This volume seeks to provide a response to the question “Just what is it that the social sciences do?”

This paper addresses three aspects of creativity in Australian society:

This edition of the Academy's journal, Dialogue, features the following articles on feminism: Disappearing Tricks, by Marian Sawer Poisons and Antidotes: Historicising feminism and equality in an age of rights competition, by Ann Genovese The Sexual Revolution as Big Flop: Women’s Liberation lesson one, by...

The issue of public service responsiveness to ministers has been described as a ‘hardy perennial’ of public service ethics. Too much responsiveness implies a public service that has become compliant to the point of subordinating its professional integrity to the political needs of ministers. Too...

If we want to understand how children learn to read (and why some find this so difficult), we first need to identify the set of reading skills that children will need to acquire. That in turn means that we first need to understand skilled reading...

These papers are a follow-up to a roundtable that reviewed the Australian tax system, the Henry Review recommendations and the extent of their implementation, and last year's Tax Summit at Parliament House. In October 2011 the Academy, in partnership with the ANU and the Australia...

Tim Lang proposes that a set of 'New Fundamentals' are now clear yet policy-makers have so far failed to get sufficient intellectual, political and economic grip on the seriousness of the situation. For a moment, in 2006-08, this looked possible. Rising oil and food commodity...

Intended as a conversation starter, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Academy has prepared this discussion paper to capture the views, ideas and concerns of social science researchers, teachers, students, professionals, policymakers and employers across Australia.

This discussion paper addresses how to achieve any given target for greenhouse gas reduction in a way that causes least cost to the economy, promotes innovation and is fair. It makes the case that the efficiency properties of market mechanisms have an important role to...

In the next 20 years, the only potential sources of increases in labour supply are increased labour force participation rates and immigration. While the Australian government is attempting to increase participation, the impacts of this policy, highly desirable as they are where they are the...