There are so many policies that intersect at the level of the family, which either enable or create barriers to active workforce participation while also ensuring family needs are met. Today’s Scorecard summarises what the major issues are for families, gender equity in the workforce, an ageing population, and carer duties. This synopsis is backed by a comprehensive document created by the Work + Family Policy Roundtable, comprised of over 30 academics from 16 research institutions. This analysis was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 30 May, 2016.
Read MoreBoth the acknowledgement that domestic violence occurs at high rates in Australia and the increased Federal funding for tackling this issue are to be lauded. In today’s post, a distinction is made between adequate funding and supporting best practice. For women experiencing violence, the choice of service model is critical. Funding must support best practice to ensure the safety of women and children.
Read MoreIn this piece, originally published in VCOSS’ Insight magazine, Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights CEO Joumanah El Matrah shared with Insight Editor Kellee Nolan her views on the power of advocacy, and describes some of the inner strengths and strategies that can help advocates persist in the pursuit of a fair and just society.
Read MoreA series of federal budget cuts to community legal centres has put the viability of many services at risk. Yet the government maintains it has increased funding to the sector. Darren Lewin-Hill, Communications Manager at the Federation of Community Legal Centres, runs the numbers on just how big a funding shortfall the sector faces.
Read MoreJames Lloyd’s recent post on the LSE Impact Blog “Should academics be expected to change policy? Six reasons why it is unrealistic for research to drive policy change” has been raising eyebrows in research and policy circles. Lloyd’s basic claim is that it is neither realistic nor desirable to expect academics to achieve policy impact. Bold, but should we take his position as correct? Luke Craven, Chris Neff, and Paul Smyth investigate.
Read MoreToday’s post examines women in the policy process and how gender can influence their agency, by examining the case study of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This article first appeared in the Canberra Times on 1 June 2016.
Read MoreAt 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.”
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