The most challenging and distressing report that I read this year was the World Bank’s Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided.  Click here for report. The report presented a forensic analysis of the potential impact of climate change on a range of environments across the globe and considered the social implications…

The paucity of women amongst the new Government’s key decision makers as ministers, outer ministers and parliamentary secretaries has raised a furore in public debate. It also raises questions more generally about women’s progress in an advanced and wealthy democracy. What of the efforts of women over the past 30, 50 or 100 years, to…

In 2008, I wrote a paper, presented at the International Council of Social Welfare conference, that considered questions of mobility from low end jobs to better jobs and the role of welfare to work social policies in facilitating this transition especially for women. The paper is of interest now because it refers to the pre…

Having published an article in the Conversation on 2 September on the paucity of debate in the election campaign on the quality of jobs growth – and specifically the need for middle class jobs growth, I was intrigued to listen this week to Radio National’s Big Ideas program Can democracy survive a disappearing middle class?…

The Australian election is over at last but what the Coalition win will mean for Australian society is the story to be told in coming years. This week we are at page one of what might be quite a long read, as both pages and chapters. For sure, the outcome of the Coalition government in…