In October 2025, Australia attended the G20 Empowerment of Women Working Group’s (EWWG) final meeting for the year in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The Working Group aims to promote gender equality, women's empowerment and inclusive economic growth. This year, the group discussed three key priority issues:
Vaping is an emerging public health issue for young Australians, with the numbers of young people (aged 14-24) vaping more than doubling from 2019 to 2022-23.
In a two-day competition, BETA and the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Behaviour Change, challenged 30 Master of Applied Psychology students to come up with an innovative and behaviourally informed solution to help young people quit vaping.
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) is committed to the safety and wellbeing of children. We remain compliant with the Commonwealth Child Safe Framework and have zero tolerance for child harm or abuse.
We are committed to continuous improvement in safeguarding children, and to regularly reviewing our policies, procedures and practices to strengthen child safety and wellbeing across all areas of our work.
This is a statement of legal services expenditure by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet for the 2024-25 financial year, published in accordance with paragraph 11.1(ba) of the Legal Services Directions 2017. All figures are GST exclusive.
Total legal services expenditure was $2,128,175 (excluding GST). This comprised:
The Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet’s Annual Report 2024–25 is now available.
Over the 12 months, PM&C has worked at the centre of government to:
It has been prepared in accordance with the provisions of section 46 of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act), the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Rule 2014 (PGPA Rule) and the Department of Finance Resource Management Guide No 135. The compliance index in Part 5 lists the information required by the PGPA Act and PGPA Rule and the corresponding page number within this report.
BETA led a review, supported by Services Australia, to understand stigma in Australian government services, and how to design services to reduce the stigma experienced by customers. View the full literature review: Stigma in government services.
BETA led a literature review, supported by Services Australia, to understand how some Australian government services could become stigmatised, and how stigma could be reduced in the policy design and delivery of Australian government services.
The review found that there are different ways stigma can be experienced by Australians and different drivers of government services stigma including public attitudes, policy settings and service design.
The Board discussed government priorities, strategic issues and emerging risks.
The Board received an update on geostrategic issues from Mr Craig Maclachlan, Deputy Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Ms Celia Perkins, Acting Secretary, Department of Defence.
The Board received an economic and budget update from Ms Jenny Wilkinson PSM, Secretary, Department of the Treasury, and Mr Matt Yannopoulos PSM, Secretary, Department of Finance.