Australia's response to sexualised or sexually abusive behaviours in children and young people.

Responding to children and young people with sexualised or sexual offending behaviours presents significant challenges across the allied health, child protection, education and juvenile justice sectors. This report maps the specialised therapeutic services designed to effect positive behavioural change and thus divert young people with sexualised behaviours from the juvenile justice system. Accurate numbers on children with sexualised or sexual offending behaviours are difficult to determine. There are several factors contributing to this gap in understanding. These include entrenched ideals about children as inherently innocent, widespread ignorance about developmental sexuality, and the tendency of both young people and parents to deny or minimise incidents when they do occur.

In Australia, data on children with sexualised behaviours are not collected uniformly and nondisclosure contributes to what might be large numbers of offences going undetected. Mandatory reporting requirements apply where children display sexualised behaviours and are thought to be at risk of harm. Yet a general lack of knowledge as to what constitutes appropriate behaviour means that many may respond inappropriately to incidents of sexualised behaviours. This context of confusion, denial and non-disclosure creates a hidden population of children that continues to be at risk. Attention to redressing the contexts for non-disclosure is urgently required to ensure that children in need are provided with specialised therapeutic care.

This report presents qualitative data from interviews with specialised clinicians as well as submissions from service providers in both community and youth justice settings. In mapping the availability of therapeutic services, this report highlights a number of geographic and demographic gaps in service provision, including difficulties with eligibility criteria, referral pathways, funding arrangements and specialised workforce development. There are multiple challenges facing the tertiary services sector, yet the comprehensive provision of specialised services is just one part of the response required. This study emphasises the need for effective primary and secondary prevention to effect a reduction in the numbers of young people requiring counselling in the future. Consistent with the public health model, this report prioritises professional and community education strategies that would ultimately necessitate fewer tertiary services for young people and fewer places in juvenile detention centres.

Problem sexual behaviour in children: a review of the literature

   Although there is an under-acknowledgement of the issue in Australia there is a large body of international scholarship on juveniles who exhibit sexually violent or coercive behaviours toward other juveniles. Research undertaken in the United States and the United Kingdom emphasises options for clinical treatment, the logistics of coordinating multi agency response, and the causes and correlatives for coercive sexual behaviours in adolescents. Much of this literature has tended to focus on adolescents and there is an urgent need for increased studies on young children engaging in problem sexual behaviour.

   The smaller body of work published in Australia also favours adolescents rather than children with much of this work heavily influenced by international clinical studies. There are, however, a handful of reports based on Australian practitioner data that do focus on young children who engage in problem sexual behaviour. This literature surveys and evaluates the very limited number of existing therapeutic programs in Australia, and provides interview data with practitioners working with children exhibiting problem sexual behaviour. In the main, this research reinforces the findings of the internationa scholarship, both in terms of the contributing factors to problem sexual activity in children, but also in terms of the need for multi-faceted and contextually based cognitive behavioural therapeutic programs in response. More importantly, this burgeoning field of study indicates how far we have to go both in understanding the extent of the problem in Australia and in fashioning appropriate programs for prevention and intervention. Dr Joe Tucci is Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Childhood Foundation (ACF), an organisation that has taken a lead in responding to childhood problem sexual behaviour. Tucci et al., (2006) claim an urgent need for investment in a dedicated research and response agenda (Staiger et al., 2005b). To effectively address this issue researchers and practitioners require comprehensive empirical data on problem sexual behaviour in children across all sectors of Australian society, including Indigenous communities.

'Fixers, the people behind the foreign correspondents'

They do the leg work for foreign correspondents who arrive in a new place and have to get on top of a story quickly, but rarely receive public acknowledgement for their work. Fixers can shape who you speak to and what angle you take on a story, as well as the logistics of making it all happen.

Book review: The High Commissioners: Australia's representatives in the United Kingdom, 1910-2010

The post of Australian High Commissioner in London has always been one of the most important and prestigious of Australia’s diplomatic posts. Indeed, as The High Commissioners demonstrates, for much of the one hundred years for which the post has existed it was an influential link between two parts of the British Empire, rather than a diplomatic mission in a foreign nation. It was for a long time a diplomatic post, but of a hybrid nature; an evolving child of empire. This handsomely produced book is a scholarly study of the position and of the many high commissioners. The chapters, which examine all the high commissioners and a range of related subjects, have been authored by many of Australia’s leading historians of empire and of foreign policy, with the most recent high commissioners covered by former government officials. While the book is designed as a celebration of the centenary of the Australian High Commission in London it is not a work of hagiography. Important analyses are presented of the strengths and weaknesses of many of the key high commissioners, such as George Reid, Andrew Fisher, S.M. Bruce, Alexander Downer senior and John Armstrong. Indeed, the book leaves the strong impression that some of the high commissioners, especially after the Second World War, were often well behind the Australian people in appreciating how the relationship between Australia and the United Kingdom was changing. The research and writing is of a uniformly high standard with each chapter providing many interesting insights into the history of Australian foreign policy.

