Globalization, frontier masculinities and violence : booze, blokes and brawls

Over the last two decades, two new trajectories have taken hold in criminology - the study of masculinity and crime, after a century of neglect, and the geography of crime. This article brings both those fields together to analyse the impact of globalisation in the resources sector on frontier cultures of violence. This paper approaches this issue through a case study of frontier masculinities and violence in communities at the forefront of generating resource extraction for global economies. This paper argues that the high rates of violence among men living in work camps in these socio-spatial contexts cannot simply be understood as individualised expressions of psycho-pathological deficit or social disorganisation. Explanations for these patterns of violence must also consider a number of key subterranean convergences between globalising processes and the social dynamics of male-on-male violence in such settings.

Enabling Open Access to Public Sector Information With Creative Commons Licences : The Australian Experience

This chapter considers how open content licences of copyright-protected materials – specifically, Creative Commons (CC) licences - can be used by governments as a simple and effective mechanism to enable reuse of their PSI, particularly where materials are made available in digital form online or distributed on disk.

'Homophobia' in the university classroom : law and justice students' conceptualizations of queer identity

Heteronormative discourses provide the most common lens through which sexuality is understood within university curricula. This means that sexuality is discussed in terms of categories of identity, with heterosexuality accorded primacy and all ‘others’ indeed ‘othered.’ This paper reports on research carried out by the authors in a core first year university justice class, in which students of law and/or justice were required to engage with, discuss, and reflect on discourses on sexuality. It uses a poststructural framework to identify how students understand non-heterosexualities and how they personally relate to queer identities, in the sense that it asks questions about gender and sexual identity, and the discourses surrounding them. It was found that strongly negative attitudes to non-heterosexualities are quite resistant to challenge, and that some students express being confronted with queerness as a deep-seated fear of being drawn into otherness against their will. The result was that, while many students were able to unpack their attitudes towards queerness and engage in critical reflection and re-evaluation of their attitudes, students with strongly negative views towards non-heterosexualities conversely refused to engage at all, typically perceiving even the engagement itself as a threat to their core heterosexual identity. However, the authors caution against relying on the idea that students are simply “homophobic” to explain this reluctance, as this term does not necessarily account for the complexity of the discourses that inform students’ reactions in this context. This “homophobia” may simply be related to a way of performing gender and sexual identity as opposed to overt discrimination and fear.

Enabling authentic collaborative education in an online environment : the QUT Virtual Law Placement

This paper explores an innovative model for work-integrated learning using a virtual paradigm – The Virtual Law Placement Unit at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Australia. It builds upon the conceptual model previously explored at WACE 2007 and provides an account of the lessons learned from the pilot offering of the unit which was conducted and evaluated in 2008. ----- The Virtual Placement Unit offers students the opportunity to complete an authentic workplace task under the guidance of a real-life workplace supervisor, where student-student communication and student-supervisor communication is all conducted virtually (and potentially asynchronously) to create an engaging but flexible learning environment using a combination of Blackboard and SharePoint technologies. This virtual experience is pioneering in the sense that it enables law students to access an unprecedented range of law graduate destination workplaces and projects, including international and social justice placements, absent the constraints traditionally associated with arranging physical placements. ----- All aspects of this unit have been designed in conjunction with community partners with a view to balancing student learning objectives with community needs through co-operative education. This paper will also explore how the implementation of the project is serving to strengthen those partnerships with the wider community, simultaneously addressing the community engagement agenda of the University and enabling students to engage meaningfully with local, national and international community partners in the real world of work.

Assessing reflection skills in law using criterion-referenced assessment

This paper focuses on the assessment of reflective practice, an issue that has not been fully explored within legal education literature. While the issue of how reflective practice should be taught is one that requires careful consideration, it is beyond the scope of this paper to consider both the teaching and the assessment of reflective practice. Part II of this paper conceptualises reflective practice, and Part III explores the benefits of reflective practice in legal education and the use of reflective writing to assess experiential learning in a legal context. Part IV considers the diverse issues that arise in assessing reflective practice and whether there is an objective method for assessing reflection. Part V of the paper examines the assessment of reflective practice in the context of an exemplar undergraduate law subject that uses a reflective report to assess students’ experiential learning during a court visit.14 Finally, Part VI offers a rubric to facilitate criterion-referenced assessment of reflective practice and thereby provides a framework for assessing reflection skills. It is suggested that the rubric is transferable not only to other law subjects but also to subjects in other disciplines.

