The National Disability Insurance Scheme promises to transform the lives of people with disability, and deliver an economic boost for all Australians by creating thousands of jobs. At the recent launch of an Empowering Youth Initiative designed to encourage young people to work in the disability sector, David Moody, National Disability Services State Manager – Victoria, talked about opportunities to develop and grow the disability workforce of the future.
Read MoreThe idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is gaining traction in Australia and around the globe. While a UBI has the potential to lift people and communities out of poverty, Michael Fletcher from the Aukland University of Technology warns us that it is not a panacea; government still needs to provide comprehensive services and tailored support. This policy analysis originally appeared on the New Zealand web site Briefing Papers, and can be viewed here.
Read MoreIn another insightful post, Juanita McLaren (@defrostedlady) of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand examines the patterns of welfare dependency by women and suggests that the Welfare to Work policy could be more effective if, rather than punishing single mothers, it supported them based on normal arcs of parenting and employment. You can hear Juanita speak on her experiences at our upcoming Women’s Policy Forum, held in Melbourne on 22 September 2017.
Read MoreThis is a guest post on Paul Cairney's Politics & Public Policy blog by Claire A. Dunlop and Claudio M. Radaelli both from the University of Exeter. In it they discuss how to use insights from the Policy Learning literature to think about how to learn effectively or adapt to processes of ‘learning’ in policymaking that are more about politics than education. The full paper has been submitted to the series for Policy and Politics called Practical Lessons from Policy Theories
Read More'Naive optimism' and mistaken beliefs about improved efficiency and cost savings are major drivers of the adoption of government ‘one stop shops’, a recently published review paper has found. Misplaced expectations about cost savings don’t just influence decisions but can be damaging, as governments pre-emptively cut budgets and leave new projects without enough money, argues Dr Cosmo Howard in ANZSOG's open access Evidence Base journal.
Read MoreLast week’s Power to Persuade symposium led to fascinating discussion about how evidence feeds into public policy and the impact of post-truth political culture. Stephen Easton writes that policymakers have always seen multiple truths, and not everyone believes the widely-understood term describes a genuinely new phenomenon. This article originally appeared in The Mandarin.
Read MoreBetween 1907 and 2005, Australian deaths by infectious disease declined markedly. Now, chronic and ‘lifestyle’ diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity-related disease, and chronic respiratory conditions are dominant and account for as much as 90% of all deaths in Australia. Geoff Browne explores health equity as a collective choice.
Read MoreLearning by our mistakes is an accepted wisdom, yet how does this apply in the sphere of public policy. In this re-post from The Mandarin, Catherine Althaus and David Threlfall examine the conditions needed to support innovation in public policy
Read MoreThis week on Power to Persuade, we are focusing on 'Impact'—how can academic research make a contribution to society? How can it influence the development of policy, practice or service provision? In today's post, Paul Cairney and Richard Kwiatkowski explore the importance of using insights from psychological science to effectively communicate research to policymakers. A modified version of this post originally appeared on Paul's blog.
Read More'Impact' is a fickle concept. We talk about it a lot, but what does it really mean? What form does it take in practice? And what can we do, as researchers and policymakers, to support its emergence? Impact is our theme this week on Power to Persuade. To kick us off, today's post by University of Stirling Senior Lecturer Dr Peter Matthews (@urbaneprofessor) reports on new research from the United Kingdom that explores how academics perceive barriers to achieving impact. This post originally appeared on Peter's blog and has been edited for length.
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In the UK in particular, but also in Australia, debate about mental health and mental illness are increasingly appearing on political agendas and appearing in the mainstream media. Whilst there is a concerted effort to reduce the stigma attached to mental illness, mental health and illness remain largely located in health focused policy debates. In the post below, Dr Sarah-Jane Fenton looks at why mental health is a topic pertinent to all contemporary public policy, and uses highlights from recent blog posts to show how embedding understanding of mental health issues should be central to all policy maker’s agendas.
Read MoreIs inequality rising or falling? The answer, if recent public debate is anything to go by, may appear at first to depend on who you ask. Peter Whiteford Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University explores in this re-post from the Conversation.
Read MoreNHS statistics released this week documented that eating disorders in men have increased by 70% in the UK, finding that these illnesses are rising at the same rate in young men as they are in young women. The media has been inundated with headlines discussing this rise in male eating disorders pointing towards causes such as social media and rise of body image pressures on men and boys within modern society as a way to understand this phenomenon. While there is no doubt that such issues may have an influence on such a sharp rise in men experiencing such illnesses, male eating disorders are not a new phenomenon, simply one that has been “underdiagnosed, undertreated, and misunderstood” (Strother, Lemberg & Tuberville, 2012). A study in 2007 estimated that up to 25% of individuals with eating disorders were male, with underdiagnoses being debated due to the low number of men within services.
Research into the reasons why people develop these illnesses have developed steadily in recent years with evidence suggesting that the similarities outweigh the differences between genders with regards to the core features and psychology of eating disorders. With treatment outcomes reported as equally successful for men as for women, Dr Una Foye asks the question remains why this “sudden” increase?
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With the rise in authoritarianism comes very real concerns about effective governance. In today’s post, policy whisperer Susan Maury ( @SusanMaury ) of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand explores how the psychology of group identification is used by government to vilify specific groups of people, thereby limiting public accountability for ensuring robust policy.
Read MoreClimate change is a problem that can and should be fought in multiple ways and at many different levels, argue policy researchers Michael Mintrom (ANZSOG) and Joannah Luetjens (Utrecht University) in their recent journal article. Policy entrepreneurs actively work with others in and around policymaking venues to promote policy change. They play – and will continue to play – an important role in efforts to address climate change.
Read MoreCan alcohol and drugs be called a ‘cause’ of family violence? What do we even mean when we talk about ‘causes’ of social problems? In this post, ANZSOG Research Fellow Sophie Yates (@MsSophieRae) outlines research she presented last month at the 5th European Conference on Politics and Gender. She explains why problem framing is so important in public policy, and explores the framing of policy actors talking about alcohol and drugs in Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence.
Read MoreAs the first of its kind internationally, the Centre of Research Excellence in Disability and Health (CRE-DH) is Australia's new national research centre to improve the health of people with disabilities. The CRE-DH, in collaboration with key stakeholders, will gather the evidence needed to guide social and health policy reform. How will the organisation work? CRE-DH's Celia Green and Zoe Aitken explain.
Read MoreUN Gender Training is a policy that aims to reduce harmful behaviours in peacekeepers and unintended negative effects of peacekeeping missions; but does this well-intentioned, academically based, and centrally designed policy actually work in real life? In this article, Lisa Carson of UNSW Canberra's Public Service Research Group discusses the need for openness and knowledge transfer to strengthen policy design and implementation.
Read More"Joined-up government" has been around for some time and is still present in the lexicon of Australian politicians and public servants. But have we learned from our previous attempts at integrated approaches to government? In 2014, The Mandarin's David Donaldson spoke to UNSW Canberra's Gemma Carey, Fiona Buick, and Deborah Blackman as well as University of Melbourne's Janine O'Flynn and retired professor John Halligan about their views on this topic, and their comments are just as relevant today.
Read MoreThe Productivity Commission released the position paper National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Cost earlier this month. Today's post is from UNSW Canberra's Public Service Research Group's Helen Dickinson, who provides a succinct analysis of the report's findings. This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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