Gender-Responsive Budgeting improves targeted and effective social change. Despite being an early leader in this area, Australia abruptly ceased issuing a Women’s Budget Statement (WBS) in 2013. Today’s post argues that the WBS ought to be resurrected as an integrated analysis of the budget process itself.
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A focus on national health and wellbeing as well as on healthcare services is an investment in equity, productivity and prosperity, argues Dr Lesley Russell (University of Sydney). Healthcare policies need to go well beyond the current over-medicalised focus on hospitals, doctors and prescriptions – how do the major parties measure up?
Read MoreWhen violence against women is considered an “incident” and handled through the criminal justice system, there is a failure to effectively address the reason why men use violence. Today’s Scorecard provides a much-needed framework for considering effective policy responses to men who perpetrate violence against women.
Read MoreDespite girls’ higher academic performance compared to boys – including science and math subjects – there is a “leaky pipeline” when it comes to keeping women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers. Today’s policy analysis provides a comprehensive break-down of the policy statements from the Coalition, Labor, and the Greens parties regarding keeping girls and women in STEM.
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David Donaldson (@davidadonaldson) writes about new research that casts doubt on whether outcomes-based contracting solves a fundamental problem: unintended consequences. Listening to stakeholders, although no breakthrough, remains key. The systematic review of evidence on outcome-based contracting was conducted by Emma Tomkinson and published in ANZSOG's Evidence Base journal.
Read MoreThe community legal sector is well positioned to identify need for systemic change, to act upon that need and to generate policy improvements with significant public impact. Jacki Holland of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand discusses how, by engaging in strategic legal advocacy, community lawyers can venture beyond traditional case by case approaches to tackle systemic and common legal problems through novel means generating broad community benefit.
Read MoreThere are so many policies that intersect at the level of the family, which either enable or create barriers to active workforce participation while also ensuring family needs are met. Today’s Scorecard summarises what the major issues are for families, gender equity in the workforce, an ageing population, and carer duties. This synopsis is backed by a comprehensive document created by the Work + Family Policy Roundtable, comprised of over 30 academics from 16 research institutions. This analysis was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 30 May, 2016.
Read MoreBoth the acknowledgement that domestic violence occurs at high rates in Australia and the increased Federal funding for tackling this issue are to be lauded. In today’s post, a distinction is made between adequate funding and supporting best practice. For women experiencing violence, the choice of service model is critical. Funding must support best practice to ensure the safety of women and children.
Read MoreToday’s post examines women in the policy process and how gender can influence their agency, by examining the case study of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This article first appeared in the Canberra Times on 1 June 2016.
Read MoreIt has been heartening to see the recent attention that family violence has been receiving at both a Federal and State levels in the past two years. In today’s policy analysis Supriya Singh argues that this attention is not being translated into meaningful policy responses, and has been sidelined in the current election debates. In order to effectively tackle family violence, gender inequalities must be addressed in a meaningful way.
Read MoreLast week, the Australian Labor Party announced that it will lift the Medicare rebate freeze if elected to office in the July federal election. We know health issues feature strongly in election debates, but what does this proposal actually mean for most of us? In our latest post, Helen Dickinson explores these questions and more #healthelection.
Read MoreIn this policy analysis, originally published in The Conversation, Eva Cox provides an analysis of a range of current Federal policies that must be addressed to increase public trust. In her words, “the social must include feminist issues as most of the devaluing of this is in areas associated with women, and similarly many of the failures in the concerns of Indigenous people relate to social well-being and more collectivist cultures.”
Eva has initiated a policy network designed to fill some of the overlooked and under-resourced social policy gaps with positive alternatives: The Good Society Policy Network.
Read MoreAs the federal election looms in Australia, the track records of both Coalition and ALP governments of fulfilling their election promises are under scrutiny. Sometimes, a promise gets lost or falls short in implementation. Todays’ post by Professor Christina Boswell and Dr Eugenia Rodrigues provides lessons from the UK on how policy can be reinterpreted, distorted or even subverted when applied at a local level or across different arms of government.
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Below, Professor David Hayward from RMIT provides some thoughtful reflections on the recently announced budget from a social policy perspective.
Read MoreWhat kinds of research evidence will policymakers pay attention to, and when? How can researchers plan better for policy impact? This post by Paul Cairney and Kathryn Oliver (originally appearing on Paul's blog) builds on a discussion of ‘evidence based best practice’ in the Evidence and Policy journal.
Read MoreConditional arrangements designed to ‘correct’ the ‘problematic’ behaviour of welfare recipients have become commonplace in the UK, Australia and other countries for many years. What’s missing from current debates about welfare conditionality, and how can this problem be thought about differently? Professor Peter Dwyer from the University of York, and head of the Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change project, offers his views in this email interview for Power to Persuade.
Read MoreNudging is the flavour of the moment in public policy, with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet recently announcing they will follow NSW and establish a new high-level behavioural economics team in PM&C. But what are the risks, ethically and otherwise, of a focus on the psyche? And what can we learn from the experiences of international development practitioners in how we nudge our citizens at home? Elise Klein explores these questions, and more, in this new post.
Read MoreNSW Council for Intellectual Disability has been having lots of conversations and engaging with many people about the NDIS Information Linkages & Capacity Building Framework which is currently in consultation. Submissions on the framework can be made until 22 April. This post, originally published on the CID website, explores some of their initial thoughts on the framework and shares some of the ideas and themes that they are developing.
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Gemma Carey & Lara Corr examine the orms and values of the Productivity Commission and how this influences the way PC reviews are conducted and the advice that is given to government. The full article is available online.
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