Banking regulation and market forces in Australia

The purpose of this paper is to use Kane's notion of the regulatory dialectic to analyse the changing nature of bank regulation in Australia. Throughout Australia's economic history, economic regulation of the Australian banking system has not been static but has responded to changes in technology, market forces, and the behaviour of regulated institutions. From this analysis, some inferences about general banking principles and policy can be made.

Drugs and police

Discusses the corruption-cloud hanging over the Victoria police drug squad. What does it mean for criminal investigations and trials? And, speaking more generally, what is it about the drugs-trade and the way the law deals with it - that can lead law enforcers down the wrong path?

Public satisfaction with police : the importance of procedural justice and police performance in police-citizen encounters

A large body of literature has demonstrated that when authorities use procedural justice with those they regulate, people will be more satisfied with those authorities and will be more willing to cooperate and comply with their directions and rules. In the context of policing, procedural justice has also been shown to be important for shaping citizens’ views about police legitimacy, their satisfaction with police and also in fostering cooperation with police. What remains largely unexamined, however, is whether the positive effect of procedural justice varies across different types of police–citizen encounters. Using survey data collected from a national sample of 1,462 Australians, the present study will examine the relative importance of procedural justice on overall ratings of police satisfaction across two types of police–citizen encounters (citizen-initiated contacts and police-initiated contacts). It will be shown that procedural justice is most important in police-initiated contacts, while police performance is most important in citizen-initiated contacts.

The relationship between job status, interviewing experience, gender, and police officers' adherence to open-ended questions

Purpose : The current study examined whether several factors related to the job and demographic profile of police officers are associated with adherence to best-practice guidelines when interviewing children.

Method : One hundred and seventy-eight police officers completed a standardized (simulated) interview regarding an allegation of abuse by a 5-year-old child. Immediately prior to this interview, details were obtained from the officers' regarding their job status, gender, interview experience, the timing and nature of prior training/supervision, and experience outside the policing profession with young children.

Results : The results showed that timing of training was the only factor that related to interview performance. The proportion of open-ended questions among participants who completed their interviewer training course less than 1 month prior to the simulated interview was better than those who completed the training earlier. Interestingly, the performance of the latter group was identical to that of a group of participants who had not yet received any formal interview training. The implications of the findings are discussed, along with directions for future research.

The 'wimple' : rippled deformation of a fluid drop caused by hydrodynamic and surface forces during thin film drainage

It is well-known that hydrodynamic pressures in a thin draining liquid film can cause inversion of the curvature of a drop or bubble surface as it approaches another surface, creating a so-called “dimple”. Here it is shown that a more complicated rippled shape, dubbed a “wimple”, can be formed if a fluid drop that is already close to a solid wall is abruptly pushed further toward it. The wimple includes a central region in which the film remains thin, surrounded by a ring of greater film thickness that is bounded at the outer edge by a barrier rim where the film is thin. This shape later evolves into a conventional dimple bounded by the barrier rim, which then drains in the normal way. During the evolution from wimple to dimple, some of the fluid in the thicker part of the film ring flows toward the central region before eventually draining in the opposite direction. Although the drop is pressed toward the wall, the central part of the drop moves away from the wall before approaching it again. This is observed even when the inward push is too small to create a wimple.

Double-layer and hydration forces measured between silica sheets subjected to various surface treatments

Force measurements between silica surfaces in aqueous solutions of NaCl are reported. Silica is prepared with one of three surface treatments: (i) flaming, (ii) exposure to steam for 150 h, and (iii) brief exposure to ammonia vapor. Analysis of electrical double-layer interactions indicates that the surface density of silanol groups increases with steam treatment, and that exposure to ammonia etches the surface slightly and renders it porous. The force at short range is dominated by a strong repulsion which is attributed to hydration of the surface. The hydration component of the force is not significantly affected by the surface treatments, nor by electrolyte concentration over the range investigated (up to 0.1 M).

The effect of surface and hydrodynamic forces on the shape of a fluid drop approaching a solid surface

This paper describes an experiment designed to measure surface and hydrodynamic forces between a mercury drop and a flat mica surface immersed in an aqueous medium. An optical interference technique allows measurement of the shape of the mercury drop as well as its distance from the mica, for various conditions of applied potential, applied pressure, and solution conditions. This enables a detailed exploration of the surface forces, particularly double-layer forces, between mercury and mica. A theoretical analysis of drop shape under the influence of surface forces shows that deformation of the drop is a sensitive indicator of the forces, as well as being a very important factor in establishing the overall interaction between the solid and the fluid.

