Tracking Australian wellbeing

Countries around the world are putting wellbeing at the heart of policy and budgeting. Australia’s Measuring What Matters framework is a strong start, but dashboards and data will only take us so far.

Reviewing Australia’s foreign policy planning

Last updated in 2007, Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley’s book on “Making Australian Foreign Policy” offers a fascinating glimpse into the past but also underlines the need for a fresh assessment to reflect the fast shifting power dynamics and emerging threats of today’s world.

Where’s my wave?

From a friendly wave to a hostile honk of the horn, it might be worth developing a standard “road language dictionary” to sit alongside formal road rules and feature as a small but important part of driver training.

The Australian way

In his new book “We Should Be So Lucky – Why the Australian Way Works” Andrew Low looks to uncover the secrets behind Australia’s success and what it can teach the world.

Four steps to a fairer Australia

Excessive inequality isn’t just unfair, it’s socially and politically corrosive. Around the world, inequality has fuelled social instability, political divisiveness, reduced class mobility, falling life expectancy and racial scapegoating. To deliver a fairer future for Australians, it’s time we set transparent targets for inequality – then commit to policies needed to meet them.

Closing the gap with “family wellbeing”

Family Wellbeing is an empowerment program created by Aboriginal Australians in the early 1990s and has proven its worth over the last 30 years in helping to ‘close the gap’.

A nation divided

The multi-cultural and political rifts that have surfaced over the last two years in response to the war in Gaza were there well before the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 2023, and even when this conflict subsides, it will leave fractures, anger, bitterness and fear across the Australian community.

Supporting mental health staff

Australia’s mental health services are buckling due to rising demand, staff shortages and patient violence. Despite their importance, mental health nurses face unique occupational challenges including high emotional demands, frequent exposure to workplace violence and harassment from clients.

Interventions such as formal support systems are needed for Australia’s exhausted, overwhelmed mental health nurses

The rise of the ‘sovereign individual’

In Silicon Valley’s unofficial literary canon, few works loom as large as 1999’s “The Sovereign Individual” as it offers the cashed-up cognitive elite credible intellectual cover for their headlong pursuit of wealth and power without regard for democratic oversight or social consequence.

Unsocial media

Far from bringing people closer together, the algorithims which drive engagement on social media have antagonised and fractured society and undermined respect for truth.

Republican dream or political nightmare?

The PM says no effort will be made to become a republic in the immediate future, following his meeting with King Charles at Balmoral, and in an age of resurgent authoritarianism unfettered by constitutional restraint or respect for tradition, that may be no bad thing.

Managing AI in education

Thanks to generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, students can now generate acceptable essays and test answers in seconds with no effort at all, wrecking havoc on university assessments.