1370.0.00.002 - Measures of Australia's Progress - Aspirations for our Nation: A Conversation with Australians about Progress , 2011-12  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 29/05/2013   
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AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED ACADEMIES

There are four Australian Learned Academies – The Australian Academy of Science, The Australian Academy of Humanities, The Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. These four Academies cooperate through a national forum, formed in 1995. The Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) supports cooperative activities by the Academies and provides a common point of access to them. It promotes a unified national vision on issues of national significance, and aims to help overcome difficulties that may separate science, technology and engineering from the social sciences and the humanities.

What they said...

  • Knowledge – ‘We trust that you will consider adding a category within “social” that we believe should be distinct from “education and training”, namely the research-knowledge-innovation continuum.
  • ‘A society’s preparedness to manage the intellectual challenges of the future should be a crucial measure of its progress.’
  • Governance – ‘Consider elevating “governance” to become a domain in its own right, besides “social”, “economic” and “environmental” matters. One would need to be mindful of the fact that “good governance” is ... a culturally loaded notion. In a multicultural society such as ours, it would therefore be useful to unbundle some of the more presumptive definitions of “good governance”.’