Tightening eligibility for bail for persons on supervision orders in Victoria: repairing a broken system?

Victoria Nourse has observed that political debates about crime legislation are predictable and invariably one-sided because ‘no-one is “for” crime.’1 This certainly appears to be the case with regard to recent proposed changes to the Bail Act 1977 (‘the Act’) by the government of Victoria. The reforms were triggered by the case of Sean Price, an offender with a history of mental disorder, serious offending and lengthy incarceration who was on bail and subject to a supervision order when he murdered Masa Vukotic, raped another woman and assaulted a third person in March 2015. The Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, stated that a bail system that allowed Price to be free and unmonitored was failing the community and pledged to repair ‘a system that is broken.’

Going to a 'double d': the 2016 federal election and the Constitution

This article sets out the key constitutional issues surrounding the 2016 federal election and its aftermath. The authors discuss the double dissolution mechanism in the Australian Constitution which was used to trigger the 2016 election and the recent changes to the Senate voting system. The authors also examine how and why the newly elected senators will divide into long and short term senators after the 2016 election, whether the new Parliament will proceed to a joint sitting, and the prospects of another early election.

Criminalising controlling and coercive behaviour: the next step in the prosecution of family violence?

A new offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in intimate or family relationships has recently come into force in England. The parliament of Scotland is contemplating introducing a related offence. The offence is distinctive because it criminalises conduct – controlling and coercive behaviour – which has specified negative behavioural and psychological consequences without necessarily requiring that a victim sustain physical injury or fear death or serious harm. This significant extension of the criminal law supplements anti-stalking legislation and has been justified on the basis that it addresses a core feature of abusive relationships, is essential to protect the human rights of victims of domestic abuse, and has community support. In the context of the ongoing debate about how best to tackle the problem of domestic abuse in Australia, this development provides an innovative – albeit still untested – model and should be closely examined.

A bridge over troubling waters in education: the complexity of a "students as co-researchers" project

“Students as co-researchers” is a mode of engagement between students and teachers in school systems that has been likened to a bridge. This article explores the bridge metaphor with reference to one school’s experience of a students as co-researchers project involving students and teachers in the school and a university partner. We use the bridge metaphor, inspired by the imagist poet Ezra Pound, to explore particular challenges faced in this project, and to envision new modes of teacher/student relationships in education. We argue that the purpose of building such a bridge between students and teachers is not an instrumental one (to reach the other side), but rather that the bridge offers up zones of affective relational encounters between students and teachers.

Inspired by the past, driven by the passion: music in state-supported education in New South Wales and Victoria 1848-1920

This investigation considers the development of class music teaching in New South Wales and Victoria during the first seventy-two years of state-supported primary education. The first chapter describes the English background including music teaching methods (resulting from the mid-nineteenth century English choral singing movement) and the subsequent development of music teaching in English elementary schools. The promotion of school music is then considered on a broadly chronological basis in the two states and several themes are identified in relation to school music policy and practice. These include the status of music (core curriculum or extra-curricular subject), who should teach music (generalist or specialist teachers), what teaching methods and music notation should be used (staff or Tonic Sol-fa), musical training for generalist teachers, and curriculum content in relation to the aims and objectives of school music. Comparisons are made between developments in both states and between both states and English school music. The final chapter demonstrates the relevance of many of the historical themes identified for music education today. The thesis concludes by identifying a recurring problem from the past. namely the lack of co-ordination between various aspects of school music policy, as the most serious problem to be overcome in the future.

`Zealotry or nostalgic regret`? women leaders in technical and further education in Australia : agents of change, entrepreneurial educators or corporate citizens?

Education has been restructured in many Western post-industrial nation states during the 1990s. The Australian Technical and Further Education sector (TAFE) has been particularly susceptible to discourses of responsiveness to the market and the new entrepreneuralism. This article explores how women have been repositioned in contradictory and ambiguous ways as the new entrepreneurial middle managers by existing and emergent discourses that circulated in and through TAFE organizations. In turn, it points to how discourses of change management and client responsiveness took on particular readings within specific institutional and professional cultures of the eight Technical and Further Education institutions (TAFEs). At the same time, the restructuring that arose from the corporatization of TAFE, in a highly gendered process, through the twin strategies of marketization and the new managerialism produced new possibilities for individual women educators who moved up into middle management. Yet these individual women were positioned within highly masculinist 'neo-corporate bureaucratic cultures' that co-opted their passion for the capacity of education to make a difference and incorporated these new entrepeneurial work identities.

