Reading between the lines: How women fare in the Liberal budget documents

In the run-up to the federal election, it behoves one to consider how major party platforms will impact on quality of life – both immediate changes and those that are felt over many years. Since the scrapping of the women’s budget, the National Foundation for Australian Women (@NFAWomen) have mustered a team of academics, policy and content specialists who volunteer their time to provide approximately 40 separate policy analyses on proposed budget measures and election platforms. In today’s post, a summary of major themes drawn from the Liberal Party’s budget documents is provided, covering revenue, climate change and health, housing, social services, education and training, employment, health, violence against women and children, energy, infrastructure and international aid. Following each summary statement, links are provided to the specific analyses that are included.

The NFAW also conveniently provides summary information for differing cohorts of women, including young women, older women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, Migrant and refugee women, and Women with disabilities. Further, there is an analysis of the machineries of government – how women are included or excluded within the policy process itself.

As election announcements are made by the Liberals, Labor and the Greens, the specific analysis papers will be updated.

Womens Policy Action TankWomen's Policy Action Tank3 May 2019Election, Gender Inequity

The complex intersection between aid facilities and aid effectiveness

Are Australia’s aid facilities part of a “cartel of good intentions?” The Crawford School of Public Policy’s Stephen Howes unpacks the complex problem of aid facilities and their impacts on aid effectiveness.

Issues, Service DeliveryPower to Persuade3 May 2019international aid and development

We need tomorrow’s teachers today

Is Australia’s education system adequately developing our children for the jobs of the future? Incept Labs’ Dr Robert Kay argues that under the current system, our children will not prepared for the next wave of workforce changes that the World Economic Forum’s Professor Klaus Schwab has dubbed the ‘fourth industrial revolution.’ His solution? Education 3.0 and a new mindset for the teachers of tomorrow.

Issues, Policy and governancePower to Persuade2 May 2019education, future

Time to work and time to care: Policy levers to enable gender equality

It can be argued that time is the crucial element in securing gender equality. Women work longer hours than men, but most of these hours are unpaid. Meanwhile, men spend increasingly long hours at work, resulting in promotions and pay rises unrelated to productivity or competence. In today’s federal election series, Sara Charlesworth of RMIT (@RMITCPOW) shares an overview of the Australian Work + Family Roundtable’s election benchmarks, which provides an evidence-based framework for addressing the root causes of inequalities.

Why government agencies forget

Scholars have, for decades, suggested that organisational amnesia can negatively impact the effectiveness of government agencies. So why do they forget? Maria Katsonis has summarised the findings of Alastair Stark (University of Queensland) for why public institutions may be unable - or unwilling - to access and/or use past experiences to help deliver better public outcomes.

Too many Australians miss out on timely dental care

Grattan Institute’s Stephen Duckett and Matt Cowgill unpack a glaring gap in Australia’s public health system: universal access to dental care.

A guide to setting up a What Works evidence centre and surmounting its challenges

The use of evidence in public policy decision-making is not new, though fully embedding the practice across the public sector has been challenging. On the eve of a trip to Australia to share the learnings from the UK What Works centres with interested government and philanthropic audiences, Jonathan Breckon (Director of The Alliance for Useful Evidence) joined with Dr Robyn Mildon (Executive Director of The Centre for Evidence and Implementation) to outline some common issues for anybody setting up a new evidence centre – and ideas on how to surmount them.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade30 April 2019evidence-based policy

Shrinking middle class threatening social stability, warns OECD

The concept of the ‘middle class squeeze’ has been around for more than a decade, with the term dating back to November 2006, when US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi used it to provide context to the domestic agenda of the U.S. Democratic Party. This issue has yet to subside, with a recent report from the OECD noting that middle incomes have grown less than the average in many OECD countries, and in some they have not grown at all. The Mandarin’s David Donaldson explains how this trend affects Australia’s middle class, and outlines OECD’s recommendations for how governments can act to support this shrinking group.

Finance and economics, Policy and governancePower to Persuade30 April 2019Equity, tax reform

Child support and the F word

Poverty in Australia appears to be entrenched for many marginalised groups, and this is a concern which is regularly raised in the lead-up to the Federal election – is Australia “fair”? However, one policy area on which there is resounding silence is child support. In today’s federal election series, Kris Natalier (@KrisNatalier) of Flinders University and Terese Edwards (@Terese_NCSMC) of the National Council for Single Mothers and their Children argue that child support reform is urgently needed to reduce poverty levels and improve financial and psychological wellbeing for some of Australia’s most disadvantaged families.

