Centre for Policy Development's Blog, page 42

Implications of a changing climate: latest insights from CPD staff and fellows

COP21 convenes at a critical point in climate science and policy. By Christmas, the world passes the 1C temperature increase –  half way towards the scientifically-accepted threshold of 2C by the end of the century. The UN confirmed in November that 2015 is the hottest year on record, and 2011-2015 the hottest five-year period. Whilst the announced national contributions by attending states represent a substantive step towards robust action, we are still on track for a global temperature shift of 3.5 – 4 degrees Celsius by century’s end.

What are the ramifications of this? Will Paris be another Copenhagen? What lies ahead for Australia in 2016 and beyond? CPD offers you the research, intelligence and briefings that addresses these and other key questions.

COP21 –insight on the major conference developments from the experts

As the Conference of the Parties begins its two week schedule, there is strong commitment from a diverse range of stakeholders for the development of a binding agreement. It is likely that 2015 will be viewed as a pivotal year in humanity’s struggle to combat climate change. This year has seen a global resurgence by developed and developing states to take comprehensive action on reducing carbon emissions. Civil society organisations from around the world have had their advocacy strengthened by increasingly strident demands for action from multinational corporations and commercial sectors.

As the world watches Paris for signs of progress, we’ll be seeking the latest latest insights from two CPD fellows who are in attendance. Fiona Armstrong is the Executive Director of the Climate and Health Alliance, and one of Australia’s foremost experts in understanding how climate change will affect population health and wellbeing. Fiona’s organisation, the Climate and Health Alliance released a report in November demonstrating how Australia is well behind other industrialised nations in protecting citizens from major health risks associated with global warming.

CPD fellow Professor John Wiseman is Deputy Director of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, and  an expert in identifying climate risks and solutions, particularly for Australia’s metropolitan cities. John’s insights from COP21, published on the MSSI COP21 blog and cross-posted at CPD, will give you an understanding of not only how our major capitals will be affected but how they can lead Australia’s solutions for cleaner economy.

While Fiona and John will give you the latest intelligence from Paris, back in Australia CPD fellow Ian Dunlop will also be unpacking what it means for Australia’s future energy needs. Ian, a former executive in the fossil fuel industry, is a formidable climate and energy security expert, and has advised foreign governments on their responses to climate change. In the meantime you can catch Ian’s latest contribution to the national debate – calling for a moratorium on new coal mines – here on ABC’s website.

Also back at home, CPD CEO Travers McLeod offered an analysis this week of how unusual suspects from the corporate world who are making their voices more pronounced in the climate debate, and of who might help push global leaders towards a binding, longer-term agreement at Paris. You should also keep you eyes peeled for climate-focused contributions in CPD’s ‘Secret Santa‘ blog series in the first two weeks of December.

Catch up on CPD’s climate work from 2015

Throughout 2015, CPD has undertaken a range of policy and research work on the implications of a changing climate for Australia’s economy, society and environment.

Analyst Rob Sturrock co-authored with Peter Ferguson The Longest Conflict: Australia’s Climate Security Challenge which was released in June. Climate change is a national security concern, and Australia has significant vulnerabilities at home and abroad. Since June CPD has been closely engaged with the Department of Defence, including senior military leaders, in discussing the report’s findings. Read more about them here.

Heat stress, food shortages, natural disasters and various other threats risk seriously degrading our quality of life and those of coming generations. Ahead of Fiona Armonstrong’s updates from Paris, get a background briefing on the health implications of climate change for Australia and the Indo-Pacific region by reading the oration given by  Rob Sturrock to the Australian Population Health Congress in September.

In October, CPD hosted a roundtable with Ross Garnaut, Robyn Eckersley and Fergus Green, three of Australia’s leading climate policy experts. You can read a summary of the discussion here. This week Professor Garnaut looked ahead to COP in a detailed interview with ABC radio, while Professor Eckersley predicted a ‘mixed bag‘ from the Paris meetings.

Image from CPD’s climate policy roundtable.

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Travers McLeod: relaxing airstrike rules is a recipe for disaster | The Drum

Calls to relax targeting rules for airstrikes against Islamic State ignore the lessons of our recent past and the fact that a battle of ideas, not body counts, will determine this war, writes Travers McLeod.

