Editorial: Closing the gap: Nurses and midwives making a difference

Life expectancy at birth is one of the main indicators of health inequality. Current health and social status indicators for Australian Indigenous people demonstrate major discrepancies in comparison to other Australians. For example, in Australia in 2005–2007 the Indigenous life expectancy gap at birth was 11.5 years for males and 9.7 years for females (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009). This gap has remained relatively constant over the last few decades (ABS, 2008). While the main causes of death for Indigenous Australians are similar to those of non-Indigenous Australians, the percentages attributed to the different disease categories are significantly different. For example, death from external causes is 16.2% for the Indigenous population compared to 6.3% for non-Indigenous, and diabetes is 8% for Indigenous Australians compared to 2.4% for non-Indigenous (ABS, 2008; AIHW, 2008). The Australian Government’s response to this troubling issue, urged on by unprecedented support from the public, was the Close the Gap initiative which aims to reduce the gap in life expectancy within a generation (Shadow Report, 2010). Since the introduction of the Close the Gap strategy there have been some claims of success. For example, the Honourable Warren Snowden (Snowden, 2010), Minister for Indigenous Health, outlines some of the changes that have occurred as a result of the implementation of the Indigenous Chronic Disease Package, funded at $805.5 million over four years, as: 294 new positions...

Integrating urban ecosystem sustainability assessment into policy-making: Insights from the Gold Coast City

This paper introduces a policy-making support tool called ‘Micro-level Urban ecosystem Sustainability IndeX (MUSIX)’. The index serves as a sustainability assessment model that monitors six aspects of urban ecosystems, hydrology, ecology, pollution, location, design, and efficiency based on parcel-scale indicators. This index is applied in a case study investigation in the Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia. The outcomes reveal that there are major environmental problems caused by increased impervious surfaces from growing urban development in the study area. The findings suggest that increased impervious surfaces are linked to increased surface runoff, car dependency, transport-related pollution, poor public transport accessibility, and unsustainable built environment. This paper presents how the MUSIX outputs can be used to guide policy-making through the evaluation of existing policies.

Making usability affordable in the design of e-government services: User-centred design for public sector websites

E-government provides a platform for governments to implement web-enabled services that facilitate communication between citizens and the government. However, technology-driven design approach and limited understanding of citizens' requirements have led to a number of critical usability problems on the government websites. Hitherto, there has been no systematic attempt to analyse the way in which theory of User-Centred Design (UCD) can contribute to address the usability issues of government websites. This research seeks to fill this gap by synthesising perspectives drawn from the study of UCD and examining them based on the empirical data derived from case study of the Scottish Executive (SE) website. The research employs a qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of data. The triangulated analysis of the findings reveals that e-government web designers take commercial development approach and focus only on technical implementations, which lead to websites that do not meet citizens' expectations. The research identifies that e-government practitioners can overcome web usability issues by transferring the theory of UCD to practice. © Copyright 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Market access and welfare: Is there a conflict?

Well known tariff reform rules that are guaranteed to increase welfare will not necessarily increase market access, while rules that are guaranteed to increase market access will not necessarily increase welfare. The present paper proposes a new set of tariff reforms that can achieve both objectives at the same time.

Tariff-tax reforms and market access

Reducing tariffs and increasing consumption taxes is a standard IMF advice to countries that want to open up their economy without hurting government finances. Indeed, theoretical analysis of such a tariff–tax reform shows an unambiguous increase in welfare and government revenues. The present paper examines whether the country that implements such a reform ends up opening up its markets to international trade, i.e. whether its market access improves. It is shown that this is not necessarily so. We also show that, comparing to the reform of only tariffs, the tariff–tax reform is a less efficient proposal to follow both as far as it concerns market access and welfare.

Tracking brand positioning for an emerging destination: 2003 to 2015

Few published studies have monitored destination brand image over time. This temporal aspect is an important gap in the literature, given consensus around the role perceptions play in consumers’ decision making, and the ensuing emphasis on imagery in destination branding collateral. Whereas most destination image studies have been a snapshot of perceptions at one point in time, this paper presents findings from a survey implemented four times between 2003 and 2015. Brand image is the core construct in modelling destination branding performance, which has emerged as a relatively new field of research in the past decade. Using the consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) hierarchy, the project has benchmarked and monitored destination brand salience, image and resonance for an emerging regional destination, relative to key competitors, in the domestic Australian market; and the survey instrument has been demonstrated to be reliable in the context of short break holidays by car. What is particularly interesting to date is there has been relatively little change in the market positions of the five destinations, in spite of over a decade of marketing communications by the regional tourism organisations and their stakeholders, and more recently the mass of user-generated travel content on social media. The project didn’t analyse the actual marketing communications for each of the DMOs. Therefore an important implication is that irrespective of the level of marketing undertaken the DMOs seem to have had little control over the perceptions held in their largest market during this time period. Therefore it must be recognised any improvement in perceptions will likely take a long period of time, and so branding needs to be underpinned by a philosophy of a long term financial investment as well as commitment to a consistency of message over time; which given the politics of DMO decision making represents a considerable challenge.

