The concept of “stewardship” keeps coming up in a wide range of contexts, suggesting it is capable of broad application to achieve many outcomes. In this article Katie Moon, Dru Marsh, Helen Dickinson & Gemma Carey examine how we can meaningfully identify stewards, and understand their role in contemporary public policy.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade30 November 2017accountability

7 lessons about governing from the ANZSOG case library

If your job involved poring over the best and the worst of government, you’d probably pick up a few things. Here, ANZSOG’s Marinella Padula harnesses 13 years of public sector case writing experience to identify the top lessons for program leadership, design and evaluation.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade24 November 2017evaluation, Government

Using “low-end” evidence in social policy: Case from Guangzhou, China

Governments value evidence-based policy; but are policy makers using all possible evidence to inform their decisions? Dr. Anna N. Li, Postdoctoral Fellow at UNSW Canberra argues that "soft, qualitative, practice-based evidence can be used to better inform decision making by providing frontline, implementation information, which can increase the chance of policy success.

Creating using evidence, Policy and governancePower to Persuade17 November 2017evidence-based policy

Random drug testing won’t help unemployed people find a job or overcome addiction

The Australian Government announced in its 2017 budget that it would trial random drug-testing of recipients of the Newstart Allowance and Youth Allowance in three locations from January 2018. Evidence suggests this approach will neither help people overcome addiction or find a job. Drawing on her recent article in the Australian Journal of Public Administration, Dr Sue Olney from the Public Service Research Group at UNSW Canberra explains why this is bad policy.

Issues, Policy and governancePower to Persuade16 November 2017welfare reform, sue olney, Wicked issues

Protecting equity in the National Disability Insurance Scheme

The potentially life transforming National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) won’t be a safety net for all if the market is weak. UNSW Canberra's Eleanor Malbon and Gemma Carey canvas what options the government’s market stewards have to ensure none are left behind. This article was originally posted on The Mandarin.

Issues, Policy and governancePower to Persuade15 November 2017Disability, NDIS, Aboriginal issues

Flexible work can lead to flexible thought

What links flexible work, flexible thought, and diversity? Sue Williamson, Senior Lecturer of Human Resource Management at UNSW Canberra's School of Business explains these interlinking concepts in this repost from Government News.

Innovation, Policy and governance, IssuesPower to Persuade13 November 2017Flexible Work, Human Resources, Diversity, Flexible Thought

How liveable are our capital cities?

Melbourne has been awarded the world's most liveable city and yet the experience of traffic congestion, unaffordable housing and public transport bursting at the seams would suggest otherwise. The authors suggest 7 domains of liveability and consider how our capitals perform and the implications for policy. This post by Billi Giles- Corti, Director, Urban Futures Enabling Capability Platform and Director, Healthy Liveable Cities Group, RMIT University and Jonathan Arundel, Senior Research Fellow, Healthy Liveable Cities Group, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University originally appeared on The Conversation.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade2 November 2017

We need to address questions of gender in assisted dying

This week the Victorian Upper House will debate - and possibly pass - the Assisted Dying Bill. This legislation is extremely emotive, and emotions have been at the heart of the discussion in the wake of the protracted and painful deaths of family members experienced by MP Jill Hennessy and Premier Dan Andrews. However, it is critical to ensure adequate public debate on this issue prior to its passage precisely because it is emotive. The medical community itself is divided on this topic, with the Australian Midwifery & Nursing Federation supporting it, while the Australian Medical Association and Palliative Care Australia are both opposed.

The merits of a policy must be considered, not in the light of those who have high levels of personal agency, but in terms of how it will affect those in the margins. As always, the Women's Policy Action Tank is interested in how policies may impact differently on women compared to men. Today's analysis, by Rachel Wong and originally appearing in The Conversation, provides a gender analysis on the Assisted Dying Bill.

Why don't more people register as organ donors - are we missing something?

In today’s post, Dr Emma Tinning, outlines some of her findings from her recent PhD on organ donor registration. Emma explores whether a change in framing the act of organ donation from a “heroic” act to a collective act would help address Australia’s low rate of donor registration through the current opt in policy.

Policy and governance, IssuesPower to Persuade30 October 2017

Refugee women on Nauru: The gendered effects of Australia's asylum seeker detention policies

Perhaps nobody is more deplorably served by Australian policy than asylum seekers. In today's post, Azadeh Dastyari ( @azdastyari ) of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, explains how women held in detention in Nauru face very specific physical and mental harm due to their gender. This blog first appeared on Themis Says: The Blog of the Feminist Legal Studies Group at Monash ( @feminist_law ). NOTE: This blog post contains references to sexual and physical assault that may be distressing to some readers.

Nicholas Gruen: The academy and partners try wellbeing frameworks

Economist Nicholas Gruen looks at problems with various attempts to measure wellbeing and the struggle to get from noble principles to practical outcomes. This is a repost from the Mandarin of a part three of Nicholas Gruen’s essay series about the difficulty of translating policy into outcomes. Read part one, on wellbeing frameworks, and part two on commonsense hacks government could use to bolster Australians’ wellbeing.

Paul Cairney's 5-step strategy to make evidence count

Dr. Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Stirling in the UK and he has a message for us about how to make our evidence count. Paul is the author of The Politics of Evidence Based Policy Making (2016), which has already achieved cult status for politics enthusiasts worldwide. Read some of his insights in this week's blog post, originally posted on Paul's own blog.

Advocacy, Policy and governancePower to Persuade4 October 2017evidence-based policy

Disability Rights, the NDIS and the Need for Law Reform

Today’s post explains tensions between the National Disability Insurance Scheme - a system that aims to facilitate choice and control for people with disability - and the socio-legal conception of disability that perceives people with disability as legitimate subjects of coercive medical intervention. Noting that competing notions of political rights, autonomy, agency, and the role of the state often play out in the form of social policy reform, the author argues that the creation of the NDIS could be a starting point for new claims and calls for legislative activity in the area of disability law. The post is published under a pseudonym at the author’s request.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade28 September 2017Disability, NDIS, Law

Bumping into barriers on the way to social inclusion with the NDIS

Bars, gyms, the homes of friends and all the places that community life happens; it’s no secret they are often inaccessible for people with disabilities. The NDIS funds individual packages and community linkages to reduce this social exclusion. Jen Hargrave from Women with Disabilities Victoria says the fledgling scheme may need external architecture to increase social inclusion.

Advocacy, Policy and governancePower to Persuade26 September 2017ndis, health, Disability

How do we ignite young people to work in the disability sector?

The National Disability Insurance Scheme promises to transform the lives of people with disability, and deliver an economic boost for all Australians by creating thousands of jobs. At the recent launch of an Empowering Youth Initiative designed to encourage young people to work in the disability sector, David Moody, National Disability Services State Manager – Victoria, talked about opportunities to develop and grow the disability workforce of the future.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade25 September 2017employment, Disability, ndis

A Universal Basic Income may be a good idea, but... we will still need social security that works

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is gaining traction in Australia and around the globe. While a UBI has the potential to lift people and communities out of poverty, Michael Fletcher from the Aukland University of Technology warns us that it is not a panacea; government still needs to provide comprehensive services and tailored support. This policy analysis originally appeared on the New Zealand web site Briefing Papers, and can be viewed here.

Policy and governance, Finance and economics, InnovationDr Susan Maury19 September 2017Social Welfare

Hitting a brick wall: How Welfare to Work could support single mothers (but doesn’t)

In another insightful post, Juanita McLaren (@defrostedlady) of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand examines the patterns of welfare dependency by women and suggests that the Welfare to Work policy could be more effective if, rather than punishing single mothers, it supported them based on normal arcs of parenting and employment. You can hear Juanita speak on her experiences at our upcoming Women’s Policy Forum, held in Melbourne on 22 September 2017.

Three ways to encourage policy learning

This is a guest post on Paul Cairney's Politics & Public Policy blog by Claire A. Dunlop and Claudio M. Radaelli both from the University of Exeter. In it they discuss how to use insights from the Policy Learning literature to think about how to learn effectively or adapt to processes of ‘learning’ in policymaking that are more about politics than education. The full paper has been submitted to the series for Policy and Politics called Practical Lessons from Policy Theories

Policy and governancePower to Persuade13 September 2017policy making

‘Naive optimism’ driving uptake of one stop shops

'Naive optimism' and mistaken beliefs about improved efficiency and cost savings are major drivers of the adoption of government ‘one stop shops’, a recently published review paper has found. Misplaced expectations about cost savings don’t just influence decisions but can be damaging, as governments pre-emptively cut budgets and leave new projects without enough money, argues Dr Cosmo Howard in ANZSOG's open access Evidence Base journal.

Post-truth politics makes evidence-based policy harder, but it’s no reason to give up

Last week’s Power to Persuade symposium led to fascinating discussion about how evidence feeds into public policy and the impact of post-truth political culture. Stephen Easton writes that policymakers have always seen multiple truths, and not everyone believes the widely-understood term describes a genuinely new phenomenon. This article originally appeared in The Mandarin.

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