The aim of this work is to inform public debate and to promote policies that will protect individual liberties, emphasise personal responsibility and strengthen community life. Good policies should help people take control over their own lives and enable them to contribute in a positive way to the society in which they live.

In recent years, our work has focused on six major areas of social policy. Research on community has focused on strengthening informal norms of civility and autonomy and has investigated policing and penal policy. In education we have promoted the case for school choice and for higher standards and greater use of markets in schools and universities. Health is a new area of work where we consider how best to balance private and public initiatives in responding to escalating costs and rising expectations.

Work on families has collated research evidence on marriage and parenting and examined ways to strengthen family life to maintain a satisfactory ‘work-family balance.’ The work in Indigenous affairs has documented the appalling state of health, education and welfare dependency in remote and regional Australia and identified policies to put it right. Finally, research on the welfare state addresses issues of poverty and welfare reform and asks how self-reliance can be protected against the growing intrusion of government.

The rationale for the social policy research program was set out in a 2001 Occasional Paper, The Social Foundations of a Free Society, and a digest of recent social trends, State of the Nation: An Agenda for Change, was published in 2004. A full list of publications is given under each policy heading. In addition to these books and papers, research is disseminated through TV, radio and newspapers (with print articles reproduced as CIS ‘Executive Highlights’), and through conferences, seminars and workshops.