Public private partnership infrastructure delivery: Benefits and costs for society

This research provides additional knowledge on the benefits and costs to society, in particular of road transport procured through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements. Currently, the public sector comparator (PSC) and cost-benefit analysis (CBA) used to evaluate and measure the benefits and costs of PPP are limited in their capacity to predict and forecast long-term events. PPP is attractive to governments due to the non-upfront payment, perceived value for money, and risk allocation and transfer to the private investor. However, public sector remains the guarantor, and under-writer of the private investor's loan from financial institutions and other voluntary risks which are unlimited to future compensatory claims. The new knowledge from this research is the introduction of a framework capable of evaluating, and measuring the associated PPP benefits, as well as the costs, effects, and impacts to society which are protracted and sporadic by nature.

Teachers-as-writers: Writing information texts in English and vernacular

Our contribution to this volume is not on the work of the teacher who inspires the child writer, but the teacher as the writer and illustrator of multilingual texts for classroom use that inspires the child reader. This chapter focuses on a first time teacher writer from Fiji, Bereta , who participated in a two day writing workshop known as the Information Text Awareness Project (hereafter ITAP). This chapter commences with an overview of the ITAP which was conducted in Nadi, Fiji, in 2012 with Bereta and 17 teachers from urban, semi-urban and rural contexts within the Nadi educational district. The politics of presenting Western ways of knowing to teachers from diverse cultural and linguistic contexts via a Western pedagogical approach is explored in the second section. We believe that this work involves a moral dimension that needs careful consideration. The third section outlines the eight stages of ITAP where teacher writers such as Bereta produced an English and a vernacular information text for use in their classrooms. The outline of the eight stages of ITAP is justified with links to the research literature. The final section recounts Bereta’s interview data where she talks about using the newly created English and vernacular information texts in the classroom and the community’s response to her inaugural publications. The findings may be of interest to those seeking to establish an adult writing cooperative to produce English and vernacular information texts for classroom use.

Heretic: Copyright law and dramatic works

The production of the play Heretic in 1996 prompted a debate over copyright and the dramatic arts in Australia. The playwright David Williamson argued that the role of the writer was supreme. Although he was willing to acknowledge the contributions of other collaborators, the playwright did not believe that these interpreters deserved copyright protection. The director Wayne Harrison advocated a more collaborative vision of the performing arts. He believed that the role of the director and the position of the producer deserved greater legal recognition. Furthermore he was also willing to countenance limited rights for performers. This article argues that recognition should be accorded to all of the main collaborators in the performing arts. It contends that economic rights and moral rights should not be just limited to the writer, the director, and the producer, but they should extend to the performers and the designers.

Distribution Revolution: Conversations about the Digital Future of Film and Television

Distribution Revolution is a collection of interviews with leading film and TV professionals concerning the many ways that digital delivery systems are transforming the entertainment business. These interviews provide lively insider accounts from studio executives, distribution professionals, and creative talent of the tumultuous transformation of film and TV in the digital era. The first section features interviews with top executives at major Hollywood studios, providing a window into the big-picture concerns of media conglomerates with respect to changing business models, revenue streams, and audience behaviors. The second focuses on innovative enterprises that are providing path-breaking models for new modes of content creation, curation, and distribution—creatively meshing the strategies and practices of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. And the final section offers insights from creative talent whose professional practices, compensation, and everyday working conditions have been transformed over the past ten years. Taken together, these interviews demonstrate that virtually every aspect of the film and television businesses is being affected by the digital distribution revolution, a revolution that has likely just begun. Interviewees include: • Gary Newman, Chairman, 20th Century Fox Television • Kelly Summers, Former Vice President, Global Business Development and New Media Strategy, Walt Disney Studios • Thomas Gewecke, Chief Digital Officer and Executive Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, Warner Bros. Entertainment • Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, Netflix • Felicia D. Henderson, Writer-Producer, Soul Food, Gossip Girl • Dick Wolf, Executive Producer and Creator, Law & Order

