The Emissions Trading Task Group is a creature of another age – an age before we knew just how seriously our activities were jeapardising the climate. Former senior oil & coal industry executive Ian Dunlop argues that both sides of Australian politics need to wake up and smell the climate science.

Time is the currency of relationships, but the never-ending expansion of our working lives is leading to a social recession. Australia’s leading social capital expert Eva Cox argues for policies to help us reclaim our time.

Are taxpayers getting value for money out of Private Health Insurance susbsidies? Ian McAuley looks at the latest OECD data to determine what works in health care financing.

We undersell democracy. We mistake it for the ritual of writing numbers in a box in reverse order of alienation. But despite the growing separation of the people from those who govern them, there’s still hope for the democratic ideal, writes Marcus Westbury.

Governments should take a leaf out of corporate strategy books and remove barriers to competition instead of trying to mandate it, writes Jason Falinski.

The Coalition can’t claim credit for our current economic prosperity, argues Ian McAuley. In fact its unwillingness to deal with long-term structural issues is putting our economy on very shaky ground.

Just as houses need effective architecture and design, so too do Indigenous housing policies, writes Michael Dillon.

Huge changes have been taking place in Australians’ working lives but public policy is yet to catch up. Brian Howe outlines the concrete measures being taken in Europe to restore workers’ ‘time sovereignty’.

In each edition of InSight we’ll be profiling 5 innovative policy ideas from around the world. This month’s ideas: Time banks | Feed-in tariffs | banning junk food advertising to children | the Alaska Permanent Fund | Circles of Care