In remote community schools, children often miss one or two days of school a week. A majority cannot do maths or read at their age level, and few ever do so beyond the level of an eight year old. As many as half do not make the transition to secondary school and only a handful...

Australia’s centrally-controlled system of allocating university places has failed to adjust to either student or labour market demand argues Andrew Norton. A market system, in which universities set the number of places and student fees, would do a better job of supplying Australia’s workforce. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Politicians and academics argue that we need more people...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Government in New Zealand keeps expanding. The main driver has been the inexorable increase in spending on the welfare state. New Zealanders are much richer than when the welfare state was founded. People’s incomes should therefore be sufficient for them to buy many of the services earlier generations could not afford. This means...

Global strategic changes are leading to a faster pace of nuclear proliferation, including in Northeast Asia. Australia currently relies on the US for nuclear protection. But these regional changes could necessitate a rethinking of this position. In this paper, Robyn Lim raises questions about Australia’s dependence on the US for extended deterrence and discusses the...

The rapid spread of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea has created a health emergency, with at least 120,000 Papua New Guineans likely to have HIV/AIDS. In this report, Miranda Darling Tobias discusses the biological, social and political factors that are responsible for the rapid rise of the HIV/AIDS infections in order to identify the practical...