A community-centred project in NZ is helping rehabilitate a polluted but popular swimming river. Working collaboratively with farmers and addressing funding issues has seen widespread voluntary buy-in to fix up a treasured community asset.
Every Australian jurisdiction has run inquiries into Indigenous youth justice, but they vary wildly on follow-through. June Oscar and Justin Mohamed discuss where we are and what's needed to resolve issues with Aboriginal youth experiences in our justice systems.
Some services have benefited from outsourcing, while others have caused harm to vulnerable people. A UK study examines what factors make failure more likely, and how to avoid being caught out.
We really do need to rethink old practices and principles that are no longer appropriate, much less still embraced. This applies to both ministers and the officials who serve them, and to both sides of politics.
Josh Forde takes us through what a government innovation lab is, why the sudden proliferation of them, what — if anything — is new, and what challenges are emerging.
Victoria's sustainability commissioner on why it's important to measure the economic value of biodiversity, how she got where she is, and her approach to stakeholder engagement.
Distrust of the disability services system is not new. It was a significant driver of change from the previous state-based system to the nationally consistent scheme that the National Disability Insurance Scheme aspires to be. Flavio Souza, Gordon Duff, and David Jonas surveyed 239 eligible NDIS participants and carers about the sources of their distrust of the NDIS and its impact on their choices.
When diseases like the recent coronavirus emerge, public administration can make the difference between containment and major outbreak. The divergent experiences of two Canadian provinces during SARS prove just how important different approaches to planning, resourcing and workers' rights can be.
They measure emissions within a municipal area, such as from cooking with natural gas or driving a car, and emissions from activities within that area that produce emissions somewhere else, such as using electricity from a coal-fired power station or sending rubbish to landfill.
Australia today has more than 8000 quangos, and the recent sports rorts scandal has shone a light on the role of them, their board members, and whether they should call out breaches of public integrity.
Somebody very senior in the Australian Public Service needs to spell out explicitly and publicly that it is never okay for ministers to use federal grants as election slush fund and that it must never be ignored or covered up.
While we obviously need to continue recycling for quite some time, putting the emphasis on genuine circular innovations — that is, moving us away from a waste-based model — should be our sole objective.
New research in Science Advances breaks down the policy issues on which political conservatives and liberals think in zero-sum terms — a black-and-white view of the world where there are only winners and losers. Clark Merrefield reports.
Melbourne Water's award-winning makeover of Dandenong Creek not only broke with tradition in 'daylighting' a piped waterway, but made the community a core stakeholder in planning it. Project lead Sarah Watkins on what made it a success — and why you shouldn't be afraid of the public.
The APS Commissioner's speech delivered to the APS-Wide Conference in Canberra in February 2020.
