The journey of the role of religious faith in corrections : the case of circles of support and accountability

A renewal of interest has occurred in the relationship between religion, penal policy, and systems of criminal justice in different countries. This has been manifested in the development of religious programmes in prison and community settings. The subject has also precipitated a substantial body of empirical research, in addition to theorising the impacts of religion upon offending behaviour. However, specific faith‐based measures have attracted limited attention, mainly because of the empirical complexity of measuring the relationship between faith and behavioural change. These issues are addressed in this article by considering the recentlyemerged practice of Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA).

The tertiary debate : a case study analysis of factors considered when applying for university entry by traditional age school leavers in Brisbane

Many interacting factors contribute to a student's choice of a university. This study takes a systems perspective of the choice and develops a Bayesian Network to represent and quantify these factors and their interactions. The systems model is illustrated through a small study of traditional school leavers in Australia, and highlights similarities and differences between universities' perceptions of student choices, students' perceptions of factors that they should consider and how students really make choices. The study shows the range of information that can be gained from this approach, including identification of important factors and scenario assessment.

The body in grief : death investigations, objections to autopsy, and the religious and cultural 'other'

Sudden, violent and otherwise unexplained deaths are investigated in most western jurisdictions through a Coronial or medico-legal process. A crucial element of such an investigation is the legislative requirement to remove the body for autopsy and other medical interventions, processes which can disrupt traditional religious and cultural grieving practices. While recent legislative changes in an increasing number of jurisdictions allow families to raise objections based on religious and cultural grounds, such concerns can be over-ruled, often exacerbating the trauma and grief of families. Based on funded research which interviews a range of Coronial staff in one Australian jurisdiction, this paper explores the disjuncture between medico-legal discourses, which position the body as corpse, and the rise of more ‘therapeutic’ discourses which recognise the family’s wishes to reposition the body as beloved and lamented.

Exploring emotions on #auspol : polarity, conservativism and public performance in the Twitter debate on Australian politics

The affective communication patterns of conversations on Twitter can provide insights into the culture of online communities. In this paper we apply a combined quantitative and qualitative approach to investigate the structural make-up and emotional content of tweeting activity around the hashtag #auspol (for Australian politics) in order to highlight the polarity and conservativism that characterise this highly active community of politically engaged individuals. We document the centralised structure of this particular community, which is based around a deeply committed core of contributors. Through in-depth content analysis of the tweets of participants to the online debate we explore the communicative tone, patterns of engagement and thematic drivers that shape the affective character of the community and their effect on its cohesiveness. In this way we provide a comprehensive account of the complex techno-social, linguistic and cultural factors involved in conversations that are shaped in the Twittersphere.

Small firms, the paid maternity leave debate in Australia and the business case

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the management of maternity leave in small firms and particularly to explore the perceived costs and benefits of paid maternity leave (PML). PML is a universal right in some countries (i.e. the UK), but not in Australia where most private sector female employees only have access to 12 months unpaid maternity leave. It also aims to explore how the business case for (or against) PML is constructed in small firms. Design/methodology/approach The study was limited to smaller firms operating in the business services sector in the same regional area. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with eight employers and female employees in six of these firms. Analysis by theme was undertaken within and across interview transcripts. Findings Not one of these small firm employers offered PML and the cost of doing so was not considered to outweigh the benefits already realised through the (legislated) unpaid maternity leave scheme. In these firms maternity leave was managed in an informal way with notions of flexibility – give and take – characterising what happens. Originality/value The paper addresses the lack of research on access to family‐related leave policies in small firms. Employer and employee views of the issue are drawn upon, the latter not often being heard. The paper contributes to understanding the construction of the business case for a specific issue in smaller firms and human resource management from a resource‐based view more generally in smaller firms.

Suicide and religion : new evidence on the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism

Suicide has remained a persistent social phenomenon and now accounts for more deaths than motor vehicle accidents. There has been much debate, however, over which religious constructs might best explain the variation in suicide rates. Our empirical analysis reveals that even though theological and social differences between Catholicism and Protestantism have decreased, Catholics are still less likely than Protestants to commit or accept suicide. This difference holds even after we control for such confounding factors as social and religious networks. In addition, although religious networks do mitigate suicides among Protestants, the influence of church attendance is more dominant among Catholics. Our analysis also indicates that alternative concepts such as religious commitment and religiosity strongly reduce suicide acceptance.

