Digital Commons Network^™

Diversifying Ethnicity In Australia's Population And Environment Debates, Natascha Klocker, Lesley Head

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Population–environment debates in Australia are at an impasse. While the ability of this continent to sustain more migrants has attracted persistent scrutiny, nuanced explorations of diverse migrant cultures and their engagements with Australian landscapes have scarcely begun. Yet as we face the challenges of a climate changing world we would undoubtedly benefit from the most varied knowledges we can muster. This paper brings together three arenas of environmental debate circulating in Australia—the immigration/carrying capacity debate, comparisons between Indigenous and Anglo-European modes of environmental interaction, and research on household sustainability dilemmas—to demonstrate the exclusionary tendencies of each. We then attempt to …

Bottles, Bores, And Boats: Agency Of Water Assemblages In Post/Colonial Inland Australia, Leah Maree Gibbs

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Australian water politics is marked by conceptual and bureaucratic separation of water as discrete matter. The source of this politics of separation is colonial relations with water and the Australian continent. Yet, analysis of the materiality of water illuminates the agency of water as part of an assemblage. This paper seeks to unsettle the treatment of water as separate, discrete matter. It asks how political responses to the public problem of water would change were we to take seriously the vitality of nonhuman bodies. In order to investigate this question, the paper presents an analysis of six objects from the …

A Study Of Analyst Forecast Reliability In Australia, Alina Maydybura, Dionigi Gerace, Brian Andrew

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether time weighted consensus estimates offer a more effective method for predicting company actual EPS figures than simple mean or median analysis. The study aims to construct a more comprehensive earnings forecast signal using analyst earnings forecasts that have been weighted based on the timeliness of updates. Aimed at extracting valuable information from timely analyst forecasts, the time weighted earnings signal (TWES) methodology allows extracting valuable information from analysts who possess some unique insights about the market and issue their updates more frequently. One would expect the time signal to reflect a …

The Australian Capital Territory Has Adopted Measures To Abolish Stamp Duty And Impose A Land Tax On All Real Property: Will This Approach Be Adopted By Other States In Australia?, John A. Mclaren

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

From 1 July 2012 the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) imposed land tax, in the form of general rates, on all commercial and residential property in the ACT, including owner occupied homes, on a progressive basis. Marginal rates of tax are applied on increased values of the land. The ACT is unique in that there is no local government so the ACT government was able to increase its general rates on owner‐occupied homes and reduce land tax on investment properties and commercial properties. As a result of the subsequent increase in government revenue, the ACT has substantially reduced stamp duty on …

Alice In Oz - 'Please, Ma'am, Is This New Zealand? Or Australia?': The Lewis Carroll Alice In Wonderland Books In Australia, Michael K. Organ

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

There is no obvious connection between Australia and the very English Alice in Wonderland stories written by the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in the latter half of the nineteenth century, apart from a few brief words uttered by Alice at the beginning of her adventures - 'Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand? Or Australia?' - suggesting that, upon falling down a rabbit hole, she had been transported to the Antipodes ('Antipathies'), just as Lemuel Gulliver had found himself lost in Lilliput a century earlier. Yet the ongoing popularity and influence of these works in the former British colony is …

Making Histories: Developing An Oral History Of All In Australia, Alisa J. Percy, Bronwyn James, Tim Beaumont, Reem Al Mahmood

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

How might our present understandings of our professional identities, our struggles, our achievements and our capacities for agency be better understood through the memories and accounts of those who championed our emergence? What might oral accounts of the emergence of our field offer beyond what can be gathered from its existing literature? Indeed, why look at the history of a professional field at all? This session approaches such questions by reporting on oral accounts of the emergence and evolution of ALL in Australia. As we note some of the insights and lived experiences of those engaged in the formative years …

Reciprocity As Deliberative Capacity: Lessons From A Citizens Deliberation On Carbon Pricing Mechanisms In Australia, Alex Y. Lo, Kim S. Alexander, Wendy Proctor, Anthony Ryan

Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute

Australia has seen a deep division in opinion in search of a carbon pricing mechanism. While concepts of carbon taxation and emission trading have comparable public support, climate scepticism is influencing the debates in political and public spheres in downplaying the need for carbon pricing. Public deliberation is a possible engagement option to address the conflict inherent in climate policy preferences. This research explores the way that a deliberative forum involving twenty-four Australians promoted effective communication between participants through which conflict between policy preferences became more tangible. While the forum did not eliminate disagreement in preferences in the choice of …

Environmental Issues And Household Sustainability In Australia, Lesley M. Head, Carol Farbotko, Christopher R. Gibson, Nicholas J. Gill, Gordon R. Waitt

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The complex and variable structure of households makes it difficult to design policies to help them behave in a greener way. Cultural research methods, particularly ethnography, provide survey research with the necessary extra depth. These perspectives illustrate pathways towards sustainable results and the problems of achieving more sustainable outcomes.

Forensic Mental Health In Australia: Charting The Gaps, Natalia K. Hanley, Stuart Ross

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Process of national mental health reform fails to take adequate account of forensic mental health services - factors hampering national consistency in forensic mental health - need for national leadership - human rights implications.

Socio Cultural Arena Of Alcoholism In Australia: What Do We Know?, Nagesh Brahmavar Pai

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

After caffeine, ethanol is probably the most commonly used recreational drug worldwide. However, there is significant variation in the consumption of alcohol between individuals. Alcohol is freely available throughout most of the world, although some communities prohibit its consumption on religious grounds. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2002) reported that in established market economies, 10.3% of the disease burden as quantified by disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) was attributable to alcohol in 2000. This is comparable to the disease burden caused by tobacco (11.7% of DALYs) but significantly more than that due to unprescribed drugs (2.3% of DALYs). However, these figures …

Addressing The Deficiencies In The Evidence-Base For Primary Practice In Regional Australia - Sentinel Practices Data Sourcing (Spds) Project: A Pilot Study, Abhijeet Ghosh, Karen E. Charlton, Lisa Girdo, Marijka J. Batterham, Keith Mcdonald

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Background Chronic disease risk on a population level can be quantified through health surveys, either continuous or periodic. To date, information gathered from primary care interactions, using sentinel sites, has not been investigated as a potentially valuable surveillance system in Australia.

Methods A pilot study was conducted in a single General Practice in a regional area of New South Wales, Australia to assess the feasibility of accessing data obtained through a computerised chronic disease management program that has been designed for desktop application (Pen Computer Systems (PCS) Clinical Audit Tool: ™ PCS CAT). Collated patient data included information on chronic …

Patients Communicating With Their Primary Care Physician About Chronic Disease Treatment In Regional Australia: Is Health Literacy Important?, J Mullan, K Weston, A Bonney, C Magee, G Albert, B Gerges, Soheir Abadier, T Smith, V Bonney, B Dijkmans-Hadley, C Kielly-Carroll

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

No abstract provided.

'Redneck, Barbaric, Cashed Up Bogan? I Don't Think So': Hunting And Nature In Australia, Michael Adams

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Hunting is a controversial activity in Australia, and much debated in international research. Positions range from 'the first hunters were the first humans' to the 'meat is murder' argument. There is, however, very little research on non-Indigenous hunting in Australia, particularly on the social aspects, but also on biological and ecological issues. In contrast to a general lack of research on non-Indigenous hunting, there is extensive literature on Indigenous hunting. This paper reviews initial research exploring hunting participation and motivation in Australia, as a window into further understanding connections between humans, non-humans and place. My focus is on an analysis …

Book Review: Ian W. Mclean. Why Australia Prospered: The Shifting Sources Of Economic Growth, Simon Ville

