The Abbott government can provide national leadership and take adoption out of the ‘too-hard’ basket by setting national child protection performance targets, argues this report, including by boosting the number of local adoptions from care to the equivalent of more adoption-friendly countries within the next 10 years.

Executive summary: While Commonwealth government debt has been the focus of attention recently, this report takes a broader view by bringing state debt into the picture. Much has been made of the fact that Commonwealth government debt is projected (under current expenditure and tax policies) to grow from $300 billion at June 2013 to more...

With inventive foreign policy needed to reassure the Indo-Pacific’s established powers and accommodate Chinese ambitions, this report proposes three complementary strategies: prolong US leadership; protect the territorial status quo; and pursue a policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ vis-à-vis territorial disputes. Executive summary With the centre of global economic gravity shifting east towards Asia, the Indo-Pacific will...

This collection of speeches makes the case that students are not being provided with the most effective evidence-based reading instruction in the early years of school. Executive summary: This collection of edited speeches is from a CIS policy forum held on 14 November 2013 to discuss the article ‘Why Jaydon Can’t Read: The Triumph of...

Executive summary: At a National Press Club forum held 15 days before the federal elections of 7 September 2013, Liberal MP Kevin Andrews pledged that a Coalition government would abolish the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ACNC), a new regulatory body for the not-for-profit (NFP) sector that the Gillard government established in late 2012. When...