Digital Commons Network^™

'Fire': An Australian Play Gives Voice To Animals Devastated By Catastrophic Bushfire, Rebecca Scollen

Animal Studies Journal

Animals on a grand scale are victims of climate change and of natural disaster. With no voice within human cultures, their plight can be silenced and forgotten once an extreme weather event is over and when media coverage of the devastation has ceased. The creative arts have an important role to play in raising public awareness of and empathy for animals impacted by natural disaster. This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of the Australian play Fire by Scott Alderdice (2017), framed by Animal Studies perspectives. The voices of the animals in Fire, as expressed through language – dialogue and …

Persona Non Grata, Philip Armstrong, Annie Potts

Animal Studies Journal

This essay tells the story of the authors’ relationship with a rescued marsupial raised from a baby in Aotearoa New Zealand, in sections interspersed with an account of this species’ history in our country. This animal belongs to a species designated a noxious pest here, a population subject to an especially sustained, thorough, and popularly-supported campaign of vilification and destruction, even by the standards that apply in New Zealand, where the dominant environmental ideology is very intensely focussed on eradication of introduced species. So in deciding to take responsibility for this creature, the authors committed to keeping her both hidden …

Using Strategic Culture To Understand Participation In Expeditionary Operations: Australia, Poland, And The Coalition Against The Islamic State, Fredrik Doeser, Joakim Eidenfalk

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article investigates how strategic culture influenced the decision-making of Australia and Poland regarding the global coalition against the Islamic State. In the coalition, Australia has followed its tradition of active participation in United States-led operations, while Poland has embarked on a more cautious line, thereby breaking with its previous policy of active participation. The article examines how Australian and Polish responses to the coalition were shaped by five cultural elements: dominant threat perception, core task of the armed forces, strategic partners, experiences of participating in coalitions of the willing, and approach to the international legality of expeditionary operations. It …

No Longer Tied To Britain, Australia Is Still Searching For Its Place In The World, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

It is worth noting that Australia Day commemorates the dumping of a cargo of the outcasts of Britain on the shores of the Australian continent. It was not an act of escaping religious oppression, as in the case of America, or the founding of a new political order, as in France.

Australia And The Secretive Exploitation Of The Chatham Islands To 1842, Andre Brett

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The European discovery of the Chatham Islands in 1791 resulted in significant consequences for its indigenous Moriori people. The colonial Australian influence on the Chathams has received little scholarly attention. This article argues that the young colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land led the exploitation of the archipelago before its annexation to New Zealand in 1842. The Chathams became a secretive outpost of the colonial economy, especially the sealing trade. Colonial careering transformed the islands: environmental destruction accompanied economic exploitation, with deleterious results for the Moriori. When two Māori iwi (tribes) from New Zealand's North Island invaded …

Toothsome Termites And Grilled Grasshoppers: A Cultural History Of Invertebrate Gastronomy, Deirdre P. Coleman

Animal Studies Journal

This article examines the recent turn to entomophagy (insect eating) as a new source of nutrition in a world confronted by increasing population, degraded soils, and food insecurity. Although many regard entomophagy with disgust, there is a case to be made that many insects are much more nutritious, as well as greener and cleaner¹, than many of the foods we regularly eat without thinking. Also, there is nothing new about insect eating or the belief in entomophagy as a sustainable and sensible practice. There is a long cultural history in countries such as Africa and Australia, for instance.

Unclear About Fairness, Australia's Major Parties Focus On Expediency, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Both of Australia’s major parties have variously used “fairness” to describe key policies and in their election pitches. Labor leader Bill Shorten emphasised the concept in Sunday’s first leaders’ debate, while Treasurer Scott Morrison said the superannuation changes announced in the May budget were done in the name of fairness.

Three Tax Alternatives To Restore Sovereignty To Australias States, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Indefinite Detention Of People With Cognitive And Psychiatric Impairment In Australia Submission 59, Linda Roslyn Steele

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Financial Fraud In The Private Health Insurance Sector In Australia: Perspectives From The Industry, Kathryn Flynn

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - While financial fraud against the private health insurance sector in Australia has commonalities to other countries with similar health systems, in Australia fraud against the industry has garnered unique characteristics. The purpose of this article is to shed light on these features, especially the fraught relationship between the private health funds and the public health insurance agency, Medicare and the problematic impact of the Privacy Act on fraud detection and financial recovery. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative methodological approach was used and interviews were conducted with fraud managers from Australia’s largest private health insurance funds and experts in fields …

Pinkwashing The Past: Gay Rights, Military History And The Sidelining Of Protest In Australia, Tanja Dreher

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper explores the implications of the militarisation of Australian history and the dilemmas of increasing public support for same-sex marriage in Australia at a time of renewed assaults on Indigenous rights, austerity measures and the silencing of dissent. The paper analyses the celebratory rhetoric which increasingly typifies both marriage equality campaigns and the commemoration of Australia's First World War or 'Anzac' history in popular media and public debate. Against the confluence between ongoing debates on same-sex marriage and the 'Anzac myth', I highlight four key challenges: the silencing of dissent; forgetting of the Frontier Wars; untold stories of civil …

Groomed For War, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

An account of Australia's preparations for war before 1914, with the focus on the system of compulsory military training for boys and youths introduced in 1911.

