The Dawson report and merger regulation

Discusses the Review of the Competition Law Provisions of the Trade Practices Act recommended by the Dawson Committee in Australia. Prohibition of mergers that lessens market competition by Trade Practices Act 1974; Requirement for a request of informal clearance; Establishment of an optional formal clearance procedure; Submission of merger authorization requests to the Australian Competition Tribunal.

Client identification and money laundering control : perspectives on the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001

The Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001 (FICA) compels certain persons and institutions (defined as "accountable institutions'') to identify and verify the identity of a new client before any transaction may be concluded or any business relationship is established.1 Accountable institutions are listed in schedule ¹ to FICA and include banks, brokers, financial advisers, insurance companies, attorneys and estate agents. This duty to identify new clients came into effect on 30 June 2003. However, FICA also requires a similar procedure to be followed in respect of all current clients. Current clients are those with whom an accountable institution had business relationships on 30 June 2003.² After 30 June 2004 an institution may not conclude a transaction in the course of its business relationship with an unidentified current client, until it has established and verified that client's identity as prescribed. An institution that concludes any transaction in contravention of this prohibition, commits an offence and is liable to a fine not exceeding R10 million or to imprisonment of up to 15 years.³

The majority of accountable institutions and their clients failed to meet the June 2004 current client identification deadline.4 This failure posed serious economic and legal risks. With a few days to spare, the minister of finance granted a partial and temporary exemption in respect of these requirements. This article explores the statutory scheme for identification and re-identification of clients and some of the practical problems that were encountered. The June 2004 exemptions from these requirements are also considered and proposals for law reform are made.

The discussion of the FICA identification scheme necessitates the following brief overview of the international and South African money laundering control framework.

1 s 21(1) of FICA.
2 s 21(2) of FICA. See also s 82(2)(b).
3 s 46(2) of FICA read with s 68(1) of FICA.

Discourses of anxiety in nursing practice : a psychoanalytic case study of the change-of-shift handover ritual

This paper reports on the findings of a study that considered how anxiety might function to organise nurses' practice. With reference to psychoanalytic theory this paper analyses field notes taken during a series of nursing change-of-shift handovers. The handover practices analysed met all the criteria for a ritual, as understood in psychoanalytic theory, and functioned to alleviate anxiety in the short term while symbolically expressing a forbidden and unknown knowledge. We argue that the handover ritual contained certain prohibitions, yet allowed some expression of the prohibited knowledge in a disguised way. The prohibition concerned how the patient affected the nurse, that is, moved the nurse to love and hate the patient. We argue that this prohibition is expressed, in disguise, via the displacement of affection for the patient onto other nurses and through negative stereotyping of some patients. We also argue that these prohibitions of the handover mirror broader prohibitions within nursing, and thus the rituals of the handover become an expression of how professional prohibitions are enacted in practice. We conclude that the important implicit function of the handover ritual is to keep anxiety at bay, thereby enabling the nurse to commence practice rather than being immobilised by the effect of potentially overwhelming anxiety.

The Internet and child sexual offending : a criminological review

This paper outlines the current literature on what is known about the processes by which individuals utilize the Internet for child sexual abuse. First, three ways in which the Internet is utilized are outlined: (1) by dissemination of sexually abusive images of children for personal and/or commercial reasons; (2) by communication with other individuals with a sexual interest in children: and (3) by maintaining and developing online pedophilic networks. Second, content and availability of abusive images are described, and the difficulties faced by criminal justice agencies in both the definition of abusive images and their prohibition is discussed. Third, the potential for offenders to ‘cross-over’ from online offenses to contact sexual victimization of children is examined and placed within a context of various Internet offender typologies that have been developed. Finally, implications of this body of research for law and public policy are considered.

Regulatory design strategies and enforcement approaches for research involving human embryos and cloning in Australia and the United Kingdom – time for a change.

This paper examines regulatory design strategies and enforcement approaches in the context of the UK and Australia’s regulation of research involving human embryos and cloning. The aim is to discuss current regulation in view of the impending review of the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002 (Cth) and the Prohibition of Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2002 (Cth). It is argued that the type of regulation used in relation to those who are licensed to research in Australia is unsuitable due to an over-emphasis on deterrence and the authoritarian approach taken by regulatory bureaucracies. The cost and efficiency of the current system is also questioned. The central thesis is that a co-regulatory system that combines the existing framework legislation with self-regulation should be adopted for licence holders. Such regulation of licence holders should include responsive regulatory strategies. ‘Command and control’ design strategies and deterrence approaches present in the current regulatory systems for breaches of legislation by non-licence holders and serious breaches by licence holders should be maintained.

