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People with innate variations of sex characteristics (also known as intersex traits or disorders or differences of sex development) have any of a wide range of innate physical traits that differ from medical and social norms for female and male bodies. Responses to these physical differences create experiences and risks of stigmatisation, discrimination, violence, and harmful medical practices intended to promote social and familial integration and conformity with gender stereotypes. As is evident globally, the Australian policy response to the existence and needs of people with innate variations of sex characteristics has been largely incoherent, variously framing the population as having disordered sex development in need of "fixing", and a third sex/gender identity group in need of recognition, with only recent engagement by intersex community-controlled civil society organisations. This paper presents an overview of the context and goals of the intersex human rights movement in Australia. Australian intersex community organisations have sought to apply human rights norms and develop new infrastructure to address key health and human rights issues, and necessitating new ways of resolving policy incoherence. Together with human rights, mental health, and public health institutions, they have called for significant changes to medical models of care and reform to research and classification systems. Intersex community organising and resourcing have made a tangible difference. The Australian Capital Territory is the first jurisdiction in the country to move ahead with reforms to clinical practice, including a legislative prohibition of certain practices without personal informed consent, oversight of clinical decision-making, and investment in psychosocial support. A national community-controlled psychosocial support service has also commenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance measurement (PM) in the public sector has progressively broadened to cover the operation of professionals traditionally framed as independent and autonomous. How PM reconstitutes the role and conduct of professionals is critical for understanding contemporary dynamics of policy and governance, and service provider-service user relationships. Building on Lipsky's classic Street-level Bureaucracy, this paper examines the ways in which street-level professionals are reconfigured in their roles as evidenced by the operation of Australia's schooling PM, NAPLAN. The paper reports findings from a project examining the effects of PM in social policy. Attention is given to the ambiguous and conflicting goals arising from measuring literacy and numeracy performance and the varied ways performance numbers are used by management for teacher governance at the street-level. These considerations have implications for the effectiveness of PM in delivering service improvements, the experience of service users, and the achievement of policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic and social contribution young people make to society is increasingly important as the population ages. Yet a substantial number of young people face economic and social challenges that have an impact on their current and future well-being. Independent indicators are often used to describe what we know about how young people are faring, but these fail to show how young people are doing holistically, across their whole life. If we are to better understand and improve young people's well-being and their lives more generally, it is critical that research establishes the connections and interactions between life domains. This paper uses a well-being framework and secondary analysis of national statistics to begin to understand how young people are faring when we cross economic outcomes with other social indicators. It argues that some Australian young people fare poorly across a large number of other social indicators and thus may be walking a tightrope in regard to their well-being and well-becoming. This paper also aims to generate a dialogue about using a well-being framework for future research with and about young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic saw governments around the world suddenly accumulate substantially higher levels of public debt. We consider the level of debt entered into by Australia's federal, state and territory governments and compare this against three metrics for debt sustainability. Using these measures, we find that current and future public debt levels sit within what is regarded as sustainable by scholarly and practitioner opinion. However, we note that recent increases in interest rates will challenge this. We conclude by outlining a range of economic, social and policy challenges arising from the new high public debt environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a comparative study of the growth of data and the changing governance of education in Europe. It looks at data and the 'making' of a European Education Policy Space, with a focus on 'policy brokers' in translating and mediating demands for data from the European Commission. It considers the ways in which such brokers use data production pressures from the Commission to justify policy directions in their national systems. The systems under consideration are Finland, Sweden, and England and Scotland. The paper focuses on the rise of Quality Assurance and Evaluation mechanisms and processes as providing the overarching rationale for data demands, both for accountability and performance improvement purposes. The theoretical resources that are drawn on to enable interpretation of the data are those that suggest a move from governing to governance and the use of comparison as a form of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The connection between choice, control and health is well established in the literature on the social determinants of health, which includes choice and control of vital health and social services. However, even in the context of universal health and social care schemes, the ability to exercise choice and control can be distributed unequally. This paper uses the case of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to examine these issues. The NDIS is a major policy reform based on an international trend towards personalisation in social