Opinion pieces
Published on The Age online, Friday 15 January, 2010
The Haiti quake should prompt countries to rethink cutting their aid budgets in the light of the global financial crisis.
Published on SMH online, Friday 20 November 2009
Today a dozen or so Australian schoolchildren will reveal their "creations" in an extraordinary exhibition that candidly illustrates how children view themselves.
Published on ABC Unleashed 20 Nov 2009
Australia, like many other industrialised countries, is facing a major economic and social challenge brought on by the aging of the population.
Published in the Canberra Times, 2009
We all know that children are our future. But what kind of world are we creating for our children and what kind of life do we offer them?
Published in The Age 11 November 2009
Children settling in Australia from overseas fare far better than such children in other industrialised countries. In fact, new research from UNICEF shows many immigrant children actually do better than those born in Australia.
Published by ABC Online 13 October 2009
When you think of a natural disaster and the plight of those whose lives are devastated, you may not give too much thought to giving priority to education.
Published on The National Times, 5 October 2009
When disaster strikes, such as the tsunami that has devastated the Pacific nations of Samoa and Tonga or the earthquake that rocked West Sumatra, it is the poor, and particularly children, who suffer the most.
Published on ABC online, 15 September 2009
At the end of last year, spikes in global fuel and food prices were hitting poor nations hard as the global financial crisis was just unleashing its destructive force on economies across the globe.
Published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 September 2009
On a visit to East Timor, I watched a young mother give birth after she had walked hours to medical care. Just a few hours after giving birth, she had not alternative but to take her baby and set out on the long walk home.
Published on ABC online 4 August 2009
Already poverty kills 50 children each day in the Pacific, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste - a figure likely to rise as the global financial crisis hits, writes UNICEF Pacific's Will Parks.
Published in The Canberra Times on 26 June 2009
The global economic crisis has dealt a devastating blow to poor nations. New UNICEF research shows it has impacted particularly cruelly on South Asia.
Published on ABC online 19 May 2009
The ability of sport to corrupt is all too evident today. Footballers behaving badly - whether drinking too much, brawling or caught in sex romps - don't even surprise us much now.
Published in AusAID's Focus magazine, June - September 2009
UNICEF Australia and AusAID have entered a new four-year partnership aimed at reducing the number of women and children who die in poverty.
Published in The Australian Financial Review, Saturday 23 May 2009.
American tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie famously stated: ‘The man who dies rich, dies disgraced'.
Published on ABC Online, Friday 1 May 2009.
The economic boom times are over, yet there still remains a minority of Australians who are very rich indeed.
Published in The Age, Saturday 18 April 2009.
Can Bono really do anything to solve world poverty? How does George Clooney going to Darfur change the plight of those threatened by genocide?
Thursday 2 April 2009.
This week’s G20 leaders meeting will have profound implications for the economies of the world's poorest countries.
Published on ABC Online, Friday 13 March 2009.
Australia is experiencing a mini baby-boom. Inspired in part by the previous government’s baby bonus, Australia’s birth rate is heading upwards.
Published in The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 11 March 2009.
The impact of the the global financial crisis is proving extraordinarily cruel for some of the poorest people on the planet.
Tuesday 10 March 2009.
Australia is just now feeling the effects of the global financial crisis amid grim headlines of job losses, profit downgrades and budget deficits.
Thursday 15 January 2009.
UNICEF Australia Ambassador Erica Packer says her own experience as a mother has made UNICEF’s latest research even more confronting.
Published in the Australian Financial Review, Tuesday 6 January 2009.
In the maelstrom of events and news that characterise the current global crisis, it is often difficult to keep a clear head and a sense of what is really going on.