The seventh edition of this classic handbook on the policy process is fully updated, featuring new material on policy making amid local and global disruption, the contestable nature of modern policy advice, commissioning and contracting, public engagement and policy success and failure. The Australian Policy Handbook shows how public policy permeates every aspect of our lives. It is the stuff of government, justifying taxes, driving legislation and shaping our social services. Public policy gives us roads, railways and airports, emergency services, justice, education and health services, defence, industry development and natural resource management. While politicians make the decisions, public servants provide analysis and support for those choices. This updated edition includes new visuals and introduces a series of case studies for the first time. These cases-covering family violence, behavioural economics, justice reinvestment, child protection and more-illustrate the personal and professional challenges of policymaking practice. Drawing on their extensive practical and academic experience, the authors outline the processes used in making public policy. They systematically explain the relationships between political decision makers, public service advisers, community participants and those charged with implementation. The Australian Policy Handbook remains the essential guide for students and practitioners of policy making in Australia.

The seventh edition of this classic handbook on the policy process is fully updated, featuring new material on policy making amid local and global disruption, the contestable nature of modern policy advice, commissioning and contracting, public engagement and policy success and failure. The Australian Policy Handbook shows how public policy permeates every aspect of our lives. It is the stuff of government, justifying taxes, driving legislation and shaping our social services. Public policy gives us roads, railways and airports, emergency services, justice, education and health services, defence, industry development and natural resource management. While politicians make the decisions, public servants provide analysis and support for those choices. This updated edition includes new visuals and introduces a series of case studies for the first time. These cases-covering family violence, behavioural economics, justice reinvestment, child protection and more-illustrate the personal and professional challenges of policymaking practice. Drawing on their extensive practical and academic experience, the authors outline the processes used in making public policy. They systematically explain the relationships between political decision makers, public service advisers, community participants and those charged with implementation. The Australian Policy Handbook remains the essential guide for students and practitioners of policy making in Australia.

Victoria Wood stars in this poignant drama about an ordinary woman whose life is transformed by the Second World War.

In a true story based on a Mass Observation diary, housewife Nella Last is trapped in a difficult marriage and dreads her beloved son going away to fight at the outbreak of war.

Struggling with depression and fearing a breakdown, she draws strength from writing a diary, putting down on paper all the things she dare not say to her controlling husband (David Threfall). Meanwhile the support and companionship she finds at the Women's Voluntary Service, in particular from the formidable Mrs Waite (Stephanie Cole), bring joy and liberation and help diminish her 'nerves'.

Unexpected conflict with her son Cliff, the demise of a marriage and the blossoming of female friendships add to this moving portrait of an ordinary woman at war...

Often described as 'the father of realism', Henrik Ibsen was a pioneer of modernist drama. He influenced playwrights as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, and is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare. Included in this collection are adaptations of his tragicomic masterpiece The Wild Duck, his complex and compelling play Rosmersholm, the epic drama Brand and the tragedy John Gabriel Borkman. Ibsen's A Doll's House is relocated to 1879 India in Tanika Gupta's Audio Drama Award-winning dramatisation, while the provocative and scandalous Ghosts is adapted by Richard Eyre, with the cast of his Olivier Award-winning Almeida Theatre production. Also featured are vibrant dramatisations of Hedda Gabler, whose desperate heroine is trapped in a suffocating marriage; The Lady from the Sea, about a woman torn between security and passion; and An Enemy of the People, in which a whistleblower reveals an inconvenient truth and is vilified for it. The casts of these stunning dramas include David Threlfall, Nicholas Farrell, Helen Baxendale, Indira Varma, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter.