Public Policy
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BRUCE THOM. Keeping the Murray mouth open
Maintaining an open mouth of the Murray River in South Australia was a key objective of the Murray Darling Basin Plan (MDBP). The Basin Plan was established by the Australian Government to address the chronic over-allocation of water for irrigation and other purposes. One aim of the MDBP was to recover more water for the Continue reading »
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MICHAEL LAMBERT. The Productivity Commission on Improving Productivity and Health Reform PART 2 OF 2.
In part 1 yesterday, I outlined the five key areas or themes where the Productivity Commission believes that reform is essential and would deliver major benefits to individuals, the community and the economy. These five themes are summarised below. Continue reading »
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DAVID WATTERS AND COLLEAGUES. An open letter to the Australian Parliament regarding the health of asylum seekers and refugees on Manus Island
(The following letter appeared in the MJA Insight on 27 November 2017) WE are senior Australian clinicians who write in our individual capacity to express our concerns about the ongoing health and well-being of the former detainees still based on Manus Island and now in alternative accommodation. They, like all human beings, have a universal Continue reading »
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MICHAEL LAMBERT: The Productivity Commission on Improving Productivity and Health Reform. Part 1 of 2.
The Productivity Commission (hereafter the Commission) has recently released a very substantial and potentially important report, Shifting the Dial, and associated supporting papers. It was produced in response to a reference from the Treasurer for the Commission to investigate the state of productivity improvement and ways that government can enhance productivity performance. This is to Continue reading »
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BENJAMIN VENESS. NSW commits to improving health of doctors-in-training
NSW has finally committed to addressing systemic problems with medical training in a bid to improve the mental health of doctors-in-training. Continue reading »
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Myanmar Is Not a Simple Morality Tale
In this article published in the New York Times on November 25, 2017, Roger Cohen writes about the dilemma of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. He comments ‘The West made a saint of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The Rohingya crisis revealed a politician.’ Continue reading »
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LYN GILBERT. Healthcare-associated infections are important and often avoidable.
Hospital, where you go to get better, can have the opposite effect and high on the list of hazards is infection acquired while there. Progress has occurred but more needs to be done. IT opens up great possibilities for scaling mountains of data that could improve patient welfare and save wasted money. Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. Humanity’s stark choice: continue genocidal wars or try to save our planetary home.
CO2 levels reached 403.64 ppm in October 2017, a rise of 2.07 ppm above October 2016. This has triggered amplifying feedbacks from land and oceans. It is becoming clear the only way to avert environmental and nuclear catastrophes is to down-draw atmospheric CO2 using budgets on a scale currently only available to the military. Continue reading »
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IAN DUNLOP. Climate & Energy – Appeasement Does Not Work
The current chaos around climate and energy policy brings to mind George Santayana’s caution that: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. That is exactly what we are witnessing, albeit with far more profound implications even than the advent of the Second World War. Continue reading »
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SUSAN RYAN. A roof over their heads.
The Annual Report for 2016 of the Women’s Housing Company demonstrates solutions to the terrible and growing situation of older women facing homelessness. These solutions however continue to elude policy makers, the media and business, whose failures to recognise the size of the problem and its costs to the public purse inflict great damage on Continue reading »
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FRANCESCA BEDDIE. The way ahead for VET
The Productivity Commission’s five-year review, Shifting the Dial, recommends reforms in vocational education and training (VET). These are based on ‘the key premise…that skills formation is one of the central pillars for productivity improvement, even if its benefits are not immediately realised’. That caveat is important: neither skills acquisition nor other knowledge gains are easily Continue reading »
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RICHARD KINGSFORD. Policy holes drain the life out of Murray-Darling rivers.
We are often told by some politicians and irrigation lobbyists not to worry about our rivers – Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains – and ever it was thus. After all, Murray-Darling rivers surely fixed themselves when the 2010 and 2011 floods broke the seven year Millennium Drought. This tired old talking Continue reading »
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IAN MACPHEE. A deeper view of the Rohingya crisis than media provide.