Tony Abbott has argued Australia and her allies should relax targeting rules for airstrikes to destroy the Islamic State.

At best, he is ignorant of the lessons of the military campaigns waged in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. At worst, he is willing to repeat mistakes to differentiate himself on national security and open a pathway to take his job back.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Abbott isn’t as narcissistic as the latter reading suggests. Let’s assume he was insufficiently briefed on recent military campaigns or has forgotten the lessons of our longest wars.

The battle of ideas, not body counts, will determine this war. Disproportionate use of force will only inflame and grow the Daesh insurgency. There is no military solution to destroy IS.

“A military force, culturally programmed to respond conventionally (and predictably) to insurgent attacks,” wrote General Stanley McChrystal in November 2009, “is akin to the bull that repeatedly charges a matador’s cape – only to tire and eventually be defeated by a much weaker opponent.”

McChrystal should know. He was commander of the United States-led coalition of forces in Afghanistan from 2009-2010 and headed up US Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan from September 2003 until February 2006.

When McChrystal took over as commander he told his troops to “get rid of the conventional mindset”.

We know the prequel. In 2005 the US was accused of being a “lawless hegemon”, one that avoided the laws of war or sought to exploit gaps within it. Commanders misunderstood the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their “enemy-centric” mindset harmed civilians and alienated the people. David Kilcullen described US forces as “chasing their tails”.

From late 2006 military doctrine, strategy, tactics and rules of engagement began to shift decisively. Australian military advisers and judge advocates were pivotal in this change of mindset.

Phillip Bobbitt put the new position best in 2010: “The war aim in a war against terror is not territory, or access to resources, or conversion to our way of political life,” Bobbitt wrote. “It is protection of civilians within the rule of law.”

McChrystal’s tactical directive to troops in July 2009 made this explicit. “We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories – but suffering strategic defeats – by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people.”

Losing popular support would “translate into more insurgent recruits, more IEDs, and a prolonged conflict with an uncertain outcome.”

McChrystal prohibited the use of air-to-ground or indirect fire against residential compounds with three tightly-specified exceptions, installed new battle damage assessment requirements, denied capacity for unilateral missions without regional command approval, raised the approval level for night raids, tightened escalation of force procedures and mandated civilian casualty investigations and reporting up the chain of command within 24 hours from any given incident.

McChrystal was clear: “Our success depends on our ability to escalate force proportionally, in a manner that the average Afghan civilian can understand, and respects the fact that this is their country.”

 

A disproportionate use of force will only inflame and grow the Daesh insurgency. (Photo: AFP: US Air Force/Senior Airman Matthew Bruch)

 

 

Successive studies of countering insurgencies reveal that if one loses legitimacy they lose the war. This means one cannot separate the conduct of operations from the broader, contested narrative of a war.

Securing the population and killing the enemy is a necessary condition to countering Daesh. But the chief lesson of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns is that the legality of the conduct of those operations is central to their legitimacy.

This is why proportionality has become a watchword for countering insurgencies successfully. It requires a delicate but appropriate balance to be struck between military necessity and collateral damage, in an age when allegations of disproportionality can be uploaded to YouTube and viewed across the world in seconds.

US military doctrine now asserts that “all interactions between security forces and the population directly impact legitimacy”. Complying with the law of war helps to gain local trust – violations “have a direct and significant negative impact on the ability to conduct successful counterinsurgency operations”.

Abbott now advocates “less restrictive targeting rules for airstrikes”. His position may be more nuanced. He may dispute current distinctions between civilians and combatants, including what it means for civilians to participate directly in hostilities. As stated, his position is pregnant with ambiguity.

Such hawkish ambiguity is exactly what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ruled out last Tuesday in his National Security Statement to Parliament. Turnbull called for “calm, clinical, professional, effective” conduct to defeat IS, not “gestures or machismo”. He said “the strongest weapons we bring to this battle are ourselves, our values, our way of life”.

In war the most significant distinction is between civilians and combatants. The latter are lawful targets who can be killed. We water down the distinction at our peril. This is but one way in which our military forces live our (and their) values.

Countering insurgencies, former US Central Command head General James Mattis once said, is only new if “we don’t read our own history”.

