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Griffith Business School experts have had their say on the 2017 Federal Budget and have been left underwhelmed by Treasurer Scott Morrison’s second economic blueprint.
In a special Griffith Business School presentation, five key academics reviewed the budget’s impact on the economy, superannuation, regional Australia, energy policy, defence and on the political landscape.
Head of Department for Accounting, Finance and Economics Professor Fabrizio Carmignani said the Treasurer fell short of what Australia needs to sustain long term growth. Professor Carmignani also argues that this budget does not do nearly enough to avoid the growing disparity between the rich and poor.
“I would have liked to see some specific intervention to ensure that growth is inclusive. Instead, most of the spending that is indeed instrumental to reducing inequality is classified as so-called ‘bad debt’ and, this spending can only be financed through taxes.”
Housing affordability was one of the key pillars of the 2017 Budget

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Cycling 1600kms from Townsville to Brisbane is all in the name of charity for Professor Scott Baum from Griffith University’s School of Environment and the Cities Research Institute as he gears up for the Smiling for Smiddy Challenge Ride.
Professor Baum will be joined by 50 other like-minded men and women on the route from Townsville to Brisbane, as he aims to raise his target goal of $5000 for the Mater Foundation.
Riders will travel through Queensland’s scenic countryside from August 26 to September 2, 2017, with the funds raised from this epic event contributing to support breakthrough cancer research at The Mater.
“With one in two Australians diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime I hope that my participation in the ride and more importantly the associated fundraising will give hope to current sufferers and to those who might be diagnosed in the future,” Professor Baum said.
Professor Baum said the event had personal

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Scientists from Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE) have helped discover Homo naledi’s surprisingly young age, opening up more questions on where we come from.
Findings published this week in journal eLife show that Homo naledi, the hominin that was discovered by a large team of international researchers in 2013, was alive sometime between 335 and 236 thousand years ago.
ARCHE was among a large team of international researchers led by James Cook University who have presented the long-awaited age of the naledi fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber and announced the new discovery of a second chamber in the Rising Star cave system, containing additional specimens of Homo naledi, including a child and a partial skeleton of an adult male with a remarkably well-preserved skull.
Dr Duval in the lab.
Among all the dating methods used, direct dating of the Homo naledi fossil teeth was performed using Electron Spin Resonance in two different laboratories. Part of this work

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Fit and healthy Tasmanian devils are being taken down by deadly facial tumours that are attacking the “best” animals in the population, according to novel research led by Griffith University.
The research, published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters, shows that devils that catch devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) have higher survival and reproductive rates prior to disease-induced death than individuals that do not become infected.
Typically infectious diseases affect mostly older, younger, or less healthy individuals. However, the team of scientists from Australia and the US, led by Dr Konstans Wells of Griffith’s Environmental Futures Research Institute (EFRI), found that devils with higher fitness are at highest risk of infection and death from facial tumours.
Dr Wells said this was probably because of the disease’s mode of transmission among socially dominant individuals.
“It’s an important finding, as it indicates that the fittest devils, which are the ones typically engaging in mating or aggressive

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If there’s anyone who knows the value of networking with alumni, it’s Griffith University graduate Thomas Punch. Currently based in Montreal, Thomas is the youngest executive for the wildly successful global media company WatchMojo, and was keen to drop back into his former university to provide valuable guidance to current students when he visited Australia.
“When I moved overseas to further my career, a lot of the networking I did to build my networks was through alumni. I was essentially contacting former Griffith University students who were a lot older than me and asking them about their career path,” he explains. “Then it just occured to me I could do the same for the younger generations. It’s always helpful to hear from people in the workforce who are in different careers to what you might have thought about.”
And Thomas’s career has been quite extraordinary. At 30 years old, he is one

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