Place-taking and place-making in waterfront renewal, Australia

Waterfront and port zones around the world have long been subject to change, as they have variously been used for trade, waste disposal, leisure and most recently for urban re-imagining, spectacle and lifestyle housing. While such a narrative has been well explored in the urban studies literature, another element of port development – its relation to imperialism and colonisation has not. In the case of colonized countries – such as Australia, but also Canada, the United States and across Africa and Asia – waterfronts were often the entry points of imperial occupancy and key sites for colonial trade and industry. Contestation over how to value and use these sites is integral to their constitution as landscapes, as place taking becomes part of their place making. It will be argued, using case studies drawn from Adelaide and Melbourne in Australia that these sites register a range of culturally-specific imprints connected to the colonisation process. For Indigenous Australians, sea country was indistinguishable from land, but subsequent assessments have seen land demarcated from the ocean, water defiled and obliterated, slums designated but then redeveloped and the Indigenous present rendered benign through its symbolic re-presentation. This post-colonial reading will correlate the divide between land and water with those who have the imperial and class power to define this elemental boundary to add a new dimension to studies of waterfronts.

The musical and social benefits of community choir membership in Melbourne (Australia)

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Hungry for change: the food banking industry in Australia

Purpose – Over the last 20 years, food banks in Australia have expanded nationwide and are a well-organised “industry” operating as a third tier of the emergency food relief system. The purpose of this paper is to overview the expansion and operation of food banks as an additional self-perpetuating “tier” in the response to hunger.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on secondary data sourced from the internet; as well as information provided by Foodbank Australia and Food Bank South Australia (known as Food Bank SA) to outline the history, development and operation of food banks. Food banking is then critically analysed by examining the nature and framing of the social problems and policies that food banking seeks to address. This critique challenges the dominant intellectual paradigm that focuses on
solving problems; rather it questions how problem representation may imply certain understandings.

Findings – The issue of food banks is framed as one of food re-distribution and feeding hungry people; however, the paper argue that “the problem” underpinning the food bank industry is one of maintaining food system efficiency. Food banks continue as a neo-liberal mechanism to deflect query, debate and structural action on food poverty and hunger. Consequently their existence does little to ameliorate the problem of food poverty.

Practical implications – New approaches and partnerships with stakeholders remain key challenges for food banks to work more effectively to address food poverty.

Social implications – While the food bank industry remains the dominant solution to food poverty in Australia, debate will be deflected from the underlying structural causes of hunger.

Originality/value – This paper contributes to the limited academic literature and minimal critique of the food bank industry in Australia. It proposes that the rapid expansion of food banks is a salient marker of government and policy failure to address food poverty.

Barriers to implementing reverse logistics in South Australian construction organisations

Purpose - This paper aims to present a survey of the perceptions of the barriers to implementing reverse logistics (RL) practices in South Australian (SA) construction organisations. Despite the extensive research on forward logistics and RL, there is a paucity of studies that examine the barriers to implementing RL particularly within the Australian construction industry. This study builds on the ongoing research being undertaken by the authors, entitled “Designing for reverse logistics (DfRL) within the building life cycle: practices, drivers and barriers”, which is examining the best practices and drivers that could be used as a “road map” for developing appropriate solutions for the successful implementation of RL. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected by utilising a triangulated data collection approach, a literature review and 49 questionnaires. The review of the literature identified 16 barriers to implementing RL. The quantitative survey data were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics with correlation analysis to examine the relationships between different pairs of variables comprising RL’s critical barriers. Findings - The following barriers were indicated as most significant: lack of incorporation of salvaged materials by designers; regulation restrictions to usage of recovered materials and components; potential legal liabilities; higher costs; and longer-time association with deconstructing buildings. The least ranked barriers were mostly drawn from the operational and industrial categories as being: organisational lack of support for deconstruction due to incompatible design; lack of organisational support for deconstructing buildings due to higher health and safety risks; and inadequate skills and experience for deconstruction (operational). The industrial barrier was related to “higher costs of salvaged materials in comparison to virgin products”. Research limitations/implications - First, the reported findings are focussed on one study that used questionnaire surveys within the construction industry; therefore, the results may not be generalisable to other contexts. Further, studies should be conducted and extended to other industrial sectors beyond the construction industry. Second, the quantitative study (n 49) used a smaller sample, and the survey items were based on the review of the literature. Practical implications - The identified barriers could be used as a “road map” for the development of appropriate solutions for the successful implementation of RL, and to improve the environment-related decision-making processes of contractors. Originality/value - This study makes a contribution to the body of knowledge on the subject of RL within a previously unexplored SA context. In addition, the study provides some insights on the contributory effects of the barriers to the implementation of RL. It is the first work undertaken to determine the barriers to the adoption of RL within the SA construction industry.

