While we stigmatise fat people, perhaps they are behaving normally in a sick social environment. The answer then is not diets, drugs and surgery but a wholesale change in the culture of consumption, which itself is a reaction to the emptiness of affluence.

Bashing baby boomers is becoming so passe. The Howard Government’s Intergenerational Report found that the ageing of the population does not constitute a crisis but rather a fairly manageable transition. Despite this, a number of commentators continue to insist that the age pension claims of a large cohort of boomers will put unsustainable pressure on

As parents and professionals who work with children point out, the time and energy that they currently spend in trying to protect children from the advertising and media onslaught (as well as in healing the damage it causes) would be far better spent on the positive aspects of caring for children. In short, if government

Drugs policy arouses strong emotions. People see drug users and fear the unknown. The traditional response from politicians, particularly conservatives, has been to exploit these fears for political gain. The outcome has been an over-reliance on law enforcement as a means of stamping out both the supply and use of harmful drugs. It is hoped

Rather than being empowered, children are being exploited by the process of sexualisation. For children seeking to become empowered in an adult world, a more promising route is to focus on developing cognitive and emotional capacities that enable them to negotiate power relations more maturely and with less risk to themselves. There is nothing wrong

Despite the fanfare that surrounds major events, the reality is that state and territory governments are often spending large sums of taxpayer money in attempts to divert events, tourists, jobs and associated revenue from one part of Australia to another, and from one industry to another.

Since the early 1900s, Australias drug policies have been based on the notion that the law should be the primary mechanism for addressing drug problems. By prohibiting both the supply and use of certain undesirable drugs, governments thought they could stamp out drug use and drug-related activities. But drug markets have proved remarkably resistant to

Over the last fifteen years, much effort has gone into the preparation of sustainability reports. These are reports that provide information on social and environmental as well as economic matters. This has been done in the name of improved decision making, accountability and transparency. It has also been motivated by a desire to promote ecologically

Our national myth is that of the stoical farmer battling the elements and never succumbing. But the $1 billion plus in drought relief granted over the last few years is an expensive means of sustaining an anachronism. Sometimes we have to be cruel to be kind, and that means refusing to pretend that if we

The Government argues that encouraging people to work longer is also helping them do something for their own benefit. However, increasing the retirement age is asking people to contribute time at a life stage when time is scarce. For boomers, being compelled to work later means that individuals are giving up something – time –

Under a voucher scheme, government funding would be provided on a per student basis to the school of parents’ choice, whether public or private. The amount given to each student could be the same (flat-rate vouchers) or could vary (differentiated vouchers). Vouchers could also be confined to particular students (targeted vouchers). Jennifer Buckingham, from the

We drew out the broad elements of an active social strategy targeted at the major barriers to social mobility ”” children’s early development, public infrastructure deficiencies and inequalities of access to employment, health, education, training and housing. If it is to gain public acceptance, such a strategy would need to be preceded by a campaign

Corporate chains – which now own around a quarter of centres in Australia – offer the lowest quality of care on all indicators surveyed, in some cases markedly lower than that provided by community-based centres. Beyond tightening up the centre accreditation processes, as announced recently, the government should consider offering capital grants to new community-based

Social scientists have sought to measure the degree of upward income mobility (the ability of low-income people to rise up the ladder over time) and found that some nations perform better than others on this criterion. Looking back over recent decades, Australia emerges as a more mobile (less “sticky”) society than the United States, Britain

With evidence now appearing to suggest that the quality of care in corporate childcare centres is markedly lower than elsewhere, the Government will need to act to discourage any further domination of long day care in Australia by the corporate chains until it can be shown that the quality of the care they provide is

Our state and local governments have also been cowed by the cultural and economic momentum of the marketing industry and their squadrons of boosters and lickspittles in the media. In the relentless drive to attract advertisers’ dollars into supporting public facilities and events, the guardians of public morals have lost their way, blinded by the

A recent Australia Institute report found that drug strategies should be treatment-orientated so that to ease the punitive burden on users we need to discourage people from using drugs and provide those who do with effective treatment. It also found that drug law enforcement is incapable of putting a significant dent in illicit drug markets,