From selfies to climate change : the #G20 debate on Twitter

The G20 Summit that brought many of the world’s most important leaders to Brisbane last weekend was also a major Twitter event. Australian and international users expressed their concerns over the appearance of Russian warships off the Queensland coast, shared selfies from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s impromptu visit to Brisbane’s Caxton St nightlife hub and called for action on issues ranging from Ebola to climate change...

'Genuine' refugees or illegitimate 'boat people' : political constructions of asylum seekers and refugees in the Malaysia Deal debate

Immigration to Australia has long been the focus of negative political interest. In recent times, the proposal of exclusionary policies such as the Malaysia Deal in 2011 has fuelled further debate. In these debates, Federal politicians often describe asylum seekers and refugees as ‘illegal’, ‘queue jumpers’, and ‘boat people’. This article examines the political construction of asylum seekers and refugees during debates surrounding the Malaysia Deal in the Federal Parliament of Australia. Hansard parliamentary debates were analysed to identify the underlying themes and constructions that permeate political discourse about asylum seekers and refugees. We argue that asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat were constructed as threatening to Australia’s national identity and border security, and were labelled as ‘illegitimate’. A dichotomous characterisation of legitimacy pervades the discourse about asylum seekers, with this group constructed either as legitimate humanitarian refugees or as illegitimate ‘boat arrivals’. Parliamentarians apply the label of legitimacy based on implicit criteria concerning the mode of arrival of asylum seekers, their respect for the so-called ‘queue’, and their ability to pay to travel to Australia. These constructions result in the misrepresentation of asylum seekers as illegitimate, undermining their right to protection under Australia’s laws and international obligations.

Secular and religious moral grounds resonating across state schools in Indonesia

This paper describes moral education in Indonesia, more particularly, how teachers have implemented the Character Education policy issued by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MOEC) in 2010. This policy required teachers to instil certain values in every lesson, including EFL lessons, to contribute towards building a shared national moral character. Drawing on Durkheim's distinction between secular and religious morality, this paper considers how state schools accommodated and promoted this ‘rational moral education' or secular morality (Durkheim, 1925) in government schools, and how it interacted with religious moral education. This paper uses Bernstein's concepts of pedagogic discourse, instructional and regulative discourses to analyse how teachers have recontextualised this policy in the micro pedagogic settings of their EFL classes. Three types of data were collected for this study: interviews, class observations and teachers' lesson plans. In this way, four EFL teachers working in state schools were interviewed on two occasions and three of their classes were observed. The first interview identified teachers' beliefs and perceptions regarding the Character Education policy. Their classroom and lesson plans were observed to augment this information. Then the final interview asked about the teacher's thinking behind their actions in the observed classes. Since character education was issued within the broader frame of school based curriculum that offered schools and teachers more choices to develop the local curriculum and its intent, the analysis will focus on what moral premises were evident in their school and classes, and how such morality was transmitted through the EFL lessons. The conclusion suggests that teachers' implementation of moral education in their classes was dominated by their school communities and the teachers' own preferred value of religiosity. Such value played out in the classes through both the regulative discourse and the instructional discourse.

Basic Religious Charities

Just over 44,000 registered charities filed their first Annual Information Statement (AIS) return with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) before the end of October 2014. Of these, 10,918 charities self-identified as Basic Religious Charities (BRCs). These are usually, but not always, unincorporated religious congregations which receive no or little government funding. Having a central agency for reporting, in the form of the ACNC, having access to information supplied in the AIS by registered organisations has allowed access to new measures of charities and their activities. In September 2014 the ACNC, in conjunction with Curtin University Not-for-profit Initiative, released a high-level report on the first AIS, and the data were also made available digitally through the Australian Government Data Repository. This factsheet builds on that report by focusing on BRCs.

