Usefulness of a self-reported history of chickenpox in adult women in the Top End

Early determination of immune status is essential for the prevention and/or amelioration of disease following exposure to chickenpox. This is of particular significance for pregnant women because of the additional risks to the foetus or newborn.1 To determine the usefulness of a self-reported history of chickenpox in adult women in the Top End, we compared it with serological evidence of immunity.

Welfare surveillance, income management and new paternalism in Australia

This article discusses the situation of income support claimants in Australia, constructed as faulty citizens and flawed welfare subjects. Many are on the receiving end of complex, multi-layered forms of surveillance aimed at securing socially responsible and compliant behaviours. In Australia, as in other Western countries, neoliberal economic regimes with their harsh and often repressive treatment of welfare recipients operate in tandem with a burgeoning and costly arsenal of CCTV and other surveillance and governance assemblages. Through a program of ‘Income Management’, initially targeting (mainly) Indigenous welfare recipients in Australia’s Northern Territory, the BasicsCard (administered by Centrelink, on behalf of the Australian Federal Government’s Department of Human Services) is one example of this welfare surveillance. The scheme operates by ‘quarantining’ a percentage of a claimant’s welfare entitlements to be spent by way of the BasicsCard on ‘approved’ items only. The BasicsCard scheme raises significant questions about whether it is possible to encourage people to take responsibility for themselves if they no longer have real control over the most important aspects of their lives. Some Indigenous communities have resisted the BasicsCard, criticising it because the imposition of income management leads to a loss of trust, dignity, and individual agency. Further, income management of individuals by the welfare state contradicts the purported aim that they become less ‘welfare dependent’ and more ‘self-reliant’. In highlighting issues around compulsory income management this paper makes a contribution to the largely under discussed area of income management and welfare surveillance, with its propensity for function creep, garnering large volumes of data on BasicsCard user’s approved (and declined) purchasing decisions, complete with dates, amounts, times and locations.

The vanishing endpoint of settler colonialism

In this paper, we interrogate the way that narratives about the unfolding of settler colonialism through time are encoded in recent Australian Indigenous policy frameworks. We argue that the postcolonial image of a single transformative moment of radical political break is embedded in Australian policy frameworks, but is deployed in ways that fuse this idea with the moment of colonial completion and in so doing assist the colonial project. By merging the moment of decolonisation and the moment of colonial completion, temporal narratives mobilise conservative and progressive settler voices towards colonial goals. We identify three recent policy approaches: reconciliation, neoliberal contractualism and intervention, and interrogate the narratives of the present and future that they reflect and deploy. We argue these unacknowledged stories of the colonial future must be contested, so that debates about how settler and Indigenous people might live together differently across time are not foreclosed.

Taxonomy and redescription of the Fawn Antechinus, Antechinus bellus (Thomas) (Marsupialia: Dasyuridae)

We provide a taxonomic redescription of the Fawn Antechinus, Antechinus bellus (Thomas). A. bellus is the only member of its genus to occur in Australia’s Northern Territory, where it can be found in savannah woodlands of the Top End. It is perhaps the most distinctive antechinus, and clearly distinguishable from the other 10 extant species of antechinus found in Australia: externally, A. bellus has pale body fur, white feet and large ears; A. bellus skulls have large auditory bullae and narrow interorbital width, while broadening abruptly at the molar row; mitochondrial and nuclear genes clearly dis-tinguish A. bellus from all congeners, phylogenetically positioning the Fawn Antechinus as sister to Queensland’s A. leo Van Dyck, 1980, with which it shares a curled supratragus of the external ear and a similar tropical latitudinal range.

Australian domestic violence protection order legislation : a comparative quantitative content analysis of victim safety provisions

In Australia, protection orders are a key legal response to domestic violence, and are often viewed as a way of providing for victim safety. For instance, recently the joint Australian and New South Wales Law Reform Commissions recommended that a common core purpose of all state and territory domestic violence legislation should be ‘to ensure or maximise the safety and protection of persons who fear or experience family violence’ (2010:Recommendation 7-4). Drawing and building upon prior research in Australia and the United States (‘US’), this paper uses comparative quantitative content analysis to assess the victim safety focus of domestic violence protection order legislation in each Australian state and territory. The findings of this analysis show that the Northern Territory, South Australia and Victoria ‘stand out’ from the other jurisdictions, having the highest victim safety focus in their legislation. However, there remains sizeable scope for improvement in all Australian jurisdictions, in terms of the victim safety focus of their legislative provisions and the considerations of legislative inconsistency between jurisdictions.

