Conference Report of the First Meeting of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, 21-23 May 2009, Department of American Indian Studies, University of Minneapolis, Minesota, United States of America

Report provided back by Bronwyn Fredericks on her participation at the First Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Meeting held 21-23 May 2009 in Minnesota, United States of America.

An Interview with John Rajchman, Department of Art History, Columbia University, on Architecture, Deleuze and Foucault

An Interview with John Rajchman, Department of Art History, Columbia University, on Architecture, Deleuze and Foucault at his apartment, Riverside Drive, New York City, February 10, 2003.

Strategy for the development of investment decision-making framework for road asset management for queensland department of main roads

The aim of this project is to develop a systematic investment decision-making framework for infrastructure asset management by incorporation economic justification, social and environmental consideration in the decision-making process. This project assesses the factors that are expected to provide significant impacts on the variability of expenditures. A procedure for assessing risk and reliability for project investment appraisals will be developed. The project investigates public perception, social and environmental impacts on road infrastructure investment. This research will contribute to the debate about how important social and environmental issues should be incorporated into the investment decision-making process for infrastructure asset management.

Teachers reporting suspected child sexual abuse : results of a three-state study

Over 3000 cases of child sexual abuse are identified every year in Australia, but the real incidence is higher still. As a strategy to identify child sexual abuse, Australian States and Territories have enacted legislation requiring members of selected professions, including teachers, to report suspected cases. In addition, policy-based reporting obligations have been developed by professions, including the teaching profession. These legislative and industry-based developments have occurred in a context of growing awareness of the incidence and consequences of child sexual abuse. Teachers have frequent contact and close relationships with children, and possess expertise in monitoring changes in children’s behaviour. Accordingly, teachers are seen as being well-placed to detect and report suspected child sexual abuse. To date, however, there has been little empirical research into the operation of these reporting duties. The extent of teachers’ awareness of their duties to report child sexual abuse is unknown. Further, there is little evidence about teachers’ past reporting practice. Teachers’ duties to report sexual abuse, especially those in legislation, differ between States, and it is not known whether or how these differences affect reporting practice. This article presents results from the first large-scale Australian survey of teachers in three States with different reporting laws: New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia. The results indicate levels of teacher knowledge of reporting duties, reveal evidence about past reporting practice, and provide insights into anticipated future reporting practice and legal compliance. The findings have implications for reform of legislation and policy, training of teachers about the reporting of child sexual abuse, and enhancement of child protection.

Punitiveness and the criminalisation of the other : State wards, unlawful non-citizens and Indigenous youth

This paper explores the genealogies of bio-power that cut across punitive state interventions aimed at regulating or normalising several distinctive ‘problem’ or ‘suspect’ deviant populations, such as state wards, non-lawful citizens and Indigenous youth. It begins by making some general comments about the theoretical approach to bio-power taken in this paper. It then outlines the distinctive features of bio-power in Australia and how these intersected with the emergence of penal welfarism to govern the unruly, unchaste, unlawful, and the primitive. The paper draws on three examples to illustrate the argument – the gargantuan criminalisation rates of Aboriginal youth, the history of incarcerating state wards in state institutions, and the mandatory detention of unlawful non-citizens and their children. The construction of Indigenous people as a dangerous presence, alongside the construction of the unruly neglected children of the colony — the larrikin descendants of convicts as necessitating special regimes of internal controls and institutions, found a counterpart in the racial and other exclusionary criteria operating through immigration controls for much of the twentieth century. In each case the problem child or population was expelled from the social body through forms of bio-power, rationalised as strengthening, protecting or purifying the Australian population.

Online discovery of similarity mappings

We consider the problem of choosing, sequentially, a map which assigns elements of a set A to a few elements of a set B. On each round, the algorithm suffers some cost associated with the chosen assignment, and the goal is to minimize the cumulative loss of these choices relative to the best map on the entire sequence. Even though the offline problem of finding the best map is provably hard, we show that there is an equivalent online approximation algorithm, Randomized Map Prediction (RMP), that is efficient and performs nearly as well. While drawing upon results from the "Online Prediction with Expert Advice" setting, we show how RMP can be utilized as an online approach to several standard batch problems. We apply RMP to online clustering as well as online feature selection and, surprisingly, RMP often outperforms the standard batch algorithms on these problems.