Wrong side of the road

On its release in 1981, Ned Lander's 'Wrong Side of the Road' won that year's Jury Prize at the Australian Film Institute Awards. Emphasising the film's status as a pre-eminent Australian production, the theorist and critic Sylvia Lawson, writing in 2013, called Wrong Side of the Road 'the best Australian film of 1981 and indeed of many other years'. Progressing at a restrained pace, it breaks 'Hollywood conventions (which most Australian films obediently copy) about what constitutes a proper narrative focus', with the result that the film stands as 'something of an event in Australian cinema'. In this way, Wrong Side of the Road is the 'first narrative feature to take the experience of a contemporary Aboriginal group [of characters] as its theme instead of using them as contrasts or complements to the main action'.

The documentary take

Interview on the ABC TV The Mix Episode 38

The "other" in film : exclusions of Aboriginal indentity from Australian cinema

Throughout the latter half of the past century, cinema played a significant role in the shaping of the core narratives of Australia. Films express and implicitly shape national images and symbolic representations of cultural fictions in which ideas about Aboriginal identity have been embedded. In this article,1 exclusionary practices in Australian narratives are analyzed through examples of films representing Aboriginal identity. Through these filmic narratives the articulation, interrogation, and contestation of views about filmic representations of Aboriginal identity in Australia are illuminated. The various themes in the filmic narratives are examined in order to compare and contrast the ways in which Australian films display the operation of narrative closure and dualisms within the film texts.

Voices in the human rights dialogue : the individual victim and the Australian Human Rights Commission

Framework for human rights protection in Australia - report of the National Human Rights Consultation Committee - the role of resolution of human rights complaints in the enforcement of human rights - use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) - current role of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) - future role as an advocator and crusader for victims of human rights abuses - need for recognition and protection of the special status of the AHRC.

Alt.film.au(2) : Blogging at the margins in Australian retrospective 2012

In 1972 Albie Thoms wrote: ‘In Australia it has been impossible to elicit much sympathetic appraisal from critics who seem distressed by the relation of personal film to amateur movies. Even those proselytizing for the New cinema have underrated the personal film as a worthy antidote to the market assumptions of Hollywood.’ (Thoms 1978, p. 146) The question now is, of course, is anything different in 2012? The answer is of course yes and no. Although the politics remains frustratingly familiar the digital has progressed further to the point that where in the 60s every one picked up a guitar, now we pick up a video camera. A postscript relates those films in the program not available for inclusion in the original 90s rant- (i.e. they did not exist) I have further annotated this re-play of old wounds and victories with commentary on some of the films in the screening program.

Boom and bust in Australian screen policy: 10BA, the Film Finance Corporation, and Hollywood's 'race to the bottom'.

In recent years, a narrative has emerged in the Australian popular media about the box office 'unpopularity' of Australian feature films and the 'failure' of the domestic screen industry. This article explores the recent history of Australian screen policy with particular reference to the '10BA' tax incentive of the 1980s; the Film Finance Corporation of Australia (FFC), a government screen agency established in 1988 to bring investment bank-style portfolio management to Australia's screen industry; and local production incentive policies pursed by Australian state governments in a chase for Hollywood's runaway production.

We argue the 10BA incentive catalysed an unsustainable bubble in Australian production, while its policy successor, the FFC, fundamentally failed in its stated mission of 'commercial' screen financing (over its 20-year lifespan, the FFC invested 1.345 billion Australian dollars for 274.2 million Australian dollars recouped - a cumulative return of negative 80 percent). For their part, private investors in Australian films discovered that the screen production process involved high levels of risk.

Foreign-financed production also proved highly volatile, due to the vagaries of trade exposure, currency fluctuations and tax arbitrage. The result of these macro and micro-economic factors often structural and cross-border in nature was that Australia's screen industry failed to develop the local investment infrastructure required to finance a sustainable, non-subsidised local sector.

Film, representation and the exclusion of Aboriginal identity: examples from Australian cinema

Throughout the latter half of the past century cinema has played a significant role in the shaping of the core narratives of Australia. Films express and implicitly shape national images and symbolic representations of cultural fictions in which ideas about Indigenous identity have been embedded. In this paper, exclusionary practices in Australian narratives are analysed through examples of films representing Aboriginal identity. Through these filmic narratives the articulation, interrogation, and contestation of views about filmic representations of Aboriginal identity in Australia is illuminated. The various themes in the filmic narratives are examined in order to compare and contrast the ways in which the films display the operation of narrative closure and dualisms within the film texts.

A sampled OZ Hystery: Australian alternative film from the 60s to the present

Regional Support Network presents:A Sampled OZ Hystery: Australian Alternative Film from the 60s to the PresentTuesday, October 21, 8pm ($5 or PWYC)Videofag (187 Augusta Avenue)(co-sponsored by Videofag and Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT))Curated by Dirk De Bruyn (in person)PROGRAM:Fun Radio - Nigel BuesstLeading Ladies - Lynsey MartinContemplation of the Rose - Michael LeeZoomfilm - Dirk de BruynDiscs - Dirk de BruynDolls - Paul FletcherExcerpt - Chris KnowlesExacuate - Michael Buckley and Sue McCauleyMorena - Marie CravenShort Lives - Neil TaylorE.G. (Elephant Girl) - Virginia HilyardTraum A Dream - Dirk de BruynKeepinTime Abstract - Steven McIntyreTime Ball - Marcia JaneWAP - Dirk de Bruyn