Australia’s VET system needs fundamental change

Damian Oliver and Serena Yu (University of Technology Sydney) write in The Conversation that maintaining community confidence in the value of VET qualifications is essential for a functioning labour market, but the system is in need of fundamental reform.

Unfinished financial services reforms face the new Treasurer

Writing in The Conversation, Amy Auster (Australian Centre for Financial Studies) says that when Australia’s new treasurer, Scott Morrison, walks into the office today, a stack of unfinished business awaits.

Key policy challenges facing new Ministers in the Turnbull Cabinet

Writing in The Conversation, a panel of leading academics outlines the key policy challenges facing new Ministers in the Turnbull Cabinet.

Realising the Benefits of Smart Meters

A new report from the Victorian Auditor-General's Office finds that Victoria's electricity consumers will have paid an estimated $2.2 billion for metering services, including the rollout and connection of smart meters. In contrast, while a few benefits have accrued to consumers, benefits realisation is behind schedule and most benefits are yet to be realised.

Transferring water policy to the agriculture minister could trigger a logjam of bureaucracy

Part of the compact Malcolm Turnbull entered into to become Prime Minister included the concession to the National Party for portfolio responsibility for water policy in the Murray-Darling Basin to be transferred to the Agriculture Minister. James Horne (ANU) writing in The Conversation provides an update on progress in implementing the water reforms and the possible bureaucratic implications.

Two years in, even supporters despair of the Abbott government

Dennis Altman (La Trobe University), writing in The Conversation, assesses the first two years of the Abbott Government. So far, Abbott has failed to position himself as anything more than an opposition leader who has been given power and is unsure what to do with it. While the Government's weaknesses could turn out to be fatal, they are also clearly apparent and could therefore be addressed if there was a capability within the Government to do something about them. After all, even the Hawke and Howard Governments looked somewhat feeble in their first terms.

What is Australia's strategy for the Syrian military intervention?

Denis Dragovic (University of Melbourne) writes in The Conversation that military power alone cannot address the political and ideological motivations driving IS’s successes. Nearly five years of war has effectively redrawn Syria's borders, pushing people to move to what have become self-governed regions. We can look to the experience of the multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina to see how a previously integrated and heterogeneous society became segregated through conflict, and yet managed to establish a tenuous but peaceful co-existence by establishing autonomous regions. Australia must additionally commit non-military resources, diplomats, stabilisation and reconstruction specialists as well as financing. It must have a realistic view of the end goal and start planning to stabilise and rebuild any territory taken from IS.

Data indicates the recession is effectively here; it’s what policy makers do next that counts

Fabrizio Carmignani (Griffith University) writes in The Conversation that, while not being technically in a recession, Australia today shows most of the symptoms of recession. And without strong growth in state government spending, Australia would have probably experienced its first quarter of negative growth in 2015Q2.

A political myth that Australia takes more refugees than any other country

Mary Anne Kenny (Murdoch University) writes in The Conversation that it is incorrect to claim that Australia takes more refugees than any other country. In order to substantiate a "world best" boast, one has to torture the data to exclude the 99% of refugees who are not resettled by the UNHCR and also calculate on a per capita basis.

Distinct absence of strategy in Middle East actions

Michelle Grattan writes in The Conversation about the nexus between refugee, foreign and defence policy. She highlights the lack of accountability for Australia's offshore detention centres and an absence of strategy in Australia's intervention in the Middle East.

Keating, reform and the difficult notion of ‘political capital’

Writing in The Conversation, Natalie Mast (University of WA) and Nicholas Barry (La Trobe University) provide a nice explanation of political capital (the electorate’s level of “trust” in a politician or political party), how this trust can be used to instigate significant legislative reform, and a brief history of its use since Paul Keating's Government.

Should the federal government take over vocational training?

Peter Noonan (Victoria University) argues in The Conversation that there is little to be gained in just transferring VET funding to the Commonwealth under current policy settings. New policies are required so that VET and higher education work more effectively together, and to make sure that VET most effectively contributes to the Commonwealth’s economic and labour market objectives.

The NBN: why it’s slow, expensive and obsolete

Rod Tucker (University of Melbourne) explains why the Government's fibre-to-the-node NBN will be so slow that it is obsolete by the time it’s in place, it will cost about the same as Labor’s fibre-to-the-premises NBN, and it won’t arrive on our doorsteps much sooner.

What’s really at stake if the China FTA falls through

This is an insightful analysis from Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer (University of Victoria) from The Conversation, explaining that using the Government's own analysis the free trade agreement with China is expected to produce very modest economic benefits for Australia, and will likely only be noticeable in a few agricultural and downstream industries. Readers might also be interested in Peter Martin's analysis in The Sydney Morning Herald on how the apparent chasm between the Government and Opposition over labour provision might be resolved with a minor legislative amendment.