Drivers for adopting reverse logistics in the construction industry : a qualitative study

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyse the perceptions of South Australian construction practitioners on drivers affecting the implementation of reverse logistics (RL). In this context, RL is defined as the process of moving goods from their typical final destination for the purpose of capturing value or ensuring proper disposal.

Design/methodology/approach - Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight practitioners to collect data and the interview transcripts were analysed using the NVivo (version 10) package. Cluster analysis was used to cross-validate the findings and provide an in-depth insight into the findings.

Findings - The findings indicate that most of the drivers identified in earlier research are relevant for the construction industry. In addition, the study identified some new drivers that are categorised as "targeted demands by an exclusive clientele". These drivers were found to be complementary to the economic, environmental and social drivers as previously conceptualised. In addition, a set of factors affecting the strength of drivers that had been overlooked in previous studies emanated from the interview analysis. These include the type of project and the attributes of clients, both of which strongly affect the drivers of RL implementation in construction.

Research limitations/implications - The major limitations are the relatively small size of the sample of interviewees and having interviewees from one geographic area with specific socio-economic characteristics.

Practical implications - The identified drivers and the clustering of RL themes could be used by practitioners as a "road map" for the development of appropriate solutions to successfully promote RL within the construction industry. Organisational energies could thus be channelled towards the drivers that need the most improvement.

Originality/value - The study contributes to this research sphere by employing cluster analysis to customise and contextualise the drivers that were previously identified. The study goes beyond the extant literature by discovering the prominent effects of these drivers on the impact of targeted demands by an exclusive clientele. This could be of great value in terms of creating avenues for future investigations on the topic.

A qualitative examination of major barriers in implementation of reverse logistics within the South Australian construction sector

Despite extensive research on the benefits of reverse logistics (RL), it has yet to become commonplace in the construction industry. Furthermore, the uptake and number of studies on RL remains very limited within the Australian context and particularly related to the construction industry. This paper is aimed at filling that knowledge gap by employing an exploratory approach to examine the critical barriers faced by South Australian construction organizations in implementing RL practices. Semi-structured interviews and a ranking approach facilitated the treatment of qualitative data through quantitative coding using cloud-based applications. The research identified 12 barriers to RL implementation, four of them very significant according to the responses of the interviewees: the regulatory environment, additional costs involved, lack of recognition in the construction supply chain, and extra effort required. The study also explored their inter-relationships through the Co-occurrence Index. The study proposes some remedial measures for RL implementation in South Australia based on the barriers identified.

The Indian diaspora : Hindus and Sikhs in Australia

Since the late 1990s, the Indian community in Australia has grown faster than any other immigrant community. The Indian Diaspora has made substantial contributions to the multi-ethnic and multi-religious diversity within Australia. The growth of Hinduism and Sikhism through gurus, temples, yoga and rituals of many kind has brought new colours, images, customs and practices to the profile of Australian religion, and the Australian landscape more widely. At the same time, Hinduism and Sikhism have themselves been transformed as Hindus and Sikhs from different parts of India as well as Fiji, Malaysia and other parts of the world have come together to establish a pan-Indian ethos. Hindus and Sikhs here have also interacted with other sectors of the Australian population and with religions from the Western world. This is the theme of this book.The Indian Diaspora covers the theory of diaspora, the historical development of the Indian communities in Australia since the late 19th century to the present times, current practices and statistical profiles of Hindus and Sikhs in Australia, and interactions between Hindus and Sikhs with the wider Australian community. There are case-studies of the Indian students and women in the Australian community, of Indian communities in Melbourne and South Australia, and of temple building and the Sikh gurdwara. The book has been edited by and contains contributions from Purushottama Bilimoria, an internationally-known scholar of philosophy and religion, Jayant Bhalchandra Bapat, one of Australia’s most senior Hindu priests and a scholar of Hinduism, and Philip Hughes, a leading analyst of the religious profiles of the Australian people. It also contains contributions from several other prominent scholars. Included are special essays on the importance of diaspora by the late Ninian Smart and on the 19th century Afghan cameleers and Indian hawkers.

The threat of autocracy diffusion in consolidated democracies? The case of China, Singapore and Australia

The majority of today’s authoritarian regimes have little hope of promoting autocracy beyond their own borders, let alone to consolidated democratic countries. However, China and Singapore are two prominent examples of non-democratic countries whose soft power arsenals have given them some global appeal beyond that enjoyed by most authoritarian regimes. But to what extent has China’s and Singapore’s power of example influenced consolidated democracies in terms that the latter wanting to replicate some political practices or even norms in these non-democratic regimes? In this article, we engage recent works to examine this question in relation to how Australians perceive the political example offered by China and Singapore. Focusing our analysis on several prominent polls conducted recently by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, we suggest that at present there is little evidence of a causal impact of the rise of authoritarian powerhouses such as China and Singapore on how Australians view democracy at home. Through these case studies, this article sheds some light on the theoretical as well as practical questions about the inherent impediments of authoritarian diffusion in consolidated democracies.