Since writing my blog on 13 October in defence of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (whom I will now only term Daw Suu) external media has continued its criticism of her for not condemning the military for its brutal attacks on Rohingya people in Rakhine state on the border of Bangladesh. As I stressed then, Continue reading »
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ALISON BROINOWSKI. If you want to know the truth
WikiLeaks continues to get up the nose of the media and security establishment. They will use a newly revealed proposal to make Assange Ambassador to Washington to make things worse for him. Continue reading »
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CHRIS BONNOR. Wealthy parents flock to public schools
The results of the 2016 census are continuing to roll out. This time it is the turn of school education to grab the headlines, most recently with Fairfax telling us that wealthy families are turning away from elite private schools. Continue reading »
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DUNCAN GRAHAM. Wanted: The real refugee story
There should be no asylum seekers in offshore camps funded by Australia. They’re getting food, healthcare and accommodation – even money. But the prolonged wait is inhumane and damaging. Impractical solutions and unbalanced reporting are compounding the problem. Continue reading »
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GILES PARKINSON. LNP, One Nation would force Queensland energy prices up; Greens, ALP down
A new analysis of the energy policies presented by the major and smaller parties contesting the Queensland state election shows that the Greens would deliver the biggest electricity savings, Labor would also push prices down, while One Nation and the LNP policies would force prices to rise. Continue reading »
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IAN WEBSTER. The social harm of alcohol to communities and society
The social harm of alcohol, alcohol’s ‘harm to others’, is a re-vitalised framework for national and international policies to control the marketing of alcohol. Continue reading »
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NEW YORK TIMES. Refugees on Manus Island trapped far from home, farther from deliverance
Refugees Trapped Far From Home, Farther From Deliverance www.nytimes.com The New York Times sent journalists into a contested detention camp in Papua New Guinea to investigate Australia’s refugee policy, and the resistance rising against it. Continue reading »
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CHRIS BONNOR. Labor’s National Schools Forum – Gonski 2.0 in a day?
Remember the newly elected Rudd Government’s 2020 Summit back in 2008? It was a high-profile gathering of a sympathetic audience to address pre-selected policy issues and options. Far from coming up with answers, the education sessions at the Summit managed to avoid the urgent questions – to such an extent that a group of unusual Continue reading »
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SOPHIE VORRATH. CBA challenged for “weakest climate policy,” dirtiest investments.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has made $6 billion worth of new loans to coal, oil and gas projects in the 20 months since committing to the Paris climate agreement, a new document has shown – more than four times the amount it loaned to renewable energy projects over that period. Continue reading »
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Productivity Commission shirks real problems in VET
The Productivity Commission has undertaken a five year review of Australia’s productivity performance, identifying skills and the VET sectors as an area of concern. But have they got the answers? Continue reading »
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JULIAN CRIBB. Can we avert ecocide?
As humans progressively kill off the living creatures which inhabit the planet, do we risk at the same time killing off ourselves? Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. at 2.5 minutes to midnight, we must defend the planet
On the 27 January, 2017, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the arms of its doomsday clock to 2.5 min to midnight, the closest it has been since 1953, with enormous implications for humanity and nature. A book titled “The Plutocene: Blueprints for a post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth” elaborates the reasons for the decision of Continue reading »
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PETER YOUNG: Why Health Professionals in Immigration Detention should stop colluding and speak out
As the situation for hundreds of asylum seekers in the Manus Island continues to deteriorate the harmful consequences of Australia’s punitive immigration detention policies are obvious. Despite the secrecy surrounding immigration detention it is only the wilfully blind who avoid this conclusion. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. The growing social divide.
There are ominous signs that Australia is breaking up into different social tribes. Our claimed egalitarianism and social mobility are under serious challenge. A mixed society is the best guarantee of social cohesion and social improvement. That social cohesion arising from ‘inclusive growth’ is also good for the economy. But social cohesion rather than economic Continue reading »
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ANDREW GLIKSON. A privileged few ignore scorched Earth in race to Mars
Scientific exploration of the solar system planets constitutes one of the most exciting achievements of the human race. However, the idea of colonizing Mars may prove to be one of the most misleading, creating an impression that an alternative exists to planet Earth, which is a unique haven of life in the solar system, perhaps Continue reading »
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GILES PARKINSON. South Australia’s stunning transition to consumer-powered grid
South Australia is already being hailed – or in some quarters demonised – for its leadership on renewable energy technology. A new report from the Australian Energy Market Operator highlights how far out in front it is in the transition to a consumer-powered grid.The earlier comments by Turnbull and Frydenberg are now looking even more Continue reading »
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ROBERT MANNE. A Symbol of Inhumanity: Australia’s Uniquely Harsh Asylum Seeker Policy – How Did It Come to This?
Robert Manne is Emeritus Professor and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University. An earlier version of this analysis was published a year ago, but Professor Manne has written a new postscript in light of some disturbing recent events on Manus Island. If you had been told thirty years ago that Australia would create the least Continue reading »