The National Rural Women’s Coalition is an alliance that works to remove the barriers between women and power; between centre and periphery; between women’s potential and the opportunity to fulfil it.

Hamilton Stone was commissioned to provide an independent evaluation of how well Muster – NRWC’s flagship leadership program – is helping develop women leaders, supporting NRWC to be a powerful advocate for Australian rural, regional and remote women.

We have had many conversations over the years with older Australians, including those receiving aged care. Hamilton Stone directors Lisa Fenn and Hannah Holland (writing as Ian) have had the tremendous privilege of sharing experiences and reflections arising from these conversations, in Griffith Review volume 68, Getting On. The stories we recount, from many ordinary but extraordinary people, share this volume with pieces penned by some of the best non-fiction writers this country has seen, including Helen Garner and Stella Prize winner Vicki Laveau-Harvie. It is such an amazing opportunity to be published with such wonderful writers.

Play has huge benefits for children, their families, and their communities. However, in today’s busy world playgroups don’t just materialise by magic. Hamilton Stone has been working with Playgroup Australia to help ensure the Australian government recognises the potential for these groups to maintain and build community identity and resilience.

The aged care sector has been on a long journey toward focussing more on the needs and the choices of the people who use it. Hamilton Stone has been intimately involved in some of the key steps along the way, and we are currently helping with the analysis of how allocating residential aged care places to consumers, instead of providers, will work.

Ten months since the Commonwealth initiated its review of the Australian Public Service, the review panel has just released its Priorities for Change report. As part of its in-depth analysis of the issues, it published a paper by Hamilton Stone director Hannah Holland (writing as Ian) and Griffith University researchers Anne Tiernan and Jacob Deem, on how to reform relationships between ministers, their offices and the APS. You can offer your input to the Review between now and 2 May 2019 here.

Hamilton Stone directors Hannah Holland and Lisa Fenn have been talking with Indigenous people, asking them about their aged care journeys and what their information needs might be. We spoke with over 50 older Aboriginal people in places ranging from the urban to the very remote. They were Elders, grandmothers and grandfathers, and members of the Stolen Generation. Some were artists, stockmen, preachers, fisherwomen. What did we hear?

The Queensland Trucking Association has been representing the freight industry for over a hundred years. With momentum building toward significant policy change in the road transport sector, we assisted the Association to develop and communicate its thinking around one of the more controversial aspects of the transport system: toll roads. Read more about the issue here.