http://www.australianreview.net/ Australian Review of Public Affairs -- Original research, commentary, and review. Published by the School of Economics and Political Science, The University of Sydney en-au (C) 2000-2006 School of Economics and Political Science, The University of Sydney S.Cheung@econ.usyd.edu.au (Stephen Cheung) S.Cheung@econ.usyd.edu.au (Stephen Cheung) http://www.australianreview.net/image/feed.gif http://www.australianreview.net/ 144 85 http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/04/carson.html By Lyn Carson. The 2020 Summit was primarily a gathering of experts. What might it have looked like if participants had been randomly selected from the Australian population, to create a truly representative "mini-public"? A more diverse group, certainly, and very likely wilder ideas and greater community confidence in the output ... http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/04/cooper.html By Rae Cooper. For many observers, Margaret Thatcher's industrial relations policy was the apotheosis of state anti-unionism. So why did the British labour movement, apparently so well-organised and robust, succumb so quickly and comprehensively to the efforts of Thatcher and her successors? And how might solving this puzzle help us to understand the past -- and think about the future -- of industrial relations and unionism in Australia? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/04/louw.html By Eric Louw. In April 1994 Nelson Mandela, as leader of the African National Congress, became South Africa's first black president. Along with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mandela's inauguration was widely hailed as a defining moment of the 20th century. Yet today, most black South Africans remain poor -- and are becoming restive, as they wonder when the ANC's promise of "a better life" will happen. To understand why their lives haven't improved, we need to understand Mbeki's rise to power. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/04/moran.html By Mark Moran. Residents of remote Indigenous settlements experience living standards and institutional arrangements that resemble those in less developed countries in many ways. Many policies to which these communities are subject also resemble those carried out to aid "development" internationally. A new book about neoliberalism in international development sheds much light, then, on contemporary developments in Indigenous policy. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/03/clegg.html By Stewart Clegg. Business schools are in crisis. They are deeply implicated in the worst excesses of contemporary approaches to business; they are insecure about ethics, and they often lack professional purpose. They never achieved their early aim of a professional vocation and, when the world of the organisation man slowly crumbled in the 1980s, what was left was an ethos of managerialism premised on measurement. Is there a way forward? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/03/spies-butcher_stebbing.html By Ben Spies Butcher and Adam Stebbing. Imagine a new Labor Government, fresh from winning an historic election on the basis of defending collective bargaining. It identifies the core concerns of working families -- job security, petrol prices, grocery prices, and housing affordability. Then it announces a new welfare payment where those earning over $180,000 per year will receive twice as much as those on average weekly earnings. How did we come to this pass? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/03/crawley.html By Tess Crawley. What makes certain deaths "suspicious" and how are decisions made about the circumstances leading to those deaths? It is the typically thankless job of medical examiners to answer these questions. They can tell us the how, the where and the when. But the "why now" for those unfortunate enough to come under the jurisdiction of medical examiners tends to remain part of the Great Mystery. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/03/smith.html By Tony Smith. Australia's Indigenous peoples are not sticklers for the letter of the law. They have always emphasised the spirit that lies behind their customs and traditions. They have found it difficult to deal with the English invaders who have exploited the distinction between written, black letter law and oral, spiritual lore. The Prime Minister's apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples had both letter and spirit. But will it stimulate a positive period in race relations? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/02/spies-butcher_wilson.html By Ben Spies-Butcher and Shaun Wilson. The 2007 election was only the sixth bringing a change of government since World War Two. It was also only the second time in Australian history that a prime minister lost his own seat. Interestingly, on both occasions the incumbent government was challenging the pillars of Australia's ndustrial relations system. So did Workchoices cause John Howard's downfall? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/02/kohn.html By Rachael Kohn. The open critique, dialogue and reworking of a tradition, essential to the relevance of Judaism and Christianity to the modern world, awaits its day in Islam. Even the establishment of government-funded Islamic studies centres in Australian universities is no guarantee that this area of study will be free from the apologetic stocks in trade of Christian divinity schools. Perhaps the three "religions of the book" don't have quite so much in common ... http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/02/cutcher.html By Leanne Cutcher. Tracy earned $US200,000 in 1999, yet she is a victim of pay inequity. That might seem implausible, even offensive. But consider the fact that her colleague Roger, who had identical qualifications and equivalent industry experience, earned $US600,000 in the same year. Why did Roger earn three times more than Tracy? