{"id":814527,"date":"2026-07-21T14:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/814527\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T14:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:36:16","slug":"is-australia-too-generous-to-the-rich-the-case-for-tighter-means-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/814527\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Australia too generous to the rich? The case for tighter means-testing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why has means-testing fallen out of favour in Australian public policymaking? The idea of means-testing is to direct government support to those who need it most. Increasingly however, governments are opting for universal spending programs &#8211; from energy rebates and EV concessions, to subsidies in childcare and aged care. \u00a0Professor Robert Breunig asks why, and makes the case for tighter means-testing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Related reading: <a class=\"Link_link__5eL5m ScreenReaderOnly_srLinkHint__OysWz Link_showVisited__C1Fea Link_showFocus__ALyv2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.policyinstitute.org.au\/home-truths\/\" data-component=\"Link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Home Truths: The case for rebalancing toward better means testing<\/a>, Policy Institute Australia (June 2026)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why has means-testing fallen out of favour in Australian public policymaking? The idea of means-testing is to direct&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,1480,164,3786,228132,44,42609,5939,4961,39934],"class_list":["post-814527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-budget","tag-economy","tag-government","tag-means-testing","tag-news","tag-public-policy","tag-spending","tag-tax","tag-taxation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}