Plant Breeder's Rights: An Australian commentary December 2004

The aim of this manual is to provide a practical guide to the Plant Breeder's Rights Act 1994 (Cth). It is a resource of information about the legislation, its administration, and its operation. This commentary is intended to assist plant breeders, scientific researchers, and business managers who want to make a more effective use of the Plant Breeder's Rights Act 1994 (Cth) in the management and commercialisation of their intellectual property rights. It is also designed to enhance the understanding of the legislation among lawyers, patent attorneys, qualified persons, and policy-makers.

IT pricing: Copyright law, consumer rights, and competition policy. A submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications Inquiry into IT Pricing

For a hundred years, since Federation, Australian consumers have suffered the indignity and the tragedy of price discrimination. From the time of imperial publishing networks, Australia has been suffered from cultural colonialism. In respect of pricing of copyright works, Australian consumers have been gouged; ripped-off; and exploited. Digital technologies have not necessarily brought an end to such price discrimination. Australian consumers have been locked out by technological protection measures; subject to surveillance, privacy intrusions and security breaches; locked into walled gardens by digital rights management systems; and geo-blocked.

Opening Pandora's box: Secret treaty threatens human rights

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) 2011 - Twitter hashtag #ACTA - is a controversial trade agreement designed to provide for stronger enforcement of intellectual property rights.

The Trans-Pacific partnership: Brunei, trade, and human rights

The Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, has said that ‘Australia is Open for Business’. His trade and investment minister, Andrew Robb, has vigorously pursued bilateral trade agreements with neighbours, South Korea, Japan, China, and India — as well as the regional trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Such trade activity raises questions about the relationship between trade policy and human rights. If we are open for business, should we be open for business for countries engaged in human rights abuses? Should enter into trade agreements, which could have an adverse upon human rights? The Trans-Pacific Partnership highlights a range of problems with Australia’s treaty-making process. One important issue is the question of the relationship between trade and human rights.

A human rights-based approach to disaster displacement in the Asia-Pacific

This paper analyzes the application of rights-based approaches to disaster displacement in the Asia-Pacific region in order to assess whether the current framework is sufficient to protect the rights of internally displaced persons. It identifies that disaster-induced displacement is increasingly prevalent in the region and that economic and social conditions in many countries mean that the impact of displacement is often prolonged and more severe. The paper identifies the relevant human rights principles which apply in the context of disaster-induced displacement and examines their implementation in a number of soft-law instruments. While it identifies shortcomings in impementation and enforcement, the paper concludes that a rights-based approach could be enhanced by greater engagement with existing human rights treaties and greater implementation of soft-law principles, and that no new instrument is required.

Authentically ambiguous, credibly anonymous: Perceptually reframing the personal narrative towards effective persuasion in aggressive human rights contexts

Testing the strategies of discourse and materiality, this practice-based and practice-led research experiments with how anonymous storytelling by vulnerable communities, like that of the sexual minorities and their allies in Malaysia, can better speak to their human rights issues without further subjecting them to personal attacks and targetted persecution. The research identifies the critical role of the voice in lending authenticity and credibility to first person narratives; and contextual credibility as a form of credibility which personal stories naturally aspire to achieve with audiences. Adopting a discursive view of persuasion and recognising too that the power of persuasion may in effect lie with those who receive these stories rather than with those who tell them, the insights and knowledge gained from the research informed the development of the field output, Persuasive Storytelling by Vulnerable Communities in Aggressive Contexts: A Human Rights Communication Framework.

A legal perspective of carbon rights and benefit sharing under REDD+: A conceptual framework and examples from Cambodia and Kenya

This article discusses two key issues in REDD+ design and implementation at the national level – carbon rights, and benefit sharing. Both carbon rights and benefit sharing can be understood as new legal concepts (although they build on existing law), and as legal concepts they offer a framework for addressing related areas of REDD+ policy. Many countries are currently considering how to manage carbon rights and benefit sharing issues, including Cambodia and Kenya. Both of these countries host existing forest carbon projects and are also in the process of designing national REDD+ programmes. This article uses a conceptual framework for carbon rights and benefit sharing derived from legal analysis to consider the cases of both Cambodia and Kenya, and also includes a general discussion of the challenges countries might encounter when considering how to manage carbon rights and benefit sharing in the context of REDD+ implementation.

