Towards a dignified and sustainable electricity generation sector in Australia : a comparative review of three models

Electricity is the cornerstone of modern life. It is essential to economic stability and growth, jobs and improved living standards. Electricity is also the fundamental ingredient for a dignified life; it is the source of such basic human requirements as cooked food, a comfortable living temperature and essential health care. For these reasons, it is unimaginable that today's economies could function without electricity and the modern energy services that it delivers. Somewhat ironically, however, the current approach to electricity generation also contributes to two of the gravest and most persistent problems threatening the livelihood of humans. These problems are anthropogenic climate change and sustained human poverty. To address these challenges, the global electricity sector must reduce its reliance on fossil fuel sources. In this context, the object of this research is twofold. Initially it is to consider the design of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 (Cth) (Renewable Electricity Act), which represents Australia's primary regulatory approach to increase the production of renewable sourced electricity. This analysis is conducted by reference to the regulatory models that exist in Germany and Great Britain. Within this context, this thesis then evaluates whether the Renewable Electricity Act is designed effectively to contribute to a more sustainable and dignified electricity generation sector in Australia. On the basis of the appraisal of the Renewable Electricity Act, this thesis contends that while certain aspects of the regulatory regime have merit, ultimately its design does not represent an effective and coherent regulatory approach to increase the production of renewable sourced electricity. In this regard, this thesis proposes a number of recommendations to reform the existing regime. These recommendations are not intended to provide instantaneous or simple solutions to the current regulatory regime. Instead, the purpose of these recommendations is to establish the legal foundations for an effective regulatory regime that is designed to increase the production of renewable sourced electricity in Australia in order to contribute to a more sustainable and dignified approach to electricity production.

Nurses' experiences of practice and political reform in long-term aged care in Australia : implications for the retention of nursing personnel

Keywords gerontological nursing;health care reform;health policy;long-term care;recruitment and retention Aim  The aim of the study was to explore registered nurses’ experiences in long-term aged care in light of the political reform of aged care services in Australia. Background  In Australia, the aged care industry has undergone a lengthy period of political and structural reform. Despite reviews into various aspects of these reforms, there has been little consideration of the effect these are having on the practice experiences and retention of nursing staff in long-term care. Methods  In this critical hermeneutic study, 14 nurses from long-term care facilities in Australia were interviewed about their experiences during the reform period. Results  The data revealed a sense of tension and conflict between nurses’ traditional values, roles and responsibilities and those supported by the reforms. Nurses struggled to renegotiate both their practice roles and values as the reforms were implemented and the system evolved. Nursing management support was an important aspect in mediating the effect of reforms on nursing staff. Conclusion  This research highlights both the tensions experienced by nurses in long-term aged care in Australia and the need to renegotiate nursing roles, responsibilities and values within an evolving care system. This research supports a role for sensitive and proactive nursing management during periods of industry reform as a retention strategy for qualified nursing personnel.

Searching for value : the influence of policy and reform on nurses’ sense of value in long-term aged care in Australia.

Contemporary literature on long-term aged care focuses heavily on issues associated with the recruitment and retention of nursing staff, such as job satisfaction and attitudes towards caring for older people. This paper aims to highlight one aspect of a larger study of registered nurses' experiences in long-term aged care in Australia and the influence that government policy and reform has in shaping that experience. This insight into aspects of nurses' everyday experience also contributes to a broader understanding of job satisfaction in long-term care. Findings from this study suggest that registered nurses experience tension in their search for value in their practice, which incorporates professional, political and social mediators of value and worth. These issues are discussed in relation to the impact of policy and reform on nurses' sense of value in long-term aged care and highlight the need for sensitive policy initiatives that support issues of value in nursing practice.

Mapping the conditions of penal hope

This article examines the conditions of penal hope behind suggestions that the penal expansionism of the last three decades may be at a ‘turning point’. The article proceeds by outlining David Green’s (2013b) suggested catalysts of penal reform and considers how applicable they are in the Australian context. Green’s suggested catalysts are: the cycles and saturation thesis; shifts in the dominant conception of the offender; the global financial crisis (GFC) and budgetary constraints; the drop in crime; the emergence of the prisoner re‐entry movement; apparent shifts in public opinion; the influence of evangelical Christian ideas; and the Right on Crime initiative. The article then considers a number of other possible catalysts or forces: the role of trade unions; the role of courts; the emergence of recidivism as a political issue; the influence of ‘evidence based’/‘what works’ discourse; and the emergence of justice reinvestment (JR). The article concludes with some comments about the capacity of criminology and criminologists to contribute to penal reductionism, offering an optimistic assessment for the prospects of a reflexive criminology that engages in and engenders a wider politics around criminal justice issues.