Butterworths Questions and Answers : Criminal Law in Queensland and Western Australia

Criminal Law in Queensland and Western Australia is a new title in the Butterworths Questions and Answers (BQA) series, focusing on the criminal law in the main code states – Queensland and WA.

Realistic yet humanitarian? The comprehensive plan of action and refugee policy in Southeast Asia

The 1989 Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) has recently been described as a successful example of how to manage large protracted refugee flows. However, this article revisits the circumstances surrounding the CPA used to resolve the prolonged Indo-Chinese refugee crisis to highlight that part of its development was linked to the fact that Southeast Asian states refused to engage with proposed solutions, which did not include repatriation for the majority of the Indo-Chinese asylum seekers who were deemed to be ‘non-genuine’1 ( UNGA, 1989a) refugees. This resulted in the CPA often forcibly repatriating ‘non-genuine’ refugees, particularly near the end of its program. This article reviews the CPA in order to assess whether its practices and results should be repeated.

Where the bloody hell does parody fit in Australian copyright law?

This article examines the role of the recently introduced fair dealing exception for the purposes of parody and satire in Australian copyright law. Parody and satire, while central to Australian expression, pose a substantial challenge for copyright policy. The law is asked to strike a delicate balance between an author’s right to exploit their work, the interests of the public in stimulating free speech and critical discussion, the rights of artists who rely on existing material in creating their own expression, and the rights of all artists in their reputation and the integrity of their works. This article highlights the difficulty parodists and satirists have historically faced in Australia and examines the potential of the new fair dealing exceptions to relieve this difficulty. This article concludes that the new exceptions have the potential, if read broadly, not only to bridge the gap between humorous and non-humorous criticism, but also to allow for the use of copyright material to critique figures other than the copyright owner or author, extending to society generally. This article will argue that the new exceptions should be read broadly to further this important policy goal while also being limited in their application so as to prevent mere substitutable uses of copyright material. To achieve these twin goals, I suggest that the primary indication of fairness of an unlicensed parody should be whether or not it adds significant new expression so as not to be substitutable for the original work.

Open Access and Public Sector Information : Policy Developments in Australia and Key Jurisdictions

This book chapter considers recent developments in Australia and key jurisdictions both in relation to the formation of a national information strategy and the management of legal rights in public sector information.

Are there any true adult-onset offenders?

In the extant literature, adult-onset offending has usually been identified using official sources. It is possible, however, that many of the individuals identified would have had unofficial histories of prior offending. To investigate this issue, the men from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) were examined. The CSDD is a prospective longitudinal study of men from inner-city London, followed from age 8 to age 48. Onset of offending was identified using official records and then the self-reported offending of the adult-onset offender group (with a first conviction at age 21 or later) was compared to others. All the adult-onset offenders self-reported some previous offending in childhood and adolescence but most of this offending was not sufficiently frequent or serious to lead to a conviction in practice. About one-third of adult-onset offenders were considered to be self-reported delinquents who were realistically in danger of being convicted because of the frequency of their offending. For some, the adjudication by the criminal justice system was simply the first time that their ongoing pattern of offending had been detected. Their lack of detection was because the types of offences they were committing had lower detection rates.

Traceability : retracing law and public policy on measurement standards

This presentation outlines key aspects of public policy in broad terms insofar as they relate to establishment, implementation and compliance with legal measurement standards. It refers in particular to traceability of a legal measurement unit from its source in a single international standard as a compliance issue. It comments on accreditation of legal measurement and liability concerned with errors in measurement.

Cyber bullying in schools and the law : is there an effective means of addressing the power imbalance?

Cyber bullying – or bullying through the use of technology – is a growing phenomenon which is currently most commonly experienced by young people and the consequences manifested in schools. Cyber bullying shares many of the same attributes as face-to-face bullying such as a power imbalance and a sense of helplessness on the part of the target. Not surprisingly, targets of face-to-face bullying are increasingly turning to the law, and it is likely that targets of cyber bullying may also do so in an appropriate case. This article examines the various criminal, civil and vilification laws that may apply to cases of cyber bullying and assesses the likely effectiveness of these laws as a means of redressing that power imbalance between perpetrator and target.