Category Archives: Policies
Are we intentionally increasing the burden on public health?
Pondering the budget papers from the Health Portfolio, I am moved to ask this question: are we intentionally moving people back out of private health and increasing the burden on the public health system? I appreciate it’s an ideological thing, but didn’t we just spend the last two decades doing the opposite? The cliff notes […]
Ready to Lead
Is Tony Abbott ready to be Prime Minister? Or, more to point, is the Australian public ready to vote for him? Of course, the answer to that question depends on what version of Tony Abbott we are thinking of. Is it the man that Annabel Crabb famously dubbed the Mad Monk – the socially conservative […]
How Values influence Policy
This word ‘values’ flys around the politicians and media players; but like many English words it seems to have many meanings. This is not in the slippery or weasel-wordish way, it is just a word that most people seem to feel they understand, and are entitled to use in any old way that they mean […]
A Band-Aid Bill: a look at the 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act
On Thursday 21 March, the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus stood up in the House of Representatives and introduced the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Bill 2013. In his speech, Mr Dreyfus declared the Bill would “introduce sexual orientation and gender identity as protected grounds of discrimination at the federal level.” The […]
Parenting leave – two strong policies with a deep divide
Stupid hashtag misquotes of Tony Abbott (and equally stupid reporting thereof) aside, recent weeks have seen a bump in the presence of policy discussion in Australia. Both parties have been forced to discuss substance in view of the upcoming budget and in the absence of parliamentary sitting days to fill with ephemera and shouting. One […]
I Call Bull on the Live Export Ban Call
*Battens down the hatches, stations the guards, enters the witness protection program, offers up pie as a bribe and clears throat* It appears to me that many who are part of the campaign to ban the live export of livestock seem to think there is a level of inevitability about it, the same way there […]
The Diagnosis Problem
Hobjobblesmum’s post today on the NDIS and mental health has prompted me to push the button on an issue a bit close to the bone personally and a bit complex but so amazingly important it’s gobsmacking. It’s The Diagnosis Problem. One does not realise until one gets sick how unbelievably critical a diagnosis is. Not just getting the […]
The NDIS and the mental health minefield
Our own Blunt Shovels has explained the design of the NDIS for Joe Hockey, who apparently didn’t understand it. There’s a lot of information around already if you’re prepared to dig for it. Ed Butler recently argued that the obsession with the budget and the nation’s finances more generally is not conducive to good policy […]
Farm finance assistance: friend or faux?
I have been trying to make sense of the Government’s announcement of additional financial assistance for farmers last week. Not the what so much as the why. Let’s work through it a bit. It’s a four part package primarily to ease financial pressure on farmers, pressure that has been building some say due to the high dollar, […]
Safety Trampolines, One World Government and Giving People a Reason To Join A Party – The Whitlam Institute gives time for Thought
On this May Day that has passed, the University of Western Sydney’s Whitlam Institute organised a political forum called It’s My Party, as a part of the Behind the Lines exhibition that is being hosted at Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres. Labor’s John Faulkner, the Liberals’ Joe Hockey and the Greens’ Bob Brown were invited to outlay […]
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