Administrators must manage a complex set of internal subsidies and cross-subsidies, yet dictates from on high run counter to this reality, argues Michael Martin. More...

The Council of Europe (CoE) is dealing with a high-scale political and financial crisis in the organisation: Russia’s decision to stop paying its membership fees (and the risk of Russia’s withdrawal from the CoE), Turkey returning to its status as an ordinary contributor and the ‘zero nominal growth’ budget policy enforced by member states, are the key factors affecting CoE’s budget. More...

What can we expect in this year’s Budget?  The NTEU is not anticipating that the government will use the unexpected improvement in the Budget bottom line, largely as result of unexpected improvements revenue as a result of better than expected commodity (iron ore and coal) prices, to reverse the funding freeze and restore demand driven funding and increase public inevestment in higher education, but are happy to be proven wrong. More...