Defining the InstaBooth: Facilitating debate and content creation from situated users

Through ubiquitous computing and location-based social media, information is spreading outside the traditional domains of home and work into the urban environment. Digital technologies have changed the way people relate to the urban form supporting discussion on multiple levels, allowing more citizens to be heard in new ways (Fredericks et al. 2013; Houghton et al. 2014; Caldwell et al. 2013). Face-to-face and digitally mediated discussions, facilitated by tangible and hybrid interaction, such as multi-touch screens and media façades, are initiated through a telephone booth inspired portable structure: The InstaBooth. The InstaBooth prototype employs a multidisciplinary approach to engage local communities in a situated debate on the future of their urban environment. With it, we capture citizens’ past stories and opinions on the use and design of public places. The way public consultations are currently done often engages only a section of the population involved in a proposed development; the more vocal citizens are not necessarily the more representative of the communities (Jenkins 2006). Alternative ways to engage urban dwellers in the debate about the built environment are explored at the moment, including the use of social media or online tools (Foth 2009). This project fosters innovation by providing pathways for communities to participate in the decision making process that informs the urban form. The InstaBooth promotes dialogue and mediation between a bottom-up and a top-down approach to urban design, with the aim of promoting community connectedness with the urban environment. The InstaBooth provides an engagement and discussion platform that leverages a number of locally developed display and interaction technologies in order to facilitate a dialogue of ideas and commentary. The InstaBooth combines multiple interaction techniques into a hybrid (digital and analogue) media space. Through the InstaBooth, urban design and architectural proposals are displayed encouraging commentary from visitors. Inside the InstaBooth, visitors can activate a multi-touch screen in order to browse media, write a note, or draw a picture to provide feedback. The purpose of the InstaBooth is to engage with a broader section of society, including those who are often marginalised. The specific design of the internal and external interfaces, the mutual relationship between these interfaces with regards to information display and interaction, and the question how visitors can engage with the system, are part of the research agenda of the project.

Copyright and creativity: An ongoing debate in the creative industries

This paper critically analyzes the divergent perspectives on how copyright and intellectual property laws impact creativity, innovation, and the creative industries. One perspective defines the creative industries based on copyright as the means by which revenues are generated from innovation and the dissemination of new ideas. At the same time, it has been argued that copyright and intellectual property regimes fetter creativity and innovation, and that this has become even more marked in the context of digital media convergence and the networked global creative economy. These issues have resonated in debates around the creative industries, particularly since the initial DCMS mapping study in the UK in 1998 defined creative industries as combining individual creativity and exploitable forms of intellectual property. The issue of competing claims for the relationship between copyright and the creative industries has also arisen in Australia, with a report by the Australian Law Reform Commission entitled Copyright and the Digital Economy. This paper will consider the competing claims surrounding copyright and the creative industries, and the implications for policy-makers internationally.

Trick or treaty?: The Australian debate over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

