Women, minorities, and proportional representation in Parliament : a proposal for voting reform

The right to vote permits the voices of the electorate to be heard in democracies. However, voting is often insufficient for minorities to obtain representation by their preferred candidates. For traditional political ‘minorities’ including women, self-representation is essential to political equality and social equity. Despite holding roughly 50% of the electoral vote in Australia for 100 years, women comprise only 22% of the Commonwealth Members and 29% of Senators. This paper proposes a new vote counting system, STV with Borda elimination or STV-B. STV-B retains proportional representation but much greater voter control over selection of candidates. STV-B would provide women with a mechanism that yields proportional representation for women without undermining party representation.

No smoke without fire : Benedict XVI and true liturgical reform

I read the recent comments on Pope Paul VI and the 'smoke of Satan' (July AD2000) with interest not long after I had finished re-reading the massive work by the late Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, generally considered to be the main architect of the liturgical reforms prior to, during, and after Vatican II.

Modelling new public management in an Asian context : public sector reform in Malaysia

This article combines the key elements of new public management theories with theories of privatisation and total quality management. The key elements identified in this review are used to establish a general model of new public management. Based on western theorising, the model is acknowledged as having a cultural bias. As a corrective, the article reviews the empirical experience of Malaysian public sector reform between 1980 and 2000, with the findings being used to identifying country-specific characteristics as a means of refining the model in a way that reflects that experience. The discussion concludes by setting out a revised model of new public management which takes account of its application in a Malaysian context. The contention is that the process of enquiry leading to this contingent model of new public management might be adapted along similar lines for the purposes of analysing the application of public sector reform in other developing countries.

Trust and the social capital necessary for pedagogical reform

Part of the program of educational reform and the change in pedagogy from rote top down instruction to group based and more creative forms of  pedagogy relies on teachers adequately engaging with accepting, and  trusting the reforms and the way subjectivity is reformulated in the  classroom. My essential argument is that if we want to know how Malaysian educational reform will work and what its chances of success are we must focus as much on the issue of trust as we do on pedagogy. The reasons for this are two fold. First, the success of pedagogical reform and the pick up of new forms of pedagogy in the classroom relies on forms of social interaction and aspects of social capital that are different from the types of relationships that characterize a traditional educational setting. Second, a failure to  understand the important social capital that is both a precursor to  pedagogical reform as well as an outcome of it is a failure to understand  both how pedagogical reform can work and what its implications are. If this thesis is correct then we need to focus our research agendas on an area  that is not as well researched. We need to look at the social capital  preconditions for effective teaching and in particular the issue of trust in our  teaching. This paper is an attempt to map out the theoretical issues that  need further elaboration through research.

Youth culture educational reform and pedagogy

The discourse of globalisation and the knowledge economy are now front and centre of the ever changing discourse of youth and youth identity. Educational reform in Malaysian society is seeking to engage the problems of globalization and the need for reform in schooling as a prerequisite for social and economic development. The education of youth is as a critical prerequisite for national advancement and development. The syllogism that structures debate with respect to globalization, youth and education is that reform to teaching technique will lead to improved competencies in students and this in turn will lead to improvements in human capital thus leading to economic and social advancement. Missing from such a simple approach is an understanding of youth culture in its multiple forms as now being productive of capacities, knowledge’s and attitudes that are arguably often far in advance of what is taught in schools. This argues that often the action in terms of cognitive growth, glocalised competencies, collaboration, cross cultural dialogue and innovative creativity are found in youth cyber communities, popular cultural movements often portrayed as problematic or troublesome. Proper educational strategies in Malaysian schooling society require teachers to learn from their students and engage innovative pedagogy not as something to be taught top down in rote fashion, but as something that is genuinely open, interactive and dialogical. This paper will discuss this theoretical issue with specific reference to Malaysian examples and policy initiatives.

Power and production in site-based management: the responses of women secondary principals to structural reform in South Australian education

After describing and analysing the purpose and shape of structural reform in Australia, the author uses the data gained from interviews with 16 South Australian women principals, to examine its effects on the work of principals. She uses her analysis to issue some warnings about the current moves to Local School Management in South Australia

Generic medicines in Australia : business dynamics and recent policy reform

This article describes the role of generics in the Australian prescription drug market and patterns of business activity in this dynamic market segment. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is the central mechanism for the supply of prescription medicines. PBS prices are arrived at through cost-effectiveness analyses comparing new products against already available products and therapies. In this system, prices do not operate effectively as incentives for consumers or prescribers to choose generics, and their market share was historically marginal. In recent years, generics suppliers achieved a growing market share through discounts (trading terms) to pharmacists. It is estimated that around 30% of PBS scripts, representing around 15% of PBS sales by value, are now filled with generics. Complex changes to the PBS were introduced in 2007, to be phased in over the period to 2012, aimed at increasing the scope for cost benefits to the government, and to lesser extent consumers, from the expanding availability of generic medicines.

Aligning school reform and teacher education reform in the middle years : an australian case study

This paper discusses the development of a new Bachelor of Education (Middle Years of Schooling) at The University of Queensland. The middle years of schooling have increasingly been the focus of education reform initiatives in Australia, but this has not been accompanied by significant increases in the number of teacher education institutions offering specialised middle schooling-level teacher preparation programmes. Considering the rapidly changing social and economic context and the emergent state of middle schooling in Australia, the programme represented a conceptual and practical opportunity and challenge for The University of Queensland team. Working collaboratively, the team sought to design a teacher education preservice programme that was both responsive and generative: that is, responsive to local school contexts and to current educational research and reform at national and international levels; and generative of cutting-edge theories and practices associated with middle schooling, teachers' work, and teacher education. This paper focuses on one component of the Middle Years of Schooling Teacher Education programme at The University of Queensland; namely, the practicum. We first present the underlying principles of the practicum programme and then examine "dilemmas" that emerged early in the practicum. These issues and tensions were associated with the ideals of "middle years" philosophy and the pragmatics of school reform associated with that new approach. In this paper, and within this context, we explore what it means to be both responsive and generative, and describe how we as teacher educators negotiated between the extremes these terms implied.