Canada And Australia Share A Political Culture Of Conflict, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In a recent book, political scientist Tom Flanagan argues that the years of minority government in Canada between 2004 and 2011 had a corrosive effect on Canadian politics and political culture. He comments:

After so many years of continuous campaigning, federal politicans are like child soldiers in a war-torn African country; all they know how to do is fire their AK-47s.

This statement, and many other things that Flanagan describes as features of Canadian politics – including increased centralisation of decision-making in the party and the need to be in constant campaign mode – could also be considered to be …

Australia's Constitution Works Because It Doesn't Define National Identity, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

When Australia’s Founding Fathers came together in the 1890s to draw up a constitution to enable the colonies to federate, what did they think they were doing? Looking at the debates and the Constitution itself, one thing is certain. They were not drawing up a document that defined what it means to be an Australian.

They were engaged in creating a document that would be acceptable to all parties and enshrined the political and legal principles which they had inherited from Great Britain. They looked to their British inheritance because they believed, quite correctly, that the (unwritten) British Constitution worked. …

Enduring Civilisation, Entangled Histories: Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation At The British Museum, Ian A. Mclean

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

With about 6200 artefacts, as well as photos and archival materials in its Australian collection, the British Museum (BM) is a rich mine for stories about Australia. However, while most of this collection can these days be seen online, it has featured little in the Museum’s headline stories of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilisations or been able to compete with its African galleries.

Early Chinese Newspapers In Australia: Trove Presents A New Perspective On Australian History, Kate Bagnall

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Most Australian historians will tell you that there was a “before Trove” and an “after Trove”. Being able to search and access digitised copies of hundreds of Australian newspapers, from major city dailies to small country papers, has changed the way we work and the sorts of histories we are able to write.

The Front Comes Home: Returned Soldiers And Psychological Trauma In Australia During And After The First World War, Jennifer M. Roberts

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Professional Misconduct: The Case Of The Medical Board Of Australia V Tausif (Occupational Discipline), Caroline Colton

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In 2014, the Australian Capital Territory Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (ACAT) made a finding of professional misconduct against a Canberra general practitioner working in two bulk-billing medical practices established by a corporate medical practice service company, Primary Health Care Limited (Medical Board of Australia v Tausif (Occupational Discipline) [2015] ACAT 4). This column analyses that case, particularly in relation to the ACAT finding that the practitioner's professional misconduct was substantially contributed to by an unsafe system of care, specifically, the failure of Primary Health Care to provide supervision and mentoring for clinicians working at its medical centres. The case …

Salvador Torrents And The Birth Of Crónica Writing In Australia, Catherine H. Seaton

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In Salvador Torrents's 1928 newspaper crónica 'Un Sueño' ('A Dream'),2 the author describes returning home from an arduous day working in the sugar cane fields of Far North Queensland, ready to welcome the sleep that awaits him.With sleep comes a dream, in which Torrents finds himself in an unnamed capital city in Europe, in the company of a large crowd of onlookers, watching handcuffed prisoners being paraded by police. He asks of a finely dressed gentleman: 'What crime have these men committed?' The reply is that these men are political prisoners, who have meddled in matters that do not concern …

Student Skills And The Bradley Agenda In Australia, Jennifer Carpenter, Joanne Dearlove, James Gt Marland

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

This paper investigates the study strategies that first-year Australian university students bring with them to university. The research has currency due to the implementation of the Review of Australian higher education [Bradley, D., Noonan, P., Nugent, H., & Scales, B. (2008). Review of Australian higher education: Final report. Canberra: Australian Government.], which recommended that universities increase the number of students in undergraduate courses. In response to government incentives to increase enrolments, many universities have lowered their entrance scores and, as a result, have attracted students who would not traditionally have been eligible for university entrance. The study employed the Learning …

The Impact Of Section 18c And Other Civil Anti-Vilification Laws In Australia, Luke J. Mcnamara, Katharine Gelber

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper reports on the findings of a large scale study of the impact of anti-vilification (or ‘hate speech’) laws,1 on public discourse in Australia over more than two decades.2 Its scope includes, but is not limited to s 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth). We investigated the ways in which legislation might have affected public discourse over time. Our task was methodologically challenging, for connecting changes in public discourse to the introduction or enforcement of hate speech laws is fraught with difficulty. We triangulated data from a range of primary and secondary sources, to investigate the relationship …

Professional Misconduct: The Case Of The Medical Board Of Australia V Tausif (Occupational Discipline), Caroline Colton

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In 2014, the Australian Capital Territory Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (ACAT) made a finding of professional misconduct against a Canberra general practitioner working in two bulk-billing medical practices established by a corporate medical practice service company, Primary Health Care Limited (Medical Board of Australia v Tausif (Occupational Discipline) [2015] ACAT 4).