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

In a series of articles written over many years, Ian W. McLean has addressed the dual questions of how Australia attained high levels of prosperity less than a century after European settlement and why it has since remained amongst the wealthiest of nations. Although this book is not a comprehensive study of Australian economic history, it builds on this earlier body of work and brings together his answers to these questions. It is engagingly written, helped by the minimal use of technical material and the creation of counterfactual scenarios in several places. Most important of all is McLean's impressive use …

Should Users Pay The Toll For Australia's Infrastructure Problem?, Garry Bowditch

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Australia spends more on infrastructure today than at any stage in its history. Yet governments are unable to meet demand and don't expect ever to do so. What can governments do to keep up with escalating demand and community expectations for infrastructure? Reserve Bank assistant governor Philip Lowe says tolls and levies could be the answer to more efficiently funding the transport infrastructure we need - infrastructure he says would boost productivity and improve living standards. Tolls are just one issue likely to be debated as part of the Productivity Commission's current inquiry into infrastructure costs, which is considering how …

Australia's Infrastructure Cost Conundrum, Garry Bowditch

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Infrastructure is about the long-term growth and prosperity of a nation, but Australia will get very little of this benefit if the cost of building it continues to rapidly escalate. Australia is becoming increasingly uncompetitive in design and delivery of major projects. This is an unacceptable situation, and a newly commissioned multi-state inquiry by the SMART Infrastructure Facility will identify the key causes and make recommendations to help secure better value for taxpayers' money. Australian jurisdictions have experienced sharp rises in the cost of delivering mega-projects. In the pre-GFC mining construction boom period of the mid-2000s construction costs were 20-30% …

Health Workforce Australia Expanded Scopes Of Practice Program: Evaluation Progress Report 3, Cristina Thompson, Kathryn Williams, Karen Quinsey, Darcy Morris, Milena Snoek, Luise Lago, Robert Gordon

Australian Health Services Research Institute

The Centre for Health Service Development (CHSD), University of Wollongong, was appointed in June 2012 to undertake the program evaluation of the Health Workforce Australia - Expanded Scopes of Practice (HWA-ESOP) program. Health Workforce Australia (HWA) currently funds 26 project teams across Australia. The Expanded Scopes of Practice program involves undertaking a number of targeted innovative health workforce reform initiatives with a specific focus on role redesign and expanding the scope of existing health workers in acute and primary care settings.

The focus of this third evaluation progress report is the evaluation methods and strategies employed to embed and sustain …

National Report On Patient Outcomes In Palliative Care In Australia: July - December 2012: Report 14, Samuel Allingham, Sonia Bird, Malcolm Masso, Maree Banfield

Australian Health Services Research Institute

PCOC aims to assist services to improve the quality of the palliative care they provide through the analysis and benchmarking of patient outcomes. In this, the fourteenth PCOC report, data submitted for the July - December 2012 period are summarised and patient outcomes benchmarked to enable participating services to assess their performance and identify areas in which they may improve.

Public Interest Litigation: Making The Case In Australia, Andrea Durbach, Luke Mcnamara, Simon Rice, Mark Rix

Sydney Business School - Papers

Litigation is widely and appropriately recognised as an important component of the public interest advocacy 'toolkit'. Yet, little attention has been paid in Australian research and scholarship to an important question: under what circumstances is public interest litigation (PIL) an effective way to bring about progressive social change? Informed by a review of the international literature on PIL, the authors of this article argue for the importance of drawing on Australia's rich history with PIL to develop a solid empirical evidence base which can inform future decision about the strategic employment of PIL in campaigns to address the concerns and …

Characteristics Of Power Quality Disturbances In Australia: Voltage Harmonics, S T. Elphick, V W. Smith, V J. Gosbell, S Perera

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Management of harmonic voltage levels can impose significant economic impacts for both electricity suppliers and customers. For the case where harmonic voltage levels are high, economic costs include damage to equipment and associated loss of production due to high voltage harmonic levels as well as the costs associated with mitigation of harmonic currents, for example, harmonic filters. In the alternate scenario, ie. the case where harmonic voltage levels are acceptable, considerable expense may be incurred mitigating harmonic currents unnecessarily due to lack of knowledge of harmonic levels and/or network capabilities. As such, there is considerable potential for industry to make …

