Library Blog - March 2024
News
Systems thinking for better social policy: a case study in financial wellbeing
Jeremiah Thomas Brown, Jack Noone and Fanny Salignac
Journal of Social Policy, 2024
Social problems are becoming increasingly complex. Policymakers cannot solve these issues with a single policy instrument. We argue that extant literature does not adequately conceptualise the complex relationships between the micro, meso, and macro-level drivers of financial wellbeing. As a result, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners are under-resourced when it comes to designing interventions to improve individuals’ financial situations. We use the examples of affordable housing and social security policy to highlight the utility of a systems approach. In doing so we contribute to ongoing debates by putting forward a model of financial wellbeing in the context of Western countries (specifically Australia) that can better incorporate the moderating, mediating, and reciprocal relationships between financial wellbeing and its drivers.
Digital (t)winning: the potential for AI as a public policy design tool
José-Miguel Bello y Villarino
While the political and policy focus has rightly been on regulating artificial intelligence, we also need to plan now to harness AI’s power as a policymaking tool – especially, its capacity to model outcomes in complex systems.
Podcasts/Streaming
The Party Room
Want to know what's really going on in Parliament House? Fran Kelly and Patricia Karvelas give you the political analysis that matters and explain what it means for you.
Changemakers
ChangeMakers Podcast: A podcast telling stories about people changing the world
hosted by Amanda Tattersall
There are 140 million people engaged in social change work across the globe. These are the ChangeMakers. The ChangeMakers podcast features stories about social change and interviews with people changing the world (ChangeMaker Chats). We produce content to help people change the world.
Learning
How Australians benefit from climate-ready homes – The Briefing Room – Climateworks Centre
19 March 2024, Online, 2pm AEST, Free
Inefficient homes don’t just waste money, they waste energy and the emissions that come with it.
New work from the Renovation Pathways program at Climateworks sheds light on how homes in Australia perform on energy measures and what combinations of exterior upgrades and electrification are needed to get them ‘climate-ready’.
Circular economy housing
9 May 2024, Wesley Conference Centre, 220 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000, 9.00am-5.00pm AEST, from $360.
The build, operation and demolition of Australian homes contribute significantly to Australia’s embodied carbon emissions, which will continue to grow as more homes are built. In the face of the climate crisis and the housing affordability crisis, a shift to circular economy housing is urgently needed and requires multi-directional effort. This conference will explore the findings from the AHURI inquiry, Informing a strategy for circular economy housing in Australia and facilitate a broader discussion about what it will take to decarbonise Australian housing through the full lifecycle from construction through to demolition.