Determinants of online sperm donor success: How women choose

Because the worldwide demand for sperm donors is much higher than the actual supply available through fertility clinics, an informal online market has emerged for sperm donation. Very little empirical evidence exists, however, on this newly formed market and even less on the characteristics that lead to donor success. This article therefore explores the determinants of online sperm donors’ selection success, which leads to the production of offspring via informal donation. We find that donor age and income play a significant role in donor success as measured by the number of times selected, even though there is no requirement for ongoing paternal investment. Donors with less extroverted and lively personality traits who are more intellectual, shy and systematic are more successful in realizing offspring via informal donation. These results contribute to both the economic literature on human behaviour and on large-scale decision-making.

Decision-making in a death investigation: Emotions, families and the coroner

The role of the coroner in common law countries such as Australia, England, Canada and New Zealand is to preside over death investigations where there is uncertainty as to the manner of death, a need to identify the deceased, a death of unknown cause, or a violent or unnatural death. The vast majority of these deaths are not suspicious and thus require coroners to engage with grieving families who have been thrust into a legal process through the misfortune of a loved one's sudden or unexpected death. In this research, 10 experienced coroners discussed how they negotiated the grief and trauma evident in a death investigation. In doing so, they articulated two distinct ways in which legal officers engaged with emotions, which are also evident in the literature. The first engages the script of judicial dispassion, articulating a hierarchical relationship between reason and emotion, while the second introduces an ethic of care via the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence, and thus offers a challenge to the role of emotion in the personae of the professional judicial officer. By using Hochschild's work on the sociology of emotions, this article discusses the various ways in which coroners manage the emotion of a death investigation through emotion work. While emotional distance may be an understandable response by coroners to the grief and trauma experienced by families and directed at cleaner coronial decision-making, the article concludes that coroners may be better served by offering emotions such as sympathy, consideration and compassion directly to the family in those situations where families are struggling to accept, or are resistant to, coroners' decisions.

Planning for climate change adaptation in a neoliberal context: Influences and responses

This thesis explores how planning policy and practice is responding to the challenge of climate change, particularly in contexts where neoliberal rationales and practices frame decision making. It documents patterns of devolving government responsibilities and experiences of market based mechanisms before reporting on institutional and professional responses to these conditions. The research centred on a qualitative case study and involved thematic content analysis of policy documents and informant interviews. The contribution of the research and thesis is to establish the outlook for climate change adaptation under neoliberal conditions, and to introduce strategies for planners operating within these conditions.

Place making for knowledge generation and innovation: Planning and branding Brisbane’s knowledge community precincts

Knowledge generation and innovation have been a priority for global city administrators particularly during the last couple of decades. This is mainly due to the growing consensus in identifying knowledge-based urban development as a panacea to the burgeoning economic problems. Place making has become a critical element for success in knowledge-based urban development as planning and branding places is claimed to be an effective marketing tool for attracting investment and talent. This paper aims to investigate the role of planning and branding in place making by assessing the effectiveness of planning and branding strategies in the development of knowledge and innovation milieus. The methodology of the study comprises reviewing the literature thoroughly, developing an analysis framework, and utilizing this framework in analyzing Brisbane’s knowledge community precincts—namely Boggo Road Knowledge Precinct, Kelvin Grove Urban Knowledge Village, and Sippy Downs Knowledge Town. The analysis findings generate invaluable insights in Brisbane’s journey in place making for knowledge and innovation milieus and communities. The results suggest as much as good planning, branding strategies and practice, the requirements of external and internal conditions also need to be met for successful place making in knowledge community precincts.

Consumer’s comparison between local and imported organic products: A hedonic analysis of the Japanese table wine market

Although hundreds of thousands of organic products are traded on a daily basis, it is less known how imported organic products are evaluated by consumers in an importing country. The paper analyzes Japanese wine point of sale (POS) data to examine whether consumers differentiate between local and imported organic products. The results of our hedonic analyses show that the premium for imported organic red (white) wines is about 42.996 % (8.872 %) while that for domestic red (white) organic wines is about 6.440 % (1.214 %), implying that Japanese consumers pay higher premiums for imported organic agricultural products than for those produced in Japan.