care. It aims to increase choice and control over services and supports for people who have or acquire a permanent disability, thereby boosting citizen empowerment and improving health and social outcomes.Methods: The research is a structured review of empirical evidence on the administration and outcomes of the NDIS to identify how social factors constrain or enable the ability of individuals to exercise choice within personalised care schemes.Results: We show how social determinants of health at the individual level can collide with the complexity of policy delivery systems to entrench health inequalities.Conclusion: Many social policy reforms internationally focus on improving empowerment through enabling choice and control. However, if administrative systems do not take account of existing structural inequities, then such schemes are likely to entrench or grow social inequality. Our research indicates that more attention must be given to the design of policy delivery systems for personalisation schemes to ensure health equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In western nations, the social and economic changes of the past 30 years have facilitated a reorientation of the focus of educational institutions. Global capitalism has placed education at the forefront of national competitiveness, and governments have responded with education policies primarily designed to serve the needs of the market. Such neo-liberal economic imperatives have been supported by a variety of neoconservative social forces calling for schools to become sites of cultural and moral restoration. This paper draws upon current theoretical debates about the consequences of such changes and employs ethnographic data from a small qualitative study of Australian youth to argue the case for a more democratic and student-centred approach to educational reform. It contends that in the interests of all young people, it is time for schools to resist systemic impulses to make them producers of human capital and claim their role as transformative institutions of human possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the existing scope and role of regulations in Australia. While there are many benefits from regulation, there is also a myriad of, often underplayed, costs associated with regulations. While compliance costs are large, probably the most significant costs arise from behavioural responses to regulations that reduce efficiency or compromise social goals. These adverse effects are often unanticipated and arise from complex interactions between regulations. The main reasons for regulatory failure are excessive ambition (underestimating the deficiencies of the regulatory 'solution'), capture of regulatory agencies, and poor regulatory processes and institutions. The paper offers some guidelines for producing better regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years policy makers and social scientists have devoted considerable attention to wellbeing, a concept that refers to people’s capacity to live healthy, creative and fulfilling lives. Two conceptual approaches dominate wellbeing research. The objective approach examines the objective components of a good life. The subjective approach examines people’s subjective evaluations of their lives. In the objective approach how subjective wellbeing relates to objective wellbeing is not a relevant research question. The subjective approach does investigate how objective wellbeing relates to subjective wellbeing, but has focused primarily on one objective wellbeing indicator, income, rather than the comprehensive indicator set implied by the objective approach. This paper attempts to contribute by examining relationships between a comprehensive set of objective wellbeing measures and subjective wellbeing, and by linking wellbeing research to inequality research by also investigating how subjective and objective wellbeing relate to class, gender, age and ethnicity. We use three waves of a representative state-level household panel study from Queensland, Australia, undertaken from 2008 to 2010, to investigate how objective measures of wellbeing are socially distributed by gender, class, age, and ethnicity. We also examine relationships between objective wellbeing and overall life satisfaction, providing one of the first longitudinal analyses linking objective wellbeing with subjective evaluations. Objective aspects of wellbeing are unequally distributed by gender, age, class and ethnicity and are strongly associated with life satisfaction. Moreover, associations between gender, ethnicity, class and life satisfaction persist after controlling for objective wellbeing, suggesting that mechanisms in addition to objective wellbeing link structural dimensions of inequality to life satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares and contrasts the Australian and Scandinavian welfare states with a view to demonstrating that, whilst the extent of welfare expenditures and the instruments of social policy vary quite markedly in these countries, policy outcomes in terms of levels of inequality and poverty and social protection are much more similar. In the course of this comparison, the paper casts serious doubts on the usefulness of both the prevailing paradigms for evaluating welfare state performance: measures of expenditure effort and measures of welfare decommodification, instead, it is argued that welfare state performance can only be properly assessed, as Richard Titmuss pointed out many years ago, by evaluating the impact of fiscal and occupational welfare in addition to the extent and character of the explicit expenditures of the state. When we broaden our conception of social policy in this way, Australia appears much less of a welfare state laggard than it is often taken to be and the oft mooted Scandinavian claim to welfare superiority is, perhaps, rather less compelling than is sometimes argued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a reconsideration of social cohesion as an analytical concept and a policy goal in response to increasing levels of religious diversity in contemporary Australia. In recent decades, Australian has seen a revitalization of religion, increasing numbers of those who do not identify with a religion (the "nones"), and the growth of religious minorities, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. These