The crowded chasm: the place of science in the Australian government

Policymakers are developing more sophisticated approaches to science and evidence, says PAUL HARRIS.

Scientists and policymakers: wave goodbye to the valley of death

We need to ditch misleading metaphors which imply that linking science to innovation or policy is the task of heroic pioneers writes PAUL HARRIS.

Bare minimum: unpicking the minimum wage

Australia needs to have a national conversation about the minimum wage, starting with breaking free from the short-term thinking of the annual negotiations, according to the author of a new report from the HC Coombs Policy Forum.

Counting captured carbon

Policy makers need to count carbon ‘stocks’ in the land and sea alongside current reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in order to plan long-term responses to climate change, says a leading economist.

The productivity conundrum

The year ahead is likely to see increased debate and discussion about Australia's productivity and competitiveness, writes CHRISTOPHER VAS.

Financial frenemy

Are innovation, research and development ways to get out of economic trouble, or further into it? PAUL HARRIS writes that the answer lies in doing better innovation, instead of more of it.

Mapping the future

How do you take the complexity of an entire country’s policy landscape and turn it into a single ‘systems map’? CHRISTOPHER VAS offers some insights.

Unpicking productivity

What does productivity actually mean? And what happens to the economy if we aren’t able to make satisfactory progress in increasing it? Those are some of the questions addressed in a new issues paper.

USA and Australia share growing pains

The long-term challenges facing Australia to sustain productivity growth, and what we can learn from the US experience, are the focus of a two-day HC Coombs Policy Forum conference starting on Monday.

How many is too many? Future Forum tackles immigration

The thorny issue of immigration was in the spotlight in the recent Future Forum broadcast.