David MacKenzie

David MacKenzie is well-known for his research and policy work on homelessness and youth issues. At the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University, he led many research and development projects on youth issues, youth policy and is widely recognised in Australia and internationally for his work on homelessness. Together with Chris Chamberlain, he developed a methodology for estimating homelessness in Australia using Census data, which has been adopted by the Australia Bureau of Statistics.
In 2007-2008, he was one of the four Commissioners responsible for the National Youth Commission Inquiry into Youth Homelessness [NYC] and its report, Australia’s Homeless Youth.
David is the architect of the ‘community of schools and youth services’ of early intervention or COSS Model, and the founding CEO of Upstream Australia, a change agency platform launched in July 2023 to provide systemic backbone support for place-based collective impact system change incorporating the scaling up of the COSS Model.