Deciding to take a peek at the My School website was a little like tuning in to Big Brother – I knew what I was about to see might alarm me, but I couldn’t help being drawn in for a little look.

And given the huge number of hits on the site over the last few weeks, there is no doubt that education – and the quality of education – is a huge issue, although I did wonder if they were all guilt ridden mothers like me who spend too much time on the net.

Key Impacts of Tax Policy

The main role of governments is to promote economic and social opportunities for all their citizens. This includes opportunities to learn and work, to enjoy good health and relationships, to have affordable housing and transport options, to raise children and pursue pastimes, to be treated fairly and to be helped when hardship strikes. Lack of these opportunities is the main cause, and also the main consequence, of hardship and injustice.

You might not have noticed with everything else going on in politics this week, but it’s been social inclusion week.  What does this mean?  Executive Director Jo-anne Schofield explores what social inclusion really means...

What the hell does social inclusion actually mean?, Fairfax Media, 27th November 2009

Since this article was written in June the "debate" about asylum seekers or, more accurately, those of them who arrive by boat, has re-erupted in the Australian media.  Again it has generated domestic division and political pointscoring with scant attention being paid to the root causes of people fleeing their home countries.

Within our region Australia should be setting the standard for dealing with the complexities of refugee processing.   It is not acceptable for children to be detained on Christmas Island or indefinitely in Indonesian detention centres.

Refugees will remain an ongoing international problem and Australia needs to lead the international community in finding durable solutions with appropriate resettlement options.

-  Dianne Hiles, 10th November 2009

Against a backdrop of tensions in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, the Horn of Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has monitored a global rise in refugees and displaced people. While Australia has an off-shore humanitarian program that is second to none, accepting in 2007–8 10,800 refugees for humanitarian resettlement, policies dealing with on-shore asylum seekers continue to be highly politicised.

Co-inciding with the release of our first publication, Equality Speaks: Challenges for a fair society, Catalyst asked a group of primary students to explore what Australia would look like if it was a village of just 100 people.

Based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data, here is how Ella, Callum, Natalia, Paloma, Rosie and Willow saw Australia as a village....

Catalyst's David McKnight has produced an article for The Australian's series about what it is to be on the left in present day Australia. This article explores some of the issues raised at a roundtable discussion featuring a number of leading left thinkers held at Deakin University in September 2009. David argues that the 'left' needs measure progress and quality of life in a way which goes beyond simplistic consumer measures. He explains how this will enable the left to reclaim family values and adequately confront the challenges of climate change.

Click here to read David's article Left's Family Values, The Australian, 23 September 2009