The innovation report fails to mention the risk of bias for researchers collaborating with industry. We must ensure that researchers maintain their independence.
Would politicians have the courage to stand up to backlash if people with disability use their care money to pay for overseas holidays, sex workers, internet dating, or tickets to sporting events?
Too many new laws in South Africa are poorly thought through at the policy formulation stage. The new Socio-economic Impact Assessment will need rigorously support throughout government to succeed.
South Africa’s lack of a clear policy direction, poor leadership, corruption and electricity supply problems will be the major constraints to its economic growth over the next 20 years.
By backing a new Charter for Budget Responsibility, the main political parties in Britain want to persuade you that they’re legally obliged to balance the books within three years. Fortunately, it’s not…
After the defeat of the Abbott government’s higher education bills in the Senate, Education Minister Christopher Pyne invoked the legacy of past “reforms” that had been violently contested at the time…
Since 1990, GDP per person in China has doubled and then redoubled. With average incomes multiplying fourfold in little more than two decades, one might expect many of the Chinese people to be dancing…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report tells us that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise and that, unchecked, climate change will likely…
E-cigarettes are increasingly popular in a number of countries including the UK, while in others such as Norway and Brazil they are banned altogether. So amid all these differences in policy, what do we…
The British Medical Journal’s investigation into the role played by the alcohol industry in public health policy focuses on the government’s decision to drop its commitment to introduce a minimum unit…
Stories about “population ageing” often have a number of things in common – it is bad, it is new, and it will overwhelm us all. The major fear is a burden of cost and caring that more older people will…
If you follow the debate on “population ageing” you could be forgiven for thinking that it is a bad thing; growing numbers of older people mean greying societies, struggling to maintain pensions, welfare…
Walter Holland, London School of Economics and Political Science
The introduction of scientific principles into government decision-making began with the publication of the Haldane Report in 1918. Haldane believed that research should play a key role in government and…
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called for politicians to take up their “megaphones” to explain policy and argue for reforms. Launching the book Dog Days: Australia After the Boom, by leading…
Without good advice, governments are in extreme danger of creating erroneous or damaging public policy. So it’s a serious matter when a government science adviser is accused of ignoring scientific evidence…
Most controversial public policy could be said to be made on the run, or at least amended on a brisk walk. So the revelations in Peter Martin’s recent article on the errors embedded in the Gillard government’s…
Apparently, teachers and principals have no need to hear about research on international education policy and are too sensitive to deal with “controversial” ideas. Last week, the University of Melbourne’s…
Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Deakin Business School and Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University