Given our focus these past weeks on France, it’s worth recalling that the best-known military theorist and practitioner of counterinsurgency was French. Lieutenant Colonel David Galula’s formula was simple: win the support of the people. “Antagonising the population will not help,” he wrote in 1964, “rash actions on the part of the forces should be kept to a minimum.”

An ad-hoc legal approach to fighting terrorism would return us to the fog of law within the fog of war. It is a recipe ripe for disaster.

—

This article first appeared on The Drum. 

 

 

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CPD’s Secret Santas for Australia

To get into the festive spirit this December, CPD has asked 12 prominent Australians to participate in our ‘Secret Santa‘ series.

Each day, one of our guest writers will offer a ‘gift’ of fresh thinking and good policy ideas on an issue close to their heart. By mid-December, when each of our Santas has been revealed, we hope that they will have offered a collective present to Australia’s future – or at least, a thought-provoking summer reading pack for people prepared to think big for 2016 and beyond!

One new contribution will be published each day by The Huffington Post Australia, as well as appearing on CPD’s website. Keep an eye on our Twitter feed and Facebook for updates.

Each piece will appear below as they are published, with the full set available here.

 

December 1: The gift of belonging to Australia’s future - Yassmin Abdel-Magied

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 2: Learning to think for ourselves is the most powerful gift of all – Lord Robert May

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Yassmin Abdel-Magied: The gift of belonging to Australia’s future

When thinking about policy areas that require attention and improvement for young Australians, there are many to choose from.

The most obvious is youth unemployment. The reality is hundreds of young people are finishing school and graduating from tertiary education without an obvious career path, and there is a lack of clarity around where the ‘jobs of the future’ lie.

Given that the unemployment rate for young Australians between the ages of 15 and 24 is at 13.9 percent, the highest since 1998, and the underutilisation rate is sitting between 28 and 32 percent, it is clear that some level of policy change is required.

At a very minimum, there needs to be investment in areas where young people are excelling, such as entrepreneurship and social enterprise. However, this is not new, and there are many young Australians and organisations anxiously waiting for this to happen. Social enterprise, one could argue, is now in vogue and it just needs governments to catch up.

What else then?

Well, according to the seminal report conducted by the Foundation of Young Australians, and the less official but equally relevant polls conducted on my Facebook page, other areas of concern for young Australians include the environment, health care access and housing affordability. In fact, young Australians (broadly) care about roughly the same issues as the previous generations, just in different ways and slightly different orders.

However, for those young Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, life isn’t as straightforward.

Certainly, the experience of young CALD communities are incredibly varied. An experience of a young Muslim woman of colour is not going to be the same as a young third generation Vietnamese man. However, there are elements of the Australian experience that we share, which is primarily around finding our place in the Australian story.

For those who are visibly — and not so visibly — different to the social norm, thriving in this nation is not simply about finding a job and affording a house. Sit in on any conversation on multicultural policy in Australia and two words will no doubt be bandied about: identity and belonging. Why, and why are they so important?

It is not as if being from a diverse background is unusual. In Australia, almost half the population is either born overseas or has a parent born outside Australia. We are, statistically, a diverse nation. We know it too — the Scanlon report on Social Cohesion discusses how roughly 85 per cent of Australians believe multiculturalism has been good for Australia. We accept that we are a multicultural nation, yet you could be forgiven for forgetting, given the kind of language allowed to be thrown about after events such as the Paris attacks in November this year.

Imagine living in a society where people who look like you or share your story of arrival are portrayed in one way only. Imagine never getting a right of reply. Imagine being asked to apologise for things that have nothing to do with you. Imagine having to constantly prove your ‘Australian-ness’ without even really knowing what that means. Imagine having to convince people to be compassionate towards those who are different. Imagine being expected to choose between where you call home and what you believe.

The difficulty then, for young CALD Australians, is the fact that they must deal with all the issues facing any young Australian, as well as constant and persistent questions about who they are and where they belong. There are no easy answers. There is not even the space to ask questions or make mistakes because with one strike, you’re out.

It means that as a nation we are missing out. We are losing out on the beauty of a truly diverse nation. We are forgoing the wonder that can come from having young people with different perspectives invested in making Australia the best nation it can possibly be.

It is incredibly wasted potential.

What is called for isn’t a policy change but a complete mindset change. There must be no allowance in our public conversation for vitriol and hate-filled tirades that make young CALD Australians feel like outsiders in their own homes.

