Exit polls taken after last year's election showed that economic growth alone is no longer enough to guarantee votes. John Langmore and John Wiseman argue for the new Labor government to adopt broader measures of progress than its predecessor.

If it is to make real change, a future Labor government will need to resist the temptation to mimic its predecessor, writes Miriam Lyons in Online Opinion.

How can we transform the risk of breakdown into an opportunity for renewal? Thomas Homer-Dixon explores the possibilities for positive change in this extract from ‘The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization’.

American social entrepreneur Peter Barnes presents a vision for safeguarding the commons from both governments and markets.

Australian state and federal governments may still be in love with privatisation, writes James Arvanitakis, but for Australian communities the relationship is getting cold. In ‘Reclaiming the Australian Commons’, Arvanitakis charts the enclosure of Australia's common wealth and calls for governments to re-draw the 'line in the sand' between commons and commodities

John Menadue launched Our Common Wealth with a call for 'hochmar' -– the science of the heart –- the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depends on you.

The Government’s slick marketing of WorkChoices failed, said Unions NSW secretary John Robertson, because it was a “misguided attempt to arrange community values from the top down”. The values that underpin government policy should come from the ground up, he argues, and the union movement is now working to achieve just that.

To anyone with even a modest understanding of humanity's place in nature and our absolute dependence on the natural world, the response of governments and institutions to the massive environmental changes the world is now facing appears morally and ethically negligent.

Inequality in schools and under-investment in higher education

It certainly is time for a new debate in this country about the pressing need to re-examine the values and principles which underpin our education systems.

There are two issues – growing inequality in access and success in schooling and the decline since 1997 in public outlays on universities – that have serious consequences for us all. Both of these phenomena stem from the same underlying value position.