120 resultados para AUSTRALIA -- Politics
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A prominent feature of recent Australian economic discourse is the assertion that there was a ‘productivity surge’ during the 1990s, resulting from the neoliberal microeconomic reforms inaugurated in the early 1980s. However, the evidence for the productivity surge is routinely overstated, thus undermining the rationale for many past and future microeconomic reforms. There is also substantial evidence that productivity growth can have perverse socioeconomic and/or environmental consequences. Nonetheless, many policymakers, economists and commentators remain preoccupied with increasing productivity growth. This article examines the Australian productivity debate and concludes that this is driven more by neoliberal norms than socioeconomic necessity. These are manifest in a disciplinary discourse that constructs productivity growth as a national imperative, unencumbered by negative social and environmental externalities.
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BACKGROUND: As the changes underpinning the Coordinated Care Trials in South Australia have become more apparent, similarities have emerged between the rationalisation of public schooling in the mid 1980s and the transformation of public health in the 1990s. <br /><br />OBJECTIVE: This article aims to discuss the evolution of health services in South Australia and help us answer the question of how best to manage our public and private health infrastructure in a changing economic and social context. <br /><br />DISCUSSION: Both strategies in education and health share common elements of cost cutting, attempts at improving efficiencies, a flirting with the private sector and the attendant risk of reduced quality of services to the public. This situation in both sectors is indicative of a shift in public policy and a growth in the belief that private management of public sector infrastructure can help resolve the funding crises around our education and health systems.
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This paper tracks the development of gender equity and schooling policy in Australia from theNational Policy on the Education of Girls in 1987, to current policy concerns with boys’ educational underperformance. The paper’s key focus is on the ways in which feminist informed equity policy has been undermined by broader imperatives of economic rationalism and anti-feminist discourses. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s understandings of distributive and cultural gender justice and her notion of a nonidentitarian feminist politics, the paper critically examines the ways in which such imperatives have re-articulated equity and schooling concerns. Through these lenses, the limitations of the affirmative gender binary politics and remedies that have dominated gender and schooling reform in Australia are highlighted. The paper concludes with an illumination of the gender justice spaces currently being mobilised in Australian schools. Such spaces, it is argued, fostered within a context of increasing autonomy and self-management for schools, are providing avenues for creative and disruptive (pro)feminist activism.
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AFTER BALI, OCTOBER 12, 2002, A RANGE OF PUBLIC rituals took place in Australia to remember those who had been killed in the bombing. In Melbourne, the most visible, and collective ritual was the laying of flowers by members of the public on the steps of the State Parliament building, at the highly visible apex of Bourke St. This was a much-publicized event that took place over a period of two weeks. It was a riveting and moving sight/site for many people, who left notes expressing grief and regret, promises of remembrance, and of revenge. The choice of the site, and what would happen there, was prompted by talk-back listeners to Radio 3AW's Nell Mitchell, who called in with many different suggestions as to where and why the laying of flowers should take place. This essay seeks to understand the processes and purposes of the popular, public rituals after Bali, asking who made them, what was made, and how popular--that is, open to formation by those not primarily and directly connected with the mass media and party politics--were the constructions? Further, in calling such an event a "postmodern ritual," the essay will inaugurate an analysis, through cultural studies methodologies, of the attributes of public rituals in contemporary Western cultures.<br />
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The pharmaceutical domain represents a type of internationalised policy network theorised in recent writings on neo-liberalism, neo-corporatism and governance. This article presents an analysis of developments in prescription drug regulation in Australia. A relatively stable, state-managed pattern of interaction has been superseded by less closed exchange, and the government itself has fragmented into agencies pursuing different objectives. Developments in the three core regulatory areas are described: safety and efficacy controls, social policy (access and equity), and state support for industry (economic) development. Consensus-building occurs within the context of the National Medicines Policy. The pharmaceutical industry, represented by Medicines Australia, has a stake in all aspects of pharmaceutical policy and regulation, and draws upon unique resources (expertise and lobbying capacity). The context for the developments described is Australia's abandonment of a protectionist version of the Keynesian welfare national state in favour of the model of the competition state, which is oriented towards support for the growth of high technology industries such as pharmaceuticals, premised on partnerships with business.<br />
