Sea search : a community-based citizen science monitoring program for Victoria, Australia, Marine National Parks and Marine Sanctuaries

Community involvement in monitoring Victoria’s Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) engages coastal volunteers in looking after their marine ‘front yards”. The Management Strategy for Victoria’s System of Marine National Parks and Marine Sanctuaries dedicates an entire theme to community engagement with core key performance areas. This includes community participation. The Sea Search community based monitoring program was developed in 2003 to engage volunteers in meaningful ecological data collection for future sustainability of Victoria’s MPAs. Deakin University, an academic institute, and Parks Victoria, the management agency for Victoria’s MPAs, through a research partner program, trialled three different habitat monitoring methodologies. The trails assessed volunteer ability to collect scientific data, and social science aspects for their involvement in a community-based monitoring program. Information collected by volunteers, feeds directly into their local MPA management strategies to address issues such as climate change, introduced pests and human impacts and natural ecological variation.

The Sea Search program addresses the two action programmes, Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, created at the United Nations Earth Summit, held in 1992. Both documents highlight the need for community engagement and capacity building for sustainability, health and integrity of the earth. Involvement in the Sea Search program builds the volunteer’s capacity by learning scientific skills, interacting with other like minded community members, and creating relationships with all organisations involved in the delivery of the program. In this regard, Sea Search is a citizen science program involving all sectors in society by promoting public-interest and research for decision making and planning of Victoria’s system of Marine National Parks and Marine Sanctuaries.

Funding special education provision by means of discriminant function analysis

This thesis is concerned with the development of a funding mechanism, the Student Resource Index, which has been designed to resolve a number of difficulties which emerged following the introduction of integration or inclusion as an alternative means of providing educational support to students with disabilities in the Australian State of Victoria. Prior to 1984, the year in which the major integration or inclusion initiatives were introduced, the great majority of students with disabilities were educated in segregated special schools, however, by 1992 the integration initiatives had been successful in including within regular classes approximately half of the students in receipt of additional educational assistance on the basis of disability. The success of the integration program brought with it a number of administrative and financial problems which were the subject of three government enquiries. Central to these difficulties was the development of a dual system of special education provision. On one hand, additional resources were provided for the students attending segregated special schools by means of weighted student ratios, with one teacher being provided for each six students attending a special school. On the other hand, the requirements of individual students integrated into regular schools were assessed by school-based committees on the basis of their perceived extra educational needs. The major criticism of this dual system of special education funding was that it created inequities in the distribution of resources both between the systems and also within the systems. For example, three students with equivalent needs, one of whom attended a special school and two of whom attended different regular schools could each be funded at substantially differing levels. The solution to these inequities of funding was seen to be in the development of a needs based funding device which encompassed all students in receipt of additional disability related educational support. The Student Resource Index developed in this thesis is a set of behavioural descriptors designed to assess degree of additional educational need across a number of disability domains. These domains include hearing, vision, communication, health, co-ordination (manual and mobility), intellectual capacity and behaviour. The completed Student Resource Index provides a profile of the students’ needs across all of these domains and as such addresses the multiple nature of many disabling conditions. The Student Resource Index was validated in terms of its capacity to predict the ‘known’ membership or the type of special school which some 1200 students in the sample currently attended. The decision to use the existing special school populations as the criterion against which the Student Resource Index was validated was based on the premise that the differing resource levels of these schools had been historically determined by expert opinion, industrial negotiation and reference to other special education systems as the most reliable estimate of the enrolled students’ needs. When discriminant function analysis was applied to some 178 students attending one school for students with mild intellectual disability and one facility for students with moderate to severe intellectual disability the Student Resource Index was successful in predicting the student's known school in 92 percent of cases. An analysis of those students (8 percent) which the Student Resource Index had failed to predict their known school enrolment revealed that 13 students had, for a variety of reasons, been inappropriately placed in these settings. When these students were removed from the sample the predictive accuracy of the Student Resource Index was raised to 96 percent of the sample. By comparison the domains of the Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scale accurately predicted known enrolments of 76 percent of the sample. By way of replication discriminant function analysis was then applied to the Student Resource Index profiles of 518 students attending Day Special Schools (Mild Intellectual Disability) and 287 students attending Special Developmental Schools (Moderate to Severe Intellectual Disability). In this case, the Student Resource Index profiles were successful in predicting the known enrolments of 85 percent of students. When a third group was added, 147 students attending Day Special Schools for students with physical disabilities, the Student Resource Index predicted known enrolments in 80 percent of cases. The addition of a fourth group of 116 students attending Day Special Schools (Hearing Impaired) to the discriminant analysis led to a small reduction in predictive accuracy from 80 percent to 78 percent of the sample. A final analysis which included students attending a School for the Deaf-Blind, a Hospital School and a Social and Behavioural Unit was successful in predicting known enrolments in 71 percent of the 1114 students in the sample. For reasons which are expanded upon within the thesis it was concluded that the Student Resource Index when used in conjunction with discriminant function analysis was capable of isolating four distinct groups on the basis of their additional educational needs. If the historically determined and varied funding levels provided to these groups, inherent in the cash equivalent of the staffing ratios of Day Special Schools (Mild Intellectual Disability), Special Development Schools (Moderate to Severe Intellectual Disability), Day Special Schools (Physical Disability) and Day Special Schools (Hearing Impairment) are accepted as reasonable reflections of these students’ needs these funding levels can be translated into funding bands. These funding bands can then be applied to students in segregated or inclusive placements. The thesis demonstrates that a new applicant for funding can be introduced into the existing data base and by the use of discriminant function analysis be allocated to one of the four groups. The analysis is in effect saying that this new student’s profile of educational needs has more in common with Group A than with the members of Groups B, C, or D. The student would then be funded at Group A level. It is immaterial from a funding point of view whether the student decides to attend a segregated or inclusive setting. The thesis then examines the impact of the introduction of Student Resource Index based funding upon the current funding of the special schools in one of the major metropolitan regions. Overall, such an initiative would lead to a reduction of 1.54 percent of the total funding accruing to the region’s special schools.

