More than 60 community leaders were brought together recently by the Community Council for Australia at the National Portrait Gallery to consider what kind of Australia we want to live in.
The forum found that the not-for-profit sector wants to be part of a more creative, safer and kinder Australia, where reinventing failure is not the default position in our national policy making.
They found that more money n necessary was being spent supporting people with mental health problems negotiate the merry-go-round of crisis acute care, and far too little on prevention and ongoing community care.
New measures including an Australia where incarceration rates are falling; where the suicide rate is less than the road toll and where levels of violence against women and children and animals are significantly reduced were also on the wish list.
