The Business/Higher Education Roundtable commissioned the Allen Consulting Group to conduct a scoping study that reviews the effectiveness of current interventions designed to increase the number of people with higher education qualifications in the agricultural workforce. Although employment levels in on-farm agriculture have not been growing, there is a shortage of skilled labour across the...

The Federation is the cornerstone of the Australian nation and at the very heart of our constitutional democracy, both historically and culturally. However, it is increasingly not working well and needs updating and modernising. The balance of power within the Federation has shifted increasingly to the centre, with an accompanying degree of resentment and distrust...

The Prime Minister reports annually on progress in Closing the Gap. This is the fourth annual report, tabled in Parliament on 15 February 2012. According to the report: "This Closing the Gap report shows that the foundations for overcoming Indigenous disadvantage are now in place. It demonstrates how governments are delivering investments that will make...

Since 2009, the Australian Government, through AusAID, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have been funding a project in Cambodia to rehabilitate and privatise the railway system. The project is pitched as an economic driver for Cambodia in which the poor will, in some unarticulated way, eventually share. But as Shiva predicted, a program that...

Regional organisations of councils (ROCs) have been a part of the Australian local government landscape for over seventy years and were once a prominent feature in all states. They have evolved into a wide range of forms, but their structure generally involves several common characteristics such as a contiguous geographic base and some degree of...