We need to address questions of gender in assisted dying

This week the Victorian Upper House will debate - and possibly pass - the Assisted Dying Bill. This legislation is extremely emotive, and emotions have been at the heart of the discussion in the wake of the protracted and painful deaths of family members experienced by MP Jill Hennessy and Premier Dan Andrews. However, it is critical to ensure adequate public debate on this issue prior to its passage precisely because it is emotive. The medical community itself is divided on this topic, with the Australian Midwifery & Nursing Federation supporting it, while the Australian Medical Association and Palliative Care Australia are both opposed.

The merits of a policy must be considered, not in the light of those who have high levels of personal agency, but in terms of how it will affect those in the margins. As always, the Women's Policy Action Tank is interested in how policies may impact differently on women compared to men. Today's analysis, by Rachel Wong and originally appearing in The Conversation, provides a gender analysis on the Assisted Dying Bill.

Why don't more people register as organ donors - are we missing something?

In today’s post, Dr Emma Tinning, outlines some of her findings from her recent PhD on organ donor registration. Emma explores whether a change in framing the act of organ donation from a “heroic” act to a collective act would help address Australia’s low rate of donor registration through the current opt in policy.

Policy and governance, IssuesPower to Persuade30 October 2017

Taking Stalking Seriously

Stalking as a phenomenon has been noted in human behaviour for well over a century. References to obsessive behaviour and the need to retain intimacy with another person can be seen in the writing of Victorian author, Louise May Alcott, who wrote Little Women. In her novel, A Long Fatal Love Chase, a woman is chased across the seas for years by her estranged husband, until he mistakenly kills her whilst trying to murder her new partner. Holding her dead body in his arms, the ‘stalker’ then kills himself and as he does so he says “Mine first - mine last – mine even in the grave!” This obsession to the point of murder is not a sensational, fictitious idea but a behaviour which is worryingly still prevalent within our society in 2017. In this blog post Victoria Charleston, Policy Officer at Suzy Lamplugh Trust explores stalking and potential implications for policy.

Refugee women on Nauru: The gendered effects of Australia's asylum seeker detention policies

Perhaps nobody is more deplorably served by Australian policy than asylum seekers. In today's post, Azadeh Dastyari ( @azdastyari ) of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, explains how women held in detention in Nauru face very specific physical and mental harm due to their gender. This blog first appeared on Themis Says: The Blog of the Feminist Legal Studies Group at Monash ( @feminist_law ). NOTE: This blog post contains references to sexual and physical assault that may be distressing to some readers.

Nicholas Gruen: The academy and partners try wellbeing frameworks

Economist Nicholas Gruen looks at problems with various attempts to measure wellbeing and the struggle to get from noble principles to practical outcomes. This is a repost from the Mandarin of a part three of Nicholas Gruen’s essay series about the difficulty of translating policy into outcomes. Read part one, on wellbeing frameworks, and part two on commonsense hacks government could use to bolster Australians’ wellbeing.

Preventing online sexual abuse: understanding the problem as a first step to informing prevention

While it is widely acknowledged that the Internet has many positive aspects, it may be used by some individuals to engage in illegal behaviour. Durkin (1997) suggested four different ways in which the Internet may be misused by individuals who have a sexual interest in children: (a) exchanging child sexual abuse material; (b) identifying potential victims for sexual abuse in the physical world; (c) engaging in inappropriate sexual communication; and (d) corresponding with like-minded individuals. The ‘engagement in appropriate sexual communication’ involves offenders accessing Internet communication platforms (ICPs) to approach children and initiate conversations with them, which may develop into interactions in which offenders incite them to engage in sexually explicit talk and/or activities. As part of such interactions, offenders may request sexual images and exposure via webcam. This is commonly referred to as ‘online sexual grooming’. The following blog post explores the cutting edge research of Dr Juliane Kloess at the University of Birmingham, and looks at what we know about offenders, and what can be done to support young people around awareness of the risks of online abuse.

Creating using evidence, IssuesPower to Persuade23 October 2017crime, young people, policy making

Advocacy and changemaking: reflections from the Women’s Policy Forum

As part of the recently-held Women's Policy Forum, Jesuit Social Services CEO Julie Edwards and GetUp!'s Human Rights Campaign Director Shen Narayanasamy engaged in a conversation that explored the intersection between policy change and campaigning. Jesuit Social Services’ Policy and Advocacy volunteer Jemima Hoffman recaps the presentation, in a blog that originally appeared on the Jesuit Social Services website.

Workers wanted, no hardhats required

Australia is set for massive growth in the number of jobs in health and social assistance over the coming years, but there are big risks including qualification silos, the undermining of our TAFE system, inadequate pay and career pathways, and a lack of diversity.

In the post below, David Hayward, Director of the Future Social Service Institute, looks at the challenges and opportunities and concludes that it’s time we started attracting more people to the social service industry, training the workforce to have the skills required to properly meet people’s needs, and developing new professions and careers.

