Natasha Stott Despoja on Paid Maternity Leave: After the past few months with the deliberations and report of the Productivity Commission, it looks like Paid Maternity Leave (PML) may finally happen – that is, unless the Government can think of reasons to delay further. But what took them so long and, more to the point, why did both major parties persistently kill legislation that has been on the table for over 6 years?

What can the Commonwealth do to protect Australia’s forests, asks Judith Ajani: Australia is sitting pretty with plantations making possible native forest protection for immediate and significant reductions in our net greenhouse gas emissions. Calls for native forest protection in Australia started with the lobbying of the Argus and Australasian newspapers as the mid 1860s drought deepened. A century later a second wave of concerned citizens added plants and animals to the list as state governments approved clear-felling public native forests for export woodchips. Half a century after that, the earth’s atmosphere has joined the list.

Sean Regan writes: The ideal of social and economic integration is one to which few object, at least in public (what is moot is the kind of integration we’d accept). For social democrats ‘fairness’ and ‘prosperity’ are a passable shorthand; and ‘social inclusion’ an adequate policy framework. Clearly, though, these terms have to be unpacked and their practical applications spelled out, as there is an inherent tension between the two elements of the putative integration.

Philip Mendes considers contemporary leaving care policy and practice: Looking at the 2004 Forgotten Australians report on people who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children, it would be very easy to conclude that these events were an historical anomaly which have little bearing on contemporary child welfare policy and practice. And to be sure the state care system has changed considerably since that time, and arguably for the better. But the evidence suggests that some (and perhaps even many) children and young people currently or recently in care have experienced forms of abuse and neglect similar to those described in the Forgotten Australians, and that this abuse and neglect is similarly undermining their long-term life chances. So there is no doubt that we need to learn some key lessons from the Forgotten Australians if we are to avoid similar suffering in the future.

CPD Fellow Mark Davis considers the prospect of a humane market economy: Neoliberals have provided the populist front end for attacks on the welfare system and the privatisation-by-stealth of unemployment services, child care, education and health care, while neoclassicals have provided the back-office grunt. Lost in the revisionism and myth-making that surround recent economic history is the possibility of thinking through alternatives. Yet ours is a historic moment at the end of two periods of economic consensus, both of which have been found wanting, that offers the opportunity to build a humane market economy. Having spent decades labouring under the pernicious idea that ‘government isn’t the solution to the problem, government is the problem’, as Ronald Reagan once put it, the key question now is how to establish a better mix of government and markets.

Susan Harris Rimmer reviews Human Rights Overboard: If I let my inner dictator loose, every person in Australia would be forced to read this book, while listening to the Paul Kelly song "I get a little emotional sometimes".

In this month's 5 ideas in 5 minutes, Daniel Frank looks at: the Corporate Responsibility Index │10,000 Women │Triple Bottom Line Accounting │Socially Responsible Investment │ Legislating Corporate Conduct