SERIES: Freedom, opportunity and security
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Terry Flew. Regulating Convergent Media: An Ongoing Policy Challenge.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. In the 2013 Federal election, neither of Australia’s major political parties took forward a detailed media policy. This was surprising as one of the main features of the Gillard and Rudd Labor governments was significant attention being given to reviews of media Continue reading »
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Peter Hughes, Arja Keski-Nummi, John Menadue. Part 3: Settlement Policy and Services.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and JohnMenadue. 3.1 Overview The migration process starts in earnest after a visa is given to a migrant. Its success or otherwise is determined after the person arrives in Australia and becomes part of the workforce and community. Australia, along with the other great traditional Continue reading »
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Peter Hughes, Arja Keski-Nummi and John Menadue. Part 2. Refugee Policy.
Policy Series Part 2: Refugee Policy 2.1 Overview The current and future global environment for irregular migration is extremely challenging. Many more people are on the move globally to gain protection from persecution, security from conflict or greater economic opportunity – or a mixture of these things. The movement of people is being accelerated Continue reading »
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Kim Williams. Creative Arts Policy Formulation
Policy Series I have been giving presentations recently in which I have exhorted the creative community to accept responsibility for: – Writing refreshed meaningful arts policies for federal political parties to inform a renewed approach for support and activity; Forming renewed priorities and objectives for national arts training and other tertiary institutions which address evident Continue reading »
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Julianne Schultz. Comparative advantage. Culture, citizenship and soft power
Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. IT’S TIME TO think much more seriously about culture. For years we bought the Clinton truism, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’, but this simple binary no longer provides sufficient guidance for the future. Self-evidently, a successful society must have a robust and innovative Continue reading »
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Peter Hughes, Arja Keski-Nummi and John Menadue. Part 1. Immigration Policy and Administration.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Overview This paper sets out a broad design for Australia’s immigration, refugee and settlement policies for the coming decades. The issues are covered in three parts: Immigration Policy and Administration Refugee Policy Migrant Settlement and Citizenship Policy Part 1: Immigration Policy and Continue reading »
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Michael Keating, Luke Fraser. Infrastructure: Improvement or Impoverishment?
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. To paraphrase Paul Keating, right now every galah in the pet shop seems to favour more infrastructure spending. The current Prime Minister wants ‘to be remembered as a Prime Minister who built the roads of the 21st century’. The business community is Continue reading »
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Andrew Podger. A fair, effective and sustainable retirement incomes system.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. In his introduction to this series, Ken Henry said he could not recall a poorer quality debate, on almost any issue, than what we have had in Australia in recent times. Ian Marsh, in his contribution, advocated pursuing bi(multi)partisanship opportunities as far Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Improving Productivity.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. After more than seventy years of ever increasing living standards Australians have come to expect further such increases as their right. But these increasing living standards are for the most part dependent on increases in productivity. So as Nobel Prize winner, Paul Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Improving Employment Participation
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. The rate of employment participation and the productivity of those employees together determine the average per capita incomes of Australians, and therefore our living standards. In addition, being employed creates many of the social contacts and sense of self-esteem that are vital Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Future of Federalism
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Six months ago Tony Abbott announced that he wanted to ‘create a more rational system of government for the nation that we have undoubtedly have become’. A worth aspiration, but what does it mean in reality? Fundamentally there are two contending doctrines Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Making the Federation work better.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. State governments spend about 25% of their budgets on health and another 25% on education. A cooperative arrangement between the commonwealth and state governments in one of these areas would greatly improve the operation of our federation. This article will focus on Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Taxation Reform
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great American jurist, is reputed to have said, ‘I like to pay taxes. In this way I buy civilisation.’ However, in contrast to Holmes’ noble ideal, too often today we hear people railing about the burden of taxation, Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Fixing the Budget – Part 2
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. The previous article on fixing the Budget concluded that the Government’s plan to balance the Budget by 2019-20 was not really credible. It relies too much on unsustainable increases in taxation as a result of bracket creep, and too many of the Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Fixing the Budget – Part 1
Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. According to the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, the ‘timetable back to a budget surplus is unchanged from last year’. Furthermore, the Government is asking us to believe that unlike the savage and unfair spending cuts in last year’s budget, now it can all Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Role of government