Do Social Interactions Explain Ethnic Differences In Psychological Distress And The Protective Effect Of Local Ethnic Density? A Cross-Sectional Study Of 226 487 Adults In Australia, Xiaoqi Feng, Thomas Astell-Burt, Gregory Kolt

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Background A frequently proposed, but under-researched hypothesis is that ethnic density benefits mental health through increasing social interactions. We examined this hypothesis in 226 487 adults from 19 ethnic groups aged 45 years and older in Australia. Methods Multilevel logit regression was used to measure the association between ethnicity, social interactions, own-group ethnic density and scores of 22+ on the Kessler scale of psychological distress. Self-reported ancestry was used as a proxy for ethnicity. Measures of social interactions included a number of times in the past week were (i) spent with friends or family participants did not live with; (ii) …

Performance Monitoring Of Rail Tracks Stabilized By Geosynthetics And Shock Mats: Case Studies At Bulli And Singleton In Australia, Buddhima Indraratna, Sanjay Nimbalkar, Pongpipat Anantanasakul, Cholachat Rujikiatkamjorn, Tim Neville

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Rail tracks are conventionally built on compacted ballast and structural fill embankments overlying the natural subsoil. Ballast plays an important role in providing track stiffness to support heavy traffic loads, and providing rapid drainage. However, ballast deforms and degrades progressively under the heavy cyclic loading of passenger and freight trains, which may lead to a loss of track geometry, and require costly regular maintenance. In particular, track construction requires appropriate stabilization techniques for ballast, the extent of which depends also on the type of subgrade. Comprehensive field trials were carried out on two rail lines in Bulli and recently in …

What Is Different In Psychiatric Practice In Developing And Developed World? An Experiential Account From Australia And India, Nagesh Pai, Naveen Chandra

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Abstract of a paper presented at the 65th Annual National Conference of Indian Psychiatric Society, Bangalor, 10-13 Jan, 2013. This is a narrative account of two psychiatrists (from Wollongong, NSW and Mangalore, India) who swapped their location or practice and reviewed their experiences.

Considerations For U-Series Dating Of Sediments: Insights From The Flinders Ranges, South Australia, Heather K. Handley, Simon P. Turner, Anthony Dosseto, David Haberlah, Juan C. Afonso

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Uranium isotope ratios have been determined for the fine-grained detrital fraction of Pleistocene Wilkawillina valley-fill sediments, four local Proterozoic bedrock samples and fine-grained aeolian material from a sand dune deposit of the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. The aim was to quantify the comminution age, i.e. the time elapsed since physical weathering of the bedrock, and residence time of the valley-fill sediments and to place tighter constraints on input parameters for the comminution age calculation. Despite using two independent approaches for determination of the recoil lost fraction of 234U from the sediment (weighted geometric and surface area estimates), samples fail to …

Making Things In A High-Dollar Australia: The Case Of The Surfboard Industry, Andrew Warren, Chris Gibson

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

In August 2011 the announcement by Bluescope Steel of mass layoffs at its Port Kembla steelworks, in the Illawarra region, sparked renewed public debate and media commentary on the future of manufacturing in Australia. The debate has since spread to cars, aluminium smelting - even Mortein fly spray - and has quickly coalesced around the unprecedented high Australian dollar, its impacts on exports, and the prospects of the production of goods shifting overseas. As Australian mining magnates such as Clive Palmer, Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest attempt to remould Australia around their 'quarry vision' (Pearse, 2009) of extractive minerals exports, …

Climatic Records Over The Past 30 Ka From Temperate Australia - A Synthesis From The Oz-Intimate Workgroup, L Petherick, H Bostock, T J. Cohen, K Fitzsimmons, J Tibby, M -S Fletcher, P Moss, J Reeves, S Mooney, T Barrows, J Kemp, J Jansen, G Nanson, A Dosseto

