Government support for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is critical to future economic growth, but Australia lags behind other nations in implementing the tools needed to ensure initiatives succeed, Brody Hannan writes.

Consistent with superpowers past and present, China will be part of a rule-based international order but increasingly on its terms. Gavin Briggs examines what the South China Sea ruling means in practice.

Transforming Nepal into a federalist structure is a complex and time-consuming task. Thaneshwar Bhusal takes a look at why the pace of progress is so slow.

In a world increasingly on high alert from terrorism, Melanie O’Brien analyses the balance between fear, security and human rights, from a very personal perspective and asks, have heightened security measures gone too far?

With so much at stake why does Indonesia’s policy position on the South China Sea seem so ambivalent? Muhamad Arif looks at the domestic factors in play.

In the new Policy Forum Pod, three experts discuss the concerns around the Australian Census, how the data is used by researchers, and why the census website went offline on its big night.