The attraction, retention, well-being and quality of outcomes for international students have become major policy and political issues in Australia and in many of the students’ countries of origin. In Australia the perceived range of environmental and social impacts of a rapidly growing international student presence has stimulated public attention. The economic contribution of international […]
This paper is a report of a workshop held on 31 March 2010. Public policy does not stand still, and a dynamic area such as this has continual policy adjustments and program changes. At the end of this paper is a list which refers readers to government responses and some of the policy work currently […]
Environmental regulation has had a chequered path since the birth of the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the enactment of the Victorian Environment Protection Act in the same year, and the launch of the first European environmental policy in 1972. Today, over two decades of neo-liberalism has ensured that regulation is no longer centre […]
Public hospitals and their performance was the major health issue in the 2007 national election. The now Prime Minister, as Opposition leader, announced that he would develop a national reform plan ‘designed to eliminate duplication and overlap between the States and the Commonwealth’ and ‘to move beyond the blame game’.1 He also stated his intention […]
Occasional Paper 2010: CS#5
This is the fifth in a series of essays based on data from the 2006 census, produced in cooperation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics. For over 20 years, the popular press has been trumpeting the pending and imminent disaster that is ‘the ageing of the Australian population’. We are told that our hospitals are […]
This is the fourth in a series of essays based on data from the 2006 census, produced in cooperation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Since the 1960s we have experienced major changes in the way people live and the way in which they build their families and households. Adults are marrying and having children […]
Occasional Paper 2008/5: CS#3
This is the third in a series of essays based on data from the 2006 Census, produced in cooperation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australian society is changing in response to social, economic, demographic and policy processes that affect all dimensions of life, including housing. These changes raise important questions about how Australians see […]
This is the first in a series of essays based on data from the 2006 Census, produced in cooperation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics. One of the ten working groups assembled at the Federal Government’s 2020 Summit held in Canberra in April 2008 to discuss ideas for Australia’s future was that brought together under […]
As part of the Australian Government’s Skilling Australia for the Future policy, an independent statutory body, Skills Australia, was established to provide advice on current and future demand for skills and investment in training. In September 2008, Skills Australia joined with the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia to sponsor a half-day seminar with […]
This is the second in a series of essays based on data from the 2006 Census, produced in cooperation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The continuance of substantial diversity between the lives of Indigenous and non- Indigenous Australians is manifest within data from the 2006 Census. The national picture is one of difference across […]
The issue of public service responsiveness to ministers has been described as a ‘hardy perennial’ of public service ethics. Too much responsiveness implies a public service that has become compliant to the point of subordinating its professional integrity to the political needs of ministers. Too little, implies a public service that ignores its duty to […]
Australian economic growth has been strong for almost fifteen years. With a more flexible economy as a result of reforms and good macro-economic management settings, prognostications are that this situation can continue. This will be subject to continuing strong overseas demand and sustained buyer confidence in the face of the late 2007 and early 2008 […]
Forty years ago, when I stepped off the aircraft which had brought me back from a year of war in Vietnam, I had the beginnings of an anxiety which has grown more acute since. My worry, in a nutshell, was that the United States for all its wealth and military power, did not know how […]
The four propositions I have outlined do not translate easily into the language of international law; the democracy-building industry may indeed show up the limitations of the discipline. But they point to major challenges. In the West, we have a tendency to believe that democracy and justice are inherently virtuous concepts; that they have a […]
Learning to read is not easy, and a substantial number of children struggle to do it. Children who read substantially less well than most children of their age may be referred to as exhibiting ‘specific learning difficulties’ or ‘specific reading impairment’ or ‘developmental dyslexia’ (‘dyslexia’ for short). These different terms are typically used interchangeably. Learning […]
As this paper goes to press, Australia’s industrial relations system stands on the brink of a major overhaul, an ‘industrial revolution’ in the words of the Sydney Morning Herald. The Howard government’s control of the Senate from July 2005 is leading to sweeping changes in the legislative framework governing industrial relations in Australia, both at […]
It is a great privilege to deliver this year’s Cunningham Lecture to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, on a subject more challenging than ever: the dynamics within our system of governance. As I wrote this Lecture I reflected that it is 30 years ago this week that we witnessed the Dismissal – […]
The subject of leadership can be approached in many different ways. How we approach leadership – who and what we choose to study, the activities and events we attempt to analyse, and the conceptual frameworks we use to understand leadership – determines what we see and therefore what is concluded. Who is a leader? How […]
There was a time, in the first half of the twentieth century, when the earth’s climate was regarded as pretty well known and well understood and all that remained for the science of climatology was to build up the length of the record and fill in the remaining geographic detail. Over the past fifty years, […]