This is a plea for those influential (and not-so-influential) members of society to rise above primal gut reactions to admittedly terrifying events, or even the increased levels of pluralism in our society. It is a plea for leaders to sell a vision that encourages Australians to be more accepting, more compassionate and more resilient to forces that wish to divide us.

We need to realise that in order for us to be the society we claim to be, we have to work a little harder at being united and accepting of each other. We have the opportunity and the right ingredients for it, so why not?

At the end of the day, what so many young people want is simply to be heard. To have a seat at the table where their views are listened to, respected and taken on board.

This is even more relevant for young Australians from CALD backgrounds. Every man, woman and their dog wants to speak on behalf of us, and to tell us, whether implicitly or explicitly, that we do not belong or that our perspectives are not worth listening to.

There is a level of fragility in our country’s fabric that speaks to our discomfort with who we were, are and what we want to be. We need those who hold power to step up to the occasion. We need leaders who have a vision for a truly inclusive and resilient society and then demand that we become that nation. We can, and we must.

—

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is the 2015 Queensland Young Australian of the year. 

This is the first piece in CPD’s 2015 ‘Secret Santas for Australia’ series. All up there will be 12 prominent Australian’s getting into the festive spirit by offering the gift of good policy and bright ideas – with one revealed each day. 

 

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‘Unusual suspects challenging usual thinking on climate change’, Huffington Post, 27 November 2015

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Twenty years ago Kevin Spacey uttered this famous line about his alter ego, Keyser Söz, in The Usual Suspects. Keyser Söz isn’t climate change, but he might as well be.

Since the film was released an inordinate amount of money has been spent to trick the world that human-induced climate change doesn’t exist.

Recent data from the CSIRO suggests the ‘trick’ is yet to be completely foiled in Australia. Although almost 80 percent of people believe climate change is occurring, every second person routinely changes their mind and there is considerable divergence on whether human activity is a causal factor.

Thankfully, someone who requires no more convincing is Mark Carney, the Canadian Governor of the Bank of England.

“There is a growing international consensus that climate change is unequivocal,” Carney saidin September.

“Human drivers are judged extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of global warming since the mid-20th century.”

Carney, like his Chief Economist, Andy Haldane, is what I call an unusual suspect, someone who looks beyond the parapet and leads on an issue when we don’t expect them to.

Think doctors and nurses on children in detention and sporting heroes like David Pocock on marriage equality.

Although we might deem these interventions ‘unusual’ given their infrequency, they can be perfectly natural for the individual speaking out. Often they are based on experience or expertise.

This makes unusual suspects particularly insightful, and especially powerful.

Carney’s incursion into the climate change debate shouldn’t be taken lightly. He also heads up the global Financial Stability Board, established after the Global Financial Crisis.

It was no coincidence Carney gave his speech at Lloyd’s of London.

Insurers know full well the rising cost of weather-related events, aggravated by climate change, from around $10 billion per year in the 1980s to $50 billion today. These losses, Carney conceded, will “pale in significance” to those on the horizon when we consider “broader global impacts on property, migration and political stability, as well as food and water security”.

Carney and Haldane argue the physical, liability and transition risks posed by climate change threaten financial stability.

They are progressives amongst a hitherto conservative central banking set.

Haldane in particular has bemoaned “quarterly capitalism“, which sees public companies over-discounting future income streams by 5-10 percent per year.

He believes “shareholder short-termism may have had material costs for the economy, as well as for individual companies, by constraining investment”.

Haldane is not alone. Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, wrote to S&P 500 CEOs in April, accusing them of prioritising actions to deliver immediate returns and “underinvesting in innovation, skilled workforces or essential capital expenditures necessary to sustain long-term growth”.

Where are Australia’s unusual suspects in business and finance?

One would find it difficult to locate seminal speeches on climate change and quarterly capitalism by our central bankers or the Business Council of Australia

Much has been made of our tepid growth outlook. Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens challenged the National Reform Summit to ask: “how do we generate more growth? Not temporary, flash in-the-pan growth, but sustainable growth”.

The adjective — sustainable — is key. Focusing on growth at all costs risks missing the wood for the trees. To engineer sustainable growth, one requires a sustainable economy. And that is what Australia lacks most of all.