The increasing criminalization of economic law : a competition law perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the trend towards the criminalization of hard core cartel conduct and to consider the appropriateness and effectiveness of extending the criminal law to this conduct. In addition, it will consider some of the legal implications, including the exposure of directors of companies to potential racketeering charges.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper first examines cartel theory and the justification for prohibition. The paper then identifies the emerging trend toward criminalization of hard core cartel conduct, followed by an assessment of potential justifications for criminalization. Implications of criminalization, including the potential impact of organized crime legislation on offenders and regulators, will then be considered.
Findings – There is a clear trend towards the criminalization of hard core cartels. The paper argues that this trend is appropriate, both because of the moral culpability it attracts and because of its potential to enhance general deterrence. The paper also argues that cartel conduct, in jurisdictions in which it is criminalized, will constitute “organized crime” as defined in the Palermo Convention and, as such, expose participants to potential money laundering and asset forfeiture consequences.
Originality/value – This paper is of value to governments and regulators considering adoption or implementation of a criminal cartel regime and to practitioners in advising clients about potential consequences of cartel conduct within a criminal regime.

Working around a contested diagnosis : borderline personality disorder in adolescence

This discourse analytic study sits at the intersection of everyday communications with young people in mental health settings and the enduring sociological critique of diagnoses in psychiatry. The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) is both contested and stigmatized, in mental health and general health settings. Its legitimacy is further contested within the specialist adolescent mental health setting. In this setting, clinicians face a quandary regarding the application of adult diagnostic criteria to an adolescent population, aged less than 18 years. This article presents an analysis of interviews undertaken with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) clinicians in two publicly funded Australian services, about their use of the BPD diagnosis. In contrast with notions of primacy of diagnosis or of transparency in communications, doctors, nurses and allied health clinicians resisted and subverted a diagnosis of BPD in their work with adolescents. We delineate specific social and discursive strategies that clinicians displayed and reflected on, including: team rules which discouraged diagnostic disclosure; the lexical strategy of hedging when using the diagnosis; the prohibition and utility of informal ‘borderline talk’ among clinicians; and reframing the diagnosis with young people. For clinicians, these strategies legitimated their scepticism and enabled them to work with diagnostic uncertainty, in a population identified as vulnerable. For adolescent identities, these strategies served to forestall a BPD trajectory, allowing room for troubled adolescents to move and grow. These findings illuminate how the contest surrounding this diagnosis in principle is expressed in everyday clinical practice.

Internet content regulation, public drug websites and the growth in hidden Internet services

Governments have traditionally censored drug-related information, both in traditional media and, in recent years, in online media. We explore Internet content regulation from a drug-policy perspective by describing the likely impacts of censoring drug websites and the parallel growth in hidden Internet services. Australia proposes a compulsory Internet filtering regime that would block websites that ‘depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of… drug misuse or addiction’ and/or ‘promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime’. In this article, we present findings from a mixed-methods study of online drug discussion. Our research found that websites dealing with drugs, that would likely be blocked by the filter, in fact contributed positively to harm reduction. Such sites helped people access more comprehensive and relevant information than was available elsewhere. Blocking these websites would likely drive drug discussion underground at a time when corporate-controlled ‘walled gardens’ (e.g. Facebook) and proprietary operating systems on mobile devices may also limit open drug discussion. At the same time, hidden Internet services, such as Silk Road, have emerged that are not affected by Internet filtering. The inability for any government to regulate Tor websites and the crypto-currency Bitcoin poses a unique challenge to drug prohibition policies.
Read More: http://informahealthcare.com/doi/full/10.3109/09687637.2012.745828

From chemical warfare to peace

Following the horrors of chemical warfare in two World Wars and the Vietnam War (see box), the international community worked to develop an encompassing treaty to prevent the use of chemical weapons. After extensive work, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction came into force in 1997. Commonly known as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), it requires member states to declare and destroy chemical weapons and provides for inspection of facilities and investigation into alleged use. The CWC has been ratified by 190 countries and is administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Warfare (OPCW). In 2013, the OPCW won the Nobel Peace prize "for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons". Notable in the official announcement is the reminder that neither the US nor Russia met the 2012 deadline for destruction of their stockpiles of chemical weapons, although both have made significant progress. In July 2005, an invitational joint International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)/OPCW Conference concluded that for the work of OPCW to succeed and be sustainable, engagement in formal educational contexts and public outreach was needed. To this end, the Multiple Uses of Chemicals website

