By Nareen Young and Joshua Gilbert

“We seek a commitment from all levels of government to develop deep dialogue regarding the approaches toward First Nations Peoples’ employment that is cognisant of contemporary policy approaches that are Indigenous-led. This includes recognition that there is an Indigenous-led Indigenous-employment sector that is broad, experienced and knowledgeable and is best placed to make policy and practical recommendations to governments. This commitment needs to address wages and conditions as well as benefits and employment across Australia and must do so across the policy, legal and bargaining processes. This will include developing positive, First Nations-led and data-informed policy development across the workplace community.”

By Youqing Fan

“Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in the national and global supply chain, representing 97.4 per cent of all businesses and contributing 32 per cent of national economic output by revenue in Australia. However, SMEs may face greater ESG challenges than larger firms, because they may lack the scale, expertise, financial resources and capabilities to effectively address ESG issues.”

By Krystal Lockwood and Heron Loban

“The tricky point comes when we consider, who are the decision makers? Closing the Gap is a national framework, but criminal justice policies are predominately driven by the states. Without co-ordination – the river is going to reverse its flow – “downstream” decisions will increase the number of people in the criminal justice system, resulting in high demand and overload on “upstream” services. Under the new Closing the Gap strategies, what this will mean in practice is an overburdening of Indigenous community-controlled organisations, services, and communities. We have already seen this pattern in shifts to services in the New South Wales child protection system.”

By Ian Oppermann

“What is different about AI is that is allows systems, processes and decisions to happen much faster and on a much grander scale. AI is an accelerant and an amplifier. In many cases, it also adapts, meaning what we design at the beginning is not how it operates over time…Before developing new rules, existing regulation and policy should be tested to see if it stands up to potential harms and concerns associated with those three “A’s”. If your AI also “generates” or synthesises, then a few more stress-tests are needed given that “generation” goes well beyond what you can expect from your desktop calculator.”

“Starting policy analysis with the data currently available often limits the questions we ask or pushes us to ask the wrong questions. By starting with the daily news cycle, reporters and editors are driven to discuss the events and issues of the day, not always what matters to communities and for policy reform. But what happens when we start with the voices and perspectives of individuals and communities, informed by research insights? Does the way we identify and prioritise questions enable transformative insights through collective intelligence and thus different forums for policy action? If we don’t do that, it risks leaving us ill-equipped to respond to complex social challenges – or worse, with blunt instruments pointed at the wrong issues.”