Editors:

Dr Mark Davis is the author of  The Land Of Plenty: Australia in the 2000s and Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism. He is well-known as a cultural and political commentator, and is Director of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

Miriam Lyons is the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Development. Formerly the Policy Coordinator of New Matilda, Miriam has a long history of bringing policy ideas to new audiences, as the founding director of the Interface Festival of Ideas in Sydney, and director of the Ideas Program for the StraightOutof Brisbane Festival. Miriam has also worked as a freelance writer and a media development consultant in East Timor with the international NGO,  Internews. Miriam was a participant in the 2020 Summit and was recently nominated in the Thinkers’ category of The Australian’s Emerging Leaders series.

Contributing Authors:

Fiona Armstrong is a public policy analyst and advocate for comprehensive health reform and evidence-based climate policy. She is a co-author of the 2009 Centre for Policy Development Policy Paper Putting Health in Local Hands: Shifting Governance and Funding to Regional Health Organisations. She has a background as a health professional, in health policy, and as a journalist. She has been published on a wide range of issues including health, environment, energy, politics, finance, Indigenous affairs, mental health, aged care, education, workforce, law, and industrial relations. She has a Masters in Politics and Public Policy and has recently been researching climate policy options for Australia. She works with organisations on a range of health and climate policy issues.

Larissa Behrendt is a Eualeyai/Kamillaroi woman. She is the Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is admitted to the Supreme Court of the ACT and NSW as a barrister.  Larissa is a Land Commissioner at the Land and Environment Court and the Alternate Chair of the Serious Offenders Review Board, a member of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and a founding member of the Australian Academy of Law. She is the Chair of the Humanities and Creative Arts panel of the Australian Research Council College of Experts.  She is the author of several books on Indigenous legal issues. She won the 2002 David Uniapon Award and a 2005 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for her novel Home. Her latest novel, Legacy, is due for release in October this year. Larissa is a Board Member of the Museum of Contemporary Art, a board member of Tranby Aboriginal College and a Director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre. She was named as 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year.

Chris Bonnor AM is co-author with Jane Caro of The Stupid Country – How Australia is dismantling public education (UNSW Press), a former high school principal and former President of the NSW Secondary Principals Council. He also manages a media monitoring website on education issues: www.futuredforum.blogspot.com.

Eva Cox AO was until recently Program Director, Social Inquiry at the University of Technology Sydney, and is now practicing being an unattached change agent while reviving her consultancy, Distaff Associates. She is the national Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby – an organisation in which she was a founding member in1972. A strong feminist and advocate for women’s issues, she delivered the 1995 ABC Boyer Lectures on A Truly Civil Society, which she is still trying to achieve (available through ABC Books). She has researched and published on many policy and other social issues recently, including: child care, sole parents and welfare payments, superannuation, social capital, community well being, asylum seekers, corporate social responsibility, research and evaluation. A frequent media commentator, she sees herself as a problem solver rather than a specialist. Her current research interests include devising a more civil society, teaching community research skills, policy formulation, indigenous child-care and domestic violence, the Welfare to Work program, and a wide range of gender issues, including parental leave.

Jennifer Doggett is a health policy analyst and consultant who has worked in a number of different areas of the health system, including the federal health department and the community sector, and as a political advisor on health policy. She currently works with health provider, industry and consumer groups on a range of health issues. She has a Masters in Public Health and a Graduate Diploma in Health Economics. Jennifer is the author of ‘A New Approach to Primary Care for Australia’, published by the Centre for Policy Development in June 2007 and Out of Pocket: Rethinking Health Copayments published by CPD in 2009.

Ian Dunlop is a CPD Fellow. He was formerly a senior international oil, gas and coal industry executive.  He chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88, chaired the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000 and was CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors from 1997-2001. He is Chairman of Safe Climate Australia, Deputy Convenor of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and a Member of the Club of Rome.

Ben Eltham is a writer, journalist and creative producer from Melbourne. He trained to postgraduate level in neuroscience and philosophy at the University of Queensland before spending the next decade devoted to his love for culture and the arts. Ben has worked as a producer at a number of arts festivals including This Is Not Art, Straight Out of Brisbane (where he was the founding director), Melbourne Fringe, Brisbane Festival and Adelaide Fringe. From 2001-2006 he was the Courier-Mail’s arts and theatre critic, from 2007-2010 he was NewMatilda.com’s National Affairs Correspondent and he continues to write regularly about Australian politics, culture and the arts for publications including the ABC’s The Drum/Unleashed, Crikey.com.au, Meanjin Quarterly, Overland, Inside Story, Artlink and Australian Book Review. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and is currently completing his PhD at the University of Western Sydney’s Centre for Cultural Research.

Kate Gauthier works for the Refugee Council of Australia. Kate was the National Coordinator of A Just Australia, a refugee policy lobby group which recently merged with the Refugee Council. Previously Kate has worked as the immigration and refugee policy adviser to Senator Andrew Bartlett, and the community liaison officer for Senator Aden Ridgeway.  Kate was a co-founder of the Refugee Assistance Project, a board member of ChilOut (children out of detention), a board member of PolMin (the Political Ministry Network), a member of the steering group for Project Australia and has visited every onshore detention centre in Australia. Kate was a participant in the Governance Stream for the 2020 summit. Kate has a Masters degree in International Social Development and mentors other NGOs and advocates in policy lobbying and campaigning.

Lee Godden is Director of the Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law at Melbourne Law School. She has a long-standing research interest in sustainable water law and policy, with several present projects around water governance. Lee is also currently undertakaing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary evaluation of Australia’s legal capacity to respond to climate change, as part of an Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant, ‘Responding to Climate Change: Australia’s Environmental Law and Regulatory Framework.’

Elizabeth Hill is a member of the University of Sydney’s Department of Political Economy. She previously worked in the financial sector. Elizabeth’s primary research interests relate to the experience of gender, work and care in both developed and developing country economies. This includes: research on the development of work and family policy in Australia and its impact on women’s labour market participation and gender equity; the changing character of work and care in emerging economies in the Asia Pacific Region e.g. India; the informal economy and informal employment; organising informal labour; and the relationship between human agency and socio-economic development.  Elizabeth convenes, with Professor Barbara Pocock from the University of South Australia, the Australian Work+ Family Policy Roundtable (http://www.familypolicyroundtable.com.au/). The Roundtable promotes the development and dissemination of relevant Australian and international research on work and family policy. The Roundtable is an active participant in the public debate around these issues, providing regular submissions to Government Inquiries on the status of work and family policy in Australia, as well as media commentary and analysis on policy developments.

Ray Ison holds chairs at Monash University, where he is Professor, Systems for Sustainability (located in the Monash Sustainability Institute) and the Open University (UK), where he has been Professor of Systems since 1994. He has an established international reputation in Systems scholarship and has made significant contributions through his research, teaching and consultancy in the areas of systems practice and social learning, systemic environmental decision making, ‘knowledge transfer’, design of learning/inquiring systems and agricultural systems. Ray’s work has found practical application in diverse fields including water management, organisational change, staff induction, Higher Education reform and rural development and recently, climate change. Ray’s most recent book ‘Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate Change World’ has just been published. His other most recent work investigates how social learning could be employed as an alternative governance mechanism for managing complex, or ‘wicked’ situations, particularly water catchments and other multiple stakeholder settings. You can read more at Ray’s blog: http://rayison.blogspot.com.au/

Norm Kelly is an associate with the ANU’s Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI), which is an AusAID-funded body supporting the efforts of new democracies in the Asia-Pacific region to strengthen their political systems. Dr Kelly’s doctoral thesis was on the topic of Australian electoral reforms from 1983 to 2007 at the national, state and territory levels. He also works for the Democratic Audit of Australia, and as an author for Inside Story. Norm’s main research areas are electoral systems, political parties, and parliamentary accountability. Norm was a member of the Legislative Council of Western Australia, representing the Australian Democrats from 1997 to 2001. After leaving Parliament, Norm was elected to the National Executive of the Democrats from 2001 to 2003, including one term as National Deputy President.

Phil Lynch has been Executive Director and Principal Solicitor of the Human Rights Law Resource Centre since 2006.  Phil was previously the founding Coordinator of the PILCH Homeless Persons’ Legal Clinic which, in 2005, was conferred with the Australian Human Rights Law Award.  Phil has also worked as a commercial litigator with Allens Arthur Robinson.  Phil is on the Editorial Board of the Alternative Law Journal, an appointee to the Federal Government’s Human Rights Grants Scheme Expert Panel, and a member of the Victorian Attorney-General’s Human Rights Leadership Forum.  In 2008, he was one of 25 ‘Future Global Leaders’ invited to attend the InterAction Council meeting of former Heads of Government and of State in Sweden.

Kathy McDermott has taught in universities in Australia and the United States and worked in the senior executive service of the Australian Public Service in the areas of industrial relations policy and public sector governance. Her most recent publications include Whatever happened to ‘frank and fearless’? (for the Australia and New Zealand School of Government) and Marketing Government (for the Democratic Audit of Australia).

Ian McAuley is a CPD fellow. He lectures in Public Sector Finance at the University of Canberra. His research interests are in public policy, with a specialisation in health policy.His academic qualifications are in engineering and business management from Adelaide University and in public administration from Harvard University. Besides his academic work, he has assisted consumer and welfare organisations in financial and economic policy matters. He has been a strong advocate for integration of the components of health care into a coherent consumer-focused system. He has been a critic of successive governments’ piece-meal approaches to health policy, particularly the government’s subsidies for private health insurance, because they bring neither the benefits of market competition nor the benefits of strong government control. Ian is co-author of a number of papers for the  Centre for Policy Development, including ‘Reclaiming our Common Wealth: policies for a fair and sustainable future’ and ‘A Health Policy for Australia: reclaiming universal care’.

Peter Newman is the Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University and is on the Board of Infrastructure Australia that is funding infrastructure for the long term sustainability of Australian cities. He has recently returned from a North American tour promoting his two new books Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change and Green Urbanism Down Under, both written with Tim Beatley. In 2001-3 Peter directed the production of WA’s Sustainability Strategy in the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. It was the first state sustainability strategy in the world. In 2004-5 he was a Sustainability Commissioner in Sydney advising the government on planning issues. In 2006/7 he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Virginia Charlottesville where he wrote his new books. In Perth, Peter is best known for his work in saving, reviving and extending the city’s rail system. Peter invented the term ‘automobile dependence’ to describe how we have created cities where we have to drive everywhere. For 30 years since he attended Stanford University during the first oil crisis he has been warning cities about preparing for peak oil. Peter’s book with Jeff Kenworthy ‘Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence’ was launched in the White House in 1999.

Barbara Pocock is Director of the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia. Barbara has been researching work, employment and industrial relations since 1981. She joined the University of South Australia in January 2006, after fourteen years at the University of Adelaide. Barbara has worked in many jobs – in shearing sheds, advising politicians, the public service, on farms, in unions, teaching and researching in universities, for governments and as a mother. Barbara was initially trained as an economist, completed her doctorate in gender studies, and has taught and researched labour studies and social science since the mid-1980s. Her research has included work, industrial relations, trade unionism, pay and pay equity, vocational education, inequality in the labour market and the award of a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship to study the intersections between work, family and community for 5 years, 2003-2007. She lives in Adelaide, South Australia, and is a mother of two.

John Quiggin is a Federation Fellow in Economics and Political Science at the University of Queensland. He is prominent both as a research economist and as a commentator on Australian economic policy. He is the author of ‘The Risk Society: Social Democracy in an uncertain world’ for the Centre for Policy Development. He is a fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.

Marian Sawer AO is Emeritus Professor in the School of Political Science and International Relations, Australian National University and Vice-President of the International Political Science Association. She was formerly (2000 – 2003) head of the Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. Currently she leads two large ARC-funded projects: Democratic Choices; and The Evolution of Social Movements. Her other areas of expertise include: the theory and practice of representation; electoral governance; social liberalism; and gender politics and policy. One of Marian’s major roles has been leading the ARC-funded Democratic Audit of Australia 2002-08. The capstone book, Australia:The State of Democracy, was launched by Special Minister of State, Senator the Hon Joe Ludwig, October 2009. Marian continues to be the ANU Director for the Democratic Audit of Australia.

Tani Shaw is currently undertaking a PhD with the Institute for Sustainable Futures, at the University of Technology, Sydney and is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Policy Development. Prior to this Tani completed a Masters of Environmental Management with the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and a Bachelor of Business from Southern Cross University.

Ben Spies-Butcher lectures in economic and political sociology at Macquarie University. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the economics and politics of social policy, and on political participation. He previously worked as Senior Researcher at the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education on issues of human rights. Ben is active in a number of non-government organizations and social movements, particularly around Indigenous rights and housing. Ben co-wrote the paper ‘Reforming Australia’s hidden welfare state’ for the CPD.

Adam Stebbing is a social researcher broadly interested in the interactions of public policy and social inequality. He is currently undertaking a PhD in the Sociology department at Macquarie University. His doctoral research is focused at looking at how social tax expenditures alter our understanding of the Australian welfare state, in terms of its political development and distributional outcomes. He has previously undertaken research exploring how homeless people experience citizenship in Australia.

Marcus Westbury is a writer, broadcaster, festival director and media maker responsible for some of Australia’s most innovative, unconventional and successful cultural events. He is well known for writing and presenting the three part series Not Quite Art for ABC1 and creating the howshouldivote.com.au website for GetUp that produced personalised how-to-vote cards for 150,000 Australians in the lead-up to the 2007 Federal Election. A born and bred Novocastrian, Marcus is the founder of Newcastle’s infamous This Is Not Art festival. His other hats include stints as the Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival and Co-director of the Cultural Program at Melbourne’s 2006 Commonwealth Games. Marcus has contributed to a wide variety of publications including the Griffith Review, Crikey, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, several anthologies, journals and countless websites. He is well noted in Australia’s arts community as a member of several committees including for the Australia Council, Arts Victoria, NSW Ministry for the Arts, The Australian Film Commission and he was a participant in the 2020 Summit’s cultural stream.

Editorial Team:

Many thanks to volunteer editors Zoe Anderson, Fiona Cameron, Christopher Carlisle and Marisa Wikramanayake.