Well-being, health and the Productivity Roundtable
In June 2025 I wrote about the National Well-being Budget and Measuring What Matters. Since then, a lot has happened that deserves attention, particularly with the government’s planned Productivity Roundtable in August.
Recent articles in Health
9 August 2025
How we at Physicians for Human Rights Israel decided that the Gaza war is a genocide
When examining all the factors together, we identify a clear pattern that indicates Israeli intent to kill Palestinians in Gaza. The systematic nature is the smoking gun.
9 August 2025
Digital screen use by infants and toddlers risks long-term health and education outcomes
Greater public health awareness of the harms of digital screen use is needed to reclaim parents as their first and irreplaceable teacher.
9 August 2025
Trump and Kennedy are destroying global science. Even Einstein questioned facts – but there’s a method to it
Eight months into Donald Trump’s second term as president of the US, truth and science are again under attack – with global consequences.
8 August 2025
Call for national action to prevent 'torture' or death of incarcerated First Nations children
Paediatricians in the Northern Territory see the dire effects of entrenched structural racism on Aboriginal children on a daily basis.
3 August 2025
Is ChatGPT making us stupid?
Back in 2008, The Atlantic sparked controversy with a provocative cover story: Is Google Making Us Stupid?
2 August 2025
Australian media persists with a misguided and tragically ineffectual strategy – the way to prevent suicide is not to talk about it
Statistics are cold-hearted methods to gauge the success of suicide prevention strategies, yet they are the only tool available to measure the number of Australians who take their lives each year.
31 July 2025
The productivity paradox
A century ago, industrialists measured economic virility by tonnes of coal hewn per shift. Today, Canberra’s spreadsheets obsess over “GDP per hour worked”.
29 July 2025
'Everything beautiful in their lives is gone': US physicians read aloud the searing testimony of desperate doctors and patients in Gaza
“I have a cold. And in one hour, I’ll have finished a 24-hour shift, heartbroken again. I lost a cardiac patient because we had no medication.
27 July 2025
The disgrace of deliberate starvation: Israel's war of hunger in Gaza
Israel's plan for the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip is proceeding apace, maybe even better than expected. In addition to significant achievements in systematic killing and destruction already chalked up, the last few days have seen one more critical achievement: the deliberate starvation has started to yield results.
23 July 2025
Vale John Deeble - an architect of Medicare
Following John Menadue's refection on 50 years of Medicare this week, many have raised the contribution of John Deeble. Below is an edited version of a 2018 tribute to the man without whom the scheme would not have been possible.
23 July 2025
Effective philanthropy: A model partnership
Effective philanthropy is hard to achieve. It’s difficult to access money for a worthy cause but also difficult to give money away effectively with impact.
22 July 2025
Failures in privatised care starkly illustrate the inevitable failure of neoliberalism
The failures of privatised child care and aged care have starkly illustrated the inability of markets to deliver quality service. The failure applies to all human services.
