation contributions, voluntary superannuation contributions, and the age pension as income support or top-up for those with insufficient other income in retirement (Howe, 1989).By that time, the age pension had been in place for nearly a century, but compulsory superannuation contributions made by employers in addition to employees' salaries and wages for nearly all employees were new.The legislation, the Superannuation Guarantee Charge Act 1992, made the compulsory contribution 3 per cent in the first instance, rising to 9 per cent by July 2002.In the twelve years since the introduction of compulsory superannuation the government has, on several occasions, proposed legislation to require employers to offer their employees a choice of funds to which their contributions would be made.Even though this legislation has not been passed, the industry has reacted to the proposals by introducing several investment choices for most fund members.The upshot of these proposals, even though they were made with the

Agenda is a refereed, ECONLIT-indexed and RePEc-listed journal of the College of Business and Economics, The Australian National University. Launched in 1994, Agenda provides a forum for debate on public policy, mainly (but not exclusively) in Australia and New Zealand. It deals largely with economic issues but gives space to social and legal policy and also to the moral and