A healthier future for all Australians: final report

Source: National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission
"A Healthier Future For All Australians – the final report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission – provides the governments of Australia with a practical national plan for health reform that will benefit Australians, not just now but well into the future. Major access and equity issues include:
Improving health outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people ; Improved care for people with serious mental illness; Support for people living in remote and rural areas; Improved access to dental health care; Timely access to quality care in public hospitals."

Overcoming indigenous disadvantage: key indicators 2009

Source: Productivity Commission
"In 2002, Australian governments committed themselves collectively to overcoming the disadvantage experienced by Indigenous Australians. As part of this commitment, governments agreed to a regular public report on progress — the Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators report. This is the fourth edition of that report. This report is more than a collection of data. It draws on extensive evidence to identify the areas where government policies will have the greatest impact. Over time, the report measures the effects of those policies — and reveals where more effort is required. This was recognised in the updated terms of reference for this report, provided this year by the Prime Minister on behalf of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG)."

Climate change 2009: faster change and more serious risks

source: Dept. of Climate Change
"Prepared by Professor Will Steffen from the ANU Climate Change Institute, ‘Climate change 2009: Faster change and more serious risks’ draws on the science of climate change since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report.

Key findings of the report include:

- The climate system appears to be changing faster than earlier thought likely.

- The need for effective reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is urgent, to avoid the risk of crossing dangerous thresholds in the climate system.

- Once thresholds in ice sheet and carbon cycle dynamics are crossed, such processes cannot be stopped or reversed by human intervention."

Interacting with Government: Australians' use and satisfaction with e-government

Source: Dept. of Finance and Deregulation
"Interacting with Government explores Australians’ use and satisfaction with e‑government services provided through the internet and telephone. It investigates:

how people contact government by internet, telephone, in-person or mail; satisfaction with these means of contacting government, including reasons for satisfaction and dissatisfaction; reasons why people choose to use or not use e‑government services; preferences for future delivery of government services."

Australia's deep-water reserve network: implications of false

Source: ICES: journal of marine science, vol.66,no.1 (2009)
Australia’s southeast network of deep-water marine reserves, declared in July 2007, was designed using a hierarchy that represented the distribution of marine biodiversity as a nested set of bioregions. In this hierarchy, geomorphic units, individual or aggregations of seabed geomorphic features, are the finest scale used in the design process. We evaluated the interaction between two hierarchical levels (depth and geomorphic features), using video survey data on seamounts and submarine canyons. False within-class homogeneity indicated that depth, size, complexity, configuration, and anthropogenic impact need to be added as modifiers to allow geomorphic features to act as surrogates for biodiversity distribution.A consequence of using unmodified geomorphic surrogates, and of not correctly nesting geomorphic features within depth, is the diminished recognition of the importance and comparative rarity of megafaunal biodiversity of the continental margin (,1500-m depths). We call this area the zone of importance, because it is where targeted marine impacts coincide with the greatest megafaunal biodiversity. Refining the geomorphic classification is desirable for future bio-diversity characterization, but an alternative approach is to define patterns in biodiversity and abiotic variables jointly, and to utilize finer scale information and provide classification that preserves the maximum information of both datasets."

National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) 2007-08 reports and maps

Source: Dept. of the Environment, Water, Heritage & the Arts
"The National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) provides the community, industry and government with free information about substance emissions in Australia. The NPI shows emission estimates for 93 toxic substances and the source and location of these emissions. Reports and maps for the whole country and individual states and territories are provided (2007-08 facility data as at 31 March 2009)"

National performance report 2007-08: urban water utilities

source: National Water Commission
"The report is based on the principles of comparability, accuracy and consistency, and spans all critical performance areas of water resources - health, customer service, asset management, environmental, finance and pricing. The report includes information from 82 water utilities that supply approximately 16.8 million Australians with their urban water services."

Ecohydrological regionalisation of Australia

Source: Land & Water Australia
"This report is a result of the Ecohydrological regionalisation of Australia project. The project classified Australia’s unregulated riverine flow regimes to provide a rigorous foundation for future ecological investigations of the importance of the flow regime, testing of scenarios associated with projected future climate change and application to management of the nation’s water resources."

National energy policy: framework 2030: strategic directions paper

source: Dept. of Resources, Energy and Tourism
"This document sets the scene for the development of the Energy White Paper by broadly mapping out its intended scope and identifying some of the specific work being undertaken as input for consideration. The release of this document will be followed by the release of a series of detailed discussion papers in March and April 2009. The discussion papers will address international energy; realising Australia’s energy resource potential; the legal, institutional and governance framework; competitive markets, structural reform and investment; maximising the value of technology in the energy sector; and our people, demographics, workforce and Indigenous participation."

The third wave

Source: The monthly, no.44 (April, 2009)
Article by Tim Flannery: "If the Australian government was at all serious about climate-change mitigation, it would be pumping millions of dollars into surveys and captive-breeding programs for the most critically endangered species. Instead, we see business as usual: mouthed concern, but no meaningful action to deal with the consequences of our coal burning. Without doubt, climate change is only one factor at work, but no one can gainsay that it's a deadly serious one, with computer models indicating that we face losing three out of five species on Earth to global warming if the worst-case scenario eventuates."

