White Lines: The Intercultural Politics of Everyday Movement in Local Spaces

This article draws on research into racist vilification experienced by young Arab and Muslim Australians especially since 11 September 2001, to explore the links between public space, movement and national belonging, and the spatial regulation of cultural difference that functions in Australia. The authors analyse the way that the capacity to experience forms of national belonging and cultural citizenship is shaped by inclusion within or exclusion from local as well as nationally significant public spaces. While access to public space and freedom to move are conventionally seen as fundamental to a democratic state, these are often seen in abstract terms. This article emphasises how movement in public space is a very concrete dimension of our experience of freedom, in showing how incivilities directed against Arab and Muslim Australians have operated pedagogically as a spatialised regulation of national belonging. The article concludes by examining how processes associated with the Cronulla riots of December 2005 have retarded the capacities of Muslim and Arab Australians to negotiate within and across spaces, diminishing their opportunities to invest in local and national spaces, shrinking their resources and opportunities for place-making in public space.

The performance and politics of practice for New Graduate Nurses

The change from nursing student to Registered Nurse (RNs) is both a desirable and anticipated event for New Graduate Nurses (NGNs). Having completed their formal education, most NGNs approach the threshold of their professional career with mixed emotions. While excited about the future and eagerly awaiting the commencement of employment, many are aware that this change also signifies a time of personal upheaval, professional insecurity and further personal learning. In the nursing professions’ enthusiasm to facilitate a smooth passage for NGNs a vast literature now addresses preparation-for-practice degrees, as well as the perceived workplace deficits and support needs of NGNs. However, the importance this change from working as a student to working as a NGN is not well conceptualised, theorised or understood as this largely instrumental literature essentially reduces the problematisation of the NGN transition experience to the problematisation of the individual by identifying NGNs as ‘the’ problem. Subsequently it fails to expose or challenge the normative assumptions underpinning processes that have formerly been considered solutions, or, the impact of such processes in a workplace that frames itself as “supportive”. Conspicuously absent is an exploration of how the NGN role is performed by former students, now beginning RNs undergoing the very personal transition of “becoming registered nurses”. Using Goffman’s (1956) theorisation of performance in everyday life exploring how process and meaning in mundane interactions present themselves in the “regular” lives of people at large, and Margaret Archer’s (2000) work emphasising the significance of the inner dialogue for managing the emotions that emerge out of situations that confront us, this paper draws upon data collected during a study of NGNs’ experience of transition to practice (Malouf 2010). It focuses on an emergent understanding of the need to differentiate the performance of ‘student’ from that of ‘NGN’ role. Further, it explores how these roles have become conflated into a conceptual continuum and viewed as a slide from student to NGN performance, rather than a significant moment of change involving roles that need to be distinctly defined as a necessary precursor to enhancing and supporting the professional and personal development of beginning practitioners.

Disability and the labour market : an analysis of British males

This paper attempts, using data from the British Labour Force Survey 1996, to examine to what extent differences in labour market outcomes between able-bodied and disabled men may be attributed to differences in endowments of human capital and associated productivity differences. Both labour force participation and selectivity corrected human capital equations are estimated and decomposition techniques applied to them. Using the methodology of Baldwin and Johnson [Baldwin, M., Johnson, W.G., 1994. Labor market discrimination against men with disabilities. Journal of Human Resources, XXIX(1), Winter, 1–19], the employment effects of wage discrimination against the disabled are also estimated. Evidence of both substantial wage and participation rate differences between able-bodied and disabled men are found, which have implications for the operation of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.

Confronting consensus : the art and politics of Christopher Howlett

The article discusses the art career and works of Brisbane artist Christopher Howlett. Howlett has engaged with a number of political issues in a range of media. Issues include the artist as 'labourer', art in the age of tabloid media, art and celebrity culture in media such as performance, installation, sound works, and digital frameworks.

Et tu, George? Campaign journalism and the politics of compromise

There is a category of film about journalism in which journalism is not the star, but the supporting player, and journalists not the protagonists but the Greek chorus, commenting on and also changing the realities they report. In such films the news media are a structuring presence driving the plot, shaping the narrative, constructing what we might think of as a pseudo-reality. Like Daniel Boorstin’s notion of the pseudo-event (introduced in his still-relevant book The Image, 1962), this pseudo-reality is so-named because it would not exist were it not for the demands of the news media’s hunger for stories, and knowledge of the damage they can do with those stories, on the calculations and actions of the key actors. Pseudo-realities form as responses to what political actors think journalists and their organisations need and want, or as efforts to shape journalistic accounts in ways favourable to themselves. Films about politics often feature pseudorealities of this kind, in which the events and actions driving the plot have only a tenuous relationship with important things going on in the everyday world beyond the political arena. Everything we see is about image, perception, appearance.

