Opening the policy window: how Australia banned engineered stone
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: This case study applies Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) to analyse Australia's world-first decision to ban engineered stone (ES) and addresses the following questions: How did the ES silicosis crisis become a priority on the policy agenda, and how did problem framing, proposed solutions, and political factors converge to enable the ban? TYPE OF PROGRAM: The program discussed in this paper involves the regulatory intervention of banning siliceous ES, a significant occupational health policy reform aimed at preventing silicosis, an irreversible lung disease caused by silica exposure in the workplace. The ban, which took effect on 1 July 2024, is part of a broader initiative to protect workers, especially in industries involving ES processing, from the harmful effects of respirable crystalline silica. METHODS: A qualitative case study approach was used. Data sources included government reports, regulatory consultations, media coverage, advocacy materials, and expert insights from stakeholders involved in the reform process. Thematic analysis was structured around MSF's three streams: problem, policy, and politics. RESULTS: The analysis reveals that the problem stream was driven by framing the rapid rise of accelerated silicosis in the ES industry as a preventable 'public health emergency' disproportionately affecting young Australian workers. The policy stream, led by Safe Work Australia (SWA), featured the evolution and introduction of policy options shaped by sustained advocacy from unions, professional bodies, and researchers. In the political stream, bipartisan support, minimal industry resistance, and low economic impact facilitated the political appetite for change. The convergence of these three streams created 'a window of opportunity' that enabled the successful policy reform. LESSONS LEARNT: This case highlights that policy change can occur when evidence, political conditions, and advocacy efforts align. Strategic problem framing, limited industry resistance, and political feasibility were key enablers. The study reinforces the value of Kingdon's framework for understanding how diverse efforts can converge to create a window for meaningful occupational health reform.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.020 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.010 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".