Digitally enabled?! An analysis of law and justice students' use of smart devices

The research seeks to understand the nature of law and justice students’ use of technology for their learning purposes. There is often an assumption made that all students have, and engage with, technology to the same degree. The research tests these assumptions by means of a survey conducted of first year law and justice students to determine their actual use of smart devices inside and outside classes. The analysis of results reveals that while the majority of respondents own at least one smart device; most rarely use their device for their learning purposes.

The Law of Real Property Mortgages [2nd. Ed.]

This book examines the principles and practice of real estate mortgages in an easily accessible text referenced to all the Australian States. It specifically deals with the major theoretical and practical aspects of the land mortgage, including vitiating factors in formation, mortgagees’ powers and duties and mortgagors’ rights – both statutory and other – as well as assignment, insurance and discharge. It focuses exclusively on real estate mortgages and provides a thorough account of the law through analysis of the plethora of court decisions and statutory provisions in this area. Duncan and Dixon analyse the substance of the mortgage transaction from creation through to rights of enforcement. In its detailed consideration of the rights and obligations of mortgagors and mortgagees, it covers topics such as priorities and tacking, insurance, variation and assignment, rights of discharge, entry into possession, foreclosure and power of sale. In addition, the book contains a separate chapter on factors that may affect the validity and enforcement of a mortgage, together with separate consideration of a mortgagee’s right to enforce a guarantee provided on behalf of a mortgagor, and the rights and liabilities associated with a receivership regime initiated by

Legal Reasoning in Environmental Law : a Study of Structure, Form and Language

This book analyses the structure, form and language of a selected number of international and national legal instruments and reviews how an illustrative range of international and national judicial institutions have responded to the issues before them and the processes of legal reasoning engaged by them in reaching their decisions. This involves a very detailed discussion of these primary sources of international and national environmental law with a view to determining their jurisprudential architecture and the processes of reasoning expected of those responsible for implementing these architectural arrangements. This book is concerned not with the effectiveness or the quality of an environmental legal system but only with its jurisprudential characteristics and their associated processes of legal reasoning.

Corporate ownership, corporate governance reform and timeliness of earnings : Malaysian evidence

This paper provides the first evidence showing that ownership concentration and the identity of the largest shareholder matter to the timeliness of corporate earnings, measured by a stock price-based timeliness metric and the reporting lag. Using panel data of 1276 Malaysian firms from 1996 to 2009, we find a non-linear relationship between concentrated ownership, measured by the largest shareholding in a firm, and the reporting lag but not the timeliness of price discovery. Although firms with government as the largest shareholder and political connections have a significantly shorter reporting lag, only the former are timelier in price discovery. Firms with family and foreigners as the largest shareholder however are less timely in price discovery. While the reporting lag is shorter in the period after the integration of the Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG) into Bursa listing rules, its impact on the timeliness of price discovery is mostly immaterial.

Against Rehabilitation; For Reparitive Justice

The difficulties of re-imagining the possible relationships between crime and justice in capitalist societies, and imagining the possible meanings of democracy in societies characterised by gross inequalities of knowledge, and exclusion of the majority from political decisions are well known. One such difficulty stems from the impossible necessity of maintaining stances of both constant reform and constant critique (see Carlen, 2012). Confronted with economic and cultural inequalities which routinely deny ideals of justice and democracy, there can be a temptation to suppress (or bracket-off) troubling knowledge of criminal justice's and democracy's maligned underbellies and instead talk 'as if' criminal justice's ideal play of governance is always and already realised in its rhetoric. In some senses, this 'as if' talk is aspirational and it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise if more just conceptions of criminal justice and more democratic forms of democracy are to be conceived. However, when, as often happens, aspirational criminal justice concepts become routinised and acted upon as if they can be realised without fundamental social change, they become penal imaginaries, part of a taken-for-granted ideological baggage which, because it is taken-for-granted, obstructs critique (see Carlen, 2008). One such penal imaginary is the concept of rehabilitation, a concept which has a long history of justifying almost every kind of non-lethal response to lawbreaking and which is currently being reborn yet again in theories of criminal desistance and anti-prison campaigns as well as in the more invidious rehabilitation industry with its sales of programmes for cognitive reform.