Expanding criminal sanctions for corporate crimes-deprivation of right to work and cancellation of education qualifications

Fines are the standard sanctions employed by most Western countries when a corporation has been convicted of a crime. However, some offences committed by corporations are too serious to be dealt with by way of a fine. There is a need to consider other sanctions that can be invoked in order to deter corporate crime. In this article, it is suggested that the focus should be on criminal sanctions against the natural persons who can potentially commit crimes on behalf of a corporation. New sentencing options against those who can potentially commit crimes on behalf of a corporation should include the annulment or suspension of an offender's academic  qualifications and the making of orders preventing an offender from working or being enrolled in an educational or vocational pursuit.

Doing futures: futures education and enactivism

In New Times (Hall, 1996), there has been much rhetoric about school’s role in equipping students for the future. Futures education, or futures pedagogy, provides an interdisciplinary approach in which alternative futures may be explored, designed and articulated. Enactivism, as a theory of learning, affirms my contention that it is not enough to talk about the future. Rather, I propose that education must act as an agent of change, in equipping teachers and students alike, to imagine, critique and create possible, preferable and probable futures. This paper, then, explores the co-emergence (Manturana & Varela, 1992) of an explicit futures dimension, and teaching and learning drawing upon case studies of practice in schools.

Sustainable design education: teaching, learning and assessment in collaborative group design projects

Changes in the funding of tertiary education resulting in less one-to-one staff/student contact time mean that we cannot continue to teach as we have historically been taught. If design schools are unable to implement strategies that successfully overcome resource intensive studio teaching programs, then current architectural education may for many higher education providers be based on an unsustainable course structure. Rather than spreading their time thinly over a large number of individual projects, an increasing number of lecturers are setting group projects. This allows them to co-ordinate longer and more in-depth review sessions on a smaller number of assignments. However, while the group model may reflect the realities of the design process in practice, the approach is not without short comings as a teaching archetype for the assessment of individual skill competencies. Hence, what is clear is the need for a readily adoptable andragogy for the teaching and assessment of group design projects.
The following describes the background, methodology and early results of a Strategic Teaching and Learning Grant currently running at the School of Architecture and Building at Deakin University. The project is evaluating two design programs at Deakin and it is envisaged that the results of the
investigation may inform other project-based teaching disciplines experiencing a similar need for new knowledge and skill-based delivery due to increasing staff-student ratios.

Does financial education influence retirement savings? An examination of Australian employees

In order to ensure a financially secure retirement, Australians will need to plan and save for their retirement many decades before they retire.

The age pension, paid for out of Commonwealth government taxes is currently the backbone of the retirement system, but will not replace as much pre-retirement income in the future as it does today. Given the shift from the defined benefit style to the accumulation style, superannuation funds involve considerably more uncertainty, and as such, one might have thought that individuals would be saving more on their own. But personal saving outside of superannuation plans is virtually non-existent. Combine the retirement income crunch with the dramatic increase in life expectancy, and the need for careful retirement planning and sacrificing current consumption for later consumption becomes imperative for ensuring the financial security of older Australians. The hard question is whether individuals will be prepared to make the necessary sacrifices today to ensure a more secure financial future in retirement? This paper explores the willingness of individuals to make these sacrifices, and whether financial education can influence individuals in this difficult decision.

An educational durian? Issues in teacher education in international collaboration

This paper looks at an international collaborative project in teacher education between Malaysian Institutes of teacher training and an Australian university from the perspectives of four of the participants. Two of the stories are from participants who are co-ordinating aspects of the collaboration, and two stories come from participants who were involved closely in the curriculum and teaching aspects of the program. These personal stories reveal that international collaborative projects are indeed like the durian: there are both good and bad aspects. Our differing roles in the program allow us to provide rich insights into such an international collaboration that we believe will be of benefit to others attempting similar projects.