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In Australia from 1992 to 1999 Jeff Kennett led the Liberal state government in Victoria. Under his leadership an important vision statement for the arts was produced, and ambitious redevelopments of Victoria’s major cultural institutions were undertaken. Kennett’s ‘vision’ included reforms to Arts Victoria (the state-based arts funding agency) and a radical revision of how the arts were to be subsidised. This represented a wholesale adoption of a new policy approach which saw the arts and culture as an industry which could benefit, in particular, the development of cultural tourism for the state of Victoria. This paper argues that while the arts could be seen to have benefited from the Kennett government’s largesse, some parts of the arts sector were excluded and subjected to censorship. Based on both primary and secondary sources, we argue that in this period, the work of artists which expressed a politically dissenting view was actively discouraged.<br /><br /><br /><br />
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An investigation into the declining supply of principals in two states in Australia revealed that a mosaic of issues surrounds the overall trend towards fewer applications for vacant positions. Looking beyond systemic factors influencing this trend – factors such as the increasing workload of principals – this study discovered why some schools are more affected by a shortage of applicants than others. It was found that one of four categories of deterrents was generally involved with declining numbers of applications: location, the size of school, the presence of an incumbent, or difficulties arising from local educational politics. It was also found that smaller numbers of applicants for vacant positions do not necessarily indicate a decline in interest in school leadership: interest in the principalship remains relatively high but principal aspirants have become increasingly strategic in their applications. Whilst drawing attention, in this paper, to the research finding that numerical interpretations of principal supply have serious limitations, the authors are keen to acknowledge, briefly, the research data that refers to (a) social and generational changes (b) demographic information, (c) teacher resistance to the modern principalship and how these data explain declining numbers. They also include information about recent changes that go counter to the trend.<br />
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A dominant trope of media commentary after the 2004 federal election was the rise of blue-collar self-employment and small business and its negative impact on Labor electoral support. In this paper I examine the evidence on the growth of self-employment and small business in Australia since the 1980s and the political consequences of this growth. I consider why the growth of self-employment and small business has been overstated by many observers, and the emergence of a right-wing anti-capitalism in the critique of the dependence of wage-labour. Although the growth of self-employment and small business has been overstated it is a real phenomenon. I extract the rational kernel from the largely ill-informed commentary on this issue and place contemporary debates about self-employment in a historical and global context. I consider why the self-employed and small business were once seen as natural allies of the working-class in a populist coalition but why they are now identified by commentators as hostile to class politics.<br />
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The delegates are numbered and their names listed below the print: 1.M'Millan, 2.A. Inglis Clarke, 3.Sir John Hall, 4.Captain Russell, 5.Macrossan, 6.Sir Samuel Griffith, 7.Sir Henry Parkes, 8.Playford, 9.Premier Gillies, 10.Deakin, 11.Dr. Cockburn, 12.B.S. Bird, 13.Sir J. Lee Steere, 14. Secretary Jenkins.
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This paper explores, on the one hand, the requirements of the technologies and practices that have been developed for a particular type of renal patient and health network in Australia. On the other, we examine the cultural and practical specificities entailed in the performance of these technologies and practices in the Indigenous Australian context. The praxiographic orientation of the actor-network approach – which has been called 'the politics of what' (Mol 2002) – enabled us to understand the difficulties involved in translating renal healthcare networks across cultural contexts in Australia; to understand the dynamic and contested nature of these networks; and to suggest possible strategies that make use of the tensions between these two disparate networks in ways that might ensure better healthcare for Indigenous renal patients.<br />
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The 1990s heralded a new era in forest policy in Australia with the introduction of The National Forest Policy Statement which provided a framework under which native forest resources would be protected whilst also permitting ecologically sustainable timber harvesting. However, the implementation of the statement through the Regional Forest Agreements by state governments appear to contradict the conditions of the policy. Political bias towards development imperatives in implementing RFAs is evident. Community involvement in RFAs has not been satisfactory for sustainable forest use and management, with ongoing dissatisfaction from some stakeholder groups. There is still increased demand for protection of what remains of the various forest reserves. Aboriginal issues have not been settled in line with the expectation of the policy. There are continuing conflicts between the Commonwealth Government and some state governments<br />
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Australia’s encounters with the Middle East have historically been defined initially through its membership of the British Empire, later as a key Commonwealth player and more recently through Australia's close strategic relationship with the US. This book traces the nature of the Australia-Middle East relationship, from an insular ‘White Australia’ ideology through to the global impact of September 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the new and menacing terror threat that has arrived on its own doorstep. A comprehensive analysis of this complex relationship provides an essential basis for understanding past encounters, evaluating present policies and developing a framework for future interactions. The book seeks to draw together the various dimensions and themes of this relationship – from trade and migration, to Australia’s increasing strategic interest and current military involvement in the region.<br /><br />
