Between 2009 and 2011, the School–Community Learning Partnerships for Sustainability Project explored the ways in which schools and communities can work together to achieve sustainability outcomes. The project involved seventeen schools and early childhood centres and their communities in developing case studies of their collaborations. The research project has now been completed. One important outcome...

There's a skill shortage in trades and as the baby boomers retire it's set to become more acute. RMIT University academic Alan Montague believes students need better careers counselling to think beyond the current focus on a university degree so they see trade training as a positive alternative. Listen in full

When Barack Obama visited Australia in November last year he and Julia Gillard announced a new level of military cooperation between the United States and Australia. The public centre-piece of the “announceables” for Obama’s visit was the planned deployment of a United States Marine Air-Ground Task Force to Darwin. Less attention was paid to the...

Melbourne’s metropolitan strategy Melbourne 2030 was conceived in 1999, born in 2002, pronounced dead in 2009 and finally buried, unmourned and unloved, in 2011. When the newly-elected Baillieu government announced earlier this year that it intended to scrap Melbourne 2030 and replace it with a new metropolitan planning strategy, the response was a deafening silence...

This paper addresses private sector involvement in the delivery of public transport. It is part of a larger project to investigate the question: What should government control in a “privatised” urban public transport system in order to safeguard the public interest?