Power to Persuade20 October 2017

Parents Vexed? ParentsNext is poorly designed to support mothers into work

The Federal Government is expanding its pilot of ParentsNext, a compliance-based program to assist young parents – mostly mothers – to become employment-ready. While in principle a program of this type is most welcome, the quiet way in which the Department of Employment is rolling this out and its lack of a strong evidence base is concerning.

In the context of Anti-Poverty Week this, it is critical to ask whether these types of policies are actually creating greater vulnerability to poverty, rather than supporting people out of it.

In this blog, Juanita McLaren (@defrostedlady) and Policy Whisperer Susan Maury (@SusanMaury), both of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, summarise some of the points contained in their submission on this program.

Restorative justice: Can short-term politics align with long-term juvenile justice policy?

David Moore is President of the Victorian Association for Restorative Justice.

In the article below he looks at the impact of 'tough on crime' approaches to youth justice in Australia and how restorative justice – "not some warm-hearted-but-soft-headed notion" – offers to resolve the apparent conflicts between short-term politics and long-term policy in youth justice.

The article looks particularly at the Victorian justice system in recent years, where more punitive policies have sparked a spiral of issues for individuals and the system, and also where restorative models are offering real hope.

Power to Persuade18 October 2017

How & why do we treat tax evasion & welfare fraud differently?

In both Australia and New Zealand, policy settings treat welfare fraud as more serious than tax evasion, prompting the assumption that this reflects community views.

Not so, reports New Zealand Taxation Professor Lisa Marriott in the post below, which wraps the findings of her work published in this edition of the Journal of Australian Tax.

Power to Persuade16 October 2017

Anti-Poverty Week 2017: Making history at the ACOSS Congress?

At the height of the neoliberal period in Australia, Anti-Poverty week was always a somewhat dismal reminder of the absence of any serious political agenda on the subject. But are people listening now? And are the moving beyond listening to action? In this post, Whisperer Paul Smyth tackles these questions and more.

Social Policy Whisperer, IssuesPower to Persuade12 October 2017professor paul smyth, Disadvantage

Ecosystem services: it’s not all about the dollars

Nature is essential to our wellbeing. There are multiple layers of complexity and nuance to the interactions between humans and their environment, which are often referred to as ecosystem services. In this post, Manu Saunders discusses how the concept has much greater potential for improving human wellbeing and promoting nature conservation than it is often given credit for. This post was originally posted on Remember the Wild, and is republished here with permission.

IssuesPower to Persuade10 October 2017environment

How do we design effective individual funding systems for people with disability?

A key component of the NDIS is the provision of individualised funding to people with disability, who should then have greater choice and control over how this is spent. While this sounds good in theory a new paper by Associate Professor Helen Dickinson, published in ANZSOG’s Evidence Base journal, raises doubts about the quality of the evidence in favour of individualised funding. In this post, Helen discusses the key findings of her review. This piece originally appeared on the ANZSOG blog.

IssuesPower to Persuade9 October 2017disability, NDIS

Paul Cairney's 5-step strategy to make evidence count

Dr. Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Stirling in the UK and he has a message for us about how to make our evidence count. Paul is the author of The Politics of Evidence Based Policy Making (2016), which has already achieved cult status for politics enthusiasts worldwide. Read some of his insights in this week's blog post, originally posted on Paul's own blog.

Advocacy, Policy and governancePower to Persuade4 October 2017evidence-based policy

What needs to be heard about disability and the way in which to say it: A Mash-Up

Today, Jasmine Ozge, a PhD candidate at RMIT living with disability, discusses the conjectural nature of disability, why disability is a strength, and the benefits of an inclusive society.

AdvocacyPower to Persuade29 September 2017disability

Disability Rights, the NDIS and the Need for Law Reform

Today’s post explains tensions between the National Disability Insurance Scheme - a system that aims to facilitate choice and control for people with disability - and the socio-legal conception of disability that perceives people with disability as legitimate subjects of coercive medical intervention. Noting that competing notions of political rights, autonomy, agency, and the role of the state often play out in the form of social policy reform, the author argues that the creation of the NDIS could be a starting point for new claims and calls for legislative activity in the area of disability law. The post is published under a pseudonym at the author’s request.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade28 September 2017Disability, NDIS, Law

Why the new treaty banning nuclear weapons is important and how it can be used – Part 2

On 20 September 2017, an historic and legally-binding treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons opened for signature at United Nations Headquarters in New York. In a post published here on 28 July, Associate Professor Tilman Ruff - the founding chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) – described how the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came about and what’s in it. Today, Associate Professor Ruff describes the challenge ahead for governments and civil society in promoting and implementing the Treaty.

IssuesPower to Persuade27 September 2017United Nations, nuclear weapons

Bumping into barriers on the way to social inclusion with the NDIS

Bars, gyms, the homes of friends and all the places that community life happens; it’s no secret they are often inaccessible for people with disabilities. The NDIS funds individual packages and community linkages to reduce this social exclusion. Jen Hargrave from Women with Disabilities Victoria says the fledgling scheme may need external architecture to increase social inclusion.

Advocacy, Policy and governancePower to Persuade26 September 2017ndis, health, Disability

How do we ignite young people to work in the disability sector?

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.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade25 September 2017employment, Disability, ndis

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