Art as parodic practice

Perhaps because of the pervasive sampling, remixing, rehashing and promiscuous citational blending in postmodernity, where quote marks dissolve, parody has come to be seen as a somewhat archaic concept, pertaining to cultures more stably codified and hierarchically ordered, rather than subject to the fluctuations of global markets and phantasmagoric projections affecting the flow of investment moneys. Given the anxiogenic nature of postmodernity under its various guises, willed as hypermodernityand metamodernity or supermodernity, the ideologeme ‘parody’ might be seen as nostalgic symptom in the wake of the ‘grand narratives’ (Lyotard 1984 [1979]) – a rehearsed post-apocalyptic nostalgia for a world of neo-feudalism and fiefdoms, where the seasonal lifting of prohibition for carnival brought on the ‘allowed fool’ (Shakespeare 2006) for parody’s brief upending of the hierarchical order, when high became low, mouth met anus, and wise became mad, even within the Pater Noster of the Holy Mass. (Bakhtin 1980: 78). How the revisitation of parody might illuminate contemporary cultural politics is a driving question behind this collection, a questionmade more urgent by recent global developments of terror.

Constructive activism in the dark web: cryptomarkets and illicit drugs in the digital ‘demimonde’

This paper explores activism enacted through Silk Road, a nowdefunct cryptomarket where illicit drugs were sold in the darkweb. Drawing on a digital ethnography of Silk Road, we developthe notion of constructive activism to extend the lexicon ofconcepts available to discuss forms of online activism. Monitoringof the cryptomarket took place between June 2011 and its closurein October 2013. Just before and after the closure of themarketplace we conducted anonymous online interviews with 17people who reported buying drugs on Silk Road (1.0). Theseinterviews were conducted synchronously and interactivelythrough encrypted instant messaging. Participants discussedharnessing and developing the technological tools needed toaccess Silk Road and engage within the Silk Road community. Forparticipants Silk Road was not just a market for trading drugs: itfacilitated a shared experience of personal freedom within alibertarian philosophical framework, where open discussionsabout stigmatized behaviours were encouraged and supported.Tensions between public activism against drug prohibition andthe need to hide one’s identity as a drug user from public scrutinywere partially resolved through community actions thatinternalized these politics, rather than engaging in forms of onlineactivism that are intended to have real-world political effects.Most aptly described through van de Sande’s (2015) concept ofprefigurative politics, they sought to transform their values intobuilt environments that were designed to socially engineer amore permissive digital reality, which we refer to as constructiveactivism.

Wielding the big stick – Lessons for enforcing anti-discrimination law from the Fair Work Ombudsman

Anti-discrimination law is enforced by a person who has experienced discrimination by lodging a complaint at a statutory equal opportunity agency. The agency is responsible for receiving and resolving discrimination complaints and educating the community; it does not play a role in enforcing the law. The agency relies on ‘carrots’ to encourage voluntary compliance, but it does not wield any ‘sticks’. This is not the case in other areas of law, such as industrial relations, where the Fair Work Ombudsman is charged with enforcing the law — including the prohibition of discrimination in the workplace — and possesses the necessary powers to do so. British academics Hepple, Coussey and Choudhury developed an enforcement pyramid for equal opportunity. This article shows that the model used by the Fair Work Ombudsman reflects what Hepple, Coussey and Choudhury propose, while anti-discrimination law enforcement would be represented as a flat, rectangular structure. The article considers the Fair Work Ombudsman’s discrimination enforcement work to date and identifies some lessons that anti-discrimination law enforcement can learn from its experience.

Informed options trading prior to takeovers - Does the regulatory environment matter?

We investigate the prevalence of informed options trading prior to takeover announcements, when the legal prohibition against insider trading is strictest. Although insider trading laws apply equally to the options and stock markets, the options market is considerably more transparent than the equity market, which makes insider trading in options more easily detectable. We find that privately informed investors trade in the options market prior to takeover announcements; however, their transactions are limited to liquid call options and options with high inherent leverage. Furthermore, we find that prior to takeover announcements, informed investors trade on their private information in the options market only when a SEC investigation of insider trading is unlikely to occur. Our results suggest that even prior to takeover announcements informed investors are attracted to the options market, which increases profit making potential due the greater leverage it affords, although they trade in a way which minimizes the likelihood of detection.