Telemarketing is one form of ‘direct marketing’, along with junk mail, spam and face-to-face marketing. Direct marketing differs from ‘traditional’ advertising in making a much stronger claim on our attention. Members of the public have to take deliberate action if they wish to avoid direct marketing, but Institute research indicates that an ‘opt-in’ system would

Originally printed in the Sydney Morning Herald. Under the Productivity Commission’s parental leave proposal, men are entitled to two weeks’ paternity leave (use it or lose it), and mothers would be allowed to transfer their 18-week entitlement to their partners. It leaves the important decision about who provides primary care up to individual families and,

Non-government organisations contribute to the Australian community in a myriad of ways, creating a rich, supportive and inclusive community. They help produce an active and vibrant democracy and they provide representation to marginalised members of the community. NGOs can also inform public debate, rendering it more substantive and less likely to be captured by business

We need the TGA, and other government regulatory bodies, to keep their teeth. We also need them to behave respectably and transparently. The TGA must now come clean about what went on behind the scenes in the Pan case if it has a chance of regaining authority.

Not only can current jobs be adapted to green jobs, Australian engineers who now go to Europe, California or China might be lured home. Eventually, every job needs to be a green job: every industry will need to readjust to the reality of climate change and play their part in cutting Australia’s emissions. At best,

Recent research by the Australia Institute reveals the extent of community mistrust of the financial sector. Indeed, a large majority of adult Australians hold banks and other financial institutions responsible for the current debt crisis. Although many people believe that personal responsibility in financial decision making is important, there is broad consensus that the banking

Under John Howard, the Liberal Party was able to walk both sides of the philosophical street. On “economic” issues they were opposed to government interference in the individual’s “right to choose”, but on “social” issues the Liberals seemed comfortable with the idea that government knew best. The real issues, though, such as whether people should

Australia’s love affair with easy credit has turned on itself. The price of credit has reached its highest point in 14 years, and home buyers are feeling the economic pain associated with higher interest rates. The corporate sector has tended to blame individuals for taking on more debt than they can handle, drawing on the

A character test is traditionally applied to decide whether a person should be granted some kind of privilege – for example, a visa, citizenship, or an important job. When trying to judge character, the evidence examined usually includes a person’s past statements, activities and conduct, including any police record, criminal charges or jail terms. The

Originally printed in ABC News. It’s a good thing for our communities if working parents are able to take time out to spend with children. This should be the guiding principle for the Productivity Commission’s upcoming inquiry into paid maternity, paternity and parental leave. The second principle is to accept that many parents want or

I propose three ideas for the upcoming 2020 Summit this weekend. Firstly, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is asking for participants to take the long view of Australia’s future, which is always the hard thing for leaders trapped in the electoral cycle to do. Secondly, Rudd is asking Australia to accept that just gathering 1000 volunteers

International Women’s Day is on Saturday. In the spirit of national change, I nominate three wishes for progress in gender equality that the Rudd Government could deliver immediately, and which might also yield longer term benefits for all Australian women. First, move the Office for Women back into the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

But is it acceptable for former government members to leave early purely because they have lost government? At the least, there should be recognition of the shirking of responsibility that this entails. There should also be some contribution towards the considerable costs of holding by-elections. Representing one’s constituency for the duration of the parliament is

A study by the Australia Institute, Stuff Happens, found that women in particular find clutter distressing. They don’t necessarily have more clutter than men (the typical suburban garage would dispel that notion) but they tend to notice it more. Women are also more embarrassed by their clutter than men. The alternative to cluttering up our

From the moment it became plain that Labor would win the election, The Australian began to argue that a Rudd victory is in fact a victory for Howard. He has so much in common with Howard that, despite appearances, the victory of Rudd is another defeat for the left. Humbled by the new spirit of

The dawn of the new 42nd Parliament is a rare chance to draw a line under certain practices of the previous decade of Parliament, practices that had undermined some of the basic tenets of parliamentary democracy. The new tone has to be set from the outset. What precisely was wrong with our old Parliament? In

Ross Garnaut, who will report in June to the Rudd Government on its emissions trading system, is a former trade economist now spending a lot of time thinking about how to prevent powerful industries undermining the Government’s plans. He has come up with a radical solution. Let’s have one target, a carbon budget aimed at

The pressures on teenagers today are immense. Many are convinced that their entire lives will be determined by one number ”” their ENTER score. But, many who do not do well at school or university go on to have highly successful careers. And many who perform brilliantly at school and university somehow end up living

The science is becoming more alarming by the month, and so are the impacts of global warming itself. The demand for decisive action can only intensify over the next three years; it will require far-sighted policies to bring about a wholesale transformation of the nation’s energy economy, a structural change on a par with that

Nearly 20 years ago I went through a process that is sometimes referred to as “the dark night of the soul”. It is a phase of spiritual life that many people experience. The phenomenon is well known in the Catholic Church in all traditions. Openness is a virtue in public life. What an impoverished world

Over recent months, Minister Kevin Andrews has been bringing the new Australian Citizenship Test to fruition. This is a policy destined to fail utterly in its stated intention – “to help new citizens to embrace education, employment and other opportunities in Australia”, according to the Government – but succeed in sending a message to voters

Today’s little girls aren’t tottering around in mum’s high heels. These days, nothing could be more daggy for a primary school girl than pretending to be her mum, or any other normal adult. So – at the risk of sounding repetitive – everyone please take note: premature sexualisation has nothing to do with children’s creative

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.

Comments this week by Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull suggest that the Government is beginning to realise the incompatibility between endless growth in the aviation sector and the prevention of dangerous climate change. Even if Australia adopts a lower target of 60% reductions by 2050, as the Labor Party has proposed, aviation could still gobble

The Prime Minister, various ministers and the fossil fuel lobby have for years claimed that cutting emissions would be economically ruinous, cause massive job losses and destroy our international competitiveness. None of these claims is backed by credible evidence and can easily be shown to be false.

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

The Government dismissed the Institute’s report, claiming we don’t understand the Kyoto accounting rules and didn’t make adjustments for differences in methods. These claims are false (and are addressed in a paper available on the Institute’s website). Even if they were correct, the fact remains that NCAS is a black box: its data are not

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