Australia’s welfare system does a lot with a little. But the plight of growing numbers of precarious workers has led to calls for a new basic income.
The cost of such a scheme seems prohibitively expensive. So, might the lessons of Australia’s super-efficient welfare system offer a potential way forward?
Read MoreWe run a lot of posts on PTP that cover the challenges or problems with particular policies or courses of action taken by government. Such is the nature of working in social policy - we are often wanting to improve what is currently in place. Today's post is a little different. Paul Ronalds from Save the Children tells t a positive story of policy change, where the community sector fought back and won. Enjoy!
Read MoreYesterday, Paul Smyth provided a reflection on the Government's response to the Harper Review from a community sector perspective. In today's piece, Dr Lesley Russell from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy reflects on the Review from a healthcare perspective. Lesley worked in Washington DC on a range of issues around the enactment and implementation of health care reform, initially as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for American Progress (known as the 'Obama think tank') and later as a Senior Advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Read MoreWhile most in the social services and community sector assumed that the 2014\15 Harper review concerned the ‘economy’ and not them (see the very limited range of ‘social’ submissions) it has indeed turned out to be a Radical Liberal push to undermine social services and the community sector by an inappropriate extension of market principles into our community and social life. Even as the Federal Treasurer initiates a ‘reform’ process together with the States we have Mr Harper himself already positioned as an ‘independent’ advisor (representing the for-profit firm Deloites) to the Victorian Government’s current Roadmap for Reform. Push is turning to shove and it behoves anyone with a concern for the future of Australian society to take stock of the situation and develop their action plan.
Read MoreThe recent White Ribbon Day, and the 16 Days of Activism Against Gendered Violence, has brought the issue of Domestic and Family Violence to the fore. Gender inequality is the primary driver of Violence Against Women, and understanding this needs to be central when the Victorian Commission into Family Violence hands down its findings, as outlined in this article by Yvonne Lay at Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand.
Read MoreThe National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been built to enable people with disability a greater choice in the services they wish to use. However, what if these choices are different to supports that have been funded traditionally? If this is not enabled, are people with disability really being given a choice?
Helen Dickinson from the University of Melbourne explores this in an article originally published in The Conversation.
Read MoreThe highly-publicised gender pay gap matters for reasons of equity and fairness, but also because women are disproportionately disadvantaged as a consequence. Research and Policy Specialist Susan Maury, from Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, unpacks some of the reasons for gendered disparities as well as some actions that can be taken to mitigate them.
Read MoreIn 2005, the federal government announced Welfare to Work measures that fundamentally changed the expectations placed on those who received Parenting Payment, among others. After July 1 2005, many parents with children over the age of six were required to undertake 30 hours of paid work per fortnight. Many single parents were moved from this payment to the less generous Newstart Allowance once their youngest child turned eight. Single parents already claiming Parenting Payment were exempted from this requirement to move to Newstart, but in 2013 these changes were extended to all single parents. The government’s consistent claim has been that these reforms would improve the ‘wellbeing’ of those involved. In light of this claim, Michelle Brady (@MichelleBradyUQ) and Kay Cook (@KayCookPhD) ask: “how has Welfare to Work impacted on the wellbeing of single parents and their children?”
Read MoreWe’ve posted a number of times recently on violence against women and the way it affects women’s health and wellbeing. The statistic that violence against women is the leading preventable contributor to death, disability and illness in Victorian women aged 15–44 (VicHealth 2004) is now well known. This piece from the US Health Affairs Blog is by Laudan Aron, Lisa Dubay, Elaine Waxman, and Steven Martin. It shows more broadly that recent increased mortality among white people in the US is disproportionately due to more deaths among women of reproductive and childrearing age. Could the two be linked?
Read More“Despite a push in Canada, Australia and New Zealand to recruit more Indigenous people into the mainstream public service, no academic study has analysed their contributions or the precise purpose behind the recruitment until now,” according to an international research team examining the experiences of Indigenous public servants.
Catherine Althaus (@AlthausCat) reports on the early findings of this important research.
Read MoreIn a major development for the not for profit sector in Australia, three of its heavyweights David Crosbie (CCA), Tim Costello (World Vision) and Paul Ronalds (Save the Children) have been prominent in a concerted call for ‘charities’ to ‘merge or close’. The agenda is to be further progressed through several CCA forums. Clearly not the usual suspects (New Public Managers/ Competition Policy Economists), their views warrant our serious attention. What do they see as the problem? Why are mergers the solution?
Read MoreThis post, by Christina Boswell, originally appeared on her personal blog.
This week the government announced plans to facilitate the eviction of tenants illegally resident in the UK. As part of their drive to ‘create a hostile environment for illegal migrants’, the government will remove legal obstacles to evicting non-nationals who do not have legal residency status. They will also introduce penalties for landlords who fail to enforce the new provisions.
Read MoreANROWS has released a new report detailing the extent of violence against women in Australia. Below, Dr Peta Cox provides an overview. We urge you to read the full report at www.anrows.org.au/PSS
For a summary of the report and infographics for download, go to: http://anrows.org.au/publications/compass/PSS
Read MoreThe newly published Policy Analysis in Australia is Australia's contribution to the International Library of Policy Analysis series.
It is edited by by Brian Head, right, Professor of Policy Analysis at the University of Queensland and Kate Crowley, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Tasmania, and recently launched by ANU public policy professor Andrew Podger. See his speech here, via The Mandarin, and the editors' blog post: Policy analysis in Australia: complexities, arenas, and challenges.
Read MoreIn this article below, republished from IndigenousX with permission, Luke Pearson writes that we cannot examine issues of education, employment, housing, health, incarceration, suicide, or any other issue that affects Indigenous peoples, without acknowledging and examining the historic and ongoing impacts of racism.
Read MoreBy Ben Spies-Butcher, Lecturer in Economy and Society at the Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, with thanks to The Conversation for permission to re-post the original article here.
Read MoreVeteran tobacco control researcher Professor David Hill paid homage at the recent 2015 Oceanic Tobacco Control conference in Perth to his former colleague Dr Nigel Gray, regarded by many as the 'father of tobacco control globally as well as in Australia".
Here are excerpts from his tribute speech - it's a #Longread but provides so many great insights into research and advocacy.
Dr Nigel Gray with former Labor Health Minister Nicola Roxon
Read MoreNew research from the Mitchell Institute has found one-in-four young people in Australia does not complete year 12 or its equivalent. Report author, Stephen Lamb, examines the implications of growing youth disengagement for policy makers, educators and services
Read MoreNew research shows people who become homeless as children and adolescents are much more likely to be unemployed as adults. Anna Zhu from the University of Melbourne looks at the data and implications. This post originally appeared on The Conversation.
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