National Consultation Strategy

The National Consultation Strategy

Download the Consultation Strategy Outcomes document (Word document, 272 kB)

The instigation of the New Social Settlement National Consultation Program, funded by the R.E. Ross Trust, offers the opportunity to address this identified need in Australian public policy by integrating a range of new policy ideas into a coherent framework that responds to the complexity of labour market and household change.  The Consultation Program has been established to assist this process by drawing on the expert input of a broad range of key players in business, unions, academia and the community sector.  Its task is to refine and develop emerging policy approaches through a process combining Australia-wide consultation with the continuing, proven high-level research capacity developed under the auspices of the program.

Four areas have been targeted for discussion in the New Social Settlement National Consultation Program, with different workshops focusing on specific areas of policy development.

The loss of full employment and the onset of increasingly precarious labour markets together with a more diverse range of family structures pose new challenges for the Australian system of social protection.

These are challenges that underpin the New Social Settlement program.  They require a response that is both broad-ranging in its scope as well as explicit in its construction of policy proposals in areas of pressing priority.

The input generated through the Consultation Program will form an integral part of this response, contributing in a major way to the public debate in Australia on the future directions that social policy should take.

Through the Consultation Program, we aim to:

• develop substantive policy proposals in different areas of social policy;
• develop the policy matrix that can minimise risk across the life course;
• examine the institutions that govern and support social policy and how they might work better; and
• formulate questions for the next stage of our research.

Put very simply, the Consultation Program has been instigated to combine the strength of the critical analysis that has been central to the New Social Settlement program so far, with the development of practical agendas for change which build political momentum and inform political decision-making and community activism at various levels.  We hope that such discussion will assist in the promotion of networks of understanding across sectors, improving the capacity of policy actors to engage in innovative cross-disciplinary debate about social policy problems and options.

To assist in the formulation of a social policy response that will shape a new social settlement, four additional working papers have been developed. These four areas are:

• Youth to Work Transitions,
• Work/Family and Industrial Relations Frameworks,
• Income Support and Capital Investment, and
• Work to Retirement Transitions.

The above working papers can be downloaded and read using Adobe Acrobat.