It is a shame, because sustainability is in Australia’s DNA.

In fact, in 2011, then Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson told us “the theme of sustainability will need to shape the approach to policy development of this generation”.

Parkinson was and remains spot on: his focus was on how each generation could bequeath to the next a productive base for sustainable wellbeing at least as large as the stock of capital inherited.

How shortsighted it was for one of our best unusual suspects to be dumped by the Abbott government.

His likely reemergence as head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is timely.

At his alma mater, Princeton, in September, Parkinson echoed Carney by saying company boards and financial market regulators give scant attention to climate change risks. Equally absent was examination of the “knock-on effects to macroeconomic stability of falling demand for carbon-intensive exports”.

Accelerating Australia’s transition to a sustainable economy will require those in business, finance, government and civil society to embrace unusual suspects on climate change and sustainability as the new normal, not the exception. If anyone can do this knitting, it’s Parkinson. Welcome back.

This article appeared in The Huffington Post Australia on 30 November 2015. 

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Libya’s people trade is a threat to international peace and security – Sarah Elliot and Charlie Goodlake | Thought Starters

On the 9th of October the United Nations Security Council authorised under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that Member States use proportionate measures to search, seize and dispose of vessels that are “smuggling migrants and trafficking persons” across the Mediterranean Sea. Resolution 2240 was intended to authorise ‘Operation Sophia’, phase two of a three-phase joint security and defence naval operation of EUNAVFOR-Med. This is the latest in a series of EU-sponsored measures to stop organised criminal networks profiting from the plight of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants attempting to reach Europe through Libya.

The responsibilities and powers enshrined in Chapter VII of the UN Charter are central to the UN Security Council’s ability to uphold international stability and peace by averting or ending conflicts. Even as intractable multi-year conflicts such as that waging in Syria come before the Council, it has found itself unable to act on account of China and Russia’s age-old protection of state sovereignty along with fears that the catastrophic failures of military incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan will be repeated.

Given this history, the passage of Resolution 2240 was a surprise. But on a closer reading, it became apparent that this was only because: a) it has no impact on Libyan state sovereignty; b) it absolved no states of going to war with one another; and c) it goes towards tackling international crimes that the world has little or no idea how to tackle. The war being fought is one against smugglers and traffickers. The battlefield is the high seas. In fact, Operation Sophia was launched two days before the resolution was passed, clearly evidencing that the resolution was intended as a mere safeguard for what would have been carried out regardless.

As it turns out, Resolution 2240 was a non-event from the outset. In its first three weeks, Operation Sophia has not seized any vessels or made any arrests. And although states acknowledged that the text of this resolution—namely to search, seize and dispose of vessels used in smuggling or trafficking crimes—addresses only a small part of the crisis confronting Europe today, Resolution 2240 forgets that the people floating on rubber dinghies off the coast of Libya are typically not criminals. Rather, they are vulnerable migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, sent adrift at sea while the real perpetrators wave back at them from the safety of Libya’s sandy white beaches.

Second, it appears that for the most part, what is happening off the coast of Libya is people smuggling with criminal abuse rather than trafficking. The two terms are packaged by Resolution 2240 in such a way as to make out that they go hand in hand and that both warrant a Chapter VII response. Smuggling is in fact, the consensual and illegal movement of a person across an international border for a material or other benefit. Trafficking is the forcible, fraudulent or otherwise deceptive harbour, receipt or transfer of a person for the purpose of exploiting them for prostitution, forced labour or other slave-like practices.

While smuggling may turn into trafficking as exploitation ensues, these crimes are different and deserve proportionate and distinct responses. For those who lack documentation and face increasingly tight border controls, people smugglers, despite their criminality, are often the only means to reaching safety. According to the Meijers Committee, people smuggling, even of the scale witnessed today, would not constitute a threat to ‘international peace and security’ as to warrant a Chapter VII resolution. “Although the Security Council has previously adopted such resolutions in response to refugee crises in Iraq and Haiti”, the committee said, “these were intended to stabilise the countries of origin and not to prevent persons from seeking refuge elsewhere.” As for targeting traffickers, if Operation Sophia cannot enter Libyan territorial waters to somehow determine that the elements of this crime are taking place, then it might as well continue to focus on search and rescue instead.

