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Rethinking Australia’s Employment Services

Lisa Fowkes, author of Rethinking Australia's Employment Services, examines the tumultuous twenty year history of policy change and experimentation in employment services. Lisa brings an insider's perspective, having for many years been a key figure with Job Futures, an extensive national network of community-based employment services.

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Democratic Challenges in Tackling Climate Change

Democratic Challenges in Tackling Climate Change examines the urgency for Climate Change action, and the accompanying political challenges.

Professor the Hon Barry Jones AO tackles this vast issue with a remarkable distillation of the science and scientific history of climate change; a direct and vigorous exposition of the political meanderings that risk leaving Australia without any effective response; and a powerful argument for Australian initiative. Yet underlying his essay is an optimism that it is not too late, if only we choose to act.

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The Northern Territory Intervention and Human Rights

In The Northern Territory Intervention and Human Rights: An Anthropological Perspective , social anthropologist Dr Mary Edmunds draws together the history, circumstance, culture, principles and practice surrounding the Northern Territory Intervention. It is a considered and robust examination of the tension between our human rights obligations, the imperative to act, and the way these intentions are experienced on the ground.

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Commoditising Banking

Commoditising Banking: refashioning the private public partnership of banking around the relative strengths of the private and public sectors, by leading economic thinker and commentator, Dr Nicholas Gruen calls for banking sector reform. The essay argues that Australian banks' profitable navigation of the Global Financial Crisis may be pleasing shareholders but the political and community reception has been hostile. Dr Gruen proposes a viable, low risk policy reform which would address the current inequity in the structure of the Australian banking system.

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An Agenda for Social Democracy

In An Agenda for Social Democracy, Professor John Qiggin addresses the question of where we want Australia to be at the other side of the Global Financial Crisis with a thoughtful, some may say provocative, exploration of what may be required to give practical effect to a social democratic economic agenda.

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Young People Imagining a New Democracy

This paper offers valuable insights into the aspirations of young people, their experience and the changes in how they do participate in community and political life. It highlights several powerful questions; not least of which is the extent to which these emerging forms of participation influence particular decisions or the political environment more generally.

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