Prevention of Alcohol-Related Crime and Trauma (PACT) : brief interventions in routine care pathway – a study protocol

Background Globally, alcohol-related injuries cause millions of deaths and huge economic loss each year . The incidence of facial (jawbone) fractures in the Northern Territory of Australia is second only to Greenland, due to a strong involvement of alcohol in its aetiology, and high levels of alcohol consumption. The highest incidences of alcohol-related trauma in the Territory are observed amongst patients in the Maxillofacial Surgery Unit of the Royal Darwin Hospital. Accordingly, this project aims to introduce screening and brief interventions into this unit, with the aims of changing health service provider practice, improving access to care, and improving patient outcomes. Methods Establishment of Project Governance: The project governance team includes a project manager, project leader, an Indigenous Reference Group (IRG) and an Expert Reference Group (ERG). Development of a best practice pathway: PACT project researchers collaborate with clinical staff to develop a best practice pathway suited to the setting of the surgical unit. The pathway provides clear guidelines for screening, assessment, intervention and referral. Implementation: The developed pathway is introduced to the unit through staff training workshops and associate resources and adapted in response to staff feedback. Evaluation: File audits, post workshop questionnaires and semi-structured interviews are administered. Discussion This project allows direct transfer of research findings into clinical practice and can inform future hospital-based injury prevention strategies.

Mandatory sentencing : a criminological perspective

This paper will give a ‘criminological perspective’ on mandatory sentencing. It will however largely avoid the issues of the effect of mandatory sentencing provisions on the judicial process and judicial independence, as this has already been covered by Sir Anthony Mason. It will also avoid the legal issues concerning the constitutional, human rights and international law aspects of mandatory sentencing which will be covered by later speakers. The aim will be to give a brief overview of research which evaluates the effects of mandatory sentencing provisions in terms of the available evidence of whether they meet their stated aims of deterrence, selective incapacitation and the reduction of crime rates. This will be done in two parts, first in relation to the more extensive experiment in mandatory sentencing in the USA which has provided some of the impetus and metaphors ("three strikes") for recent Australian developments; and second the recent mandatory sentencing provisions in Western Australia (WA) and the Northern Territory (NT). Evidence from both the US and WA (NT is hard to assess because of the lack of proper monitoring and criminal statistics) indicates that mandatory sentencing does not produce the effects of deterrence, selective incapacitation and crime reduction which are its stated justifications and does produce a range of damaging side effects in terms of distortion of the judicial process, wildly disproportionate sentencing, additional financial and social cost and deepening social exclusion of individuals and particular communities. So what is left are the less acknowledged underpinnings of mandatory sentencing in the form of the symbolic politics of law and order, the politics of social exclusion and a displacement of racial anxieties and hostilities onto the terrain of the legal. In fashioning this necessarily brief overview a number of sources have been heavily drawn upon, in particular the excellent work by Neil Morgan from UWA (Morgan, 1995;1999; 2000); Dianne Johnson and George Zdenkowski in their detailed report to the Senate Inquiry (2000); and a number of articles appearing in 1999 in an excellent special issue of the UNSW Law Journal, all of which are highly recommended for further reading.

Arts practice and disconnected youth in Australia : impact and domains of change

Background: This paper describes research conducted with Big hART, Australia's most awarded participatory arts company. It considers three projects, LUCKY, GOLD and NGAPARTJI NGAPARTJI across separate sites in Tasmania, Western NSW and Northern Territory, respectively, in order to understand project impact from the perspective of project participants, Arts workers, community members and funders. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 29 respondents. The data were coded thematically and analysed using the constant comparative method of qualitative data analysis. Results: Seven broad domains of change were identified: psychosocial health; community; agency and behavioural change; the Art; economic effect; learning and identity. Conclusions: Experiences of participatory arts are interrelated in an ecology of practice that is iterative, relational, developmental, temporal and contextually bound. This means that questions of impact are contingent, and there is no one path that participants travel or single measure that can adequately capture the richness and diversity of experience. Consequently, it is the productive tensions between the domains of change that are important and the way they are animated through Arts practice that provides sign posts towards the impact of Big hART projects.