Although refugees from the Horn and Sub-Saharan Africa still continue to cross Libya in order to reach Europe, it is no longer the most popular way in to Europe. The route from Turkey to Greece is shorter. It is now the preferred route for almost 70 per cent of all migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Yet while Europe has acted by actively participating in a dialogue with Turkey to try and prevent persons crossing, it has chosen a seemingly more hostile approach to the less-used Libyan route.

If people smuggling and human trafficking are truly to be tackled, they require a comprehensive approach that features an enduring political solution for Libya, an end to endemic corruption and the eradication of the need for persons to move in an irregular and thus dangerous manner in search of safety. What it certainly does not need, is the consensual reframing of search and rescue as fighting crime instead so as to warrant a military response under a Chapter VII resolution of the UN Security Council.

—

Sarah Elliott is currently a Legal Advisor on mixed migration and trafficking in UNHCR’s Division of International Protection in Geneva. She has previously worked for UNHCR in Sudan as a Counter-Trafficking Consultant, and as a Senior Legal Advisor to a Cairo based NGO working with refugees. Charlie Goodlake is currently studying the LLM in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the University of Essex. He is also a Law and Policy intern in the Division of International Protection at UNHCR Geneva.

This post first appeared on OXPOL, The Oxford University politics blog: http://blog.politics.ox.ac.uk/libya-shows-that-people-smuggling-is-a-threat-to-international-peace-and-security/

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‘Our Harbour Our Asset’ – report by CPD fellow Caroline Hoisington on the economic value of Sydney Harbour

In November the Sydney Institute of Marine Science released a report by CPD fellow Caroline Hoisington that begins the complex, yet important, process of assessing the economic value of the Sydney Harbour.

Our Harbour Our Asset aims to understand the economic contributions of the features and activities associated with the harbour, and to lay the groundwork for better ways of tracking these values over time.

It does so by setting out eight major value groupings, ranging from private business and industry to environmental quality, leisure activity and culture and science. Where possible, the report seeks to match indicators across these fields with monetary values, such as revenue from port and transport activities, the value of premium waterfront real estate, and the value of ecosystem services such as water filtration, sediment stabilisation and carbon sequestration. The ultimate aim of the ‘total economic value’ approach used in the report is measure each of these values in a way that can be added together to form a total – a very complex task. This report represents a starting point towards this goal, which will enable a clearer understanding of the values of Sydney Harbour and how these are changing over time.

As Marine Economy Fellow at CPD, Caroline authored and contributed to a number of reports on understanding and preserving the long-term value of Australia’s marine environments. These include: Stocking Up: Securing Out Marine Economy (2011), Preserving our Marine Wealth (2012), and Insuring Australia’s Marine Future (2013).

 

Key quotes from Our Harbour, Our Asset 

“Much of the value of the Harbour lies in the way that the city has evolved to take advantage of the special features of this harbour. The character of the city, so interlinked with its dramatic harbour, enhances everything from businesses seeking to locate head offices in Sydney to its young people wanting to remain in the area to live and raise their own families. The nature of its buildings, parks and other features, even the preferences of its population, have been shaped by the Harbour in ways that add to the vulnerability of the city to any damage to the nature of its Harbour.”

 

“There are many complexities in trying to estimate economic values for Sydney Harbour, from the fact that data is seldom available in the necessary format to separating the city and the harbour as sources of value conceptually. Different reporting agencies also report in different formats and reporting of revenues may in fact overlap, raising the risk of double counting. Some important values are currently not quantified or quantifiable in dollar terms and some are apparently not quantified at all as of yet, e.g., the numbers of users of harbour side parks and pools.”

 

“ Ultimately what is of interest for policy-making is not total value but changes ‘at the margins’: meaning specifically – what can be gained? Or, what can be lost? In the case of Sydney Harbour, the question is often phrased as – what is at risk? The attempts in this paper towards estimating total values are presented as a start to be a basis for further estimation of possible changes: risks, rewards and their valuation. This estimation of total value is a starting point for the marginal analyses as it provides an indicator of the role and importance of the Sydney Harbour to many people and groups with varying interests.”

 

Media coverage 

On 16 November, Caroline discussed Our Harbour Our Asset on ABC Radio’s Mornings with Linda Mottram.

