The Financial Consumer Rights Council (FCRC): Dignity and Debt Financial Difficulty and Getting Older initiative was designed to address the effectiveness of one-on-one financial counselling sessions with Older Persons, including provision of consumer advocacy and information about financial hardship protections to those entering aged care, education to the aged-care health workforce on the role of...

The Commission has been asked to examine whether the efficiency and effectiveness of human services could be improved by introducing greater competition, contestability and informed user choice. The terms of reference request that the inquiry be undertaken in two parts: the first is to identify services that are best suited to reform by introducing greater...

One of Australia's most prominent privatisation advocates has been the head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Rod Sims. In the Financial Review recently, he says he's 'almost at the point of opposing privatisation.' Sims told a conference in Melbourne, hosted in part by the paper, that he now believes the 'people off the...

This paper seeks to assess the financial and operational performance of Victoria's private contracts for Melbourne trains and trams.

Social impact bond projects are the latest new ‘buy-now, pay later’, off-balance sheet schemes to increase private finance of public services and the welfare state, driven by austerity policies and neoliberal ideology. They are a complex venture capitalist model applied to the provision of social services, health, education and other public services. Private investors provide...