changes are often understood as problematic for social cohesion. In this paper, we review some conceptualizations of social cohesion and religious diversity in Australia, arguing that the concept of social cohesion, despite its initial promise, is ultimately problematic, particularly when it is used to defend privilege. We survey Australian policy responses to religious diversity, noting that these are varied, often piecemeal, and that the hyperdiverse state of Victoria generally has the most sophisticated set of public policies. We conclude with a call for more nuanced and contextualized analyses of religious diversity and social cohesion in Australia. Religious diversity presents both opportunities as well as challenges to social cohesion. Both these aspects need to be considered in the formation of policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politica y Sociedad is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the mid 1990s early intervention and prevention has become a central feature of public policy across the western world. This development has had a major impact on re-constructing the prevention paradigm in children and youth services. It has been underpinned by the emergence of the science of risk factor analysis (RFA). This paradigm has had mixed success in prevention work but has gained significant political credence and support. While RFA has reshaped prevention approaches it does have methodological and practice limitations. This paper argues for a more holistic approach to prevention policy and social work practice, one that recognises risk but does not allow it to dominate. We explore the growing body of evidence for RFA, outlining both its strengths and weaknesses and show how a more holistic approach can be adopted. We argue that the fundamental focus for analysis and intervention needs to recognise the social and cultural context of developmental pathways, and emphasises needs to be on relations between levels of organisation in a child's or young person's developmental process . We draw on the Australian Pathways to Prevention Programme to illustrate how social work can and should be developed to create more holistic approaches to prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on a comparative study of temporary protection (TP) mechanisms in Australia and selected European jurisdictions. Specifically, it analyzes policy developments and trends in the use of TP mechanisms in Denmark, Germany, and Australia through a systematic examination of the evolution of "substitute protection" mechanisms; their implications for "effective protection" and their impacts on key stakeholders. The policy analyses are augmented by interviews and survey questionnaires with key NGO service providers in the three target jurisdictions. The paper argues that the traditional link between Refugee Convention protection and national territorial jurisdiction and responsibility is being undermined by extraterritorial processing and offshoring arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the denigration of economics and economists in the media and evaluates the truthfulness of the media's principal assertions. It seeks to answer the following questions: (a) why is economics denigrated in the media? (b) why are economists silent in the face of such denigration? and (c) what might be done? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently public interest in the police service in Australia has emanated from extensive media coverage and from rising public accountability expectations. In light of this, the current paper explores how far the accounting, accountability and performance management systems within "new public management" ideals have evolved within the Australian police services. More specifically, it explores the accountability framework, information for performance evaluation and public sector reform implications for an Australian state police service as a whole, and an individual police station, in particular. The findings suggest that the police service in Australia has a rigid accountability structure and is continuously subject to performance evaluations. Further, it has been found that there is considerable rise of "new public management" ideals within the police services in Australia. It was apparent that the reforms in the police service had a dual purpose -- legitimizing the police service to the electorate and ordinary citizens, while encouraging efficiencies of resource use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most pervasive educational issues confronting Australia, and other countries, at the moment is the declining completion rates in high schools. While a period of success was experienced after the Second World War, there is now a pressing need to reform high schools in the ways they connect with young lives. In this paper, we present a 'sociology of the high school' as a way of encapsulating the high school as an institution that: is still largely stuck in a 'continuity of practice' (Elmore, 1987); has an 'attachment to familiar pedagogical routines' (Eisner, 1992); fails to listen to students; is hierarchically structured; treats students in immature ways; is hung up with passing on content; and seems more concerned with insulating itself from, rather connecting with or appropriating, young lives into the curriculum. As an alternative, we examine the notion of middle schooling that requires a version of whole school reform that engages with structures, cultures and changing pedagogy in ways more resonant with, and respectful of, young lives. We examine the tensions and dilemmas experienced at Investigator [1] High School in Australia, and conclude that the centerpiece has to be breaking the mold of the 'scripted' teacher and its replacement by the 'teacher-as-improviser'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous Australians have not always been entitled to welfare payments. Their right to be included in the welfare system, particularly for those in remote areas, was gradually recognised over the 1970s and 1980s. However, some indigenous leaders are now questioning whether this has been to the benefit of indigenous society. Has incorporation in the welfare state been a winner's curse for indigenous Australians? This articles examines some of the major issues for indigenous Australians in the welfare system.