New scientific study puts a price on the harbour – $43 bn is just the beginning, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 November

How Sydney Harbour adds to the city’s tourism, real estate, transport and spirituality, The Huffington Post Australia, 17 November

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Menadue and Keating’s new book Fairness, Opportunity and Security: Filling the Policy Vacuum

CPD founder and fellow John Menadue and former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Michael Keating launched their new book Fairness, Opportunity and Security: Filling the Policy Vacuum. This book is a collection of the special policy series of blogs that was published earlier this year.

Topics include Democratic Renewal, the Role of Government, Foreign Policy, the Economy, Retirement Incomes, Population/migration/refugees, Communications and the Arts, Security – internal and Human Rights, Security, Health, Development of Human Capital, Environment, Indigenous affairs, Welfare and Inequality.

Among the authors are Ken Henry, Ian Marsh, Stephen FitzGerald, Cavan Hogue, Richard Butler, Stuart Harris, John McCarthy, Andrew Podger, Julianne Schultz, Kim Williams, Susan Ryan, Michael Wesley, Jennifer Doggett, Glen Withers, Chris Bonnor and Ian McAuley.

The book was launched by Fairfax economics columnist Ross Gittins. getting described the book’s contribution to robust conversation about policy at this time as unique and indispensable.

“All the pieces in the book are, in fact, invited contributions to the special series John and Mike Keating organised earlier this year on Fairness, Opportunity and Security. The 48 articles are still accessible on John’s blog, but as an oldie who usually prints off internet articles to be read on paper rather than screen, I hope this project of turning them into a book will make them even more accessible and more widely read. They certainly deserve to be.

In view of this policy vacuum needing to be filled, it’s really great to have John providing this new platform and encouraging former bureaucrats to use it. Never has their contribution been more needed. We independent media commentators do our best to evaluate the government’s performance, but there’s nothing like a former bureaucrat to be able to see through the smoke and mirrors and decipher the true position.”

To order Fairness, Opportunity and Security click here.

To read Ross Gittins’ full speech click here.

To see more photos from the launch click here.

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Bringing great ideas together | Thought Starters

Encouragingly, in recent days, the Turnbull Government (and ALP opposition) has put innovation at the forefront of policy thinking, after a period of hibernation.

Collaboration has become a buzzword again, following a plethora of reports from the Chief Scientist, Universities Australia, and the Business Council of Australia among others, which highlight fundamental weaknesses in innovation systems linkages in Australia and beyond. Being at the bottom end of the OECD on collaboration seems to be par for the course.

As is well known, collaboration joins up disparate and specialised capabilities to address specific societal objectives and commercial opportunity, diffuses risks and shares costs.  While the debate about start-ups, commercialisation of research, and better links between industry and research is happening and certainly worth having, there is still a gap in the innovation/collaboration  space when it comes to key institutions and the “architecture” of innovation and collaboration.

One option to give real effect, focus and scale towards collaboration is to establish a National Collaboration Authority (NCA), on a par in status and imprimatur to the Australian Competition Commission. Collaboration and Competition can comfortably sit side by side. The NCA would be an autonomous body, attached to the Department of prime Minister and Cabinet, and overseen by an independent Board comprising industry, academic, research and Government representatives along with expatriate Australians to provide that crucial knowledge and ideas linkages to global innovation systems.

The NCA would have a broad range of functions. Firstly, it would identify, leverage and support large scale collaborative projects, between industry, academic institutions and Government, including from overseas, and maximise knowledge diffusion and impact. While funding support would be significant, its main role would be as a facilitator, broker and catalyser – making and retaining critical connections. The NCA could also play a major part in aggregating individual projects to build scale and critical mass.

Beyond this NCA would have a number of critical roles:

Developing and overseeing the policy architecture (funding support, regulatory instruments) and ensuring that Government itself is “joined up”.
Providing a repository and matching service to link potential collaborators together.
Promote awareness about the benefits of collaboration through demonstration and diffusion of best practice.
Develop evaluation frameworks for collaborative projects with an emphasis on impact measures.

