- 3 mins
Billions of dollars have been spent on recovering water for the environment in Australia’s most important and extensive catchment, the Murray-Darling Basin.
According to a group of experts led by Dr Matthew Coloff from ANU, three quarters of the indicators used in a major review of that spending were chosen to justify investment past investment, not to reflect the efficacy of those decisions.
“Total fertility rates over the past 30 years have gradually dropped since the Baby Boom in 1993 from 1.86 to 1.5. Dr Liz Allen, a demographer at ANU says this is so low it may be “impossible to come back from.”
“Replacement level is a statistical indication of the average number of births per woman in a particular time period – given the relevant age-specific rates of births during that period,” Allen explains”.
“The response from Southeast Asia has so far been the benchmark.
Leaders of ASEAN’s most important economies — Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Philippines President Bongbong Marcos and Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong — have coordinated closely around a non-retaliatory response”.
In case you’d missed it, there’s a federal election happening. Australia heads to the polls on Saturday, 3 May 2025.
Election campaigns are always a whirlwind of policy proposals and promises, but once the dust settles, someone will form the next government. Whoever it is, what should they focus on first? We asked experts from across ANU.
“A key contributor to real wage growth is an increase in productivity, but Australia’s productivity growth from 2010 to 2020 was the slowest in 60 years.
Our current tax system acts as a brake on productivity, as poorly designed taxes can blunt work-related incentives. Moving from stamp duty to an annualised property tax might raise productivity levels.”
According to Professor Nicholas Biddle from the ANU Centre for Social Research Methods School of Politics and International Relations, financial strain can be linked to a reported decline in life satisfaction.
“Australia’s life satisfaction is at its lowest level, since we’ve been tracking it back from 2019,” he says.
When did Labor’s recovery start? How has uncertainty in the US influenced the framing of this election and left the Coalition vulnerable? And does this election cycle point to any changes in how the major parties operate?
On this episode of Democracy Sausage, Professor Simon Jackman joins Professor Mark Kenny to talk about polling data and the AUS-US relationship.
This special Devpolicy Talks, Host Alison Carabine interviews Pat Conroy, Mehreen Faruqi, and Zali Steggall, exploring their visions for aid, responses to global humanitarian crises and priorities for Australia’s role in the Indo-Pacific region.
It offers a comprehensive look at the competing priorities and policy proposals shaping the aid debate ahead of the 2025 federal election.
According to the 2022 China Mental Health Survey found more than seven per cent of the population of the country were suffering from depression, half of them are schoolchildren.
On this episode of Little Red Podcast, Louisa and Graeme explore the problems drawing the children of China to the couch with experts Yiying Xiong, Barclay Bram, and Hsuan-Ying Huang.
ANU Policy Brief is for time-poor policymakers needing quick access to evidence-based research. It features actionable and digestible briefs drawn from the University’s full range of expertise across the campus.
