Recent government approaches to childcare funding have been simple rather than innovative. Improvements in affordability have been short lived, with benefits quickly absorbed through higher costs charged to families. The result is an ongoing game of catch up between government and service providers with families stuck in the middle. Since 2001, the proportion of Australian

Poker machines play a major role in redistributing income away from those with the least and towards those with the most. According to the Productivity Commission the social cost of poker machines is approximately $4.7 billion per year. Perversely, those who profit most from this most inequitable of income distribution devices often justify the existing

The internet today stands at a crossroads. Entry into the online marketplace is in theory open to virtually anyone with sufficient technological know-how and a viable business model. As a result, the World Wide Web is now the very model of diversity, with more information, more products and more opinions accessible more easily than through

Australian women suffer a ‘wage penalty’ when they return to work after having a child, according to new research by the Australia Institute. In the first year back at work, women can expect to earn around four per cent less per hour on average than they would if they had not had a child, the

The online retail boom has begun and it is unlikely to abate soon. According to Southern Cross Equities (2010) domestic online retailers have doubled their market share to 4.0 per cent of 2010 annual sales up from 2.1 per cent in 2005. In addition, overseas purchases driven by a strong dollar and falling shipping prices

The Rudd Government has committed to the introduction of a national compact with the community sector and is currently consulting with NGOs regarding the development of such an agreement by 2009. This report considers whether a formal agreement is the right way for the government and the community sector to go about building an ongoing

Our submission supports a minimum of 26 weeks paid leave. This would be funded through a mix of employment related and government transfer payments to families. The government transfers would be available to working and non-working families while employment related entitlements would apply to working women and men.

This piece focuses on if the electorate believes that prominent politicians should go to heaven. Out of the six politicians John Howard scored the lowest with less than half of the population believing he should go to heaven, while Peter Garrett scored the highest at 74%. When split into political parties Howard was the most

This paper explains why the current patchwork of media and advertising regulation is failing to prevent the premature sexualisation of Australian children. A number of improvements are proposed based on a review of current regulatory arrangements for the areas most responsible for the sexualisation of children: girls’ magazines, television and outdoor advertising, and television programs.

This article critics the cold war mentality of John Howard’s speech at the 50th anniversary of the Quadrant. Howard attacked environmentalists, unions, public schools, teachers and indigenous rights activists. The ability to tap into anti-left fear is due to the perceived moral decay of society that the conservatives have dominated. This article recommends a closer connection

This report gives the first comprehensive overview of the ways in which Australian children are being sexualised by advertising and marketing from a very young age. It also describes in detail the risks children face as a result of this corporate paedophilia.

This new paper reports the results of an extensive study of the attitudes of baby boomers to retirement and shifting perceptions to the pension and self-funding.

A study of the attitudes of teenagers showing that the gender wars are set to continue into the next generation with boys and girls making conflicting plans about who will do the housework and look after the children.

Analyses the conditions that facilitate access, participation and pleasure at chamber music concerts to demonstrate that cultural policy-makers and arts organisations need to engage in strategies that acknowledge more directly the audience experience.

Throughout the Western world, the changing nature of families has led to a highly charged debate and when commentators talk of how families have changed they usually compare family structures now to those of the 1950s and 1960s. Families are changing, but for reasons far more complex than declining moral values and rising selfish individualism.

The Prime Minister has given a guarantee that charities will be no worse off under the GST. This paper argues that this guarantee can only be met if substantial changes are made to the definition of what constitutes a charity and its “non-commercial” activities.

Address to the Horizons of Science Forum, UTS

This paper collects together some of the papers from the Australia Institute’s conference entitled Citizens in the Marketplace: The implications of competition policy for citizenship. The conference was motivated by the desire to bring together various strands of thought which are being knit into an alternative to economic rationalism. The notion of citizenship, and the

The Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG, President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal and Chairman of the Executive of the International Commission of Jurists and Professor Max Neutze, Inaugural Chair, at the public launch of The Australia Institute on 4 May 1994, Brassey Hotel Canberra.