At the National Press Club last Sunday, the Prime Minister congratulated his government for having produced 39,000 more jobs for indigenous Australians. But have they? The figures look a little rubbery, writes Jon Altman.
Read MoreIt has been heartening to see the recent attention that family violence has been receiving at both a Federal and State levels in the past two years. In today’s policy analysis Supriya Singh argues that this attention is not being translated into meaningful policy responses, and has been sidelined in the current election debates. In order to effectively tackle family violence, gender inequalities must be addressed in a meaningful way.
Read MoreLast week, the Australian Labor Party announced that it will lift the Medicare rebate freeze if elected to office in the July federal election. We know health issues feature strongly in election debates, but what does this proposal actually mean for most of us? In our latest post, Helen Dickinson explores these questions and more #healthelection.
Read MoreIn this policy analysis, originally published in The Conversation, Eva Cox provides an analysis of a range of current Federal policies that must be addressed to increase public trust. In her words, “the social must include feminist issues as most of the devaluing of this is in areas associated with women, and similarly many of the failures in the concerns of Indigenous people relate to social well-being and more collectivist cultures.”
Eva has initiated a policy network designed to fill some of the overlooked and under-resourced social policy gaps with positive alternatives: The Good Society Policy Network.
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In 1979 Amartya Sen addressed scholars and students at Stanford University, giving the coveted annual Tanner Lecture on Human Value. The title of the lecture was, Inequality of what? Here, Sen laid out the basis of his scholarly corpus which would lead to his Nobel Laureate, the Human Development Index and subsequent books and articles that which have underpinned the revival of human development.
Read MoreMuch has been made of both the legitimacy and the high maintenance cost of the “welfare state.” Tanya Corrie argues in this policy analysis that reducing or eliminating income support leads to higher economic and societal costs through the entrenched disadvantage for people who rely on it, particularly women and their children.
Read MoreIn 1968 anthropologist Bill Stanner spoke of the Great Australian Silence in relation to the historical mistreatment of Indigenous peoples, a national myopia. The just announced 2016 Budget could be similarly termed ‘the Great Australian Fiscal Silence’, a fiscal myopia incommensurate with the level of need.
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Every year I do an analysis of the Indigenous provisions in the federal Budget. This is done in the light of current and past strategies, policies, programs and funding, and is supported, where this is possible, by data and information drawn from government agencies, reports and published papers.
This year’s analysis is now available on the University of Sydney e‐scholarship website where you can also find the analyses from previous years.
Read MoreIt has been widely publicized that women’s superannuation accrual is significantly below their male counterparts' and often inadequate to support women in their retirement years. This policy analysis identifies the current weaknesses in the legal structure and provides practical suggestions for rectifying the inequities.
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Vocational education and training once held a proud place in Australia’s education system, providing opportunity along a less academically and more practically oriented path. While interest in and need for vocational education and training has not lost currency, the sector has been drawn into a downward reputational spiral. Reforms have been introduced in abundance to reverse the problems of VET, but instead have contributed to loss of status and scandal after scandal. At the heart of the debilitation of the VET sector has been lack of respect for and support for teaching professionalism in the reform process. Industry and government domination over what was to be taught in VET was intended to create opportunity through growth and jobs, but domination is bound to be doomed when the guardians of delivery and quality are not engaged professionally in the process. In these circumstances, a market methodology is likely to attract markets in ‘bads’ that repeatedly dislodge markets in ‘goods’. Regulation also faces a difficult challenge when it is overlayed on a market where there is deep and persistent internal conflict over the values of the sector. Delivery of quality education and training is much touted, but a schism sits below this mantra. The sector divides in its commitment to professional educators and to the aspiration of being a quality education provider in a highly stratified tertiary sector.
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Manipulation and deception are predictable, yet strangely under acknowledged, features of competitive markets. In their award-winning book Phishing for Phools, economics professors George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller argue that trickery on the part of sellers is not just an occasional nuisance: it's an inherent part of our economic system, a natural consequence of competitive pressure. The upshot is that ' free markets leads us to buy, and to pay too much for, products that we do not need'. This downside of markets is worth pondering as we consider marketizing human services in Australia.
Read MoreAs the federal election looms in Australia, the track records of both Coalition and ALP governments of fulfilling their election promises are under scrutiny. Sometimes, a promise gets lost or falls short in implementation. Todays’ post by Professor Christina Boswell and Dr Eugenia Rodrigues provides lessons from the UK on how policy can be reinterpreted, distorted or even subverted when applied at a local level or across different arms of government.
Read MoreIn today's post Dr Lesley Russell unpacks the Burden of Disease study recently released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Flagging gaps in the reported data, and a need for more investment in skills to translate research evidence into policy and practice, she argues that “at a time when there are major concerns about the ongoing impact and costs of chronic illness, Australia is missing out on significant opportunities in prevention.”
Read MoreThe economic argument for community legal centres is strong, and the Productivity Commission has recommended an immediate injection of cash to shore up their operations. Despite this, their funding is still being cut. Dr Chris Atmore (@ChrisPolicy; Senior Policy Adviser at the Federation of Community Legal Centres Victoria) outlines why CLC funding should be an election issue in the run-up to July 2.
Read MoreIn today's post, Dr Veronica Sheen covers the recent Australian Unemployed Workers' Union conference and casts a critical eye on Australia's current 'activation method' for reducing unemployment. "Standing up for rights through time honoured methods of protest, organising, and civil disobedience", she argues, "is sometimes the only way of getting action when governments fail to do what is right by segments of its citizenry".
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Continuing our theme of gender equality, childcare and relevant policy levers, this post reports on research that looks at the decisions Australian couples make about work and childcare after having their first child. George Argyrous (ANZSOG), Lyn Craig (UNSW) and Sara Rahman (ANZSOG) studied time-use data to see what impact earnings, gender role attitudes and other factors had on who went back to work, how much each partner worked, and who looked after the child. Unsurprisingly, they found a fairly traditional picture of work and home life!
Read MoreChildren with disability may make up the majority of those in out of home care, yet they are barely visible in public debate and policy development, writes Dr Jess Cadwallader from People with Disability Australia. In fact, she says the recent National Standards for Out of Home Care contain zero guidance in relation to disability. She argues that a critical starting point to providing proper care for them is to at least collect basic and crucial data.
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Below, Professor David Hayward from RMIT provides some thoughtful reflections on the recently announced budget from a social policy perspective.
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Paul Smyth
Introduction
Part One of this contribution to the SSF Dialogue proposed that we are currently in the midst of an economic policy model change from ‘market efficiency’ to ‘inclusive growth’ that will inevitably impact our thinking on social governance as equal weight is given to fairness and equality alongside market efficiency. While others are providing much needed SSF discussion of marketization failure in the social services and community sector, I want to look ahead to the principles and practices which might shape up an inclusive governance model. And it is not as though we have time to waste. In a year when the Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers (2016) to the President of the United States begins with ‘Inclusive Growth in the United States’ the idea of an economic model change is not loose talk. A policy window is opening and we need to be talking right now about the new inclusive governance agenda if we want to influence this policy transition.
Read MoreJulie Leask is a social scientist specialising in immunisation and a strong and popular advocate on mainstream and social media. She also posts regularly on her Human Factors blog. Last week she gave an engaging insight into her work, and the opportunities and challenges of research and advocacy, in a post that she has updated here. Follow her on Twitter at @julieleask.
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