Australia’s most expensive illusion

Why have Australians, otherwise alert to unfairness and quick to condemn political failure, accepted a settlement around work and housing that now punishes so many of them?

My roster doesn’t fit the world

If we want a country where the people who care for us can also care for their own children without breaking, we need to build a world where a nurse’s roster fits the world.

When the bus doesn’t come

Until we start treating regional mobility as part of the basic infrastructure of opportunity, not an optional extra, we will keep producing young Australians who are told, relentlessly, to “have a go”, while quietly being denied a way to get there.

Making people

Early childhood educators do some of the most important work in the country and our failure to honour them and pay them properly is undermining our future in the name of short-term thrift.

Perpetual peace – perpetual relevance

18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant remains a central figure in modern philosophy, but his argument that ethics and governance should be rooted in reason rather than self-interest or superstition is threatened even in the Western world by the current resurgence of nationalism, authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism.

Sleeping in the driver’s seat

Older women’s homelessness confronts Australia with an uncomfortable truth – the line between “secure” and “homeless” has become thin enough that a respectable life can fall through it quickly.

Orientation week on the outside

Orientation or freshers week at University can be an exciting time for new students, but also brings burdens of its own.

The tooth that ate my pay packet

The high cost of dental work in Australia puts many people’s health at risk.

AI’s threat to “judgment capital”

The central danger of AI is that, if deployed carelessly and at scale, it may erode the human and institutional capacities on which sound judgment depends.

From subsidies to stewardship

If reform becomes stewardship, Australia can build something rare – a national early childhood system that is trusted, equitable, safe, and professionally sustaining, where the default settings make quality the easiest business model to run.

A public convenience

Everyone needs one at some point, but public conveniences are an increasingly rare sight in the nation’s towns and cities.

The first democracy

Early childhood education should be valued for the positive impacts it has on children’s social and psychological development as well as the potential to shape more productive adults in the future.