The controversy over the Murray Darling Basin Guide centres on the need to strike a balance between the social, economic and environmental uses of water. The difficulties in undertaking this task are most…
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Cigarette packages have become the last bastion of advertising for tobacco manufacturers. If the Federal Government wins its war against big tobacco, all cigarette packages will be subject to designs chosen…
Australia could be doing more to regulate the activities of Australian companies operating abroad. In the past decade a handful of troubling cases have been reported connecting Australian mining companies…
PRIVACY – Who are hackers and what do they want from you? Pop culture would have us believe they live in dank basements, wear black leather from head to toe and have pseudonyms such as Warlock or Neo…
Recent rumors of looming cuts to the National Health and Medical Research Council budget have jump-started a much-needed national discussion about health and medical research policy in Australia. Unfortunately…
The professional Australian Rules football season is underway and the better part of the nation is now transfixed until early October by its myriad machinations. At this early point in the season, it is…
Theoretical physics is full of mysteries and unknowns. In the case of some particles, we can predict their existence even if we can’t find them. Such is the status of the Higgs boson. And yet detecting…
Something remarkable has happened: 1000 economists have agreed with each other. In Washington, civil society groups will present a letter signed by 1000 economists from 50 countries to the annual G20 finance…
Whether we’re talking about investing in renewable energy, introducing an emissions trading scheme or putting a price on carbon, the climate change discussion has been invariably focused on the cost to…
The desire to solve society’s wicked problems is a primary motivator for both government and not-for-profit organisations, and has become an important driver for business as they refine their strategies…
The Federal Government is introducing a new system for electronically managing health information – and given its botched implementation so far failure is almost guaranteed. Called the PCEHR (personally…
FOOD SECURITY - You don’t hear about it as much, but global food security is a major issue, probably of more concern than climate change. It is driven by increasing population, changes in diet, increasing…
On an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean I crouch by a seawall. The weather, normally so clement at this time of year, is appalling. Over the previous three days, the wind has blow-up thirty-foot…
PRIVACY – Your location is arguably more personal than your genetic profile; even identical twins can’t be in the same place at the same time. In terms of value, it’s on a par with your medical records…
The Fukushima incident has been upgraded to an INES Level 7 of severity. The Australian Science Media Centre asked three experts what this means. Dr Pradip Deb is a Senior Lecturer in Medical Radiations…
Since the 2004 Sumatra earthquake, there have been several major events, and a large number of magnitude-8 earthquakes – a cluster, it could be said, of large earthquakes. The last time we saw this was…
Facebook, with more than 500 million members, has now reached superpower status. If Facebook were a country, its supporters often say, its population would rank behind only China and India. But there is…
Once ‘un-Australian’ appears in any debate don’t expect rational argument or evidence. Look no further for proof than the advertising blitz by Clubs Australia and the Australian Hotels Association against…
As we worry about where we will put Australia’s ever-increasing population, urban trees are becoming collateral damage. So how much are our trees worth to us? According to Melbourne City Council, they…
Tony Abbott’s recently unveiled welfare reform package advocating a range of tough policies to push people into work has been described by Prime Minister Julia Gillard as ‘reheated’. You might expect that…
No amount of AFL passes in the Oval Office during Prime Minister Gillard’s visit to Washington last month could disguise the real issue facing Australia, the US and the rest of the world: the rise of China…
In the course of researching two books about cosmetic surgery, the most shocking truth I have discovered is how uncontroversial or “normal” it has become. Over the last decade, I’ve interviewed many people…
FOOD SECURITY - Soils can help us solve two of the most pressing problems of the coming decades: climate change and food shortage. There is more fresh water in the world’s soils than in all its lakes and…
Independent MP Tony Windsor was right in early March when he called for a debate on carbon pricing in Australia that is “a little bit more advanced than the word ‘lie’ and the word ‘tax’”. The quality…
Some 150 years ago, Charles Darwin proposed a mechanism for evolutionary change; but is there something beyond natural selection driving evolution? My colleagues and I think so, and we believe it has come…