Understanding Australia's Urban Railways provides an overview of the urban passenger and freight railways in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. For passenger rail, the report explores service provision; patronage trends; recent and planned network expansion; and the key challenges facing each system. In addition, the report examines the main characteristics of each city's rail...

Disasters are focusing events that can drive immediate policy change. It argues that good recovery institutions provide the adaptive capacity that enables communities to recover from natural disasters. This paper briefly describes recovery processes after three natural disasters in Australia and New Zealand between 2009 and 2011: bushfires in Victoria in 2009, flooding in Queensland...

This paper considers the potential value of wastewater analysis for measuring net consumption of illicit drugs and the effectiveness of law enforcement agency strategies. Estimating the use of illicit drugs in the general community is an important task with ramifications for law enforcement agencies, as well as health portfolios. Australia has four ongoing drug monitoring...

This background note provides a detailed account of the issues and dynamics of the 2012 election for the Queensland Legislative Assembly, along with a summary of its outcomes. Elections for the Queensland Legislative Assembly are regulated by the Electoral Act 1992 and managed by the Electoral Commission Queensland. There are currently seven political parties formally...

Prepared by Urbis Pty Ltd social researchers, this report documents findings from research undertaken to assess the social outcomes of the Working on Country program and complementary Indigenous natural and cultural resource management programs. This study found that the social outcomes are diverse, wide-ranging and interconnected and can be categorised according to health and wellbeing...