The InstaBooth: Making common ground for media architectural design

Media architecture has emerged from and relies upon a range of different disciplinary traditions and areas of expertise. As this field develops, it is timely to reflect upon the ways in which designers of different disciplinary stripes can be brought together to collaborate in a design process. What are the means by which design teams can establish a ‘common ground’ where design work can take place while recognizing the diversity of ways of working those different disciplines bring to the process? A co-design approach has been the fundamental backbone of the InstaBooth project, which has brought together a multidisciplinary design team of academics and practitioners. The intention of this project has been to explore the combination of digital and physical interactions within a small media architecture installation to intervene with urban environments and public places for the purposes of community engagement. It is by exploring the design process of the InstaBooth project that we highlight the value of multi-disciplinary collaborations, the lessons that can be learned, and the struggles and hurdles along the way. This paper highlights the iterative process of design, the materials and physical prototypes that were employed to ultimately create a working version of the InstaBooth, a media architecture that evolves as users push its boundaries and take ownership of the installation. The concept of the InstaBooth continues to develop not only as more data are collected on its mechanics and potentials through observations, interviews and workshops, but also as more and more users engage with the installation in their individual ways.

Performance based planning in Queensland : A case of unintended plan-making outcomes

Performance based planning (PBP) is purported to be a viable alternative to traditional zoning. The implementation of PBP ranges between pure approaches that rely on predetermined quantifiable performance standards to determine land use suitability, and hybrid approaches that rely on a mix of activity based zones in addition to prescriptive and subjective standards. Jurisdictions in the USA, Australia and New Zealand have attempted this type of land use regulation with varying degrees of success. Despite the adoption of PBP legislation in these jurisdictions, this paper argues that a lack of extensive evaluation means that PBP is not well understood and the purported advantages of this type of planning are rarely achieved in practice. Few empirical studies have attempted to examine how PBP has been implemented in practice. In Queensland, Australia, the Integrated Planning Act 1997 (IPA) operated as Queensland's principal planning legislation between March 1998 and December 2009. While the IPA did not explicitly use the term performance based planning, the Queensland's planning system is widely considered to be performance based in practice. Significantly, the IPA prevented Local Government from prohibiting development or use and the term zone was absent from the legislation. How plan-making would be advanced under the new planning regime was not clear, and as a consequence local governments produced a variety of different plan-making approaches to comply with the new legislative regime. In order to analyse this variation the research has developed a performance adoption spectrum to classify plans ranging between pure and hybrid perspectives of PBP. The spectrum compares how land use was regulated in seventeen IPA plans across Queensland. The research found that hybrid plans predominated, and that over time a greater reliance on risk adverse drafting approaches created a quasi-prohibition plan, the exact opposite of what was intended by the IPA. This paper concludes that the drafting of the IPA and absence of plan-making guidance contributed to lack of shared understanding about the intended direction of the new planning system and resulted in many administrative interpretations of the legislation. It was a planning direction that tried too hard to be different, and as a result created a perception of land use risk and uncertainty that caused a return to more prescriptive and inflexible plan-making methods.

The channels of monetary policy triggered by central bank actions and statements in the Australian equity market

Owing to the discrete disclosure practices of the Reserve Bank of Australia, this paper provides new evidence on the channels of monetary policy triggered by central bank actions (monetary policy announcements) and statements (explanatory minutes releases), in the Australian equity market. Both monetary policy announcements and explanatory minutes releases are shown to have a significant and comparable impact on the returns and volatility of the Australian equity market. Further, distinct from US and European studies that find strong evidence of the interest rate, bank loan and balance sheet channels and no evidence of the exchange rate channel following central bank actions, this paper finds that monetary policy impacts the Australian equity market via the exchange rate, interest rate and bank loan channels of monetary policy, with only weak evidence of the balance sheet channel of monetary policy. These channels are found to be operating irrespective of the trigger (monetary policy announcements or explanatory minutes releases), though results are somewhat weaker when examining the explanatory minutes releases. These results have important implications for central bank officials and financial market participants alike: by confirming a comparable avenue to affect monetary policy; and providing an explication of its impact on the Australian equity market.

The effects of community attachment and information seeking on displaced disaster victims’ decision making

This paper uses original survey data of the Great East Japan earthquake disaster victims to examine their decision to apply for the temporary housing as well as the timing of application. We assess the effects of victims’ attachment to their locality as well as variation in victims’ information seeking behavior. We additionally consider various factors such as income, age, employment and family structure that are generally considered to affect the decision to choose temporary housing as victims’ solution for their displacement. Empirical results indicate that, ceteris paribus, as the degree of attachment increases, victims are more likely to apply for the temporary housing but attachment does not affect the timing of application. On the other hand, the victims who actively seek information and are able to collect higher quality information are less likely to apply for the temporary housing and if they do apply then they apply relatively later.