My Victorian Waterway : Personal Connections with Rivers, Estuaries and Wetlands in Victoria. Report Commissioned by the Department of Sustainability and Environment

Victorians feel a strong connection to their local waterways and most have a good grasp of river health issues. The My Victorian Waterway report analyses how Victorians interact with their local waterways including rivers, lakes and estuaries. The report is based on the results of a survey completed by more than 7,000 Victorians who answered questions about how they use and care for their local waterways as well as their knowledge of river health issues and aspirations for the future of our waterways.

An evaluation of the sustainability of agreements reached through mediations conducted by the dispute resolution centres of the Department of Justice and Attorney General, Queensland between 1999 to 2003

In 1990 the Dispute Resolution Centres Act, 1990 (Qld) (the Act) was passed by the Queensland Parliament. In the second reading speech for the Dispute Resolution Centres Bill on May 1990 the Hon Dean Wells stated that the proposed legislation would make mediation services available “in a non-coercive, voluntary forum where, with the help of trained mediators, the disputants will be assisted towards their own solutions to their disputes, thereby ensuring that the result is acceptable to the parties” (Hansard, 1990, 1718). It was recognised at that time that a method for resolving disputes was necessary for which “the conventional court system is not always equipped to provide lasting resolution” (Hansard, 1990, 1717). In particular, the lasting resolution of “disputes between people in continuing relationships” was seen as made possible through the new legislation; for example, “domestic disputes, disputes between employees, and neighbourhood disputes relating to such issues as overhanging tree branches, dividing fences, barking dogs, smoke, noise and other nuisances are occurring continually in the community” (Hansard, 1990, 1717). The key features of the proposed form of mediation in the Act were articulated as follows: “attendance of both parties at mediation sessions is voluntary; a party may withdraw at any time; mediation sessions will be conducted with as little formality and technicality as possible; the rules of evidence will not apply; any agreement reached is not enforceable in any court; although it could be made so if the parties chose to proceed that way; and the provisions of the Act do not affect any rights or remedies that a party to a dispute has apart from the Act” (Hansard, 1990, 1718). Since the introduction of the Act, the Alternative Dispute Resolution Branch of the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General has offered mediation services through, first the Community Justice Program (CJP), and then the Dispute Resolution Centres (DRCs) for a range of family, neighbourhood, workplace and community disputes. These services have mirrored those available through similar government agencies in other states such as the Community Justice Centres of NSW and the Victorian Dispute Resolution Centres. Since 1990, mediation has become one of the fastest growing forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Sourdin has commented that "In addition to the growth in court-based and community-based dispute resolution schemes, ADR has been institutionalised and has grown within Australia and overseas” (2005, 14). In Australia, in particular, the development of ADR service provision “has been assisted by the creation and growth of professional organisations such as the Leading Edge Alternative Dispute Resolvers (LEADR), the Australian Commercial Dispute Centres (ACDC), Australian Disputes Resolution Association (ADRA), Conflict Resolution Network, and the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia (IAMA)” (Sourdin, 2005, 14). The increased emphasis on the use of ADR within education contexts (particularly secondary and tertiary contexts) has “also led to an increasing acceptance and understanding of (ADR) processes” (Sourdin, 2005, 14). Proponents of the mediation process, in particular, argue that much of its success derives from the inherent flexibility and creativity of the agreements reached through the mediation process and that it is a relatively low cost option in many cases (Menkel-Meadow, 1997, 417). It is also accepted that one of the main reasons for the success of mediation can be attributed to the high level of participation by the parties involved and thus creating a sense of ownership of, and commitment to, the terms of the agreement (Boulle, 2005, 65). These characteristics are associated with some of the core values of mediation, particularly as practised in community-based models as found at the DRCs. These core values include voluntary participation, party self-determination and party empowerment (Boulle, 2005, 65). For this reason mediation is argued as being an effective approach to resolving disputes, that