State police in a state of change: remaking the entrepreneurial officer

We are currently at a point in time in Australia where questions concerning how to govern police have never been more pressing or more fluid. Systemic corruption has been identified in several states; a range of new accountability mechanisms have been established internal and external to police and in Victoria police corruption has been linked with a violent 'gangland war'. This thesis locates these contemporary developments within a broader analysis of the historical circumstances shaping the changing techniques for governing state police. More specifically, this thesis engages in a detailed comparative study of the changing techniques of governing police in Queensland and Victoria. The theoretical tools to conduct this analysis are drawn from 'governmentality studies'. This refers to a broad grouping of theoretical scholarship concerned with the changing ideas - or 'political rationalities' - on how to govern some thing or some activity, and the underlying reasoning, justifications and ambitions contained within the practical tools or 'techniques' used to govern. Central to the thesis is an argument that a new politics of policing has emerged recently, one that extends the dyad of the old accountability - 'police powers' and 'external accountability' - to a pluralisation of accountability processes and structures. The thesis argues that governmentality studies offer new insights into ways of analysing the techniques for governing state police, increasingly shaped by the managerialisation of governing and embodying efforts to make police innovative, risk-taking problems-solvers. This is what I refer to as an open-ended normative project for re-making the entrepreneurial officer. However, a detailed examination of the development of governmental techniques for 'making up' the entrepreneurial officer indicates that such a governmental project is not implemented unproblematically. Nonetheless, the thesis concludes that the attempts to remake the entrepreneurial officer through the managerialisation of governing presents distinct possibilities for a new 'politics of policing' that fosters deliberative, reflective police practice within a new framework of police accountabilities

Fiscal stringency and fiscal sustainability : panel evidence from the American state and local governments

Most state (and local) governments in the U.S. operate under formal fiscal rules which limit their ability to run budget deficits and resort to debt financing. A priori, one would expect to find evidence in favor of an intertemporally balanced budget, or fiscal sustainability, for these states, especially those characterized by a relatively high degree of fiscal stringency. We test this hypothesis for a panel of 47 state–local government units (1961–2006) using four budget balance definitions and several subsamples defined based on regional classifications, or presence of certain balanced budget requirements (BBRs). Our results, obtained from panel estimation techniques that allow for general forms of serial and cross-sectional dependence, suggest that a sufficient condition for “strong” sustainability is consistently satisfied for the full sample and all subsamples in relation to balances that include special funds and/or federal grants. However, we find evidence consistent with the “weak” version of sustainability for the full sample and some regional subsamples (particularly Far West dominated by California) in at least one of the two balances that exclude these items. Finally, the BBRs seem to matter only in relation to the sustainability of the more narrowly defined balances. We discuss the implications of these findings for the role of fiscal rules and federal grant policies.

