Every generation in the last 150 years has seen in Australia a contest over marriage which reflects shifting positions on its defining features, and its associated rights and obligations.
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Articles on Social policy
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The government should follow the evidence-based advice before wasting more money on a new “trial” program that further infantilises mainly Indigenous welfare recipients and won’t work.
Government departments often commission research to help them understand and respond to policy issues. But they impose contract conditions that threaten to undermine the integrity of the work.
Centrelink’s failure to answer calls is a sign of a deeper problem: a lack of respect from government services for vulnerable citizens.
The claim that New Zealand’s investment approach to welfare reform has been “very successful” is at best unproven. Arguably, it is plain wrong.
The Intergenerational Report may actually be underestimating the scale of the budgetary challenges ahead.
Responses to family violence by Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten and the terms of reference for Victoria’s royal commission fail to mention young people. Such a lack of recognition has dire consequences.
Research about specialist women’s domestic violence and other refuges does not support the claims made by NSW Family and Community Services Minister Gabrielle Upton that recent sweeping changes to these…
A memorial service has been held in Copenhagen for the victims of the shootings that killed two and injured five in the city on February 14. A crowd of up to 40,000 people gathered just around the corner…
A Green Budget for 2015 was released recently by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The detailed report on social security spending shows that a future government would have to implement much deeper cuts…
Scott Morrison’s appointment as minister for social services in late December 2014 has been seen as an important step for the Abbott government as it moves towards its second budget. The tasks he faces…
My colleagues and I marked 100 days to the next general election by publishing a suite of reports comprehensively documenting the social policy record of the current coalition government, as we have done…
Late in December, I took a phone call from a young woman working for the Department of Social Services. She had called, she said, because the department was checking its database of contacts, so that the…
In recent years, Tangentyere Council Research Hub has undertaken data collection in Alice Springs town camps as part of a longitudinal study of income management. The final report of around 300 pages was…
Over the past decade, drug use in the US has risen dramatically, with heroin use reaching epidemic proportions. The country’s policy for combating abuse has involved incarceration, abstinence-only treatment…
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has just released its latest report card on child well-being in 41 rich countries. In particular, the report looks at the effects of the economic crisis on children…
Former prime minister Gough Whitlam, whose death at age 98 was announced on Tuesday, left significant legacies from his short time in office. Whatever their condition today, many of his government’s initiatives…
Some community welfare sector commentators point to a new order for welfare where the private sector practises social responsibility, states seek to be more entrepreneurial and voluntary community organisations…
The Creating Parity report on Indigenous employment and welfare, released last week by mining magnate Andrew Forrest, is in much the same vein as Tony Shepherd’s recent Commission of Audit. Forrest and…
Social workers deal with messy, complex and ambiguous situations where off-the-peg solutions are often irrelevant. Take a mother who wants to feed a hungry baby, but her fridge is empty because she can’t…
Top contributors
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Peter Whiteford is a Friend of The Conversation.Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
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Professorial Fellow, Jumbunna IHL, University of Technology Sydney
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Senior Lecturer in Economy and Society, Department of Sociology, Macquarie University
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Research Associate, School of Social Sciences, Monash University
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Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW Sydney
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Associate professor, Australian National University
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Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
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Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
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Research Associate, Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
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Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne
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Professor, Digital Sociology and Social Policy, The University of Queensland
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Research Professor in Social Policy, UNSW Sydney
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Emerita Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Adelaide
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Professor of Urban Policy and Director, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University
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Redmond Barry Professor of Political Science, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne
