Policy Forum Pod

In the final episode of our mini-series on housing, we speak to Emeritus Professor Barbara Norman about planning issues and, particularly, the way we need to rethink housing, land use and urban policy in the context of climate emergency and extreme weather events.

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Barbara Norman is Emeritus Professor of Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Canberra and an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University....

On this episode in our housing mini-series Professor Nicole Gurran talks about reimagining the role of urban planning in creating sustainable and inclusive communities.

Professor Gurran notes that there is no substitute for housing, and unless there is some better planning now, the crisis we are facing will only escalate. She also adds that the language used around housing is often misleading, with housing needs driven by an inc...

Australia has seriously neglected social housing, a crisis everyone is now paying the price for. Social housing was once seen as an essential part of the welfare state. It has now become a last resort or, often, an impossible dream.

In this episode, we speak with Professor Alan Morris about what we can do to fix the social housing crisis, as well as the decline in homeownership across Australia.

Having stable housing brings ...

Australia’s housing crisis: Housing is one of the biggest drivers of our economy, but it is also at the core of the biggest financial hardships people are facing.

Dr Nicholas Frank lays out why house prices skyrocketed in the 1980s and how the availability of credit became vital for families to survive with rising costs of living.

The consumption aspect of the economy currently depends on the wealth generated by increasing ...

In this special episode of the pod, we discuss the importance of music and creativity.

Professor Kim Cunio and Professor Lane Gabora talk about why the creative arts are more important now than ever before, how music makes you feel seen. They also discuss how artificial intelligence is changing, and threatening, creativity.

Professor Liane Gabora is an Interdisciplinary cognitive scientist at the University of British Colu...

In this episode, the Director of the Crawford School of Public Policy, Professor Janine O’Flynn, takes stock of the Voice to Parliament referendum result. She, along with Sharon Bessell and Arnagretta Hunter make some initial reflections and begin to work through where we now need to go as a nation.

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Professor Janine O’Flynn is the Director of the Crawford School of Public Policy. Her research interests are in public manag...

In this episode, historian and Professor Frank Bongiorno talks us through Australia’s constitutional history and explains why the upcoming referendum has the potential to reshape our ability to change as a nation.

Professor Frank Bongiorno, AM, is a Professor of History, at the ANU’s College of Arts and Social Sciences. He has held positions in Australia and the UK, and has written widely on Australia’s political history. He is ...

The narrative and origin story of the Voice to Parliament are key to understanding how Australian’s will vote in the referendum, says Rebecca Huntley.

She talks about soft-yes and soft-no voters, people who do not feel strongly about the Voice to Parliament, their level of engagement and what is important to them. Dr Huntley says her research shows that the majority of Indigenous Australians understand what is at stake in the r...

In this episode, we speak to Professor Peter Yu about what the First Nations Voice to Parliament means for our past, our present, and our future as a nation and the vital role universities play in teaching people to bridge relationship gaps. 

Professor Yu says current indigenous policy is a cost-benefit failure, and taxpayers should want better for their money, and the Voice will make that happen.

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Professor Peter Yu ...

In this special episode of Policy Forum Pod, Thomas Mayo joins Sharon Bessell and Arnagretta Hunter to discuss the importance of the Voice to Parliament.

Thomas Mayo explains how the Voice will create unity and a stronger future. We are a Nation divided, but Constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples gives us a way of coming together and leaving a legacy of collective hope and justice for our chi...

This podcast delves into the complex world of balancing the need for energy through fossil fuels and protecting the environment and human health.

Energy is central to so much human activity today and the politics are complex, weighing up local and global needs for energy, the ‘needs of the economy’ against the resultant environmental and climate impacts.  Guests Professor Melissa Haswell and Professor Hillary Bambrick disc...

This Podcast delves into the Intergenerational Report, looking at both the challenges and opportunities it highlights.

Dr Liz Allen and Professor Paul Burke discuss the key takeaways of the latest IGR that in 2062 Australia will be bigger, slower growing, and more diverse, with living standards at risk of going backwards.

Liz says we are “heading into the greatest demographic headwinds of our time,” and we need to spend more ...

This episode discusses the connections between planetary health and human health.

Sharon Friel and Fran Baun look at the challenges of health inequality, over-consumption and how we move toward a better future. 

To have healthy people we need to have a healthy planet, and in order to do that we need to be prioritising the health and wellbeing lens as a powerful tool for policy shifts.

"It can't be biomedical, it's a...

This National Child Protection Week we ask the question: What part can we as individuals play in protecting children and creating a culture of care?

The theme for this year’s National Child Protection Week is ‘Where we start matters’ building on the essence that ‘every child in every community needs a fair go’. In this episode, we speak to researcher Tim Moore, and NAPCAN Deputy-CEO Rani Kumar about what needs to happen, not jus...

In this episode, Rob Hopkins discusses why we need imagination as a core component to create the future we want.

We need to make time to listen to the bird song and allow our minds time to come up with solutions to tough problems.

“At a time when we fundamentally have to reimagine everything, we’ve created the worst possible conditions for the human imagination,” Hopkins said. Without imagination and big-picture thinking, w...

In this episode, Dr Rebecca Colvin talks about Australia’s new Net Zero Authority, and the challenges some regional communities are facing as we move towards a decarbonised future.

She expands on the role of both local and political leadership, and how identity influences the way in which our politics work. People’s love for and connection to place is often overlooked or outright ignored, as is local knowledge. Place-based comm...

In this episode, Professor Susan Sell talks about 21st century capitalism and how it undermines health outcomes, social goals and equity.

She discusses the connection between the market, our work and our health, particularly for those with precarious working conditions where we see the market’s direct impact on physical and mental wellbeing.

Professor Sell explains the phenomenon of ‘failure demand,’ growing demand for serv...

This week, Professor Kay Cook and Associate Professor Ben Phillips talk about reimagining what we value and how we value it when it comes to poverty and social policy in Australia.

Both Professor Cook and Associate Professor Phillips are on the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee and advocate strongly for raising the rate of support payments in Australia, to bring people out of poverty.

Phillips takes us through the immedia...

In this episode, Dr Andrew Leigh MP sits down in the studio with Sharon and Arnagretta to discuss the hierarchies of evidence in policy making in Australia.

Dr Leigh, a former Economics Professor at the ANU and prolific author on the subject, shares his views on the benefits of randomised trials and what he hopes the newly established Australian Centre for Evaluation will accomplish in a data-rich world.  

Understan...