Rights and wrongs of Australian government asylum seeker policy

Worldwide, no fewer than 50 million people a year are now fleeing dangerous and often life threatening situations in their countries of origin (UNHCR, 2014c). As one part of this movement, thousands risk journeys through dangerous waters hoping to obtain asylum in Australia. However, Australian Government policies adopted since 2013 aim to ensure that no asylum seeker nor any of the 3,500 detainees held in offshore detention centres will ever be settled on the mainland. To this has now been added a declaration that none of the recent refugees or 6200 asylum seekers waiting in Indonesia in centres run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will gain entry (Whyte, 2014a). These immigration policies differ dramatically from those adopted in earlier decades that produced the country’s decidedly multicultural identity. This article reviews these changing perspectives of Australian governments and communities within the context of international obligations and expectations; the experiences of those directly involved in border policing practices and in detention centres; and the attitudes of national media. Relations and conflicts among the interests of the different parties are discussed and the scope for less punitive responses to the plight of asylum seekers is examined. The authors then focus on alternative processes to better address the interests and objectives of legitimately interested parties by processes which successively examine, optimise and reconcile the concerns of each. In so doing, they aim to demonstrate that such methods of sequential problem solving can respond effectively to the multiple concerns of the many significant stakeholders involved in increasingly significant global issues, whereas recourse to such single-goal, top-down programs as are expressed in the government’s current determination to “Stop the boats” at all costs are unlikely to prove sustainable.

New evidence of the reproductive organs of Glossopteris based on permineralized fossils from Queensland, Australia. II: pollen-bearing organ Ediea gen. nov

Ediea homevalensis H. Nishida, Kudo, Pigg & Rigby gen. et sp. nov. is proposed for permineralized pollen-bearing structures from the Late Permian Homevale Station locality of the Bowen Basin, Queensland, Australia. The taxon represents unisexual fertile shoots bearing helically arranged leaves on a central axis. The more apical leaves are fertile microsporophylls bearing a pair of multi-branched stalks on their adaxial surfaces that each supports a cluster of terminally borne pollen sacs. Proximal to the fertile leaves there are several rows of sterile scale-like leaves. The pollen sacs (microsporangia) have thickened and dark, striate walls that are typical of the Arberiella type found in most pollen organs presumed to be of glossopterid affinity. An examination of pollen organs at several developmental stages, including those containing in situ pollen of the Protohaploxypinus type, provides the basis for a detailed analysis of these types of structures, which bear similarities to both compression/impression Eretmonia-type glossopterid microsporangiate organs and permineralized Eretmonia macloughlinii from Antarctica. These fossils demonstrate that at least some Late Permian pollen organs were simple microsporophyll-bearing shoot systems and not borne directly on Glossopteris leaves.

Street-level perceptions of procedural rights for young unemployed people - a comparative study between Sweden and Australia

Two types of welfare states are compared in this article. Differences in procedural rights for young unemployed at the level of service delivery are analyzed. In Australia, rights are regulated through a rigid procedural justice system. The young unemployed within the social assistance system in Sweden encounter staff with high discretionary powers, which makes the legal status weak for the unemployed but, on the other hand, the system is more flexible. Despite the differences, there is striking convergence in how the young unemployed describe how discretionary power among street-level staff affects their procedural rights. This result can be understood as a result of similar professional norms, work customs and occupational cultures of street-level staff, and that there is a basic logic of conditionality in all developed welfare states where procedural rights are tightly coupled with responsibilities.

Saviour Siblings and the Regulation of Assisted Reproductive Technology: Harm, Ethics and Law

Advances in the field of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) have been revolutionary. This book focuses on the use of ARTs in the context of families who seek to conceive a matching sibling donor as a source of tissue to treat an existing sick child. Such children have been referred to as ‘saviour siblings’. Considering the legal and regulatory frameworks that impact on the accessibility of this technology in Australia and the UK, the work analyses the ethical and moral issues that arise from the use of the technology for this specific purpose. The author claims the only justification for limiting a family’s reproductive liberty in this context is where the exercise of reproductive decision-making results in harm to others. It is argued that the harm principle is the underlying feature of legislative action in Western democratic society, and as such, this principle provides the grounds upon which a strong and persuasive argument is made for a less-restrictive regulatory approach in the context of ‘saviour siblings’.