Motivations, Learning Activities And Challenges: Learning Mandarin Chinese In Australia, Xiaoping Gao

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Mandarin Chinese is ane of the priority languages in the Australian Government's {2012} 'Australia in the Asian Century' White Paper. However the number of Australian learners of Mandarin remains the smallest among six commonly taught foreign languages in Australia. What are Australian learners' motivations and preferred learning activities for learning Mandarin Chinese? What challenges do teachers face when promoting this language? To answer these questions, this study conducted surveys with 149 school students and with 18 principals and language teachers in New South Wales. Results show that the Australian students' study of Mandarin was primarily driven by extrinsic motivation although …

Discretionary Benefit Or Entitlement? Hospitality Workers And The Ownership Of Customer Tips In Australia, Amelia Gow, Andrew Frazer

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The tipping of hospitality workers by customers is an increasingly common custom in Australia. Tips are a substantial (though unquantified) part of the income of hospitality workers. Such workers are often casual and vulnerable young employees. Tipping occurs in a tripartite relationship between the business operator, the customer and the worker. It is almost completely unregulated by the labour law instruments of awards and enterprise agreements. This is a ‘regulatory space’ where labour law and consumer protection law may potentially intersect.

Who owns tips? While customers may reasonably assume that service workers will receive all the tips they leave, either …

Theatrical Jurisprudence And The Imaginary Lives Of Law In Pre-1945 Australia, Marett Leiboff

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

If there is anything like an imagined pre-1945 past in Australia, it is one steeped in an Anglophone legal ascendancy. But this is an imaginary past in so many ways. Non-British Europeans came to Australia long before 1945. These earlier Europeans were marked by differences of voice and face, but were eager British subjects, as likely to actively take advantage of law as they were to be subjected to its strictures. By theatricalising their ordinary and extraordinary legal lives through archive and memory, we are reminded that there is more to law of the South than formal accounts which have …

Indigenous Australia's Diverse Memorialisation Of The Dead, Bronwyn Carlson

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Beliefs and ceremonies associated with death in Indigenous Australia are diverse. Death and the deceased are sacred to Indigenous Australians and ceremonies differ between communities.

They may involve lengthy ceremonies lasting several days with strict protocols around language, names, images and other possessions. Alternatively deaths might be marked by funerals that can include images and speaking the deceased person’s name, performances and other tributes.

Taxation In Australia Up Until 1914: The Warp And Weft Of Protectionism, Caroline Dick

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article offers an account of the taxing policies in Australia from 1788 up until the beginning of World War I, when the exigencies of the First World War forced the Australian government to reassess its tax policies. During the period from 1788 until 1914, Australia transitioned from being a collection of provincial colonies with their own economic objectives and taxing policies to a Federation with a centrally-directed taxing authority. Whilst this political transition was taking place there was also a transition occurring in government policy concerning the function of taxation in Australia.

Government no longer used taxation just for …

To Restore Federalism, Strengthen The States And Make Australia More Republican, Gregory Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The reform of Australia’s federation is under review. In this special series, we ask leading Australian academics to begin a debate on renewing federalism, from tax reform to the broader issues of democracy.

The University of Wollongong’s Gregory Melleuish explains how the current state-federal relationship has warped from the ideals of Australia’s constitution and why a return to republican principles must be the remedy.>p>

Impunity Of Frequent Corporate Homicides By Recurrent Fires At Garment Factories In Bangladesh: Bangladeshi Culpable Homicide Compared With Its Equivalents In The United Kingdom And Australia, S M. Solaiman, Afroza Begum

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

How corporations can be best prevented from causing deaths of others has been a critical concern of judges, legislators, prosecutors and academics alike around the world since the 19th century. Concerns for workplace safety have mounted globally in recent decades, propelling the demand for industrial manslaughter prosecution as a more effective use of criminal suits. Like the regulation of human conduct, criminal Jaw is considered to be an instrument for changing corporate behaviour in a way that fosters future conformity with the expectations of society.

Explainer: How Do Australia's Laws On Hate Speech Work In Practice?, Luke Mcnamara, Katharine Gelber

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Abbott government’s intention to amend national racist hate speech law has reignited a debate that has raged in Australia for decades: is there a place for laws that condemn public conduct that is likely to cause harm or generate ill-feeling towards racial minorities?

It’s an important question, and diverse views should be ventilated.

But the grand claims made from both corners – that hate speech laws have no place in a democracy, or that they are a valuable way of protecting minorities – are rarely backed up with evidence. This is unfortunate and unnecessary. Today, more than 20 years …