Early land grants and reservations : Any lessons from the Queensland experience for the sustainability challenge to land ownership

Environmentalists have called for a new property paradigm premised on the idea of land ownership as a delegated responsibility to manage land and resources for the public benefit. An examination of Crown freehold grants from the beginnings of settlement until the 1890s in Queensland shows that fee simple titles were granted subject to express conditions and reservations designed to reserve useful natural resources to the Crown, and to promote public purposes. Over time, legislative regulation of landowner’s rights rendered obsolete the use of express conditions and reservations in grants. One result of this change was that the inherently limited nature of fee simple ownership, and the communal obligations to which it is subject, are less transparent than in colonial times.

Delivering value for money in the procurement of public sector major infrastructure : a new first-order decision making model

The significant challenge faced by government in demonstrating value for money in the delivery of major infrastructure resolves around estimating costs and benefits of alternative modes of procurement. Faced with this challenge, one approach is to focus on a dominant performance outcome visible on the opening day of the asset, as the means to select the procurement approach. In this case, value for money becomes a largely nominal concept and determined by selected procurement mode delivering, or not delivering, the selected performance outcome, and notwithstanding possible under delivery on other desirable performance outcomes, as well as possibly incurring excessive transaction costs. This paper proposes a mind-set change in this particular practice, to an approach in which the analysis commences with the conditions pertaining to the project and proceeds to deploy transaction cost and production cost theory to indicate a procurement approach that can claim superior value for money relative to other competing procurement modes. This approach to delivering value for money in relative terms is developed in a first-order procurement decision making model outlined in this paper. The model developed could be complementary to the Public Sector Comparator (PSC) in terms of cross validation and the model more readily lends itself to public dissemination. As a possible alternative to the PSC, the model could save time and money in preparation of project details to lesser extent than that required in the reference project and may send a stronger signal to the market that may encourage more innovation and competition.

Learning and teaching from the edge to centre stage : Critical factors in embedding sustainable university-wide engagement in external awards and grants funding initiatives.

Teaching awards, grants and fellowships are strategies used to recognise outstanding contributions to learning and teaching, encourage innovation, and to shift learning and teaching from the edge to centre stage. Examples range from school, faculty and institutional award and grant schemes to national schemes such as those offered by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in the United States, and the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning in higher education in the United Kingdom. The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has experienced outstanding success in all areas of the ALTC funding since the inception of the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in 2004. This paper reports on a study of the critical factors that have enabled sustainable and resilient institutional engagement with ALTC programs. As a lens for examining the QUT environment and practices, the study draws upon the five conditions of the framework for effective dissemination of innovation developed by Southwell, Gannaway, Orrell, Chalmers and Abraham (2005, 2010): 1. Effective, multi-level leadership and management 2. Climate of readiness for change 3. Availability of resources 4. Comprehensive systems in institutions and funding bodies 5. Funding design The discussion on the critical factors and practical and strategic lessons learnt for successful university-wide engagement offer insights for university leaders and staff who are responsible for learning and teaching award, grant and associated internal and external funding schemes.

Two sides of seeking funding : grants and deposit funds

Before even thinking of approaching charitable trusts for funding, consideration needs to be given to a whole range of issues. As with many endeavours, preparation paves the way for success...

Charitable grants and donations from maching gaming sources : Does it all work out in the wash up?

Material for this paper comes partly from a report commissioned by the Department of Family Services, Aboriginal and Islander Affairs. The report is the result of a multi-strategy research project designed to assess the impact of gaming machines on the fundraising capacity of charitable and community organisations in Queensland. The first Queensland gaming machine was commissioned on 11 February 1992. By 30 November 1994 there were: · 636 clubs operating 13,162 gaming machines · 436 hotels/taverns operating 3,468 gaming machines.1 It was anticipated that the introduction of gaming machines would impact on charities and community organisations. The adverse impacts would be through competition with charity gaming and disposable income that might otherwise be directed towards donations. Some also expressed concern that charities would be relied on to finance social services for problem gamblers. This paper seeks to describe the donations and grants derived by charities from Gaming Machine revenues. Such revenues primarily come from either government distributions from its gaming machine taxes and levies or gaming machine club donations. A final comment is made on the opinions of charitable fundraising professionals about the impact of gaming machine levies on club donations.

Ideas to improve the selection of NHMRC Project Grants

The starting point for this presentation is that applicants provide a large surplus of information when submitting a NHMRC Project Grant proposal for funding. This is costly in their time, attracts high administration costs, makes the task appear daunting for peer reviewers and may reduce the quality of the peer review leading to less than perfect reliability in decision making. We are currently experimenting with alternate models to see whether similar reliability in funding outcomes are achieved at less cost. We will compare traditional NHMRC Grant Review Panels (GRPs) with panels that use less information and journal style panels. By way of background to this experimental work, we will show some results on current levels of reliability for GRPs, the costs incurred by all who participate in Project Grant selection, and the level of reliability acceptable to researchers. By experimenting in this way and building an evidence base for how research funding should be allocated, the NHMRC is showing international leadership in this important field.

Evolving a synergistic approach to road safety : an appraisal of the project management, stakeholder engagement and change facilitation (PSC) approach by means of two case studies

Existing research and best practice were utilized to develop the Project Management, Stakeholder Engagement and Change Facilitation (PSC) approach to road safety infrastructure projects. Two case studies involving Queensland Transport and Main Roads demonstrated that use of the PSC has potential to create synergies for projects undertaken by multi-disciplinary road safety groups, and to complement Safe System projects and philosophy. The case studies were the North West Road Safety Alliance project, and the implementation of Road Safety Audit policy, and utilised a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods including interviews and surveys.

