Social capital and public policy – the current challenge facing the Victorian Government

Social capital, since Putnam’s 1993 work, has captured the imagination of policy-makers the world over, and Australia is no exception. In 2005 the Department of Victorian Communities launched its Actions for Community Strengthening policy statement, which draws heavily on social capital theory. This article explores the theoretical underpinnings of the government’s policy and critiques its failure to deal adequately with the causal relationship between social capital and its supposed community benefits. The article then seeks to isolate the missing factors through a look at recent research on volunteerism and argues that the institution of collaborative/interactive governance needs to be underpinned by sound socio-economic reform.

The Victorian bushfires and extreme weather events : media coverage, crisis and communication

The 2009 'Black Saturday' Victorian bushfires claimed the lives of 173 people and have become known as the worst fire event in Australian history. Victoria has been at the centre of two other significant Australian fire disasters - 'Black Friday' in 1939 and the 1983 'Ash Wednesday' fires in south-eastern Australia that claimed the lives of 47 people in Victoria. As media scholar and commentator Michael Gawenda has noted, the media not only report an 'event' - like the Victorian bushfires or the tsunami in the South Pacific - but in a sense create and define it. Print and electronic media coverage of extreme weather events therefore raises a multitude of issues about the media's role in serving the community before, during and after a crisis, while also trying to produce the best possible reportage in a competitive industry undergoing dramatic change. This issue of MIA provides a venue for critical, empirical engagement with media coverage and representation, and the role of journalism and journalists in reporting national and international bushfires, tsunamis, hurricanes and other extreme weather events, with a special focus on the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Its goal is to address the ramifications of an industry in flux - indeed, some may say crisis - driven by technological advances, staff reductions and media organisations under financial pressure, and to explore the ways in which such extreme weather events have impacted media practices and policy

Conflict of interest in Victorian rural and regional legal practice

This research report was based on 163 survey responses and 29 interviews with Victorian rural and regional legal practitioners, as well as 8 human service organisation representatives. Peak law profession organisations including the Legal Services Board, Law Institute of Victoria, the Federation of Community Legal Centres and Victoria Legal Aid were also interviewed for the research. The principal objective of the research was to examine how conflict of interested is manifested in rural and regional settings and how effectively the current conflict of interest rules are applied within those settings. The report includes a number of recommendations for better responding to issues of conflict of interest within a rural and regional context.

Workers’ compensation and mental health : examining the mental health impacts of involvement in the Victorian Work Cover system from the perspective of long-­term injured workers

The project aimed to explore long--term injured workers’ experiences and perceptions of their mental health as they progressed through the Victorian WorkCover process. The purpose of the project was to assist in understanding these factors in order to identify how workers might be better supported, and to identify changes that compensation authorities, employers and unions can make to reduce mental distress amongst injured workers. As a project based on workers’ accounts of their experiences, it aimed to provide a narrative basis for the development of supportive policy and practice to reduce mental distress amongst people who are clients of the WorkCover system. The project was a qualitative study based on fifteen in--depth interviews with people who had been injured at work and who had been off work for at least six months. The workers who took part in the study were recruited with the assistance of their trade unions, using an advertisement that was distributed via the unions’ regular communication channels. Workers were asked to tell their story of injury and recovery with a particular focus on how they felt and the factors that affected them, both positively and negatively. They were also asked what could or should be changed to support workers’ recovery and improve their experience of the WorkCover system. The workers who took part in the study came from a variety of industry sectors (education, textile and clothing manufacturing and meat industries) and different occupational categories (professional, trade/technical and manual). They included people whose primary injury was physical and those whose primary injury was psychosocial.

Report of Captain A. B. Thomas, naval commandant on the Victorian Navy : from 1883 to 1886, together with regulations for permanent naval forces and naval brigade

Details the operations of the Victorian Navy for the period 1883 to 1886, including information on ships, training, stores, list of officers on the active and unattached list, list of ships including their armament, and the regulations under which the navy ran.

Carbon nexus: a strategic overview and research highlights

Carbon Nexus (www.carbonnexus.com.au) is a globally significant research facility at Deakin University focused on the manufacture and use of carbon fibre. Carbon Nexus represents a partnership between Deakin University and the Victorian Centre for Advanced Materials Manufacturing (VCAMM) and houses two production lines capable of manufacturing industrially relevant quantities of aerospace grade carbon fibre. The facility enables scientists to conduct research into the chemical, mechanical and nano-scale characteristics of new carbon fibre materials produced on site. There is a strong focus on evaluating these new carbon fibre products in composite materials, particularly composites cured using out-of-autoclave techniques. This paper will present an overview of the vision for Carbon Nexus as well as the technical capabilities of both the laboratory scale single tow line and the larger pilot line capable of producing up to 50 tons of carbon fibre per year. Both lines are fully operational and able to convert a range of polymer precursors into carbon fibre. They are representative of world's best practice for carbon fibre manufacturing methods and well suited to conducting energy efficiency studies. Highlights from recent research projects will focus on the effect of the surface treatment and sizing of carbon fibre on fibre-matrix adhesion in composite materials. In addition to this, results from studies of the effect of varying processing parameters on the structure and properties of oxidised polyacrylonitrile and carbon fibre will also be presented.