Congestion and optimal immigration policy

This paper presents a model to explain the stylized fact that many countries have a low ratio of migrants in their population while some countries have a high ratio of migrants. Immigration improves the income of the domestic residents, but migrants also increase the congestion of public services. If migrants are unskilled and therefore pay low taxes, and the government does not limit access to these services, then the welfare of the domestic residents decreases with the number of migrants. Visa auctions can lower the cost of immigration control and substitute legal migrants for illegal migrants. If the government decides to limit the access of migrants to public services, immigration control becomes unnecessary and the optimal number of migrants can be very large.

How much should Australians know about Papua New Guinea?

In the last week Papua New Guinea (PNG) has received more exposure in the Australian media than it has for a very long time indeed. Ever since news of the ‘Regional Resettlement Arrangement Between Australia and Papua New Guinea’ agreement between Prime Ministers Rudd and O’Neill appeared on 19 July, discussion and criticism of the so-called ‘PNG Solution’ has been widespread on the internet, on television, radio, and even in the few newspapers still being published. Media outlets which negligently had let their regional coverage slip away – preferring to invest their remaining funds into reportage of last night’s Masterchef – are now scrambling to find copy from anyone with either opinions on the subject, but little knowledge, or some direct knowledge of PNG, alas in short supply.

The avalanche of reporting and commentary has masked the complexity of the issues involved here. On the one hand, we have Australia’s response to boat-borne visa-less immigrants: there is a whole universe of pain tied up in this, as any quick glance at the commentary will demonstrate. On the other, there is Australia and its place in the world and in the region: are we embarrassed to be Australians, or proud to be Aussies who ‘grew here’? And within the region, there is Papua New Guinea.

What can one learn from the reporting of PNG so far in 2013?

Global policing and the case of Kim Dotcom

In early 2012, 76 heavily armed police conducted a raid on a house in Auckland, New Zealand. The targets were Kim Dotcom, a German national with a NZ residency visa, and several colleagues affiliated with Megaupload, an online subscription-based peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing facility. The alleged offences involved facilitating unlawful file sharing and United States federal criminal copyright violations. Following the raid, several court cases provide valuable insights into emerging ‘global policing’ practices (Bowling and Sheptycki 2012) based on communications between sovereign enforcement agencies. This article uses these cases to explore the growth of ‘extraterritorial’ police powers that operate ‘across borders’ (Nadelmann 1993) as part of several broader transformations of global policing in the digital age.

Forensic identification of students outsourcing assignment projects from freelancer.com

This paper reports the increasing popularity of outsourcing academic works by university students motivated by the lure of lucrative dividends and visa opportunities. Due to a lack of formal methods in detecting such transactions, freelance websites are thriving in facilitating the trade of outsourced assignments. This is compounded by the fact that many university staff have neither the time nor training to perform complex media analysis and forensic investigations. This paper proposes a method to aid in the identification of those who outsource assignment works on the most popular site freelancer.com. We include a recent real-world case study to demonstrate the relevancy and applicability of our methodology. In this case study, a suspect attempts to evade detection via use of anti-forensics which demonstrates the capability and awareness of evasion techniques used by students.

Synthesis and evaluation of cationic norbornanes as peptidomimetic antibacterial agents

A series of structurally amphiphilic biscationic norbornanes have been synthesised as rigidified, low molecular weight peptidomimetics of cationic antimicrobial peptides. A variety of charged hydrophilic functionalities were attached to the norbornane scaffold including aminium, guanidinium, imidazolium and pyridinium moieties. Additionally, a range of hydrophobic groups of differing sizes were incorporated through an acetal linkage. The compounds were evaluated for antibacterial activity against both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. Activity was observed across the series; the most potent of which exhibited an MIC's ≤ 1 μg mL(-1) against Streptococcus pneumoniae, Enterococcus faecalis and several strains of Staphylococcus aureus, including multi-resistant methicillin resistant (mMRSA), glycopeptide-intermediate (GISA) and vancomycin-intermediate (VISA) S. aureus.