Achieving health equity in Australia
The recently launched World Report on the Social Determinants of Health Equity, by the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2025), paints a stark picture of the differences in ill-health, poor well-being, disease and mortality within and between countries, that arise from unfair and avoidable social conditions.
Recent articles in Policy
5 July 2025
Flood management: Science, technology and people’s responses
To reduce the risks posed by floods requires both scientific input and appropriate community reaction. It is not always clear that both are in evidence.
5 July 2025
The magic of the mandate: Now you see it, now you don’t
In 2003, then prime minister John Howard committed Australia to the US-led invasion of Iraq.
3 July 2025
India’s state and central governments still aren’t speaking the same language
The first rule of discussing language policy in India is to leave any expectations of a calm conversation at the door.
2 July 2025
Will the 'Mr Magoo Nation' stand up against 'Trumpist' geopolitics?
In the June 7-8 issue of The Australian Greg Sheridan railed against the ‘’crushing waves of [Chinese] military threat” and satirised the Albanese Government’s “pathological passivity” as reminiscent of Peter Seller’s quietly subversive Chauncey Gardner.
1 July 2025
Switching from a failed vape and tobacco policy to a successful one
Australia’s health policy in relation to vapes is in disarray. Yet this deeply flawed approach is currently supported by all state, federal and territory governments.
1 July 2025
Labor’s Left majority: A defining moment
The May 2025 election delivered something quietly historic. For the first time since the 1970s, the Labor Left faction holds a majority in caucus.
27 June 2025
Australian foreign policy is in the doldrums
Opinion polls indicate Australians are at last waking up to the fact that their country’s security reliance on Trump’s US is no longer tenable.
25 June 2025
Faster than forecast, accelerated warming creates a climate time-bomb for the Albanese government
The physical reality of accelerating climate heating and faster-than-forecast impacts have mugged climate policymaking, which now needs to be rebuilt with up-to-date scientific observations and understandings, and a risk-management approach that gives particular attention to the most-damaging, plausible high-end scenarios.
24 June 2025
Regime change and blowback in Iran
According to US political scientist Chalmers Johnson, in the 1950s the CIA coined the term “blowback” to refer to “the unintended and unexpected negative consequences of covert special operations that have been kept secret from the American people and, in most cases, from their elected representatives.
21 June 2025
IDF actions in Gaza directly contradict Jewish ethical tradition
The Israeli response to the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023 has been massive and all-encompassing.
20 June 2025
The FICAC Commission of Inquiry fiasco in Fiji
What started out as a trivial story barely worthy of public attention has grown into a full-blown crisis for the Sitiveni Rabuka-led government in Fiji.
18 June 2025
Addressing our wicked problems
If there is one thing that the literature agrees on it is that wicked problems …are particularly challenging as they transcend the borders of traditional policy domains, involve a wide variety of actors across different scale levels and resist our attempts to solve them.
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