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6 Wicked problems and Homo Economicus
patrickcallioni | May 28, 2009It is hard enough to map and understand the DNA of a single organism, but the challenge assumes an entirely different magnitude when we try to do the same with a system of global scale.
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The many faces of social innovation
msweeks@cisco.com | May 25, 2009Social innovation is an instinct which shows little respect for distinctions of status or sector.
The debate about social innovation has reached an interesting point. In any ways, it has been a something of a "poor cousin" in many of the big debates about how we should tackle difficult social challenges that impact our life in common.
That’s not to say that people have not recognised and often welcomed the input to these debates from the non-profit sector or from those ventures supported in various forms of charity, corporate philanthropy or the more contemporary corporate social responsibility movement. But while those contributions have been encouraged, they have often remained peripheral to the main game of big public policy decisions and spending. At worst, the real significance of these contributions has been rendered invisible through a mixture of ignorance and misunderstanding.
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1 Million Women
Natalie Isaacs | May 19, 2009Mobilising 1 million Australian women to take personal action on climate change.
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Should Australia Have a Statutory Bill or Charter of Rights?
Fr Frank Brennan | May 19, 2009The question of a bill or charter of rights is integral to our national conversation about how human rights might be better protected and promoted in Australia.
As a lawyer with a keen interest in human rights and youth issues, it has always struck me as strange that many Australians, whilst familiar with America’s Bill of Rights, understand little about how human rights are protected and promoted in our own backyard. Many seem to be under the impression that Australia has our own Bill of Rights. We don’t.
The question of an Australian bill or charter of rights has certainly been a hot topic during the National Human Rights Consultation. It is consistently raised both at our consultations and in people’s submissions. It has also inspired great debate in the political arena as well as in the media.
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How could Australia better protect and promote human rights and responsibilities?
Fr Frank Brennan | May 19, 2009When it comes to human rights, there is always room for improvement.
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Are human rights and responsibilities sufficiently protected and promoted?
Fr Frank Brennan | May 19, 2009Would you be able to explain to a new Australian citizen how our rights and liberties are protected and promoted?
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Which human rights and responsibilities should be protected and promoted?
Fr Frank Brennan | May 19, 2009When you are trying to describe human rights, think of the core values which you believe should underpin our society.
In 2005, an inquiry was conducted into the Government’s handling of Australian citizen Cornelia Rau. This inquiry brought up a number of issues relating to human rights in Australia. Namely, rights relating to immigration, detention and the rights of the mentally ill.
The inquiry and accompanying public debate raised a number of questions about our responsibilities to protect those rights. What is the responsibility of Government? Of the community? Of the individual?
Not everyone knows which human rights we have in Australia. Not everyone agrees about which rights we should have. Questions exist about what those rights should be and whose responsibility it should be to protect them.
When becoming an Australian citizen a person says:
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Maintain the pressure on regulatory reform
John Tucker | May 15, 2009Better regulation is about informed choice between regulatory options.
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WiFi & the NBN
Dave Sag | May 14, 2009Why is WiFi so open in the rest of the world but so closed in Australia?
I am not about to argue that the Government’s proposed National Broadband Network is a waste of money because everyone these days is going WiFi, that’s just crazy talk and the many punters who have been expressing that opinion clearly know nothing about the issue at all.
The NBN is about data to the home and the office, WiFi is for roaming around within the home, the office or, in this case the train. Yes I am writing this post from a train in the UK. The bandwidth is not what you’d call broadband but it’s good enough that I can say hi to my wife via iChat before she hits the hay back home.
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Friends with Budgets
Raz Chorev | May 13, 2009In business, as in life, friends are more accesible than strangers.
Friendship is fundamental to the Chinese approach to doing business. Most Westerners will do business for a while, before becoming friends. The Chinese take the opposite approach: there’s slim chance of doing business, if you’re not friends first!
So how can we learn from the Chinese to start building our network of friends we may be able to do business with?
People are fed up with the cold calling approach to sales, and the power of traditional advertising is diminishing. Introductions are the first step. If you can find a common contact and ask them to facilitate the connection your success rate will be a lot higher.
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Focusing on Risk
patrickcallioni | May 11, 2009Regulation in fields such as health and policing has evolved thanks to risk management standardisation, so too should financial regulation.
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Broadband Reform: Getting it right
madepercy | May 11, 2009Australia could learn from Canada what a meaningful public consultation on broadband reform looks like.
The Commonwealth’s decision to build the National Broadband Network (NBN) provides an opportunity to fix the policy failures of the last two decades. Despite liberalising the telecommunications industry in the early 1990s, Australia fell well behind similar nations such as Canada in the deployment and take-up of broadband services by the early 2000s. Many believed that Telstra was responsible for the slow deployment and adoption of broadband, but recent statistics suggest otherwise. On many counts, Australia and Canada are on par for average prices and speeds, but at June last year, Australian households were still 12% behind their Canadian counterparts.