Public schools actually outperform private schools, and with less money

Public funding of private schools has been a contentious issue in Australia. While those in favour of private schools receiving government funding sometimes claim that students studying in private institutions receive better education outcomes, analysis from Southern Cross University‘s David Zyngier and Monash University’s Pennie White seems to disagree.

‘More care’ isn’t the mental health answer: Medicare needs to move beyond fee-for-service to drive real change

Despite high associated costs, Australia’s Better Access Program is unable to provide adequate support to those struggling with mental health issues, especially in the long-run, Sebastian Rosenberg writes.

Issues, Service DeliveryPower to Persuade29 April 2019mental health, service models

From the United Nations to the classroom: where is Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Australia?

The University of Queensland’s Romy Listo reports on the United Nations 63rd Commission on the Status of Women held 11-23 March in New York. She draws attention to the commitment on Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) which is supported by Australian delegates. Despite support for these commitments by the Federal Government, in practice the actual implementation of CSE by Australian states and territories does not meet the inclusive and expansive ideals being championed. Investment and strategies are needed to bring the right to CSE into Australian classrooms.

AdvocacyPower to Persuade26 April 2019gender, Policy making, education, government

Policy talks while the elephants walk! Time for the academy to employ and promote more scholars with disability

Advocacy, IssuesPower to Persuade26 April 2019representation, Research, disability, discrimination, universities

Using cognitive science research to redesign policy decision making systems

Climate change is back on the political agenda and public support for action on climate change is at its highest level since 2007. But can we expect our political institutions to be able to respond in the time and scale needed given their past failures? Rather than merely policy reform do we need to reform the system of government itself? In today’s post Celia Green and Andrew Joyce discuss how cognitive science research could be used in the redesign of our political institutions to enable better decision making processes.

Caught up in CDP’s punitive web: what remote women have to win (or lose) on May 18

Few Australians experience more pain from government policy than Indigenous populations, and too often it is Indigenous women who bear the brunt. In today’s federal election piece, Zoe Staines (@Zoettes) of The University of Queensland places a gender lens over the troubling Welfare to Work remote community incarnation known as the Community Development Programme, and explains how it differentially disadvantages women.

Different problems, same solutions: Using a social determinants of health approach to work cross-disciplinary and cross-sectorally

Bridging the evidence-policy gap is a recognised challenge for researchers and policy makers alike. In today’s blog post Hannah Badland, a Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, talks about the value of inter-sectoral partnerships to solve complex problems. Using the example of a new global framework, The New Urban Agenda, she discusses how agendas that draw on cross-sectoral collaborations can help advance policy action in complex policy areas such as the social determinants of health.

How the Sustainable Development Goals can help change the way we evaluate Federal Budgets and election platforms

Election season is on us again, and Twitter feeds and daily news updates are full of potential elected leaders making policy promises and giving warnings about how the opposing parties won’t be able to bring us the Australia we need.

But how do we know what the Australia we need is? Depending on political leaning and personal values, this is going to vary from voter to voter. But when deciding on which policies to support, it can be useful to try and have a framework by which to evaluate platforms and the societies they are wishing to create. Megan Weier suggests that, if we want an Australia in which there is a ‘fair go for all’ (the classic Australian dream), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a useful benchmark to look to.

Let’s be brave about the little things

In today’s post, Professor Catherine Needham argues that low tolerance for public servants to test new ways of working is hampering meaningful change in the way government works with citizens. This post was originally published on the 21st Century Public Servant blog.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade17 April 2019accountability, government

Seen but not heard? Older women want to be consulted in the policy space

As the portion of Australia’s older population continues to grow, there is increasing focus in policy on issues pertaining to ageing, demonstrated most recently in the Liberal Budget papers. However, much of these policies appear to be designed with little input from those who are struggling most to age well – older women. In today’s election series piece, co-authors Susan Feldman and Harriet Radermacher provide a summary of their recently-published research in which they heard from older women in the greater Melbourne area on issues of importance to them.

Womens Policy Action TankWomen's Policy Action Tank16 April 2019Election, ageing, aged policy

Planetary health and the philanthrocapitalist paradox

Issues, Finance and economicsPower to Persuade15 April 2019environment, Population health, philanthropy