Government grants - an abrogation or management of risks?

New public management (NPFM), with its hands-on, private sector-style performance measurement, output control, parsimonious use of resources, disaggreation of public sector units and greater competition in the public sector, has significantly affected charitable and nonprofit organisations delivering community services (Hood, 1991; Dunleavy, 1994; George & Wilding, 2002). The literature indicates that nonprofit organisations under NPM believe they are doing more for less: while administration is increasing, core costs are not being met; their dependence on government funding comes at the expense of other funding strategies; and there are concerns about proportionality and power asymmetries in the relationship (Kerr & Savelsberg, 2001; Powell & Dalton, 2011; Smith, 2002, p. 175; Morris, 1999, 2000a). Government agencies are under increased pressure to do more with less, demonstrate value for money, measure social outcomes, not merely outputs and minimise political risk (Grant, 2008; McGreogor-Lowndes, 2008). Government-community service organisation relationships are often viewed as 'uneasy alliances' characterised by the pressures that come with the parties' differing roles and expectations and the pressures that come with the parties' differing roles and expectations and the pressurs of funding and security (Productivity Commission, 2010, p. 308; McGregor-Lowndes, 2008, p. 45; Morris, 200a). Significant community services are now delivered to citizens through such relationships, often to the most disadvantaged in the community, and it is important for this to be achieved with equity, efficiently and effectively. On one level, the welfare state was seen as a 'risk management system' for the poor, with the state mitigating the risks of sickness, job loss and old age (Giddens, 1999) with the subsequent neoliberalist outlook shifting this risk back to households (Hacker, 2006). At the core of this risk shift are written contracts. Vincent-Jones (1999,2006) has mapped how NPM is characterised by the use of written contracts for all manner of relations; e.g., relgulation of dealings between government agencies, between individual citizens and the state, and the creation of quais-markets of service providers and infrastructure partners. We take this lens of contracts to examine where risk falls in relation to the outsourcing of community services. First we examine the concept of risk. We consider how risk might be managed and apportioned between governments and community serivce organisations (CSOs) in grant agreements, which are quasiy-market transactions at best. This is informed by insights from the law and economics literature. Then, standard grant agreements covering several years in two jurisdictions - Australia and the United Kingdom - are analysed, to establish the risk allocation between government and CSOs. This is placed in the context of the reform agenda in both jurisdictions. In Australia this context is th enonprofit reforms built around the creation of a national charities regulator, and red tape reduction. In the United Kingdom, the backdrop is the THird Way agenda with its compacts, succeed by Big Society in a climate of austerity. These 'case studies' inform a discussion about who is best placed to bear and manage the risks of community service provision on behalf of government. We conclude by identifying the lessons to be learned from our analysis and possible pathways for further scholarship.

Co-creative media : theorising digital storytelling as a platform for researching and developing participatory culture

This paper considers the question, ‘what is co-creative media, and why is it a useful idea in social media research’? The term ‘co-creative media’ is now used by Creative Industries researchers at QUT to describe their digital storytelling practices. Digital storytelling is a set of collaborative digital media production techniques that have been used to facilitate social participation in numerous Australian and international contexts. Digital storytelling has been adapted by Creative Industries researchers at QUT as a platform for researching the potential of vernacular creativity in a variety of contexts, including social inclusion of marginalized and disadvantaged groups; inclusion in public histories of narratives that might be overlooked; and articulation of voices that otherwise remain silent in the formulation of social and economic development strategies. The adaption of digital storytelling to different contexts has been shaped by the reflexive, recursive, and pragmatic requirements of action research. Amongst other things, this activity draws attention to the agency of researchers in facilitating these kinds of participatory media processes and outcomes. This discussion serves to problematise concepts of participatory media by introducing the term ‘co-creative media’ and differentiating these from other social media production practices.

Less popular but more democratic? Corrie, Clarkson and the dancing Cru

The central cultural experience of modernity has been change, both the ‘creative destruction’ of existing structures, and the growth, often exponential, of new knowledge. During the twentieth century, the central cultural platform for the collective experience of modernising societies changed too, from page and stage to the screen – from publishing, the press and radio to cinema, television and latterly computer screens. Despite the successive dominance of new media, none has lasted long at the top. The pattern for each was to give way to a successor platform in popularity, but to continue as part of an increasingly crowded media menu. Modern media are supplemented not supplanted by their successors.

Youth Festival Music Performance : Deception Bay

Research Background - Young people with negative experiences of mainstream education often display low levels of traditional academic achievement. These young people tend to display considerable cultural and social resources developed through their repeated experiences of adversity. Education research has a duty to provide these young people with opportunities to showcase, assess and translate their social and cultural resources into symbolic forms of capital. This creative work addresses the following research question. How can educators develop disengaged teenager's social and cultural capital through live music performances? Research Contribution - These live music performances afford the young participants opportunities to display their artistic, technical, social and cultural resources through a popular cultural format. In doing so they require education institutions to provide venues that demonstrate the skills these young people acquire through flexible learning environments. The new knowledge derived from this research focuses on the academic and self confidence benefits for disengaged young people using festival performances as authentic learning activities. Research Significance - This research is significant because it aims to maximise the number of tangible outcomes related to a school-based arts project. The young participants gained technical, artistic, social and commercial skills during this project. This performance led to more recording and opportunities to perform at other youth festivals in SE QLD. Individual performances were distributed and downloaded via creative commons licences at the Australian Creative Resource Archive. It also contributed to their certified qualifications and acted as pilot research data for two competitively funded ARC grants (DP0209421 & LP0883643)