This paper uses a unique survey on multiculturalism in Australia to explore attitudes towards immigration and multiculturalism. The ethnic backgrounds of immigrants are shown not to matter as long as immigrants are perceived as wanting to become Australian, rather than remaining apart. Australians support government programs to assist the adjustment process, but oppose programs that encourage distinct language and cultural maintenance or foster linguistic/ethnic concentrations. The apprehension that Australians have towards multiculturalism is that they see it as a mechanism for separate cultural preservation. Linguistic enclaves are shown to reduce the acquisition of English language skills among immigrants, whereas positive attitudes among immigrants towards Australia are associated with greater proficiency in speaking, reading and writing English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary reflects on an important article by Fisher and colleagues who draw on four Australian policy case studies to examine how universal and targeted approaches or a combination can be deployed to improve health equity. They conclude that universal approaches are central to action to increase health equity, but that targeting can improve equity of access in some situations including in the context of proportionate universalism. However, we argue that although target services may provide benefits for some populations, they are often stigmatizing and fail to reach may people they aim to support. Instead of accepting the dominant discourse about the key role for targeted approaches, we argue that those committed to reduce social and health inequities should consider the potential of Equity Sensitive Universalism (ESU). This approach focuses on achieving proportionate outcomes with equally provided resources rather than proportionate inputs and provides a 'cohesion dividend,' increasing social solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the ninth conference of the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC). The conference began with a warm and touching welcome of the attendees by Ali Golding, an Indigenous Australian from Sydney, New South Wales, and an adopted elder of the Eora people of Sydney. The atmosphere of harmony generated by this welcome provided a challenging context for the delivery of papers that together highlighted a diverse range of problematic social issues. This year also marks the beginning of close collaboration between the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Social Policy Research Centre in the evaluation of the Australian Government's innovative "Stronger Families and Communities Strategy." This important and intensive evaluation is being led by the SPRC, with the Institute as its partner. The nature of the strategy and ways in which it will be evaluated formed the basis of papers at the SPRC. As this work progresses, it will no doubt produce informative papers linking research, policy and practice.

Background: Researchers and policymakers are increasingly concerned that personalisation schemes in social and health care might be worsening social and health inequities. This has been found internationally, where better outcomes from such schemes have been found amongst those who have higher education and more household income.Method: This study looks at one of the world's largest personalisation schemes, the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme. Using publicly available data we examine the allocation and utilisation of NDIS funds according to social gradient.Results: We find that the rate at which people with disability 'spend' or effectively use their disability care funds follows a social gradient. That is, those in areas of higher socioeconomic disadvantage are not spending as much of their allocated budgets on care services across the year compared to people in areas of higher socioeconomic advantage. This represents a clear issue of equity in the use of public money to people with disability in Australia.Conclusion: We argue that this points to the need to provide targeted supports for the use of disability care funds in areas of higher socioeconomic disadvantage. Without effective supports for fund use, the NDIS and other personalisation schemes may be positioned to worsen existing social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author commends Australia's employment services for the unemployed; however, he asserts that such efforts are not enough to reduce unemployment to levels observed in the 2001 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report. He contends that both Australian and American efforts toward privatizing employment services for the unemployed have had uncertain results in improving the quality of these services, and improved knowledge of program effectiveness is needed because even the most effective policies can have only a modest impact in reducing unemployment. He observes that by itself, active labor market policy may have little effect on reducing structural unemployment, but when such policy is closely integrated with income support policy, it can significantly change worker incentives to find and keep a job.

