Larry Anthony says that there’s no need to be nervous about moving more spending ‘upstream’ to invest in early childhood education and care. All childcare services already act as community networks, he argues. The challenge is not to rebuild those networks but to make more effective use of them and to make them more accessible.
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Monthly Archives:: May 2006
Roadmap to a better health system
Australia should be proud of its achievements in health, but Prue Power and Patrick Bolton believe that challenges remain in bringing the community into the decision making process, ensuring equitable access and outcomes, and improving services. more
Changing obsolete health policy: Can Australia learn from other countries?
Dr Daniel Fox believes that Australian policymakers can teach as well as learn from their counterparts in other countries about responding to obsolete understandings of health.
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Education Topic 1: Responding to parental anxiety
Our education system is no longer based on values, writes Chris Bonnor in the third article in the Education Policy Development Series. Instead we have a system that has developed through inconsistent decisions made in response to anxiety in parents and voters. We need acknowledgement of the relative under-funding of public education, needs based funding formulas, regulation of student admissions and public charters of obligations for schools.
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Time to stop ‘social engineering’ and teach the ‘truth’
Education should reflect the diversity of real life, says James Arvanitakis, and child-care centres are no exception. Noisy moralists should not impose their blind-spots on the rest of society by excluding books that feature same-sex parents.
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A global role for NATO. Will Australia be recruited?
Gabriel Kolko believes the Iraq debacle has led the US to imagine an expanded membership and role for NATO with nations such as Australia and Japan forming part of this vision. more
Priority setting: the biggest gap in Australian health planning?
The biggest problem affecting the planning of Australian health services is the failure to set priorities in a rational, informed and comprehensive way. Priority setting is about making choices based on resource limitations; not only choosing what to do but also what not to do, writes Gavin Mooney more
Editorial: budget 2006
This week the Centre for Policy Development presents a special policy edition on the Budget. Some of Australia’s most respected economists, including John Quiggin, Steve Keen, and Frank Stilwell, look at the social and economic implications of last week’s Budget and find a lot of missed opportunities. After years of underinvestment in skills and infrastructure, we need economic management that reflects widely-held values such as fairness, ethical responsibility, and stewardship of our common future. more
The 2006 Federal Budget: A Sober Assessment
Treasurer Costello may feel pleased with himself for producing a popular budget, but it fails to address the social imbalance between ‘private wealth and public squalor,’ writes Frank Stilwell. Together with its contradictory macroeconomic effects, this makes the 2006 federal budget an exercise in political opportunism rather than social responsibility. Stilwell proposes several alternatives including a carbon tax to replace the GST, a national land tax and investment in higher education
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