Pedagogy, police training, D/discourses – “truth” and situated identities and meanings

Qualitative and quantitative methods were used in this research to distinguish the prevailing D/discourses (words, tools, beliefs, thinking styles) in police training and to analyse the ‘discourse-practice’ (Cherryholmes 1988, p.1) framework of policing in a training environment. The manifestations, functions and consequences of the D/discourses raise concerns about the efficacy of training (its doctrinal intent and value versus its educative intent and value) and its implications for individuals’ identity, subjectivity, agency, learning, and “membership” within the policing community. The literature revealed that police training acts as a formally sanctioned vehicle for police culture, subcultures, and D/discourses. This is complicated by (a) the predominance of pedagogical training practices that support a trainer-centred approach and standardised lecture format for training, (b) police training focusing predominantly on law enforcement at the cost of higher-order conceptual skills, and (c) Australian and international studies of police management education which reveal a subculture resistant to theoretical analysis and critical reflection, and a set of unconscious and unchallengeable assumptions regarding police work, conduct, and leadership. A backdrop to this research and findings is the agenda of Australian and New Zealand police services for police to become a profession.

Pedagogy, police training, D/discourses – subcultures and situated identities and meanings

Qualitative and quantitative methods were used in this research to distinguish the prevailing D/discourses (words, tools, beliefs, thinking styles) in police training and to analyse the ‘discourse-practice’ (Cherryholmes 1988: 1) framework of policing in a training environment. The manifestations, functions and consequences of the D/discourses raise concerns about the efficacy of training (its doctrinal intent and value versus its educative intent and value) and its implications for individuals’ identity, subjectivity, agency, learning, and “membership” within the policing community. The literature revealed that police training acts as a formally sanctioned vehicle for police culture, subcultures, and D/discourses. This is complicated by (a) the predominance of pedagogical training practices that support a trainer-centred approach and standardised lecture format for training, (b) police training focusing predominantly on law enforcement at the cost of higher- rder conceptual skills, and (c) Australian and international studies of police management education which  reveal a subculture resistant to theoretical analysis and critical reflection, and a set of unconscious and unchallengeable assumptions regarding police work, conduct, and leadership. The agenda of Australian and New Zealand police services for police to become a profession provides a backdrop to this research and findings.

Psychopathology in police custody: The role of importation, deprivation and interaction models

People experiencing mental illness are over-represented among police cell detainees, however limited work has sought to investigate the occurrence of psychopathology in police custody. The present study sought to examine the predictive power of personal factors (e.g., history of psychiatric hospitalisation), situational factors (e.g., police cell conditions), and their interactive effects to explain the occurrence of psychopathology in police custody. A total of 150 detainees were recruited from two metropolitan police stations in Melbourne, Australia. Personal factors were significantly associated with psychiatric symptomatology, with situational factors and interaction terms yielding no association. Detainees with preexisting vulnerabilities and those unsatisfied with police cell conditions demonstrated the highest levels of psychopathology. While all detainees experience some difficulties in police cells, it is those with pre-existing vulnerabilities that suffer the most. This may be due to the exacerbation of vulnerabilities by police cell conditions. The implications of these findings for provision of health care services in police cells are discussed.

Integrating workplace exposure databases for occupational medicine services and epidemiologic studies at a former nuclear weapons facility

We outline methods for integrating epidemiologic and industrial hygiene data systems for the purpose of exposure estimation, exposure surveillance, worker notification, and occupational medicine practice. We present examples of these methods from our work at the Rocky Flats Plant?a former nuclear weapons facility that fabricated plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons and is now being decontaminated and decommissioned. The weapons production processes exposed workers to plutonium, gamma photons, neutrons, beryllium, asbestos, and several hazardous chemical agents, including chlorinated hydrocarbons and heavy metals. We developed a job exposure matrix (JEM) for estimating exposures to 10 chemical agents in 20 buildings for 120 different job categories over a production history spanning 34 years. With the JEM, we estimated lifetime chemical exposures for about 12,000 of the 16,000 former production workers. We show how the JEM database is used to estimate cumulative exposures over different time periods for epidemiological studies and to provide notification and determine eligibility for a medical screening program developed for former workers. We designed an industrial hygiene data system for maintaining exposure data for current cleanup workers. We describe how this system can be used for exposure surveillance and linked with the JEM and databases on radiation doses to develop lifetime exposure histories and to determine appropriate medical monitoring tests for current cleanup workers. We also present time-line-based graphical methods for reviewing and correcting exposure estimates and reporting them to individual workers.