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/02/neil.html By David Neil. Drug companies expend huge sums finding dubious new diseases for the wealthy, in order to sell more product. Meanwhile, what is probably the worst plague in human history ravages entire countries virtually unchecked because a $40 per month treatment regimen is beyond the reach of most victims. It seems clear that medical science and money don't mix well ... http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2008/02/cahill.html By Damien Cahill. Think tanks are an established feature of the Australian political landscape. Their influence was evident in some key debates during Australia's recent federal election. So what kinds of organisations are they? Some scholars are confident that think tanks have emerged in liberal societies as an efficient way to present a menu of independently devised policy options to busy ministers and bureaucrats. Others are not so sure ... http://www.australianreview.net/journal/v8/n1/perry.html By Len Perry. Union membership and work stoppages due to strikes -- two indicators of union power and influence -- have been in decline in the Antipodes (Australia and New Zealand) and the United States in recent decades. Meanwhile, attitudes to unions in Australia seem to have become more positive. Evidence suggests that one popular explanation for declining union power, neoliberal workplace reforms, is not robust. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/12/mcilwain.html By Doris McIlwain. "If you take a sonovabitch and give him psychoanalysis, you don't get a good citizen; you get a sonovabitch -- with analysis" said Lacanian analyst Oscar Zentner in 1985, wittily disabusing his listeners of any expectation that psychoanalysis promotes fitting in with everyday conceptions of morality. Psychoanalysis has an uneasy relationship to morality ... http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/12/smith.html By Tony Smith. Three more books on Australia's Vietnam experience show why the period was exceptional. But they also contain some more universal lessons about war: that political problems cannot be addressed using military force, that politicians are liable to exploit the military, that patriotism cannot be enforced with legislation, and that an enterprise which promotes killing inevitably leaves deep, unhealable scars. No amount of rational analysis can remove the horror from a phenomenon that is, essentially, a malaise that lingers from our pre-democratic past. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/12/colyvan.html By Mark Colyvan. What do submarine attacks, ant-trails, and dating have in common? Not much, except that they are all instances of pursuit and evasion problems and all submit to elegant mathematical treatments. The mathematics involved in such problems is varied and interesting in its own right. But the applications breathe life into the mathematics and invite wider engagement -- as the intense interest of the military in such problems, especially during wartime, demonstrates. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/11/ho.html By Christina Ho. Politicians often use the discourse of "Australian values" to whether some minority groups can integrate into Australian society. The White Australia Policy, the boldest and most exclusionary articulation of "Australianness", was a response to anxieties over the presence of Chinese and Pacific Islanders in the colonies. It restricted non-White immigration to Australia until its official abolition in 1973. But many Chinese remained in Australia. How did they fare and where did they fit? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/davis.html By Megan Davis. Indigenous peoples' support for and emphasis on the "rights agenda" has been shaped by history. The political and constitutional history of Australia is indelibly connected to the contemporary problems of Indigenous Australia: insecurity of rights and policy experiments. It is only when we negotiate unfinished business together, with nothing ruled out and ready to compromise, that we can move forward together as a nation. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/wilson_meagher.html By Shaun Wilson and Gabrielle Meagher. Not so long ago, the addition of fluoride to the water supply made a big difference to the prevalence and severity of tooth decay. Its success, however, had at least one unintended consequence: oral health and disease fell down the list of public health priorities. Papers in this symposium show that oral health needs to return to policy prominence, if Australia is to properly care for the health and well-being of its most vulnerable citizens. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/spencer_harford.html By John Spencer and Jane Harford. Inequality in oral health in Australia has been extensively documented over the last 25 years. While the existence of inequalities has been accepted, their fundamental character has been less well understood. This has led to a misinterpretation of the information on inequalities and a failure to act on their causes. Some new research on patterns of oral disease and treatment means we now have what we need to inform rational and humane policy development in the field of oral health. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/saunders.html By Peter Saunders. By not providing an adequate and affordable public dental scheme, Australian governments have made what should be a relatively minor irritant (a toothache) into a major catastrophe for many people, not just those who are already doing it tough. The consequences of the lack of coverage and affordability of dental care and treatment in Australia is a source of deprivation that makes life even harder for those in poverty, reduces their self-esteem and employment prospects, preventing their inclusion, economically and socially. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/lewis.html By Jenny M. Lewis. Is it a good idea to take a more universal approach to the provision of dental services in Australia, or would it make more sense to have a highly targeted program? Given the shortage of dentists, adding dental items to Medicare will make them universally available in principle only. A more innovative solution would be to allow a range of oral health professionals to provide services, either through Medicare, or under a dental program. If psychologists can deliver counselling items alongside psychiatrists under Medicare, why couldn't dental therapists and hygienists deliver an expanded range of oral health services? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/stanley_howe.html By Janet Stanley and Brian Howe. Australia is still a country where life chances are unequal. This damages not only those children born into disadvantage, but society as a whole. Social policy reform is needed to improve the capabilities of disadvantaged and socially excluded Australian families. Janet Stanley and Brian Howe propose two key measures: structural adjustments around employment opportunities, and a considerable scaling up of secondary prevention programs which facilitate the well-being of children. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/dodson_sipe.html By Jago Dodson and Neil Sipe. Transport and housing costs are now serious concerns for many households and are placing pressure on household finances. How do high levels of exposure to rising fuel and housing costs coincide with electoral marginality? Enough to pose an important challenge for political parties ... http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/disney.html By Julian Disney. Lack of affordable housing strikes at the heart of our lives, our communities, and Australia's future prosperity. It impoverishes people, erodes families, destroys jobs, weakens the economy, and damages the environment. The next federal government needs to reverse the deep cuts to public and community housing programs made by both federal and state governments during the last fifteen years or so. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/jones.html By Paul Jones. The single most important reform the next Australian government should make in the media policy field is to make "freedom of expression" and "the provision of resources for informed citizenship" the centre piece of Australian media/communications policy. The best means of doing so would be to make these the leading objectives of The Broadcasting Services Act (1992). http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/wilkins.html By Roger Wilkins. The roles and responsibilities of different levels of government in Australia are becoming increasingly unclear. Ambiguity makes lines of accountability unclear, has inhibited incentives to produce good policy, has confounded efficient government and undermined the appropriate determination of revenue allocation. So how should Australian federalism be reformed? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/riley.html By Joellen Riley. Ordinary working people do not have the resources to claim the rights that new workplace laws appear to have given them. Acting individually, they often lack adequate information about their legal rights, and the financial resources to claim those rights, if an employer chooses to ignore them. Privately engaged lawyers are expensive. Pro-bono services are limited. Unions act only for their members, and union membership is declining. What is the alternative? http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/quiggin.html By John Quiggin. Australia is running short of water, not because it's the world's driest continent, but because we have not made good use of the water we have. Most agree that repurchase of water rights from irrigators is an essential element of any cost-effective and sustainable water policy, but political resistance to the idea remains strong -- and highly effective. The policy problem, then, is to design a purchase option that would attract willing sellers. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/lawrence.html By Carmen Lawrence. There is little doubt that the disclosure regime for political donations in Australia is far from satisfactory. Apart from the political inequality inherent in the system, the possibilities for corruption and influence peddling are real. Unless this changes with the next government, Australian democracy cannot claim to offer all citizens an equal opportunity to participate in the political processes and decisions which affect them. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/ajani.html By Judith Ajani. Australia is awash with plantation resources. Plantations can meet virtually all Australia's wood needs now and feed industry expansion into further processing and export markets. Government forest policy, however, remains glued to the commercial interests of the native forest based incumbents. Developments in Queensland and Western Australia offer a way forward for the next federal government. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/nicholls.html By Glenn Nicholls. The compliance section of Australia's Department of Immigration enforces the departure of 10,000 people yearly. At 5.5 per 10,000 head of population, Australia's deportations rate is well ahead of the United Kingdom at 2.6 and Canada at 2.1. In short, the deportation system is out of control and the next government should do something about it. http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2007/election/russell.html By Lesley Russell. Regardless of the health policies of the government that is elected in the forthcoming poll, addressing the healthcare workforce crisis is the essential priority. This will require a multifaceted approach, simultaneously addressing long term planning, education, training, reskilling, recruitment, retention and the modernisation of the health workforce and the workplace.