This article focuses on the Australian population policy. Population policy is a policy for a very long term. As an example, one prepares for a large increase in the aged proportion of the population that will occur mainly between 2020 and 2040. Ageing is the product of relatively high birth rates from 1950 to 1970 followed by low birth rates since 1970. Hence, a policy issue in 2030 derives from births 70 years and more beforehand. If the first priority of a population policy has been achieved, the debate shifts back to a debate about population size.

Working broadly within the late-Durkheimian tradition of cultural sociology, the symbolic boundaries of the Australian national community are conceptualized in terms of a typology composed of two dimensions: `friends'/'enemies' and `internal'/'external'. The typology is operationalized, and the specific empirical content of the four cells examined using quantitative data from the Australian National Social Science Survey (1984-85). The paper investigates how emotional attachment to the Australian national community causally effects attitude formation on three national issues; monarchism, aboriginality and multiculturalism. Also, the social determinants behind variation in emotional attachment to orthodox symbolic conceptions of the Australian national community are systematically investigated and measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on the journal and a conference of the Australian Institute of Family Research. This edition of the journal "Family Matters" presents the keynote addresses and a selection of other key papers from the Institute's very successful Seventh National Conference, held in Sydney from 24-26 July 2000. The Minister for Family and Community Services, Senator Jocelyn Newman, opened the conference, the theme of which was Family futures: Issues in research and policy. Some 363 people attended and there were 121 presentations, including 15 by staff of the Institute. The conference represents an important opportunity to present the Institute's research to a broad audience, particularly as it is one of the few conferences in Australia that brings together researchers, academics, practitioners, policy advisers and government public servants to talk about research and policy issues in the family area. The conference is also an important means by which the Institute fulfils its role of encouraging and coordinating research on factors affecting family stability and wellbeing. It provides an opportunity for key stake-holders in the development and implementation of family policy in Australia to meet and discuss current research and policy directions.

This article focuses on various issues affecting the family in Australia. The September 1, 1999 edition of "Family Matters" focuses on the theme of families, welfare and social policy. In a speech at the National Press Club on 29 September 1999, Senator Jocelyn Newman, Minister for Family and Community Services, announced that social policy would be a major reform priority of the Australian Prime Minister John Howard Government. Senator Newman announced the formation of a Reference Group on Welfare Reform to guide the development of a comprehensive Green Paper on welfare reform. Welfare dependency is a key issue for investigation by the Reference Group. The Australian Institute of Family Studies's interest in the issue of welfare reform has been a long one, indeed, the Institute held a Workshop as long ago as 1983 on the subject of "Single Parents: Work or Welfare?" Since its inception 1980 the Institute has built up and shared a wealth of experience and knowledge on issues affecting the well being and stability of families. Research areas have included: the social costs of child and family poverty and marriage breakdown; the living standards of low and middle income families; labour force issues; housing; family income transfers, child support and tax; educational and other disadvantage suffered by children in poor families; and child abuse and neglect. INSET: NEW AIFS DIRECTOR APPOINTED.

