Peter Shergold writes, ‘The relationships between social science and public policy, and between academic and public servant, are ones of utmost importance. They are not, I think, in particularly good shape.’
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Monthly Archives:: November 2005
Reconciliation: Stalled, Fermenting, or Taken Out The Back and Shot?
This Sunday marks the fifth anniversary of the end of the 'decade of reconciliation.' On December 4 2000, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (CAR) submitted its final report, including the Australian Declaration Towards Reconciliation and the Reconciliation Bill 2001, to Federal Parliament.
A New Institute of Employment Rights
Not since the penal powers dispute of 1969 has industrial relations policy and law been at the centre of the national stage.
At that time even employers became disillusioned with the Coalition’s ideological obsession with trade unions. With the introduction of ‘WorkChoices’ many of the same elements have re-emerged.
Education Vision for 2015
Don Aitkin imagines an education system with high school retention rates of 90%, increased focus on unlocking creative potential, an emphasis on competence rather than winning, specialist high schools, better paid and educated teachers and an understanding that money spent on education is an investment not ‘spending’.
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Did you know? RU486
Every two weeks the Centre for Policy Development and AHPI publish the Did You Know feature with the aim of increasing awareness on a range of issues affecting health. This week the focus is on the moral, political and practical issues of the RU486 abortion drug debate.
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Improving the Proposed IR & Welfare Systems for Women
Eva Cox explores some of the problems for women workers under the proposed new IR and welfare laws and proposes avenues for mitigating the damage.
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The Difficulty of Saying Much Useful About Values
Torrey Orton discusses the difficulties in talking about values.
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Towards a healthy policy vision for Australians
Carol Gaston argues that health policy should support the ultimate goal of improving the health status of all Australians and the provision of safe, efficient and effective health care.
The Common Wealth – Contributions from the forum
The Centre for Policy Development has embarked on a project to articulate a set of values that should underpin policy development in Australia. The Common Wealth is the first articulation of these values. It identifies six values: Community Engagement, Equity, Fairness, Freedom, Stewardship, and an Ethical Culture. Several responses have been published over the past few weeks and there has been debate in the forum. Today we will give you some extracts from contributions made to the forum. more