Under Australian mental health laws, people with schizophrenia can only be involuntarily committed to a mental health facility if they are assessed and it is determined that their illness is making them dangerous to themselves or others.

After years of highly charged political and public debate on tackling climate change, Australia started taxing carbon emissions on 1 July 2012. Under the carbon tax, Australia’s biggest carbon emitting companies will pay a fixed-price levy on their carbon emissions for three years. At the end of this period, the carbon tax will transition to...

Debates about different models of maternity care have been long-running in Australia. Disputes over evidence on the safety and quality of midwifery-led models of care – which include shared care, birth centres, and planned home births – are at the heart of the debate.

When Activity-Based Funding (ABF) for public hospitals begins on 1 July this year, it should make it easier for hospitals to establish Hospital in the Home (HITH) services. The pricing framework underpinning the ABF system stipulates that public hospital services should be priced in a way that facilitates the timely roll-out of evidence-based innovations in...

In its final report to government the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission outlined three options for reforming the structure of the Australian health system. The third option, discussed in this paper, proposed a fundamental restructure of the Australian health system. The proposal, called Medicare Select, was foreshadowed in the Commission’s interim report (where it...