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Temperate Australia sits between the heat engine of the tropics and the cold Southern Ocean, encompassing a range of rainfall regimes and falling under the influence of different climatic drivers. Despite this heterogeneity, broad-scale trends in climatic and environmental change are evident over the past 30 ka. During the early glacial period (∼30–22 ka) and the Last Glacial Maximum (∼22–18 ka), climate was relatively cool across the entire temperate zone and there was an expansion of grasslands and increased fluvial activity in regionally important Murray–Darling Basin. The temperate region at this time appears to be dominated by expanded sea ice …

Humans, Megafauna And Environmental Change In Tropical Australia, Michael I. Bird, Lindsay B. Hutley, Michael J. Lawes, Jon Lloyd, Jon G. Luly, Peter V. Ridd, Richard G. Roberts, Sean Ulm, Christoper M. Wurster

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Debate concerning the environmental impact of human arrival in Australia has continued for more than a century. Here we review the evidence for human impact and the mechanisms by which humans may have affected the environment of tropical Australia. We limit our review to tropical Australia because, over three decades ago, it was proposed that the imposition of an anthropogenic fire regime upon human occupation of the Australian continent may have resulted in profound changes in regional vegetation and climate across this region. We conclude that ecological processes and vegetation-fire-climate-human feedbacks do exist that could have driven a significant shift …

Heavy Metal Pollution Negatively Correlates With Anuran Species Richness And Distribution In South-Eastern Australia, Kristina L.G Ficken, Phillip G. Byrne

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Heavy metal pollution has likely played an important role in global biodiversity decline, but there remains a paucity of information concerning the effects of metals on amphibian diversity. This study assessed anuran species richness and distribution in relation to sediment metal content and water chemistry in wetlands located along the Merri Creek corridor in Victoria, south-eastern Australia. Anurans were present in 60% (21/35) of study sites, with a total of six species detected: the eastern common froglet (Crinia signifera), the eastern sign-bearing froglet (Crinia parinsignifera), the southern brown tree frog (Litoria ewingii), the growling grass frog (Litoria raniformis), the eastern …

Demographic Patterns Of A Widespread Long-Lived Tree Are Associated With Rainfall And Disturbances Along Rainfall Gradients In Se Australia, Janet S. Cohn, Ian D. Lunt, Ross A. Bradstock, Quan Hua, Simon Mcdonald

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Predicting species distributions with changing climate has often relied on climatic variables, but increasingly there is recognition that disturbance regimes should also be included in distribution models. We examined how changes in rainfall and disturbances along climatic gradients determined demographic patterns in a widespread and long-lived tree species, Callitris glaucophylla in SE Australia. We examined recruitment since 1950 in relation to annual (200-600 mm) and seasonal (summer, uniform, winter) rainfall gradients, edaphic factors (topography), and disturbance regimes (vertebrate grazing [tenure and species], fire). A switch from recruitment success to failure occurred at 405 mm mean annual rainfall, coincident with a …

Evolution Of A Cambrian Active Continental Margin: The Delamerian-Lachlan Connection In Southeastern Australia From A Zircon Perspective, C L. Fergusson, A P. Nutman, T Kamiichi, H Hidaka

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

The Early Palaeozoic Ross–Delamerian orogenic belt is considered to have formed as an active margin facing the palaeo-Pacific Ocean with some island arc collisions, as in Tasmania (Australia) and Northern Victoria Land (Antarctica), followed by terminal deformation and cessation of active convergence. On the Cambrian eastern margin of Australia adjacent to the Delamerian Fold Belt, island arc and backarc basin crust was formed and is now preserved in the Lachlan Fold Belt and is consistent with a spatial link between the Delamerian and Lachlan orogens. The Delamerian–Lachlan connection is tested with new zircon data. Metamorphic zircons from a basic eclogite …