The artist is a thief: A book review

Stephen Gray is a writer and law lecturer who has been living in Darwin since 1989. He started out writing formal legal pieces about how copyright law had unsuccessfully sought to accommodate Aboriginal art. Such work led him to further investigate the philosophical questions underlying the legal issues affecting both traditional and urban Indigenous people. Gray has also explored matters of bioprospecting in relation to Indigenous biological resources. He has investigated the introduction of a label of authenticity into Australia. Gray has also published a number of articles about other legal issues affecting Indigenous people. He has explored such topics as native title, customary law, alternative dispute resolution, and criminal law. Gray has recently been awarded The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award for his novel The Artist is a Thief. He was inspired to write a book after being sent out to a community on a possible copyright claim as part of his job in the law faculty of Northern Territory University: "I wrote an academic article and then a more philosophical piece talking about the copyright act and the way it doesn't really protect traditional artists who have a very different view of the place of their art. The pieces were interesting, but I felt there was something more there that needed a fictional expression as well." It is ironic that such a self-conscious and sophisticated meditation upon appropriation and authenticity should win The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award. The inaugural award in 1980 was won by Paul Radley, who later revealed his books were mostly written by his uncle, and in 1993 it was won by Helen Demidenko, aka Darville, who had lied about her Ukrainian background and family history.

Provocare

A new digital story exploring female agency and violence against women Launched this month, ‘Provocare’ is a multimedia verse thriller created by Meg Vann, writer; Mez Breeze, interaction designer; and Donna Hancox, research lead for Creative Industries at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). It is the first work to be commissioned and produced for ‘Queensland Writers on the International Stage’, an Arts Queensland funded programme created by QUT and The Writing Platform.

Interrupting the child/adult dichotomy: A genealogy of genius as an administrative object in educational discourse

Part of a special issue on childhood and cultural studies. The writer provides a genealogy of genius that interrupt the child/adult dichotomy and disrupts the notion of child as subject. Tracing the evolution of the notion of “genius,” she notes that although conceptualizations of genius have changed considerably over the years, it has continually been a concept that distinguishes the haves from the have-nots. The writer maintains that the idea of genius consistently invokes images of both maleness and whiteness and marginalizes the experiences of women and other groups.

Autism; it's for life, not just the weekend

An article about holidaying with a child with autism on a popular Australian website has sparked exasperation among many parents and advocates. Ian Rogerson, Nicole Rogerson and Michael Whelan respond. Against a backdrop of a middle-class vacation at a beach house, disability arrives and Lives are Changed when a kid "steals" a sausage roll. No. This is not the premise for a rejected David Williamson screenplay. It's the work of a writer who felt her weekend away with a family whose number happened to include an autistic kid deserved some attention. As parents of children on the autism spectrum we too think the piece published on a major Australian website yesterday deserves some attention. Just, perhaps, not in the way its author had hoped.

Apprehending the void: Using animation to interpret the genius loci of the Peel Island Lazaret

This practice-led research project harnesses the plasmatic nature of animation (Eisenstein 1989) to embody the in-between state of being of the Peel Island Lazaret on the island of Teerk Roo Ra in Moreton Bay, Queensland. In this project the genius loci of this place is expressed through the development of a series of creative works that employs the unique transformative quality of animation to push and pull at the boundary lines between what can be apprehended as the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’. Drawing on the physical approach of Czech surrealist animator Jan Švankmajer and cultural theories from Australian writer Ross Gibson, this study re-members and re-imagines the site of the Lazaret as a liminal, uncanny place. This study investigates how conceptions of place are overlaid by aspects of history, memory and the imagination and these discoveries contribute to the currently limited academic discourse around place and place-making in animation practice in Australia.

Pictures that ask the right questions

An article about the use of photographs as research in the writing of memoir. "I expect many people begin the writing of a memoir by looking through old photos. Pictures, after all, belong in the past, and they hold out the promise of delivering it to us again: everyone is younger, surrounded by yesterday’s world, a moment fixed in time. Even the size of the photo paper and printing tone belong back there, in a printer’s shop that doesn’t exist anymore. And yet, for the purpose of writing a memoir, the most useful pictures also reach beyond the past, and beyond their initial role in verifying your memories, or filling out the details. That is, they are more than an account. Such pictures seem to be asking questions about what happened next, in the moments and years after they were taken..."