The Third Australian National Conference on Unemployment was held last month at Queensland's University of Technology. The theme was "Policy and Practice" and it brought together a diverse group of people -- from activists, practitioners, politicians and academics, including several from NZ. The conference looked at 'everything to do with unemployment' from a wide spectrum of disciplines including psychology, public administration, sociology, economics and political science.

It is now just over two years since Australia introduced its 'Working Nation' policy statement in its bid to fight unemployment. The Labour Federal government introduced a whole range of training and support measures for the unemployed, whilst also pursuing economic deregulation policies similar to that in New Zealand. Many of the speakers at the conference spoke of the need to re-evaluate the direction of Australian employment policies, and proposed many progressive alternatives to the present policy direction.

We here present an essential summary of two of the papers presented by the keynote speakers at this conference.