Policy

The Western Australian government has invested $500,000 to encourage the state’s regional councils to address climate change together.

Given that in pluralistic societies policies need to address multiple conflicting objectives to survive, is truly effective policy-making ever possible?

Australia has responded well to the immediate COVID-19 crisis, but historically we have been less adept at tackling long-term ‘creeping crises’ like inequality, climate inaction and the need for economic diversification. As Australia seeks to ‘build back better’ after COVID-19 we should seize the opportunity to address these creeping crises and put Australia on a […]

A Productivity Commission paper launched on Thursday said that services employ almost 90% of Australian workers and account for around 80% of GDP.

Too many government organisations take their subject matter experts and task them with writing policies, standards, and procedures without ever providing them training on how to actually do it.

Developing objective measures of what works and what does not, and what caused a policy to fail or succeed, is nigh on impossible. What we can gather, nonetheless, is that addressing three key issues can certainly improve the chances of producing a successful policy.

The public sector is often exhorted to be more commercial in its behaviours. “In some ways it’s a bit of a nonsense”, says MD of Kiah Consulting, John Glenn. “Dogma, like any other dogma, doesn’t make sense. The public sector is about spending money to deliver a social good. There is nothing commercial in that, […]

Regulation must keep up with digital economy developments to remain effective over time by more readily adopting new approaches.

Up to 40% of Australian households which rent their housing experience energy hardship, with many forced by market pressures to live in homes that are expensive to heat and cool due to a lack of minimum energy performance standards.

A failure to prioritise has been identified as one reason for failings of the Rudd Government, the Abbott Government, and the Shorten Opposition. Trying to do too much, they did too little. But published frameworks for prioritising government initiatives are few and far between. Too much of the literature says that government priorities should be […]

Touching on an issue that has repeatedly divided his party, the Labor leader argued that Australia can and should transform into a renewable energy superpower, and accused Prime Minister Scott Morrison of having no energy policy.