Outsourcing the risks : alcohol licensing, risk and the making of the night time economy

Mariana Valverde argues that in the late twentieth century, the British state contracted out the prevention of disorder and monitoring of risks produced by widespread alcohol use to the private sector through the process of liquor licensing. This paper will argue that this scenario was duplicated in Victoria at the same time. It will do so by an analysis of four government-instigated inquiries into liquor licensing regimes from 1965 to 1998. The inquiries were distinguished by the subtly different emphases in their terms of reference. In 1965, the Phillips Royal Commission was directed to inquire into the best ways of dealing with the problems alcohol produced and how best to regulate it for the benefit of the population as a whole. By the time the Nieuwenhuysen Report was commissioned in 1985, the emphasis had changed, and he was directed to inquire how best to serve the interests of alcohol consumers and to produce the licensing regulatory regime which would enable the construction of a 24-hour city. Any anomalies that still existed in the revised Act were eliminated in the 1998 review which was instigated as a direct response to the National Competition Policy. A consequence of these changes over 30 years was the development of particular risk groups, such as ‘binge-drinking young people’, whose violence and nuisance must be controlled to enable all other ‘reasonable’ and ‘moderate’ drinkers be allowed to keep drinking. Thus the notion of risk had been redefined and the responsibility for dealing with these risks had been directed from the state to individual licensees and individual drinkers.

ID scanners in the Australian night-time economy

The recent introduction of ID scanners into the night time economy in many Australian cities is fertile ground for exploring a range of themes related to technology and society. There are questions about the scanners' contribution to increased surveillance, the interface between private and public forms of surveillance, the capacity for data ahsring, concerns about the protection of privacy and the capacity or utility of existing theoretical models dealing with human surveillance, harm prevention, individual freedoms, and the role of technology in promoting social order.

Intellectual property, creativity and innovation : IP models and the political economy of developing Asia

In advanced capitalist societies, intellectual property laws protecting such subject matter as copyright and patents are justified by a combination of theories, which include the provision of economic incentives to foster creativity and innovation and the prevention of unfair competition. IP academics and policy makers have differing views about the appropriate balance between these objectives and public interest considerations such as health, education and the protection of the environment. These different views entered the policy debate in Asian developing countries in connection with an unprecedented introduction and expansion of IP laws over the last 25 years. This paper will use case studies of law reform from Asia, in particular Southeast Asia, to show that the policy considerations of governments in reforming their laws were often quite different from the standard rationale mentioned above. As much of the IP was, at least initially, held by foreigners and introduced to attract foreign investment, national development considerations were joined with the more commonly quoted objectives to promote the rights, creativity and innovation of individuals. Such national development objectives at times coincided and at other times collided with official explanations and received wisdom about the effects of stronger IP rights.

Especially in the early postcolonial period, copyright laws and other IP laws were frequently restricted or simply not implemented, if they conflicted with development policies in areas such as education or public health. Such policies were slowly changing in the wake of WTO-TRIPS and other international agreements. Nevertheless, the implementation and enforcement of the IP laws has been uneven. Specialised institutions such as courts and IP administering agencies compete with other branches of government and administration for limited funding and a rich repertoire of informal dispute settlement procedures has kept the number of court cases relatively low. In some countries, censorship laws have influenced freedom of expression and led to quite idiosyncratic interpretations of intellectual property laws. Governments often also retain a role in the assessment of licensing and technology transfer contracts. And while there are many programs to foster individual creativity, in most cases R & D activities are still largely taking place in government institutions and this has influenced the thinking about intellectual property rights and creativity in the context of employment.

The paper uses a few case studies to examine the implementation of IP laws in selected Asian developing countries to point to the quite different institutional setting for IP law reform in comparison to European or American models. It reaches some tentative conclusions as to the likely effects on creativity and innovation under these different circumstances.

Price dynamics, foreign exchange and anticipated shocks in a tourism economy

Using a dynamic model of an open monetary economy, this paper examines the effects of tourism-related anticipated shocks on goods prices and foreign exchange reserves. Foreign tourists consume mainly non-traded goods in holiday destinations, converting them into exportable goods. This gives rise to a tourism terms-of-trade effect that affects the accumulation of foreign exchange. Announcements of anticipated events bring tourist visits forward, resulting in an initial under-adjustment or an over-adjustment in the prices of the non-traded goods when the tourism terms-of-trade effect is positive or negative. This leads to an increase or a decrease in foreign reserves in the long run.