Double-layer and solvation forces measured in a molten salt and its mixtures with water

Measurements have been made of the force between molecularly smooth mica surfaces immersed in ethylammonium nitrate, which is a molten salt at room temperature, and in mixtures of this salt with water across the concentration range from 10 -4 M to that of the pure salt, which is 11.2 M. At low concentrations the salt behaves as a typical 1:1 electrolyte, and we measure an electrical double-layer force whose range decreases with increasing salt concentration. At high concentrations, above about 1 M, the double-layer force becomes so weak and short-ranged that it is completely dominated by a solvation force extending up to 5 nm. In the pure molten salt the solvation force is an oscillatory function of surface separation comparable to that measured in simple nonpolar liquids. No monotonic component of solvation force is found.

Contrasting the perceptions of child testimony experts, prosecutors and police officers regarding individual child abuse interviews

The aim of this study was to compare and contrast the perceptions of various stakeholders regarding a series of interviews about child abuse. Eight focus groups were conducted, each involving a police officer (child abuse investigator), a prosecutor who specializes in child abuse and a child testimony expert. The aim of the focus groups was to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the specific interviews, which were conducted by the police officer in each focus group. Thematic analysis showed that the prosecutors and child testimony experts were relatively consistent in their perceptions about the need for more free narrative from child witnesses, and to ensure that police officers demonstrate open-mindedness when interviewing children. Differences in priorities and assumptions about the value of various interview techniques, however, were found among the stakeholders. These differences and their practical implications are discussed.

Global forms and local forces : PhD enrollments and graduations in Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and the United States

 This chapter presents and discusses data from five different nations—Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and the United States—on doctoral candidates and graduates. These data are from governmental and institutional sources for the years 1998–2004, a sample that enables changes across a five-year span to be identified. They span important basic characteristics, such as gender, age, discipline, and study load (that is, full-time or part-time study). Therefore, readers can see national as well as international trends and differences in such characteristics and can match these to equivalent and/or contemporary data in their own nations. The five countries considered here are among those whose data were discussed at the 2007 CIRGE research synthesis meeting in Australia. Although these countries are not universally representative of doctoral education, their practices do offer a vivid sense of how vastly the enterprise of doctoral education differs in its scope and dimensions around the world

The footage is decisive’: Applying the thinking of Marshall McLuhan to CCTV and police misconduct

This article adapts Marshall McLuhan’s writings on mass media to ubiquitous and universal surveillance systems, looking at surveillance as media. The term ‘broadcast media’ is derived from an agricultural metaphor, a technique of planting. I argue that CCTV systems are an inversion of broadcasting: ‘harvest media’. Drawing on three case studies in which CCTV has been relevant to allegations of police misconduct, I explore how harvest media impacts on cultural and legal perceptions of evidence, and what can be known.

Revisiting the Tasty raid: lesbian and gay respectability and police legitimacy

This article extends beyond analysis of homophobic police practices at the Tasty raid that took place in Melbourne in 1994 to explore the ways in which queer politics interact with constructions of ‘respectability’ in the contexts of criminalisation, policing and state protection. I argue that the successful construction of legitimate victimhood by lesbian and gay Tasty patrons (achieved largely through signifiers of middle-class respectability and the paradigm of sameness) impeded police efforts to control media narratives and secure legitimacy in the aftermath of the Tasty raid. The formal apology issued by Victoria Police in 2014 indicates that the Tasty raid was considered a significant enough stain on police reputation to warrant addressing two decades after the event itself. I consider the apology as an attempt to cleanse and redeem the institution of the negative image of police resulting from the Tasty raid. This case offers unique insights into some of the ways in which lesbians and gay men may achieve legitimacy as victims in a heteronormative context and how this might come at the cost of a structural analysis of sexuality, power and violence. It also highlights how state institutions navigate and avoid accountability to a specific and historically targeted group.

A 'fair cop': queer histories, affect and police image work in Pride March

This article investigates how proactive police image work contends with the politics of queer history by drawing from aspects of affect theory. It asks: How does police image work engage with or respond to ongoing histories of state violence and queer resistance? And why does this matter? To explore these questions, the article provides a case study of the Victorian Pride March in 2002. It analyzes textual representations of Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon’s participation in the parade to show how histories of homophobic police violence can be used strategically to fortify a positive police image among LGBT people and the wider community. Police image work carried out at Pride March becomes a means of legitimizing past policing practices with the aim of overcoming poor and antagonistic LGBT-police relations. The visibility of police at Pride March, this analysis suggests, contributes to the normalization of queerness as a site to be continually policed and regulated. Image work here also buttresses police reputation against the negative press associated with incidents of police brutality. This investigation contributes to the literature on police communications and impression management by demonstrating how police can mobilize negative aspects of their organizational history as an important part of police image work in the present.