Proceedings of the 2005 Australian Software Engineering Conference

Established in 1986, ASWEC is the premier technical meeting for the Australian software engineering community, and attracts a significant number of international participants. The major goal of the conference is to provide a forum for exchanging experience and new research results in software engineering. To increase the industry participation at ASWEC, we organized two separate paper tracks, which we have called Research Papers and Industry Experience Reports. These paper tracks had separate deadlines, separate program committees, separate review procedures, and separate proceedings. The Research Papers appear in these proceedings and the Industry Experience Reports will appear on a CD-Rom that will be distributed at the conference. The Research Papers track for ASWEC 2005 includes submissions from Australia and across the world. This year we received 79 submissions from 13 countries: 48 from Australia, 7 from New Zealand, 11 from Asia, 9 from Europe, and 2 each from North and South America. All papers were fully refereed by three Program Committee members. We accepted 34 papers to be presented at the conference. We are grateful to all authors who contributed to ASWEC.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit Annual Report 2005

Welcome to the 2005 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit Annual Report. This report is a brief summary of Unit activities during the 2005 calendar year. The Unit provides personal and academic support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and specifically aims to increase the recruitment, retention, academic performance and graduation rates of Indigenous students. The Unit also administers schemes to help Indigenous students gain access to, and receive support in, tertiary studies such as the Alternative Entry scheme and the federally-funded Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme (ITAS). The Unit is also the focus for teaching and research in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies at the University of Queensland.

Increasingly inequitable distribution of general practitioners in Australia, 1986-96

Objective: To document trends in the distribution of general practitioners (GPs) in Australia between 1986 and 1996, adjusted for community need. Methods: Data on the location of GPs, population size and crude mortality in statistical divisions (SD) were obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census of Population and Housing in 1986 and 1996. From these data, we calculated measures of distribution equality (number of people sharing each GP in each SD) and distribution equity (number of people sharing each GP divided by the crude mortality rate; the Robin Hood Index), and analysed temporal changes in the distribution of GPs. Results: Nationally the number of people sharing each GP fell 11% from 1,038 in 1986 to 921 in 1996. However, in 41 of 57 SDs (72%, p=0.01) the number of people sharing a GP actually increased over this time, and the average Robin Hood Index across SDs fell from 0.943 to 0.783 (p=0.004), indicating increasingly inequitable distribution. Comparing the Robin Hood index values of all SDs ranked in pairs, the value fell in 53 of 57 (93%, p<0.001) paired SDs over the decade. These patterns demonstrate increasing inequity over the decade. The number of people sharing each GP was consistently and substantially lower in the capital city SDs and the Robin Hood Index values were consistently and substantially higher (overserved) compared with country SDs. Conclusions: Despite there being more GPs per capita in Australia, their distribution became increasingly unequal and inequitable between 1986 and 1996, such that rural and remote areas became increasingly poorly served.

Out of the shadows: The critical sociology of sport in Australia, 1986 to 1996

The sociology of sport in Australia has reached a key point in its development. A critical tradition in the subdiscipline has been established over the last decade, but its intellectual and institutional progress has been uneven. This article briefly traces the emergence of critical sports sociology in a country outside the major centers in the UK and U.S., its break with functionalist approaches, and its attempts to overcome the neglect of local mainstream sociology. The authors proceed to examine (self-reflexively) the changes of theoretical direction and the new lines of research that are being explored in the field. A recent ''skirmish'' with narrative history over the preferred theories and methods in sports analysis is discussed as illustrative of the difficulties encountered by an energetic but small, dispersed and underorganized scholarly movement in Australia.

Modelling basin level allocation of water in the Murray-Darling Basin in a world of uncertainty, Murray-Darling Program Working Papers WPM05-1, Risk and Sustainable Management Group, 8 February 2005

Abstract: The Murray-Darling Basin comprises over 1 million km2; it lies within four states and one territory; and over 12, 800 GL of irrigation water is used to produce over 40% of the nation's gross value of agricultural production. This production is used by a diverse collection of some-times mutually exclusive commodities (e.g. pasture; stone fruit; grapes; cotton and field crops). The supply of water for irrigation is subject to climatic and policy uncertainty. Variable inflows mean that water property rights do not provide a guaranteed supply. With increasing public scrutiny and environmental issues facing irrigators, greater pressure is being placed on this finite resource. The uncertainty of the water supply, water quality (salinity), combined with where water is utilised, while attempting to maximising return for investment makes for an interesting research field. The utilisation and comparison of a GAMS and Excel based modelling approach has been used to ask: where should we allocate water?; amongst what commodities?; and how does this affect both the quantity of water and the quality of water along the Murray-Darling river system?