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,

Drug Law Reform by Andrew Macintosh Skip Dipping by Emma Rush The Dirty Politics of Climate Change by Clive Hamilton Gagging the CSIRO by Roslyn Beeby Bugging Legislation by Cameron Murphy

Who Drives 4WDs? by Clive Hamilton The Nationals’ Telstra Deal by Deb Wilkinson New Climate Institute Can We Withdraw From Iraq? by Barry Naughten Beyond Right and Left by David McKnight A Sick Economy? by Clive Hamilton The Senate: Now and Then by Emma Rush Corporate Control of Child Care by Emma Rush Fear and

Activists: How to beat them at their own game by Katherine Wilson Mapping Homophobia in Australia by Michael Flood and Clive Hamilton Poverty in Australia: Vinnies versus the CIS by Clive Hamilton The EPBC Act: A five-year assessment by Andrew Macintosh and Deb Wilkinson Managing the Economy: A Political Scorecard by Prof. Raja Junankar Will

Stuck in Traffic by Claire Barbato Government stymies advocacy by green NGOs by Clive Hamilton Wellbeing Manifesto launch Howard’s Children by Richard Denniss The ‘Left” and the Iraq War by Clive Hamilton Taxpayers Soaked by Andrew Macintosh Is the Bracks Government Serious about Climate Change? ZPG for ACT? by Claire Barbato Gross National Happiness by

Waste not want not by Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss Who is lonely in Australia? by Michael Flood Traffic fine by Clive Hamilton New Book from the Institute Relational thinking by Michael Schluter Climate Taskforce Report Released by Justin Sherrard Private health insurance by Richard Denniss

Property rights and the environment by Andrew Macintosh and Richard Denniss The peripatetic Institute When FTA spells BSE by Hilary Bambrick Can we bury our greenhouse problem? by High Saddler Climate Change Taskforce reaches consensus by Alan Tate Time to mothball the Kyoto sceptics by Clive Hamilton Take the rest of the year off  by