As the Australia Parliament currently debates legislation to fight illegal logging, it’s worth considering the impact of the American and European laws on which the Australian effort is modelled. We may…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Home – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 47101 - 47125 of 51694 articles
The issue of media reporting of suicide was once again thrust into the spotlight this week, with mental health researcher, clinician and former Australian of the year Pat McGorry renewing his calls for…
The latest NAPLAN results have arrived, and soon enough thousands of Australian parents will tear open the envelope containing their child’s NAPLAN results. They will be faced with a series of graphs that…
The release of Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report into the death of 96 football fans at the 1989 FA Cup Semi Final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest is not just a landmark in British history…
Finding bright spots in the US economy is a seemingly thankless task. The unemployment rate, despite dipping slightly in previous months, remains above 8%; last month, employers could only add 96,000 jobs…
Recent media reports have highlighted an anomaly in residential aged-care funding in Australia: that day-to-day operations of facilities are governed by both Commonwealth and state government policies…
Welcome to part two of our Race to the White House podcast series. Each week we’ll be talking to Australia’s top US experts on the ins and outs of the 2012 US presidential campaign. This week, Dennis Altman…
It was fun while it lasted Finland, but we’re going cold on you. We thought your schools had the secret but our new infatuation is with Asian school systems. The Prime Minister seems to agree. The government…
OVER-DIAGNOSIS EPIDEMIC – We finish our first week of this series with Robert Burton, Christopher Stevenson and Mark Frydenberg examining prostate cancer screening. Scientific oncology started with the…
A man arrested yesterday in anti-terror raids in Melbourne has been charged by Federal Police with four counts of making a document likely to facilitate terrorist acts. But this does not mean there is…
You might not realise it, but there is a virtual queue of organisations snaking around you just waiting to make you more valuable than you actually are. Your spending patterns, loyalty program memberships…
SAVING THE OZONE: Part five in our series exploring the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer – dubbed “the world’s most successful environmental agreement” – explores the parallels…
Imagine a specially-engineered surface that could allow liquids to boil without bubbling. This sounds counter-intuitive and, in a way, it is. But consider the following. When a small drop of water is dropped…
The most recent edition of the OECD’s Education at a Glance released this week, is another report that has invariably been seen as a report card on Australian education. Australians want to know: how did…
Are CEOs worth their massive remuneration packages, or is there too much cash in the corner office? Executive pay has been in the spotlight in recent weeks amid a lacklustre reporting season for some of…
The defining characteristic of the Newman government’s environmental policy seems to be a Great Leap Backwards: an old-fashioned determination not to let environmental concerns get in the way of expanding…
According to the best estimates at the time, almost 105,000 Australians were homeless on census night in August 2006. This promoted then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to make the ambitious commitment to accommodate…
Does it seem strange that we will enthusiastically kiss an attractive person’s mouth, with tongues intertwining and saliva going everywhere, but that we might wrinkle our nose up at the idea of using that…
The American delegation in Benghazi has been left reeling by the deaths of four of its staff, amongst them Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The deaths occurred in an effort to evacuate the consulate…
In the biggest rally for Catalan independence ever, an estimated crowd of 1.5 million people flooded the city of Barcelona with red-and-yellow striped flags on Catalonia’s national day, the Diada. Tax…
Australia has shown outstanding leadership on tobacco control - but it could do more. The next step is surely for the Future Fund to quit its addiction to tobacco investments. The Gillard government’s…
The Queensland Government has decided to raise coal mining royalties. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? A review of Queensland Pty Ltd by Peter Costello revealed a precarious balance sheet. Time to get things…
As had long been predicted, Apple today (AEST) announced the launch of the iPhone 5. The famously secretive Apple had sprung many leaks over the past few months, despite claiming it would be doubling down…
A Senate Economics Committee has been reflecting on life after the global financial crisis for Australian banks. The general consensus has been to date that Australian banks escaped the worst of the fall-out…
Welcome to The Conversation’s series on megatrends. What are the compelling economic, social, environmental, political and technological changes Australia must grapple with over the coming decades? In…