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Winthrop Professor Paul Flatau, Director of UWA's Centre for Social Impact outlined the role of the Centre at the First Ordinary Meeting held in March. Sally-Ann Jones reports.

Read through the titles of Winthrop Professor Paul Flatau's published papers and book chapters and you begin to get an inkling of the personality of their author.

Topics he has covered include Indigenous access to housing; homelessness; housing for low to moderate income older people; crossing cultures; people aged from 15 to 20 leaving the parental home; poverty and income inequality; and immigrants and invisible underemployment.

While he looks more like a rugby forward (which he was) than an academic concerned with social justice, he is very much his parents' son and is deeply concerned about finding new and effective ways of delivering social justice to the Australians who need it most.

Paul's mother and father were missionaries who met in China on their first assignment just before the 1949 victory of the Communist Party. They married years later in Malaya where their sons Andrew and Paul were brought up. Both boys went to boarding school in the Cameron Highlands from the age of six - an adventure that involved overnight car, train and plane trips through the jungle.

When Paul was 10, the family moved to Sydney - a big culture shock for the boy who had grown up speaking Chinese and playing with village kids. It wasn't until he went to a test match between Australia and England at the Sydney Cricket Ground, played rugby league and union and became a regular fellow-traveller of the rowdy crowd on the "Hill" that he felt he belonged in Australia.

After studying Economics at Sydney University, Paul landed a job in Treasury in Canberra at the time of the Hawke-Keating Labor Government.

"It was an era of reform," Paul said. "Keating was getting things done. There was a drive to increase productivity and competition, openness in markets. At the same time, important changes in social policy, such as industry superannuation, welfare targeting and improved social services were being made. There was a real feeling that we in Treasury were there to serve the public, that we were providing a critical, fundamental service."

Governments have done much to address social problems over the years but Paul says that ultimately it's a wider set of actors that need to be engaged in achieving positive social change.

"If we're going to achieve change and produce good outcomes we need to think more widely and have a strong evidence-base for new models, ideas and concepts," he said.

"In the past, the Government largely financed programs and activities but we need to look at new forms of financing. Today, we're seeing a stronger role being played by the corporate sector in corporate community investment programs with WA's resources sector undoubtedly leading the way nationally."

He cites a renewed enthusiasm in WA for giving with the formation of Giving West, but says the world of social finance that lies between philanthropists and market-driven investors remains largely untapped: "There's a world of investors out there that we have yet to unlock."

In his new role as Director of the Centre for Social Impact he has begun, with CSI Convenor Elena Douglas, a major research program engaged in a broad range of research. "For example, we're looking at homelessness and the effectiveness of homelessness programs. We're also carrying out economic analysis of its high costs in terms of health, justice, child protection and eviction.

"We're also looking at how to deliver services better and in a more integrated way: how to connect the homeless with mental health, drug and alcohol programs, how to provide social financing that has an impact and how to assess the economic and social impacts of resource developments."

The Centre hosted a successful Indigenous Business, Corporations and Entrepreneurship Conference in December 2011 - an event that is likely to be held annually.

The Conference, with the theme "New Models and Stronger Communities", encouraged discussion around the rapid growth of Indigenous business, the new opportunities generated by Native Title Agreements and the rise of community-based social enterprises.

With similar aims and linked to the Centre for Social Impact through research, the new UWA-based International Mining for Development Centre, funded by the Federal Government through AusAID, is providing practical advisory, education and training services to developing nations, most notably African, across mining-related issues.

"We need to see what happens when companies get involved with Indigenous communities in other parts of the world," Paul said. "In Australia's Indigenous space, we are seeing rapid positive change occurring in parts of Western Australia, but it's not yet comprehensive here and certainly not through Australia.

"The model of Indigenous employment programs, the development of flourishing Indigenous business and enterprise, and strategic use of Native Title land-use agreements is really having an impact but the trick is to expand these impacts beyond the mining boom."

It's lucky for the world that Paul took after his missionary parents and not his paternal greatgrandfather who came from Poland for the Victorian Goldrush. While a generous man (he donated his books to the Victorian State Library) he may have been a bit of tyrant at home if family traditions are to be believed. Dorota, his eldest daughter and later a successful writer in England, created a system of secret red flags to warn his large household of children when he was home. And, it's lucky too for WA that he followed his future wife Jane, who worked with Paul in Treasury, back to Perth from Canberra.

"I've always been interested in social disadvantage and poverty," Paul said. "And it's great to be part of this Centre with its mission of being engaged, producing good research and being out there."

UWA's Centre for Social Impact will be holding its annual Indigenous Business, Corporations and Entrepreneurship Conference on Tuesday 4 December 2012. Further details are available at business.uwa.edu.au

Published in Uniview Vol. 31 No. 2 Winter 2012