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Australia to the 1980s – Government at the commanding heights For almost 200 years, from 1788 to the early 1980s, governments held the commanding heights of the Australian landscape. The Australia in which I came of age, the Australia of the 1950s Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The Role and Responsibilities of Government.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Different possible conceptions of the responsibilities and roles of government are an important backdrop to the policies that will be examined later in this series of articles. The purpose of the present article is to show that despite the ideological debate between Continue reading »
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Stuart Harris. What Australia’s Foreign Policy Should Look Like
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. The focus in Australia’s foreign policy has shifted back and forth between the global and the regional, and between multilateralism and bilateralism in economic and political relationships, due only in part to party political differences. While some policies, such as immigration, refugees Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Role of government . The importance of values.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Good government must be based on some broadly shared values that inspire and enthuse us. We can accept that our leaders must make some compromises from time to time, but we need to know ‘what they stand for’. We look for leaders Continue reading »
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Cavan Hogue. Australian Foreign Policy
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue Summary. Australian Foreign Policy is dominated by fear, defence issues, the American Alliance and the search for votes in marginal electorates. We talk about the importance of Asia but instinctively cleave to Europe and North America who are said to share our Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Foreign Policy. An Independent Australian Foreign Policy
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Summary: For fifty years, since Australia entered the war in Vietnam in 1965, Australian foreign policy has been made increasingly subservient to a specific concept of Australia’s relationship with the United States. That concept, first enunciated by Prime Minister Menzies in 1955, Continue reading »
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John McCarthy. Foreign Policy. Australia, the United States and Asia.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy Series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue In a conversation in October last year with two British foreign correspondents and a former Japanese Prime Ministerial foreign policy adviser, the subject turned to the United States. All three interlocutors argued that in recent years Australia had superseded both Japan and Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Democratic Renewal and our loss of trust in institutions
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue We speak often about the need for new ideas and policies to fill the void in the public debate. We will be examining these issues in this series Fairness, Opportunity and Security. But I think there is a prior problem. We need Continue reading »
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Ian Marsh. Part 2. Democratic Renewal: policy-making practice.
Fairness, Opportunity, Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. In Part 1, I pointed out that the Westminster style two-party system is in trouble. Part 2. Implications for Policy Making Practice. At least four implications would seem to follow from the above analysis. The first concerns the need to create systemic capacities Continue reading »
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Stephen FitzGerald. Security in the region.
Fairness, Opportunity and Security. A policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Paul Keating and Gareth Evans used to claim, with justification, that by the mid-1990s Australia had become ‘the odd man in’ in Asia. This was in significant part because of the headway they’d made in Southeast Asia, with ASEAN countries, in Continue reading »
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Ian Marsh. Part 1. Democratic Renewal: towards a post-majoritarian policy making structure?
Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. Whoever wins the next election, the challenge of dealing with a hung Senate will almost certainly loom large. Perhaps also a hung House of Representatives. Malcolm Turnbull tells us that the appropriate response is a compelling narrative delivered with conviction and resolve Continue reading »
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Ken Henry. Fairness, opportunity and security.
The policy series ‘Fairness, opportunity and security’ begins on Monday May 11. ‘I can’t recall a poorer quality public debate, on almost any issue, than what we have had in Australia in recent times.’ Ken Henry In December 1983 the $A was floated and restrictions on the free international movement of capital were abolished. On Continue reading »
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LAUNCHING NEXT MONDAY. 11 May 2015. Policy Series
Fairness, Opportunity and Security A Policy Series to fill the policy vacuum. Edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue. On May 11 in this blog- Pearls and Irritations– we will begin a series of articles on important policy issues. There will be over forty articles on sixteen policy areas from over thirty contributors. The series Continue reading »
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COMING SOON. A policy series to fill the policy vacuum.
COMING SOON. 11 May 2015 Fairness, Opportunity, Security. A Policy Series to fill the policy vacuum. Edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue There is growing public disquiet. The government and the opposition keep playing the political and personal game at the expense of informed public discussion of important policy issues. As a community we Continue reading »
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COMING SOON – Mike Keating and John Menadue (joint editors). POLICY SERIES
Mike Keating and John Menadue (joint editors) Fairness, Opportunity and Security -filling the policy vacuum There is a growing public disquiet that both the government and the opposition keep playing the political and personal game at the expense of informed public discussion of important policy issues. As a community we have become concerned about the Continue reading »