Clearly not all good ideas and problem solving efforts are drawn from a “tops down” perspective. Local communities and citizens groups are obvious generators of many innovative ideas addressing local issues, in areas such as recycling and social disadvantage, just to name two. To provide support to “unlock” and leverage these capabilities collectively at the grass roots level, regional chapters of the NCA be established. These RCAs, not necessarily organised along State boundaries, would serve similar functions to the national body. Sharing ideas, information and expertise between the central organisation and its regional counterparts would be a hallmark of a new spirit of co-operation among public policy authorities, transcending geographical boundaries.

Ideas and knowledge originate anywhere, anytime by anybody. Harnessing this knowledge and linking it together to realise tangible outcomes is a major challenge. Breaking through silos and old ways of doing things will need a new approach, a new architecture for the future.

 

Dr Anand Kulkarni is a CPD fellow and Senior Mananger of Planning and Research at RMIT University. 

 

Image from the Department of Innovation, Industry and Science’s research paper “Australian geography of innovative entrepreneurship“.

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Educational opportunity in Australia – who succeeds and who misses out?

This critical question about our schools is the title of a new report commissioned by the Mitchell Institute. It is a thorough, timely and outstanding contribution to our understanding of disadvantage in schooling. The report, produced by Victoria University’s Centre for International Research on Education Systems, compiles data from a variety of sources to answer the ‘who succeeds and who misses out’ question. And they do this by investigating four stages of education: beginning school, Year 7, senior school and at age 24.

The report draws together existing information – something which adds to its value and significance. Cutting a long story very short, it concludes that only six out of every ten students succeed across the four identified stages. School works well for these students. As for the others, the report helps us know who they are and why they are falling behind. No surprise here: they are overwhelmingly the socio-educationally disadvantaged. The good news is that, with the right interventions, these young people can recover and succeed at the next milestone – as long as the school is properly funded to make the required difference. Yet another timely plug for the full Gonski.

Notwithstanding the quality of this report I have an enduring hope that this is surely as far as we need to go in analysing the problem. It follows over a decade of research with the same message: if we want to lift student achievement we need to lift the disadvantaged. Stephen Lamb, the team leader for this report, told us that years ago. His submission with Richard Teese to the Gonski review, along with the NOUS report for Gonski, reinforced the message. More recent reports, including by Lyndsay Connors and Jim McMorrow, show that our framework of schools is dysfunctional. Bernie Shepherd and I have found that Gonski’s findings have been strongly supported by data since Gonski reported.

A few matters arising out of the Mitchell Institute report are worth a mention. If six out of ten students are well served by our schools, then what strategies are needed for the other four? In a partial answer the report devotes attention to the problem of student disengagement, something which lies at the heart of underachievement.

But there seem to be at least two underlying assumptions. The first is that the extent of student disengagement is something that the available data, including on attendance, retention and completion captures. Margaret Vickers is one who has challenged this in the past – and teachers are well aware of students who stay the course, but also stay below the radar and jump through the hoops without really achieving their best. For all the talk about lifelong learning, the school experience of many young people ensures that their learning life ends when they finally walk out the door. This contributes to the scale of the problem identified by the Mitchell report for young people at age 24 years.

The second assumption seems to be that students are disengaged from schools. Many successful interventions proceed on information that suggests that it is the other way around: that the way we do school itself is disengaging and needs a rethink. The experience of Big Picture schools, to cite one example, is that students from a range of backgrounds (and for a range of reasons) have switched off mainstream schooling. Injecting a shopping list of ‘reforms’, including doing conventional school harder and longer – even with better teachers – isn’t the answer. Investigations into disengagement suggest that we should be having serious conversations with the young people and rethinking how we can tailor their learning.

And we need to do this thoroughly and soon, with organisations such as the Mitchell Institute taking a leading role. We need to investigate authentic interventions which are making a difference, switching kids back onto learning and achievement for the long term, right now – and support the people who are doing it while planning how to scale up such success. If we don’t – and if we only just restate the problem – then we vacate the solutions field for all those intent on recycling solutions that just don’t work. The Mitchell Institute report has appeared in the same week that the media reported on Simon Birmingham’s apparent flirtation with school vouchers. Are we going to have to endure the useless reform fetishes of yet another federal education minister?

To conclude: full marks to the Mitchell Institute and the authors of Educational opportunity in Australia. What a terrific start. Just don’t stop now!

Chris Bonnor is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and a Director of Big Picture Education Australia. 

This post first appeared on John Menadue’s blog Pearls and Irritations. 

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