When the right to be counted doesn’t count : the politics and challenges of researching the health of asylum seekers

A fundamental prerequisite of population health research is the ability to establish an accurate denominator. This in turn requires that every individual in the study population is counted. However, this seemingly simple principle has become a point of conflict between researchers whose aim is to produce evidence of disparities in population health outcomes and governments whose policies promote(intentionally or not) inequalities that are the underlying causes of health disparities. Research into the health of asylum seekers is a case in point. There is a growing body of evidence documenting the adverse affects of recent changes in asylum-seeking legislation, including mandatory detention. However, much of this evidence has been dismissed by some governments as being unsound, biased and unscientific because, it is argued, evidence is derived from small samples or from case studies. Yet, it is the policies of governments that are the key barrier to the conduct of rigorous population health research on asylum seekers. In this paper, the authors discuss the challenges of counting asylum seekers and the limitations of data reported in some industrialized countries. They argue that the lack of accurate statistical data on asylum seekers has been an effective neo-conservative strategy for erasing the health inequalities in this vulnerable population, indeed a strategy that renders invisible this population. They describe some alternative strategies that may be used by researchers to obtain denominator data on hard-to-reach populations such as asylum seekers.

The politics of gang research in New Zealand

Like many other Western jurisdictions over the past sixty years, New Zealand has had to contend with episodes of moral panic regarding the activities of youth gangs. The most recent episode occurred in 2005-2007 and was spurred by a perceived escalation in inter-gang conflict and violence in the Counties Manukau areas within greater Auckland, New Zealand. This particular episode was unique in the New Zealand context for the level of attention given to youth gangs by the government and policy makers. This paper reports on the authors’ experiences of carrying out research on the youth gang situation inCounties Manukauas part of an inter-agency project to develop a response to gang-related violence. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which government officials attempted to mould the research process and findings to suit an already emerging policy framework, predicated on supporting ‘business as usual’, at the expense of research participants calls for great autonomy to develop and delivery appropriate youth services to their communities.

The Politics of Twitter Data

Our paper approaches Twitter through the lens of “platform politics” (Gillespie, 2010), focusing in particular on controversies around user data access, ownership, and control. We characterise different actors in the Twitter data ecosystem: private and institutional end users of Twitter, commercial data resellers such as Gnip and DataSift, data scientists, and finally Twitter, Inc. itself; and describe their conflicting interests. We furthermore study Twitter’s Terms of Service and application programming interface (API) as material instantiations of regulatory instruments used by the platform provider and argue for a more promotion of data rights and literacy to strengthen the position of end users.

Are we keeping the bastards honest? Perceptions of corruption, integrity and influence on politics

The words of the late Don Chipp, the founder of the Australian Democrats, have a perennial relevance to politics. When Chipp talked about ‘keeping the bastards honest’, it related to a minor political party playing a role of keeping the major political parties true to their word (Warhurst 1997). Yet it is also a democratic role that citizens play on an ongoing basis, particularly through the mechanism of elections. At the ballot box, governments that are widely perceived to have acted with a lack of integrity are roundly punished. This chapter explores public opinion on issues of integrity, corruption, influence and trust in politics and politicians in Australia. The evidence paints a differentiated picture of a public which sees little sign of overtly corrupt political practices but on the other hand does not feel terribly influential and is not always confident of fair treatment from public officials...

The magic of numbers and the amazing disappearing act : the politics of counting youth homelessness

No-one wants to see young people who are no longer able to stay at home with their parents living in situations that are neither stable nor safe. Most Australians also appreciate that youth homelessness is typically a result of factors beyond the control of young people like poverty, lack of affordable housing, parental divorce or separation, family conflict and violence, sexual abuse, or mental health problems.1 Since the Burdekin Report of 1989 first put the issue on the national agenda, youth homelessness has been a point of some political sensitivity as the numbers of young homeless stayed stubbornly high through the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Public service versus private interest : a comparative analysis of the Australian and British debates

This paper will compare and evaluate the effectiveness of commercial media lobbying and advocacy against public service media in two countries, the United Kingdom and Australia. The paper will focus empirically on the commercial media coverage of public service media issues in these countries (relating to the BBC and ABC respectively) over the period since the election of the Conservative-led Coalition in Britain in June 2010, and the election of the Gillard government in Australia in August 2010. Reference will be made to preceding periods as relevant to an understanding of the current environment. In both countries the main commercial media rival to public service media is News Corp and its associated organisations – News Ltd and Sky News in Australia, and News International and BSkyB in the UK. The paper will examine with analysis of print and online news and commentary content how News Corp outlets have reported and commented on the activities and plans of public service media as the latter have developed and extended their presence on digital TV and online platforms. It will also consider the responses of the ABC and BBC to these interventions. It will consider, thirdly, the responses of Australian and British governments to these debates, and the policy outcomes. This section of the paper will seek to evaluate the trajectory of the policy-public-private dynamic in recent years, and to draw conclusions as to the future direction of policy. Particular attention will be devoted to recent key moments in this unfolding dialogue. In Britain, debates around the efforts of News Corp to take over 100% of BSkyB, both before and after the breaking of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011; in Australia, the debate around the National Broadband Network and the competitive tender process for ABC World, that country’s public service transnational broadcaster; and other key moments where rivalry between News Corp companies and public service media became mainstream news stories provoking wider public debate. The paper will conclude with recommendations as to how public service media organisations might engage constructively with commercial organisations in the future, including News Corp, and taking into account emerging technological and financial challenges to traditional rationales for public service provision.