New directions in archaeological science

source: ANU e-press
"This collection of refereed papers covers the thematic fields of geoarchaeology, archaeobotany, materials analysis and chronometry, with particular emphasis on the first two. The editors Andrew Fairbairn, Sue O’Connor and Ben Marwick outline the special value of these contributions in the introduction. The international nature of archaeological science will mean that the advances set out in these papers will find a receptive audience among many archaeologists elsewhere. There is no doubt that the story that Australasian archaeology has to tell has been copiously enriched by incorporating a widening net of advanced science-based studies. This has brought attention to the nature of the environment as a human artefact, a fact now more widely appreciated, and archaeology deals with these artefacts, among others, in this way in this publication."

The land is a map: place names of indigenous origin in Australia

Source: ANU e-press
"In areas where Indigenous societies remain relatively intact, thousands of Indigenous placenames are used, but have no official recognition. Little is known about principles of forming and bestowing Indigenous placenames. Still less is known about any variation in principles of placename bestowal found in different Indigenous groups. While many Indigenous placenames have been taken into the official placename system, they are often given to different features from those to which they originally applied. In the process, they have been cut off from any understanding of their original meanings. Attempts are now being made to ensure that additions of Indigenous placenames to the system of official placenames more accurately reflect the traditions they come from."

Australia's biodiversity conservation strategy 2010-2020: consultation draft

source: Dept. of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
"The new Australia's Biodiversity Conservation Strategy sets a national direction for biodiversity conservation over the next decade. The strategy outlines the activities that must begin straight away and those that are needed to effect longer-term change with a minimum 10-year outlook. All actions sit within a list of six ‘priorities for change’. These priorities—building ecosystem resilience, mainstreaming biodiversity, knowledge for all, getting results, involving Indigenous peoples and measuring success—reflect the essential changes that we must make urgently to achieve the strategy’s vision."

The operation of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999: first report

Source: Australia. Standing Committee on Environment,Communication and the Arts
The first report from the Standing Committee reviewing the EPBC Act 1999.

CMKb: a web-based prototype for integrating Australian Aboriginal customary medicinal plant knowledge

Source: BMC BioInformatics, 9 (2008)
"The customary medicinal plant knowledge possessed by the Australian Aboriginal people is a significant resource. Published information on it is scattered throughout the literature, in heterogeneous data formats, and is scattered among various Aboriginal communities across Australia, due to a multiplicity of languages. This ancient knowledge is at risk due to loss of biodiversity, cultural impact and the demise of many of its custodians. The authors of this paper have developed the Customary Medicinal Knowledgebase (CMKb), an integrated multidisciplinary resource, to document, conserve and disseminate this knowledge."

Broadening Australia's response to climate change

Source: Inside story
"A diverse set of measures is needed if we are to minimise the risk of failing to deal effectively with climate change", write Iain MacGill and Regina Betz.

The economic landscape in 2009

Source: Reserve Bank of Australia
"There’s no doubt that world economic conditions deteriorated sharply in the final months of last year. Governments and central banks around the world have taken actions to support growth in response to these events, and to assist their financial sectors. But these measures will take time to work, and 2009 is looking to be a very tough year for the global economy. Australia is being affected by these events. The international deterioration has been so abrupt that it won’t be possible to avoid some short-term weakness here. Nonetheless, Australia came into this period with better momentum than most, and with more scope than most to take expansionary policy measures. That scope is being used. The transmission channels are working, and we can expect the measures that have been taken will increasingly support demand as the year goes on."

Evidenced-based policy-making: what is it, and how do we get it?

Source: Productivity Commission
"The concept of ‘evidence-based policy-making’, while not new, has recently become elevated in public discussion. Like motherhood, it has universal appeal, at least in principle. The need for it is manifest in the complexity of the policy challenges confronting Australia, both in the short term (the ‘meltdown’) and the long term (greenhouse, population ageing). But what exactly does evidence-based policy-making entail? How can it contribute to achieving better policy outcomes? What is needed to put it into wider practice? In a speech for the Australia New Zealand School of Government, Gary Banks, Chariman of the Productivity Commission, addresses each of these questions, drawing some insights and lessons from the experience of the Productivity Commission and its predecessors over the years."

A picture of the nation: the statistician's report on the 2006 census

Source: ABS
"The report presents statistical analysis and commentary on the results of the 2006 Census. The overviews and articles are organised into eight chapters, representing the following broad areas of interest: population; cultural diversity; living arrangements; community; education; work; economic resources; and housing. Commentary focuses on the ability of the census to provide information on small population groups and small geographic areas."

The economics of nature and its implications for the Australian Federation

source: Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists
Paper given by Peter Cosier at an Institute of Public Administration Australia Conference "Australian Federalism: rescue and reform" 24th October 2008.