Field Companion to the Mammals of Australia

"This invaluable companion to The Mammals of Australia is intended to be taken out into the field and used in conjunction with the more comprehensive volume. Genuinely practical in the outdoors, the book includes accounts of 389 species and newly developed, comprehensive identification keys. The Field Companion is introduced by a Mammal Distribution Matrix, which provides a classified checklist of all mammals in Australia (including those extinguished since European settlement) and the distribution of extant species in each state and territory. Species accounts provide initial differentiation, and include notes on identification, size, abundance, habitat and federal list/status, photograph and distribution map, as well as key references, which provide quick access to all relevant state identification keys in the Field Companion and to the longer entry in The Mammals of Australia. The authors have developed separate keys, illustrated with detailed drawings and maps, for the six states and the Northern Territory, to simplify the identification process and allow the reader to confidently separate all mammal species, no matter how subtle the differences. With the addition of these identification keys, this book becomes more than a field guide - although it is intended primarily to be used outdoors - and allows the user to finish identification based on more obscure characteristics, which is an advantage for some hard-to-identify species groups."--Libraries Australia

Institutional response and Indigenous experiences of Cyclone Tracy

Early on Christmas morning 1974 Tropical Cyclone Tracy, a Category 4 storm, devastated the Northern Territory city of Darwin leaving only 6% of the city’s housing habitable. The extent of the disaster was largely the result of unregulated and poorly constructed buildings, predominantly housing. While the engineering and reconstruction process demonstrated a very successful response and adaptation to an existing and future risk, the impact of the cyclone of the local community and its Indigenous population in particular, had not been well recorded. NCCARF therefore commissioned a report on the Indigenous experience of Cyclone Tracy to document how Indigenous people were impacted by, responded to, and recovered from Cyclone Tracy in comparison to non-Indigenous groups. The report also considers the research literature on disasters and Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, with a specific focus on cyclones, and considers the socio-political context of Indigenous communities in Darwin prior to Cyclone Tracy.

Adaptation lessons from cyclone Tracy

This case study will review the impact of Tropical Cyclone Tracy on the city and people of Darwin, the Australian engineering and institutional responses that it invoked and the relevance of these lessons to a world threatened by global climate change. At Christmas, 1974, Tropical Cyclone Tracy laid waste the city of Darwin, an iconic episode in the history of Australian natural disasters. It provides one of the clearest and most successful examples worldwide of adaptation to a catastrophe. Following large losses in Townsville from Tropical Cyclone Althea in 1971, the level of destruction in Darwin was such that it led to new regulations mandating the use of the wind code for reconstruction, and eventually to similar regulations for new construction in other cyclone-prone areas of Australia.

Experience indigenous culture in Arnhem Land, NT

A travel article about a journey to the Cobourg Peninsula, Arnhem Land. "NOW I know I'm back,'' says our guide David McMahon as the scent of wood smoke makes its way into the 4WD. For McMahon, being back means Kakadu and Arnhem Land, and ultimately our final destination in the Northern Territory's Cobourg Peninsula. In the north, one of the first things you need to adjust is your attitude to fire. The indigenous people have long worked with it. The rangers perform controlled burns. The animals have adapted and know how to escape the flames. The smoke trail leads us down the old Jim Jim Rd, our first stretch of dirt track since leaving Darwin. Our destination is the Venture North campsite at Garig Gunak Barlu National Park...

Conservation genetics of the water mouse, Xeromys myoides Thomas, 1889

The water mouse, Xeromys myoides, is currently recognised as a vulnerable species in Australia, inhabiting a small number of distinct and isolated coastal regions of Queensland and the Northern Territory. An examination of the evolutionary history and contemporary influences shaping the genetic structure of this species is required to make informed conservation management decisions. Here, we report the first analysis undertaken on the phylogeography and population genetics of the water mouse across its mainland Australian distribution. Genetic diversity was assessed at two mitochondrial DNA (Cytochrome b, 1000 bp; D-loop, 400 bp) and eight microsatellite DNA loci. Very low genetic diversity was found, indicating that water mice underwent a recent expansion throughout their Australian range and constitute a single evolutionarily significant unit. Microsatellite analyses revealed that the highest genetic diversity was found in the Mackay region of central Queensland; population substructure was also identified, suggesting that local populations may be isolated in this region. Conversely, genetic diversity in the Coomera region of south-east Queensland was very low and the population in this region has experienced a significant genetic bottleneck. These results have significant implications for future management, particularly in terms of augmenting populations through translocations or reintroducing water mice in areas where they have gone extinct.