The secretive 2011 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – known in short by the catchy acronym ACTA – is a controversial trade pact designed to provide for stronger enforcement of intellectual property rights. The preamble to the treaty reads like pulp fiction – it raises moral panics about piracy, counterfeiting, organised crime, and border security. The agreement contains provisions on civil remedies and criminal offences; copyright law and trademark law; the regulation of the digital environment; and border measures. Memorably, Susan Sell called the international treaty a TRIPS Double-Plus Agreement, because its obligations far exceed those of the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement 1994, and TRIPS-Plus Agreements, such as the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement 2004. ACTA lacks the language of other international intellectual property agreements, which emphasise the need to balance the protection of intellectual property owners with the wider public interest in access to medicines, human development, and transfer of knowledge and technology. In Australia, there was much controversy both about the form and the substance of ACTA. While the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was a partisan supporter of the agreement, a wide range of stakeholders were openly critical. After holding hearings and taking note of the position of the European Parliament and the controversy in the United States, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties in the Australian Parliament recommended the deferral of ratification of ACTA. This was striking as representatives of all the main parties agreed on the recommendation. The committee was concerned about the lack of transparency, due process, public participation, and substantive analysis of the treaty. There were also reservations about the ambiguity of the treaty text, and its potential implications for the digital economy, innovation and competition, plain packaging of tobacco products, and access to essential medicines. The treaty has provoked much soul-searching as to whether the Trick or Treaty reforms on the international treaty-making process in Australia have been compromised or undermined. Although ACTA stalled in the Australian Parliament, the debate over it is yet to conclude. There have been concerns in Australia and elsewhere that ACTA will be revived as a ‘zombie agreement’. Indeed, in March 2013, the Canadian government introduced a bill to ensure compliance with ACTA. Will it be also resurrected in Australia? Has it already been revived? There are three possibilities. First, the Australian government passed enhanced remedies with respect to piracy, counterfeiting and border measures in a separate piece of legislation – the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Act 2012 (Cth). Second, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade remains supportive of ACTA. It is possible, after further analysis, that the next Australian Parliament – to be elected in September 2013 – will ratify the treaty. Third, Australia is involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. The government has argued that ACTA should be a template for the Intellectual Property Chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The United States Trade Representative would prefer a regime even stronger than ACTA. This chapter provides a portrait of the Australian debate over ACTA. It is the account of an interested participant in the policy proceedings. This chapter will first consider the deliberations and recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties on ACTA. Second, there was a concern that ACTA had failed to provide appropriate safeguards with respect to civil liberties, human rights, consumer protection and privacy laws. Third, there was a concern about the lack of balance in the treaty’s copyright measures; the definition of piracy is overbroad; the suite of civil remedies, criminal offences and border measures is excessive; and there is a lack of suitable protection for copyright exceptions, limitations and remedies. Fourth, there was a worry that the provisions on trademark law, intermediary liability and counterfeiting could have an adverse impact upon consumer interests, competition policy and innovation in the digital economy. Fifth, there was significant debate about the impact of ACTA on pharmaceutical drugs, access to essential medicines and health-care. Sixth, there was concern over the lobbying by tobacco industries for ACTA – particularly given Australia’s leadership on tobacco control and the plain packaging of tobacco products. Seventh, there were concerns about the operation of border measures in ACTA. Eighth, the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties was concerned about the jurisdiction of the ACTA Committee, and the treaty’s protean nature. Finally, the chapter raises fundamental issues about the relationship between the executive and the Australian Parliament with respect to treaty-making. There is a need to reconsider the efficacy of the Trick or Treaty reforms passed by the Australian Parliament in the 1990s.

An analytical study revisiting debate on interpretation of Article 38 of the Statute of International Court of Justice

Article 38(1) of the Statute of International Court of Justice (hereinafter ICJ) is today generally seen as a direction to the significant sources of international law, which the world court must consider in resolving disputes; however, the list is not exhaustive nor encompasses all the formal and material sources of the international legal system. Article 38 of the Statute of ICJ was written ninety years ago in a different world, a question is under debate in many states, whether or not sources mentioned in Article 38 of the statute are compatible with needs of 21st century ? In recent decade, many new actors come on the stage which have transformed international law and now it is not only governs relations among states but also covers many International Organizations. Article 38(2) does refer to the other possible sources but does not define them. Moreover, law is a set of rules that citizens must follow to regulate peace and order in society. These laws are binding on both the individual and the state on a domestic and international level. Do states regard this particular rule as a rule of international law? The modern legal system of states is in the form of a specified and well organized set of rules, regulating affairs of different organs of a state. States also need a body of rules for their intercourse with each other. These sets of rules among states are called “International Law.” This article examines international law, its foundation and sources. It considers whether international conventions and treaties can be the only way states can considerably create international law, or there is a need for clarity about the sources of international law. Article is divided into two parts, the first one deals with sources of international law discussed in Article 38 of the statute of International Court of Justice whereas the second one discusses the material and formal sources of law, which still need reorganization as sources of law.

Private governance of public rights in Japan: Revisiting the Japanese governance debate

Dramatic growth in the Japanese economy in the postwar period – and its meltdown in the 1990s – has attracted sustained interest in the power dynamics underlying the management of Japan’s administrative state. For a long time, scholars and commentators have debated about who wields power in Japan. The question has been asked in different ways. In the 1970s and 1980s, the question was usually posed as: who orchestrated Japan’s economic miracle in the 1960s and 1970s? Today, the question is usually reframed to: who is accountable for the policy failures that plunged Japan into financial crisis and recession during the 1990s? Yet the core issue remains the same – who governs Japan? (Johnson 1995)...