Copyright of Psychosocial Intervention is the property of Colegio Oficial de Psicologos de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Homelessness, despite being a major social policy issue in Australia, is an area that is not well served by data. Most sorely lacking is any large-scale panel study that follows a broad sample of persons with recent experience of homelessness and unstable housing histories. In 2010, the Australian Government set about rectifying this deficiency when it commissioned the Melbourne Institute to undertake a new panel study, now known as 'Journeys Home'. This study draws its sample from the population of Centrelink income-support recipients, targeting persons identified in the administrative data as having recent experience of homelessness, as well as others with similar characteristics who may be vulnerable to housing difficulties in the future. This article summarises the design of this new study and reports on fieldwork outcomes from the first two waves of data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on a study of Australian curriculum shifts between 1975 and 2005 to take up two themes of this special issue: the question about what conceptions of knowledge are now at work; and the consideration of global influences and national specificities in the reformulations of curriculum. It discusses two important approaches to curriculum in Australia in recent times, the ‘Statements and Profiles’ activity of the early 1990s, and the ‘Essential Learnings’ formulations of the past decade. The global tendencies we see at work in these two major approaches are, first, an increasing emphasis on externally managing and auditing student progress as a key driver of how curriculum policies are being constructed; and, secondly, a growing emphasis on approaching curriculum aims in terms of what students should be able to do rather than what they should know. We argue that in the contexts we discuss here, these approaches offered a way of marrying 1970s progressive views on child development and knowledge-as-process (views widely held by influential curriculum professionals in Australia) with late 20th century technologies of micro-management and instrumental agendas favoured by politicians — but that many questions about knowledge were left off the agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores transformations in the form, purpose and administration of income support law and policies for people with disabilities in the Australian social security system. It identifies a paradigm change which has reinforced a medicalized model of the concept and measurement of disability within social security law, effectively removing from policy discourse and practice recognition of the social and economic factors that influence the capacity for labor force participation. We examine the ways in which the current welfare reform agenda of the Federal Government has developed a disability discourse which constructs the individual as the 'problem' within the welfare system. Changes to eligibility criteria and assessment procedures for disability income support are increasingly based on conceptions of an impaired body, while, paradoxically, welfare reform is increasingly focused on the necessity to meet 'mutual obligation' through market participation (the key-words of the 'new welfare'). We explore the extent to which these policy transformations in Australia are likely to facilitate or impede market participation for people of working age with a disability. Wherever appropriate, comparisons are made with disability income support and employment programs in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the dilemmas associated with continuing to interpret women's experience through the lens of a progress narrative that emerged to represent the aspirations of women during the peak of the women's movement.The central theme of this narrative is that gender: will no longer act as a social constraint once women are recognized as workers as well as mothers. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Karl Mannheim and; empirical data from in depth interviews undertaken as part of a generational study of Australian women, the article argues that the progress narrative no longer inspires young women, who take gender equity for granted. Although motherhood continues to shape their working arrangements, the discourses they use to make sense of the tensions involved are embedded in a new Zeitgeist which prioritizes 'choice', not 'equity'. The implications of this shift for the 'work-life balance' social policy agenda are then considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has revealed considerable non-take-up rates of benefits in western welfare states, which has raised concern that benefits fail to reach their objectives. Most research has focused on means-tested benefits, partly because they are believed to be subject to high stigma deterring people from take-up. I study the take-up of such benefits in Australia, where virtually all cash benefits are means-tested. Using data from the first two waves of the Household, Income arid Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) survey, I estimate the general take-up rate of benefits among people with low assets and incomes and carry out a detailed analysis of take-up of one particular benefit, Parenting Payment. Contrary to the traditional conception of selective welfare states as highly stigmatizing, I find no evidence of a particularly low degree of take-up, and I suggest that stigma of means-tested benefits in Australia may on average be low because they target a relatively large proportion of the population. However, non-take-up appears to be considerable in some population categories where stigma is likely to be relatively high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population policy is one of those public policy issues that will not go away. It surfaces regularly, is dealt with unsatisfactorily, disappears briefly and then inevitably reappears. The problems experienced in dealing satisfactorily with population as policy derive from deep human sensitivity over the core population issues of fertility, mortality and migration. When a policy area potentially embraces anything from abortion to euthanasia and regional decline to race composition, it is an area where politicians can all too often either duck for cover or blunder through looking foolish.

Abstract Tax compliance costs represent an important area of tax policy but have, until recently, been neglected by mainstream economists'. The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in Australia on 1 July 2000 has heightened public interest in and concern for the simplification impact of tax reform. The GST Bills were accompanied by tile Government's Regulation Impact Statement (RIS), which provided an assessment of the GST on tax compliance and administrative costs. This RIS is by far the best known of its kind in Australia to date. This article argues that taxation RISs are generally not appropriate for policy evaluation because they focus on business taxpayers only. In particular, the RIS on the GST obscured the issue by the use of incorrect terminology and was not based on a valid perspective for policy evaluation. Using the same assumption as the Government, it is estimated that, contrary to the Government's claims, the GST would raise tax compliance costs by more than $1 billion annually. At the same time, it is also recognised that Australia's RIS process rates amongst the OECD's best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]