Henry Reynolds. 30 March 2021. The most shameful day in Malcolm Turnbull’s tenure as Australia’s Prime Minister was 27 October 2017. It was the moment when he peremptorily rejected the Uluru Statement, addressed to the people of Australia five months earlier. He declared that the projected voice to parliament would not be ‘either desirable or […]
Hal Pawson and Bill Randolph. 30 March 2021. Housing policies are contributing to stagnating economic growth and putting at risk the economic stability of the nation. Housing unaffordability is causing real economic damage that governments must treat more seriously. Put simply, rising mortgage debt poses risks for national economic stability, while current housing policies contribute […]
Hal Pawson UNSW. Chris Martin UNSW. Australian governments acted to protect homeless people from COVID-19 in 2020 on an even larger scale than previously thought. In the first six months of the pandemic, the four states that launched emergency programs housed more than 40,000 rough sleepers and others. The states were anxious about rough sleepers’ […]
Andrew Stewart. Adriana Orifici Monash University. Joellen Riley Munton University of Technology Sydney. Shae McCrystal University of Sydney. Tess Hardy The University of Melbourne. 5 March 2021 The government’s Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill presently before parliament was drafted at the end of a six-month consultative process that brought together […]
Reviewed by Denis Blackledge SJ. 5 March 2021 This is a timely, challenging, stimulating, knowledgeable, and, yes, frightening volume by a well-known author who knows his stuff as an environmental theologian. Moreover, he writes in a style which is crisp and clear, and ends all eleven chapters with a brief summary conclusion. The book deals […]
Noel Turnbull. 5 March 2021 After seven years of a Coalition government, household debt is the second highest of 43 countries; we ranked third last out of 35 OECD countries for wage growth and we have the third most unaffordable housing market in the OECD. But the good news is that the combined worth of […]
8 February 202 It has become a cliché : “She/he is a glass-half-full sort of person”, playing out as we enter 2021 after the Covid-19 disruptions of 2020. Some are optimistic about this new year; some are lamenting social and economic disruptions carrying forward, focusing on the scale of the problems facing us. At Social […]
Ian Chubb. 8 February 2021 We could secure a spectacular future for ourselves and help the planet. Instead the federal government dodges the hard decisions; it passes the buck. Fortunately, state and territory governments are stepping up to the plate. New analysis shows that Australia needs to cut emissions by at least 50% by 2030 […]
The latest ACOSS/UNSW report on Poverty in Australia, released this year, makes for sobering reading. By the measures used in the report, over 3 million Australians live in poverty, including over 750 thousand children, or approximately one in six children. The underlying reasons for poverty are varied and complex, but some relationships stand out. In […]
1 November 2020. As this newsletter is published, voting in the US elections is under way, with commentators speculating from the polls that Biden will win. Given the unexpected outcome of 2016, they prefer, nonetheless, to call the result uncertain. Whatever the outcome of this election, these last Trump years have seen increased international tensions, and […]
1 November 2020 A major reason for the loss of trust in governments and parliaments is the way powerful special interests with their lobbyists have come to dominate the public debate and skew decisions in their favour. The fossil fuel sector is the most obvious and recent example. Lobbyists are using their destructive influence more […]
