Assignment of Policy Proposal

Policy Proposal

You are asked to write a policy proposal to the relevant Minister (not a Cabinet proposal). Depending on the topic, your proposal may be to a Federal or a State Government Minister or Shadow Minister. You will need to refine your proposal within the context of the chosen policy area.

Choose (only) ONE of the following policy areas:

•  A proposal for country of origin food labelling
• A proposal for limits on foreign investment in agricultural land and agribusiness OR residential housing
• A proposal for a national/state (bottle) container deposit scheme.
• A proposal for forty + per cent of women on boards.
• A proposal focused on climate change, disaster management and resilience building eg. Local energy grid.
• A proposal to ban gambling advertising during sports broadcasts.

Please note that the above topics are broad, so it is suggested that you narrow the scope of your proposal to make the task more manageable. You will note that most are pitched at the national level but may also involve complicated and important Commonwealth/State or intergovernmental issues. Local government proposals will not be accepted as the proposal needs to have wider coverage – to draw out the politics of the issue. [However, students living overseas may negotiate an appropriate or perhaps comparative topic. However, this must be finalised prior to the March 31 deadline.]

You may write your proposal for the Opposition, but your fictional role cannot be a government departmental officer. It must in that instance, be an Opposition advisor to an Opposition Shadow Minister.

Alternatively, you may write the proposal for a business or not-for- profit organisation (NGO), however you would have to be a government affairs advisor within that organisation. In either case, you are required to use the same format.

The policy must relate to domestic Australian domestic policy (and not foreign affairs), and be pitched at either the state or federal government level. For instance, whereas the container deposit scheme or women on boards proposals could be pitched at either at a federal minister or a state minister, the GST proposal is clearly pitched at the national government (but clearly with ramifications for the states).

You will need to find the relevant responsible minister, by name and indicate your fictional role as a policy analyst in the relevant government department (or organisation). It is strongly advised that you start collecting material for this assignment early as once you get into it, you will realise that you need broad understanding of current policy debates and research since you will be putting an evidence based proposal. The only fictional part is your assumed role, the rest needs to be based on research.

In this assignment you will not be writing an essay but more of a report. It is an analytical and applied piece of writing using a supplied format that makes you analyse a policy problem in a very structured manner.

The policy tripod makes you examine the economic efficiency, social effectiveness (targeting) and political feasibility of your proposal. In this assignment, politics is very important and must not be side-lined. It needs to form a major part of theassignment. In particular, the stakeholder analysis needs special attention. Study Guide topics from week 7-11 are relevant but you will also need to draw on earlier weeks.

The components of the policy proposal (format) must include:

1.  Title Page

2.  Letter of Transmittal

3.  One Page Summary

4.  Policy Problem Statement

5.  Policy Analysis – Using the Policy Tripod

6.  Proposed public consultation

7.  Implementation

8.  Evaluation & the specific Recommendation

9.  A separate Postscript:Policy Reflection Addendum