The Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), otherwise known as the ‘Intervention’, was announced on 21 June 2007 by the former Australian Government and received in principle bipartisan support from the then Leader of the Opposition. The immediate aims of the NTER measures were to protect children and make communities safe. In the longer term they...

Family background is known to have a substantial impact on students’ literacy and numeracy results. This raises questions about whether any of the remaining differences in results are due to school performance – or whether they are merely due to random noise. This article reviews research from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)...

Australia’s organ donation and transplantation system does not meet the nation’s present demand for organs and is unlikely to meet its future needs. This is especially so given that the demand for transplanted organs is anticipated to continue to grow with the ageing of Australia’s population and the increased incidence of lifestyle diseases such as...

It is now a little over ten years since the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (now the Australian Human Rights Commission) released the landmark report Seen and Heard: Priority for Children in the Legal Process(ALRC 84, 1997). Seen and Heard represented the culmination of a major two-year...

This report makes recommendations aimed at setting a clearer future for mental health in Australia, providing greater accountability, improving the programs and services that already exist and addressing some of the remaining gaps and shortfalls. The committee considers that further investment, leadership and cooperation are required to achieve an adequate community-based, recovery-focused mental health care...