Moving the Needle: How Reform Gets Done in Australia
Australian reformers are plagued by a culture of hesitance. It's time to learn from our successes and make progress a reality for our nation once again
🎟️ SELLING OUT FAST🎟️
Come to our launch event — "Moving the Needle: How Reform Gets Done in Australia"
It's time to learn from our successes past and present, and make progress a reality for our nation once again.
Get your ticket now 👇
22.07.2025 21:45 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Join us at our launch event “Moving the Needle: How Reform Gets Done in Australia”
Get your tix now 🎟️
events.humanitix.com/moving-the-n...
16.07.2025 22:05 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Read the full article 👇
inflectionpoints.work/articles/the...
16.07.2025 22:05 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
In 1967, a planning permit for a 3-storey apartment building only took 12 pages.
In 2025 the same planning permit would run hundreds of pages long.
How the machinery of action has rusted — and why we must fix it.
16.07.2025 22:05 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Join us at our launch event “Moving the Needle: How Reform Gets Done in Australia”
Get your tix now 🎟️
events.humanitix.com/moving-the-n...
15.07.2025 22:03 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Read the full article 👇
inflectionpoints.work/articles/the...
15.07.2025 22:03 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Children who move to better neighbourhoods are more likely to go to university, earn more, and stay out of poverty.
So why do urban planning policies in wealthy areas resist new families?
15.07.2025 22:03 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
In 2022, no one thought, talked or uttered the words “non-compete clauses”.
In 2025, non-compete clauses were front and centre at the Federal Budget.
Here’s how it happened.
15.07.2025 00:00 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
An op-ed version of one of our essays is an Editor’s Pick in the AFR today!
We look forward to more of this: providing long form and short form essays that bring important ideas and stories to the national conversation.
14.07.2025 08:31 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
The Problem With Urban Planning | Inflection Points
A professional monopoly is gatekeeping our growth. We need a new paradigm: planning at the speed of cities.
The housing crisis isn’t just political. It’s professional.
Meet the unelected, unaccountable gatekeepers of growth: legacy planners.
How a well-meaning profession became a structural barrier to progress and how to fix it.
✍️ Jonathan O'Brien
inflectionpoints.work/articles/the...
13.07.2025 00:06 — 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 3
The Price Children Pay for Exclusive Suburbs | Inflection Points
Diverse schools are a key tool for economic mobility. But current policy is making schools less, not more, diverse.
In the most affluent suburbs, schools are emptying. In the outer fringe, kids are learning in demountables.
Welcome to the quiet equity crisis reshaping Australian opportunity.
✍️ Katie Roberts-Hull
inflectionpoints.work/articles/the...
13.07.2025 00:06 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
How Australia Banned Non-Competes | Inflection Points | Inflection Points
There are many ingredients to reform. While every reform is different, this episode clearly offers lessons for future efforts.
In 2022, no one thought, talked or uttered the words “non-compete clauses”.
In 2025, non-compete clauses were front and centre at the Federal Budget.
Here’s how it happened.
✍️ Michael Brennan & Dan Andrews
inflectionpoints.work/articles/how...
13.07.2025 00:06 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
🚨We’re launching the FIRST issue of Inflection Points 🚨
- Michael Brennan & Dan Andrews
- Katie Roberts-Hull
- Jonathan O’Brien
- Andrew Leigh
🧵
13.07.2025 00:00 — 👍 10 🔁 4 💬 2 📌 0
Our editorial priorities:
1️⃣ Increasing state capacity.
2️⃣ Building infrastructure and housing.
3️⃣ Supporting productivity growth.
4️⃣ Enabling human flourishing.
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Inflection Points aims to change that.
We’re here to champion growth, institutional clarity, and actionable ideas, not just critique.
Our core principles:
• We believe in abundance.
• We are committed to an Australia for all
• We value depth and long-term thinking
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Like mismatched rail gauges, our policy landscape today is riddled with brakes:
Housing that’s unaffordable.
Infrastructure that’s forever delayed.
Productivity that’s flatlining.
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
It worked.
Today, you can ride a train from Brisbane to Perth without changing gauge once.
But this wasn’t inevitable.
It was the result of vision, technical rigor, and institutional will.
That’s the spirit we want to revive.
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Clapp knew our fragmented rail wasn’t just inefficient, it was a risk to the nation.
During WWII, it became a national liability delaying mission-critical cargo.
So Clapp wrote a report proposing 6,000+ miles of standardised rail, with bold clarity, ambition and pragmatism.
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
For decades, Australia tolerated this dysfunction.
Other nations had solved it.
We kept debating it.
Then came Harold Clapp.
He saw how U.S. railways worked and returned home determined to lift Australia to global standards.
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
In the 1800s, each Aussie colony chose a different rail gauge.
That meant trains literally had to stop at borders to switch tracks.
It crippled commerce, wasted time, and hampered Australia’s growth.
Mark Twain even mocked us for it.
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Before we look forward, we looked back to a time when one man helped reshape Australia’s future by fixing something seemingly simple.
Train tracks.
Let us introduce you to: Sir Harold Clapp
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
We want to help change this, to bring an informed view about the reforms that will build a more prosperous Australia, and to consider the institutional changes required to get us there.
We believe that supporting quality writing plays a crucial part in starting that journey.
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
What does meaningful reform require technically, institutionally, and culturally?
What tradeoffs must we make?
What must we do today, for the sake of tomorrow?
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Reform in Australia has often become performative.
Roundtables replace results.
Royal Commissions replace resolve.
We’ve confused talk for traction.
And in all this process we rarely confront the harder questions:
12.07.2025 00:17 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
