Parliament House would benefit from the creative, collaborative culture of progressive companies like Google, where wellbeing is integral to performance: an insight from Mindful Futures Network founder Dr Lynne Reeder.

As the year comes to a close, Australia21 is proud to release our 2016-17 Annual Report. We did a lot with very little over the period, running nationally significant projects, boosting our profile and calibrating the goals that will keep us powering on through 2017-2018.

The first year of Australia21’s Mindful Futures Network has provided a jam-packed start to the mapping of mindfulness, empathy and compassion across Australia’s organisations. This last update for 2017 takes time to remind you why the Network focuses on those three things – particularly at a time that can be stressful for many people.

The final Australia21 Board meeting of 2017 was a rare opportunity to meet face-to-face. The time together sowed the seeds for new approaches and themes, while revealing fresh sources of energy and providing a strong foundation for the work to come in 2018.

There’s a range of data available about the labour market and predictions about the future of work, but the voice of young people is often missing in contemporary research. Now Australia21 is doing something about that, through our youth-led Making our Future Work initiative, piloted in 2017. Please donate to keep it going in 2018.

Help Australia21 improve public policy decision-making through high quality, evidence-based research to ensure a fair, sustainable and inclusive future.

Portugal’s 2001 drug law reforms have worked: drops in HIV infections, overdose deaths, crime and problematic use. Meanwhile, the punitive approach in other countries (including Australia) has been costly and ineffective. As Alex Wodak notes, attitudes are finally changing in the face of evidence.

It’s December! That means there’s a long hot summer of celebrations and music festivals ahead. Australia21 has done a lot of research into the use of alcohol and other drugs and the evidence is clear: preventing and reducing harm is far more important than punishing people for their mistakes. So here are a few tips for getting through without too much damage.