Ethics, Law and Health Care : a Guide for Nurses and Midwives

Understanding ethics and law in health care is an essential part of nurses’ and midwives’ professional standards. Ethics, Law and Health Care focuses on teaching applied ethics and law in a manner that illustrates the real world applications of these core components of the nursing and midwifery curriculum and practice. It equips readers with the ability to recognise and address legal and ethical issues that will arise in their professional practice. The book uses the four principles of biomedical ethics (autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice) together with the use of both the Nursing and Midwifery Codes of Ethics and Codes of Professional Conduct, issued by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, as a central means through which to analyse and approach ethical and legal issues. Ethics, Law and Health Care is scaffolded to assist readers in understanding legal and ethical principles, to integrate them in the context of a particular issue within professional practice, and provide them with a decision-making framework to take action in a professional context by utilising the Codes as well as state and federal law. Aided by pedagogical features such as case studies, review questions, further reading and a glossary of common terms, this book is an essential resource for students, academics and practitioners.

The discursive nature of citizenship : Indigenous sovereign rights, racism and welfare reform

Citizenship is more than a status associated with a bundle of rights; it is also the formal contract by which the sovereignty of a nation is extended to the individual in exchange for being governed. Who can and who cannot contract into this status and what rights are able to be exercised is also shaped by who possesses the nation. In this article it is argued that citizenship operates discursively to contain Indigenous people’s engagement with the economy through social rights. This containment precludes consideration of Indigenous sovereign rights to our lands and resources, to enable Indigenous economic development within a capitalist market economy.

Domestic violence and family law : recognition and appropriation

The battered women’s movement in the United States contributed to a sweeping change in the recognition of men’s violence against female intimate partners. Naming the problem and arguing in favour of its identification as a serious problem meriting a collective response were key aspects of this effort. Criminal and civil laws have been written and revised in an effort to answer calls to take such violence seriously. Scholars have devoted significant attention to the consequences of this reframing of violence, especially around the unintended outcomes of the incorporation of domestic violence into criminal justice regimes. Family law, however, has remained largely unexamined by criminologists. This paper calls for criminological attention to family law responses to domestic violence and provides directions for future research.

REDD+ and mangroves : a study on Sundarbans

Sundarbans, a Ramsar and World Heritage site, is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world covering parts of Bangladesh and India. Natural mangroves were very common along the entire coast of Bangladesh. However, all other natural mangrove forests, including the Chakaria Sundarbans with 21,000 hectares of mangrove, have been cleared for shrimp cultivation. Against this backdrop, the Forest Department of Bangladesh has developed project design documents for a project called ‘Collaborative REDD+ Improved Forest Management (IFM) Sundarbans Project’ (CRISP) to save the only remaining natural mangrove forest of the country. This project, involving conservation of 412,000 ha of natural mangrove forests, is expected to generate, over a 30-year period, a total emissions reduction of about 6.4 million tons of CO2. However, the successful implementation of this project involves a number of critical legal and institutional issues. It may involve complex legal issues such as forest ownership, forest use rights, rights of local people and carbon rights. It may also involve institutional reforms. Ensuring good governance of the proposed project is very vital considering the failure of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded and Bangladesh Forest Department managed ‘Sundarbans Biodiversity Conservation Project’. Considering this previous experience, this paper suggests that a comprehensive legal and institutional review and reform is needed for the successful implementation of the proposed CRISP project. This paper argues that without ensuring local people’s rights and their participation, no project can be successful in the Sundarbans. Moreover, corruption of local and international officials may be a serious hurdle in the successful implementation of the project.

Litigating law of the sea disputes using the UNCLOS Dispute Settlement System

The interpretation and application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) may be the source of many disputes. UNCLOS introduced an à la carte menu for dispute settlement with a number of options for international dispute resolution, including a compulsory procedure entailing binding decisions. While drafting this ambitious and complex system of dispute settlement, the drafters had to negotiate many delicate compromises to secure a system for the uniform interpretation of the Convention. The aim of this paper r is to explore why litigation using the UNCLOS dispute settlement system is, or is not, a preferred mode of settlement for law of the sea disputes.

Populism, law and order and the crimes of the 1%

The article examines the evidence of endemic financial crime in the global financial crisis (GFC), the legal impunity surrounding these crimes and the popular revolt against these abuses in the financial, political and legal systems. This is set against a consideration of the development since the 1970s of a conservative politics championing de-regulation, unfettered markets, welfare cuts and harsh law and order policies. On the one hand, this led to massively increased inequality and concentrations of wealth and political power in the hands of the super-rich, effectively placing them above the law, as the GFC revealed. On the other, a greatly enlarged, more punitive criminal justice system was directed at poor and minority communities. Explanations in terms of the rise of penal populism are helpful in explaining these developments, but it is argued they adopt a limited and reductionist view of populism, failing to see the prospects for a progressive populist politics to re-direct political attention to issues of inequality and corporate and white collar criminality.