Some recent strategic additions to Victoria`s protected area system 1997-2002

The development of a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system is an objective of all Australian states and territories. In Victoria, land purchase is one means of increasing the reservation levels of some of the State’s most endangered ecosystems. This article outlines the biological features of some new land purchases for addition to the Victorian protected area system.

Low allozyme variation in snapper, Pagrus auratus, in Victoria, Australia

The population genetic structure of snapper, Pagrus auratus (Bloch and Schneider), in Victoria was investigated using six polymorphic allozyme loci. Fish were sampled from four sites in Victoria and single locations in South Australia, Western Australia and New Zealand. Although there were distinct genetic differences between the snapper populations from each of the Australian states and New Zealand, only minor and largely insignificant differences were detected among Victorian populations. The results are consistent with previous genetic and tagging studies that indicate no mixing between snapper stocks in Victoria and Spencer Gulf in South Australia. This justifies separate management of the snapper fisheries in these regions. The low levels of polymorphism and heterozygosity in Victorian snapper suggest an isolation by distance model of population structure rather than one of discrete subpopulations.

Further strategic additions to Victoria`s public protected area system: 2002-2004

The development of a comprehensive, adequate and representative (CAR) reserve system is the key objective of the National Reserve System, and is supported by all Australian States and Territories. In Victoria, purchase of private land for incorporation into the protected area system of parks and
reserves is one of the only means of protecting some of the State’s most endangered ecosystems. This article outlines the ecological attributes of private land purchased for addition to the Victorian protected area system between 2002 and 2004.

A mechanism to end conflict in Aceh

On 15 August 2005, the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed an agreement to end almost 30 years of conflict between them over claims to independence. After a series of failed ceasefires, this was the first comprehensive peace agreement, and contained within it the potential to settle the political and economic claims that fuelled a desire for separation in Aceh. The talks that led to the peace agreement followed the devastating tsunami of 26 December 2004, which killed over 100,000 people in Aceh, and an escalated military campaign by the Indonesian military against GAM forces. The talks were brokered by an international mediation organisation and supported by the European Union (EU). Despite some opposition within Jakarta, the talks were ultimately successful, producing an agreement that addressed many of the fundamental concerns of the Acehnese, especially around economic redistribution and local political representation. The EU agreed to monitor the agreement by sending a 200 strong Aceh Monitoring Mission (AAM), supported by monitors from ASEAN states. The main purpose of the AMM was to oversee the decommissioning of GAM weapons and the withdrawal of most Indonesian troops and police. It was thereafter expected to retain a smaller presence in order to monitor the implementation of other aspects of the agreement. The Aceh peace agreement faced a number of hurdles, including whether or not the Indonesian military would work to undermine the peace agreement, and over the continuing presence in Aceh of the military’s proxy militias. There were also concerns that the legislation required to secure aspects of the peace agreement might not be passed by the Indonesian legislature or would be diluted to the point that they would no longer be acceptable to GAM. However, as a politically negotiated agreement to end the conflict, the peace agreement was seen as establishing the model for peace in the region, and was touted by some observers as providing the basis for a model for peace in other parts of Indonesia’s sometimes troubled archipelago.

Perceptions of the host destination as a result of attendance at a special event: a post-consumption analysis

Many destinations are now using special events as integral components of their marketing strategies. The aim of this study was to explore how  attendance at a special event might impact perceptions of the host destination. Using a case study approach, this research explored the nexus between special events, their attendees and special event destinations. This research specifically focused on exploring whether attendance at a special event influences resulting perceptions of the host destination. The results of a survey-based study indicate that for almost a quarter of respondents who resided outside the host destination, their perceptions of the host destination had changed. Over 90% of these respondents indicated that these post-consumption perceptions of the host destination were more favourable than they were before attendance at the event. Key reasons provided by respondents for their changes in perceptions included Access, the Special Event itself and Attractions at the destination. The paper concludes that the synergies between the special event and the host destination can be likened to those of the celebrity and the products that they endorse and promote, and this notion should be further explored. Recommendations were made to assist marketers of host destinations to more effectively capitalise on the synergies between special events and destinations.