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🤓 GRATTAN’S 2025 WONKS’ LIST 🤓

In addition to our Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List, our Wonks’ List highlights some of the year’s best technical policy reads.

Here are our picks for 2025. buff.ly/YcFqGwm #auspol #ausecon

Event: 2025 Summer Reading List for the Prime Minister - Grattan Institute Sign up to attend the official launch of the 2025 Summer Reading List for the Prime Minister, at the State Library of Victoria.

7/ We’ll be discussing these books at an evening of sparkling conversation with Aruna Sathanapally, journalist @tomiscrowley.bsky.social and author @cordeliafine.bsky.social.

📅 Thursday, 11 December 2025
🕠 5:30 PM-7:00 PM
🏛 State Library Victoria
buff.ly/ptRE6us

6/ In Losing It, Jess Hill argues that our strategy for preventing violence against women is not working. But if we have the courage to act on the range of evidence-based approaches to tackling gender-based violence, Australia could be the first country to end it.

5/ At a time when we are becoming painfully aware of our shared destiny with the natural world – and when our technology is posing questions of what it really means to be living – @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social Is a River Alive? offers an encouraging path towards environmental optimism.

4/ Australia has made substantial progress on women’s rights and workforce participation, but gendered patterns of education and work remain. @cordeliafine.bsky.social Patriarchy Inc. proposes a new vision of gender equality.

3/ If you want clear facts for yourself about the pros and cons of tackling climate change, or if you feel frustrated because you don’t have the facts to push back on climate action naysayers, @hannahritchie.bsky.social Clearing the Air is the book for you.

2/ @benchu.bsky.social Exile Economics paints a picture of a world retreating from the global economic system. But cutting ourselves off from these trade and migration flows isn’t just economically damaging – in many cases it’s simply not possible.

A graphic containing book covers of • Exile Economics: What happens if globalisation fails, by Ben Chu • Clearing the Air: A hopeful guide to solving climate change, by Hannah Ritchie • Patriarchy Inc.: What we get wrong about gender equality and why men still win at work, by Cordelia Fine • Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane • Losing It: Can we stop violence against women and children? by Jess Hill • I Want Everything, by Dominic Amerena

1/ Announcing Grattan’s Prime Minister’s Summer Reading List for 2025! 🎉

Here are the six books we think the PM and all Australians should read over summer. #auspol buff.ly/UbafIPQ

A graphic of a job ad with the text We're hiring! Associate, apply now

We’re hiring! Apply for our Associate position and join a team that’s passionate about evidence-based policy. buff.ly/MwmmyBX

Our Education Program Director, Dr Jordana Hunter, has been named one of the 20 most influential voices in education. News Corp says she's ‘been pivotal in shaping the debate on Australia’s maths problem, school funding, and classroom productivity, to name a few’.

A chart showing that most states overspend their hospital budgets in most years

Public hospital budgets are broken. Here's how to fix them.

Our health policy experts Peter Breadon and Elizabeth Baldwin explain in this article for the Conversation. buff.ly/goDUXJ3 #auspol

9/ We need to end the annual budget rollercoaster of hospital blowouts and bailouts.

Fixing the broken hospital funding system could enable more care, at better cost. Our new report: buff.ly/Jg6jvVs

8/ State governments should change how they fund care to promote shorter stays, buy in bulk, consolidate some procedures in specialised centres, and help hospitals adopt best practices.

7/ The federal government's contribution to public hospital funding should rise in line with growing demand for care. It should fully fund the cost of care – provided states reform their systems to improve efficiency.

Chart showing most states overspend their hospital budgets in most years

6/ Hospitals aren’t to blame – they are held back by bogus budgets.

State gov’ts set unrealistically low budgets at the start of the year, then bail out hospitals when they run a deficit at the end of the year.

Chart showing many other countries do much more same-day care.

5/ Second, there are many ways costs can be reduced without compromising care: shorter hospital stays, safer care, & making better use of workers’ skills.

Shorter stays for many surgeries are safer and cheaper, and yet, Australia is behind many other countries in same-day care.

Chart showing hospital costs vary a lot within every state

4/ If costly hospitals reached the middle of the pack for efficiency in their state, that would save taxpayers $1.2 billion every year.

Chart showing the cost of new knees, hips, babies, and other common procedures varies widely within each state

3/ First, some hospitals are much more expensive than others. Procedure prices vary wildly across the board.

The average cost of a knee replacement in Victoria varies by $13,600.

In Queensland, it’s $11,000. In NSW, $9,000.

2/ Governments will have to spend more. Today they waste $1.2b a year on avoidable spending in public hospitals which doesn’t improve care.

But in the case of healthcare, what’s avoidable?

Chart showing public hospitals are a large and growing share of health spending

1/ Government spending on public hospitals keeps rising, taking up a growing share of health spending, and of government budgets.

As Australia gets bigger, older, and sicker, spending per person could go up by another third in the next decade.

A promotional post for a new Grattan report called Smarter spending: Getting better care for every hospital dollar. It has a photo of a surgery in the background.

Public hospitals are under strain, with ambulance ramping, increasing wait times, and burnt-out staff.

Yet spending has been growing by $3b a year.

Australia needs to fix broken hospital budgets and get smarter about spending.

Our new report shows how: buff.ly/Jg6jvVs

A photo of a wind turbine in a storm, with the text "Net zero is not a political plaything.'

Australia’s commitment to net zero is not a political football. Throwing it away has real consequences, writes @reevealison.bsky.social buff.ly/clZdHkw #auspol

A mirage of an energy and climate change policy - Grattan Institute The Libs’ plan won’t reduce power prices and it won’t reduce emissions substantially.

It’s a mirage of an energy and climate change policy

The Liberals’ plan won’t reduce power prices and it won’t reduce emissions substantially, writes Grattan Institute policy guru Tony Wood in the Financial Review

#auspol #coal #renewables #NetZero

grattan.edu.au/news/a-mirag...

Melbourne needs lots of new homes—quickly - Grattan Institute The planning system needs to change so the city can stay great.

Melbourne needs lots of new homes - quickly - to ease the housing crisis and let more people live where they want. buff.ly/NAB4N84 #springst

Melbourne needs lots of new homes—quickly - Grattan Institute The planning system needs to change so the city can stay great.

Melbourne needs lots of new homes - quickly - to ease the housing crisis and let more people live where they want. buff.ly/NAB4N84 #springst

The longest city is short on homes - Grattan Institute Perth needs planning reform.

The longest city is short on homes

Why Perth needs planning reforms, by Grattan Institute housing policy experts Joey Moloney and Ashleigh Chang in today’s West Australian

grattan.edu.au/news/the-lon... #auspol

To fix the economy, fix housing - Grattan Institute Our planning systems are a drag on productivity. That’s a choice Australians can no longer afford.

Our planning systems are a drag on productivity. That’s a choice Australians can no longer afford. buff.ly/HLIYrOG #auspol

Chart showing most of inner Sydney and Melbourne is zoned for low density

Reforming rigid land-use rules is key to beating the housing crisis. Brendan Coates explains what governments need to do. buff.ly/cAxLrM5 #auspol

To fix the economy, fix housing Australia’s economy is in a post-pandemic slump. To dig us out, state and federal governments must tackle the chronic shortage of housing in our biggest cities.

To fix the economy, fix housing.

Brendan Coates, Joey Moloney, and Matthew Bowes summarise their blockbuster new Grattan Institute report on Australia’s housing crisis.

johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11...

#auspol #nswpol #springst #Insiders

Via Pearls and Irritations