Making Sense of Mass Education, 2nd Edition

Making Sense of Mass Education provides an engaging and accessible analysis of traditional issues associated with mass education. The book challenges preconceptions about social class, gender and ethnicity discrimination; highlights the interplay between technology, media, popular culture and schooling; and inspects the relevance of ethics and philosophy in the modern classroom. This new edition has been comprehensively updated to provide current information regarding literature, statistics and legal policies, and significantly expands on the previous edition's structure of derailing traditional myths about education as a point of discussion. It also features two new chapters on Big Data and Globalisation and what they mean for the Australian classroom. Written for students, practising teachers and academics alike, Making Sense of Mass Education summarises the current educational landscape in Australia and looks at fundamental issues in society as they relate to education.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Poses a Grave Threat to Sustainable Development

This month’s long-awaited release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) text was the result of years of negotiations on trade ties between nations around the Pacific Rim. Some six weeks earlier, another set of deliberations came to an end as the United Nations unveiled its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality by addressing critical issues such as food security, health care, access to education, clean and affordable water, clean energy, and climate action. Unfortunately, the two documents are incompatible. Several chapters of the TPP impinge upon the SDGs, potentially undermining the UN’s efforts to promote sustainable development and equality throughout the Pacific region. Moreover, many developing countries, least-developed countries, and small island states in the Pacific region are excluded from the preferential trade deal.

Assessing taxpayer response to legislative changes: A case study of ‘in-house’ fringe benefits rules

On 22 October 2012, the Australian Federal Government announced the removal of the $1,000 in-house fringe benefits concession when used as part of a salary packaging arrangement. At the time of the announcement, the Federal Government predicted that the removal of the concession would contribute additional tax revenue of $445 million over the following four years as well as an increase of GST payments to the States and Territories. However, anecdotal evidence at the same time indicated that the Australian employer response was to immediately stop providing employees with such in-house fringe benefits via salary sacrificing arrangements. Data presented in this article, collected from a combination of interviews with tax managers of four Australian entities as well as a review of the published archival data, confirms that the abolition of the $1,000 in-house fringe benefits concession was perceived as a negative change, whereby employees were considered the ‘big losers’ despite assertions by the Federal Government to the contrary. Using a conceptual map of tax rule change developed by Oats and Sadler, this article seeks to understand the reasons for this fringe benefits tax change and taxpayer response. In particular, the economic and political factors, and the responses of the relevant taxpayers (employers) are explored. Drawing on behavioural economic concepts, the actions, attitudes and response of employers to the rule change are also examined. The research findings suggest that the decision by Australian employers to cease providing the in-house fringe benefits as part of a salary-packaging arrangement after the legislative amendment was impacted by more than simple rational behaviour.

Lobbying by ethnic groups and aid allocation

We develop a political-economic model of foreign aid allocation. Each ethnic group in the donor country lobbies the government to allocate more aid to its country of origin, and the government accepts political contributions from lobby groups. Initial per-capita income of the recipients and those of the ethnic groups are shown to be important determinants of the solution of the political equilibrium. We also examine the effects of changes in the degree of corruption, aid fatigue, and ethnic composition, in the donor country on the allocation of aid.

Optimal foreign aid and tariffs

This paper investigates the optimal choice of foreign aid when trade policies are decided in a non-cooperative fashion. Three alternative scenarios, depending on the timing of the actions and on whether aid is tied, are analyzed. It is shown that, in the case where aid is decided before tariffs, untied aid can lead to the reduction of the recipient's optimal trade tax. When the donor can tie the aid to a reduction in the recipient's tariff, the optimal aid level is always positive and the world can always achieve a Pareto-efficient equilibrium.

Tied aid, unemployment and welfare

The effect of foreign aid on the welfare levels of both the recipient and the donor country has been a much analysed topic for research in both the theory of international trade and development economics. In the development economics literature, concerns have been raised since the 1960s on the possible adverse effect of foreign aid on domestic savings and growth.1 The trade theory literature in this respect is much older and dates back to the 1920s when Professors Keynes and Ohlin debated on the effect of foreign aid on international terms of trade.2 Ever since, the terms of trade effect has been the cornerstone in the analysis of the welfare effect of foreign aid in the trade theory literature.3 After some early confusion, it is now well established that in a Walrasian stable world economy with two countries, a necessary condition for foreign aid to have perverse effects is that there is some distortion in either of the two countries.4 It is also known that, under normality and substitutability of goods, untied aid cannot be strictly Pareto-improving in a tariff distorted world.5

A journey access tool to facilitate mobility-related access for people with disabilities in low and middle income countries

People with disabilities (PWD) experience difficulties in accessing the transport system (including both infrastructure and services) to meet their needs for health care, employment and other activities. Our research shows that lack of access to the journeys needed for these purposes is a more significant barrier in low and middle income countries than in high income countries, and results in inadequate health care, rehabilitation and access to education and employment. At the same time, the existing transport system in low and middle income countries presents much higher road crash risks than in high income countries. By combining the principles and methods of Road Safety Audit and disability access, and adapting these Western approaches to a low/middle income country context, we have worked with Handicap International Cambodia to develop a Journey Access Tool (JAT) for use by disabled peoples’ organisations (DPOs), people with a disability and other key stakeholders. A key element of the approach is that it involves the participation of PWD on the journeys that they need to take, and it identifies infrastructure and service improvements that should be prioritised in order to facilitate access to these journeys. The JAT has been piloted in Cambodia with a range of PWD. This presentation will outline the design of the JAT and the results of the pilot studies. The information gained thus far strongly suggests that the JAT is a valuable and cost-effective approach that can be used by DPOs and professionals to identify barriers to access and prioritise the steps needed to address them.