Australia's food safety and quarantine standards are coming under increasing pressure from bilateral trade agreements such as the Australia-US FTA. Despite the risks to Australian health and agriculture, quarantine standards have already been lowered to accommodate increased trade. Further concessions are likely in negotiations for FTAs with China, Thailand and other countries. Hilary Bambrick argues...

Three recent developments in the international climate change regime have profound implications for Australia. They are: the imminent start- up of the European Emissions Trading System; the near-success of the McCain-Lieberman Bill in the US Senate; and the announcement that Russia will ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Clive Hamilton discusses these in a recent public lecture.

Deb Wilkinson, Richard Denniss and Andrew MacIntosh highlight the need to tighten the current accountability arrangements that cover private schools in Australia to ensure that private schools teach public values. They highlight a range of exemptions that private schools curently have from anti-discrimination legislation allowing them to expel students on the basis of their sexuality...

A recent audit of accuracy at Centrelink revealed that an estimated one million mistakes had been made by the agency over a four-month period - an example of how burgeoning complexity has caused a deterioration in accuracy. Howard Pender describes the forms complexity takes, examines the problems it causes and discusses 'rulebase technologies' which, in...

The international climate change community is increasingly turning its attention to proposals to base future greenhouse gas emission reduction obligations at least in part on a per capita principle. In the case of industrialised countries, expectations about the responsibility to take action have been, and will increasingly be, influenced by each country's overall contribution to...