creates a lasting resolution of the issues. Evaluation of the mediation process, particularly in the context of the growth of ADR, has been an important aspect of the development of the process (Sourdin, 2008). Writing in 2005 for example, Boulle, states that “although there is a constant refrain for more research into mediation practice, there has been a not insignificant amount of mediation measurement, both in Australia and overseas” (Boulle, 2005, 575). The positive claims of mediation have been supported to a significant degree by evaluations of the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. A common indicator of the effectiveness of mediation is the settlement rate achieved. High settlement rates for mediated disputes have been found for Australia (Altobelli, 2003) and internationally (Alexander, 2003). Boulle notes that mediation agreement rates claimed by service providers range from 55% to 92% (Boulle, 2005, 590). The annual reports for the Alternative Dispute Resolution Branch of the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General considered prior to the commencement of this study indicated generally achievement of an approximate settlement figure of 86% by the Queensland Dispute Resolution Centres. More recently, the 2008-2009 annual report states that of the 2291 civil dispute mediated in 2007-2008, 86% reached an agreement. Further, of the 2693 civil disputes mediated in 2008-2009, 73% reached an agreement. These results are noted in the report as indicating “the effectiveness of mediation in resolving disputes” and as reflecting “the high level of agreement achieved for voluntary mediations” (Annual Report, 2008-2009, online). Whilst the settlement rates for the DRCs are strong, parties are rarely contacted for long term follow-up to assess whether agreements reached during mediation lasted to the satisfaction of each party. It has certainly been the case that the Dispute Resolution Centres of Queensland have not been resourced to conduct long-term follow-up assessments of mediation agreements. As Wade notes, "it is very difficult to compare "success" rates” and whilst “politicians want the comparison studies (they) usually do not want the delay and expense of accurate studies" (1998, 114). To date, therefore, it is fair to say that the efficiency of the mediation process has been evaluated but not necessarily its effectiveness. Rather, the practice at the Queensland DRCs has been to evaluate the quality of mediation service provision and of the practice of the mediation process. This has occurred, for example, through follow-up surveys of parties' satisfaction rates with the mediation service. In most other respects it is fair to say that the Centres have relied on the high settlement rates of the mediation process as a sign of the effectiveness of mediation (Annual Reports 1991 - 2010). Research of the mediation literature conducted for the purpose of this thesis has also indicated that there is little evaluative literature that provides an in-depth analysis and assessment of the longevity of mediated agreements. Instead evaluative studies of mediation tend to assess how mediation is conducted, or compare mediation with other conflict resolution options, or assess the agreement rate of mediations, including parties' levels of satisfaction with the service provision of the dispute resolution service provider (Boulle, 2005, Chapter 16).

Submission to the Queensland Department of Communities Review of the Juvenile Justices Act 1992 Issues Paper 2007

This submission addresses the Queensland Government’s Department of Communities Issues Paper regarding the Review of the Juvenile Justice Act 1992 (August 2007). The Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law has a Criminal Justice Program within the Law and Justice Research Centre. The members of this Program wish to participate in the debate on these issues which are critically important to the Queensland community at large but especially to our young people.

Effects of free flow state highway traffic parameters on the performance of amplify and forward cooperative multi-hop vehicular networks

In this paper we analyse the effects of highway traffic flow parameters like vehicle arrival rate and density on the performance of Amplify and Forward (AF) cooperative vehicular networks along a multi-lane highway under free flow state. We derive analytical expressions for connectivity performance and verify them with Monte-Carlo simulations. When AF cooperative relaying is employed together with Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC) at the receivers the average route error rate shows 10-20 fold improvement compared to direct communication. A 4-8 fold increase in maximum number of traversable hops can also be observed at different vehicle densities when AF cooperative communication is used to strengthen communication routes. However the theorical upper bound of maximum number of hops promises higher performance gains.