Capital works procurement policies in Australia : implications for understanding and meeting client needs

This paper undertakes a case study of procurement through a comparative analysis of the capital works procurement policies of the Commonwealth, State, and Territory Governments in Australia. Capital works procurement policies provide the mechanism by which governments manage procurement processes, and frame how individual government agencies, as clients, participate in those processes. The paper proposes a typology of capital works procurement approaches, together with implications of how these different policies play out for clients. A tentative proposition is advanced that policy approaches to capital works procurement either explicitly or implicitly, make assumptions about the organisational capability of clients to plan and deliver capital works projects, including their ability to understand and articulate their own building needs. Additionally, the paper concludes that innovation has occurred at a policy level in capital works procurement. Recommendations for further research are suggested.

Pain, passion and faith : revisiting the place of Charles Wesley in early Methodism

Pain, Passion and Faith: Revisiting the Place of Charles Wesley in Early Methodism is a significant study of the 18th-century poet and preacher Charles Wesley. Wesley was an influential figure in 18th-century English culture and society; he was co-founder of the Methodist revival movement and one of the most prolific hymn-writers in the English language. His hymns depict the Christian life as characterized by a range of intense emotions, from ecstatic joy to profound suffering.

Public health planning for the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games in metropolitan area health services

In addition to an increase in visitors to Sydney and movement to and from Olympic venues, many activities and attractions are planned throughout the Sydney metropolitan area for the period of the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Public health planning and strategy development has been conducted at the NSW Department of Health, area health service, public health unit, and local government levels to ensure that all possible steps have been taken to mitigate public health risk.

Tax morale in Australia : what shapes it and has it changed over time?

Why taxpayers pay their taxes voluntarily is an important question for tax administrations worldwide. Some believe it is because taxpayers are deterred from tax evasion out of a fear of being caught or penalized. Others, in contrast, suggest that factors such as the level of tax morale one has (ie, the intrinsic motivation one has to pay their tax) affects compliance behaviour. While there have been numerous empirical studies published that have explored the role of deterrence on tax compliance behaviour, very few studies have explored the concept of tax morale in any detail. This article therefore attempts to rectify this gap in the literature. If tax morale is important in determining compliance behaviour, as several researchers have suggested, then it is also important to understand what might affect one’s level of tax morale. The specific aim of this article will be to identify factors that shape or have an impact on tax morale. Using data collected from the Australian waves of the 1981 and 1995 World Values Survey, this study will demonstrate that factors such as trust and moral beliefs plan an important role in shaping tax morale in Australia. Further, it will be shown that tax morale has increased significantly in Australia since the early 1980s, and that it has done so at a faster rate than many other OECD countries. Possible explanations for this increase will be discussed.

Apprehending butterflies and flying beauties : bringing magical realism to ground

[No Abstract]

Event that never happened : the history and politics of decentralisation in Victoria and New South Wales 1885-1985

The thesis is an account of movements and policies for decentralisation of population and economic activity away from metropolitan to non-metropolitan areas in Victoria and N.S.W. in the period 1885-1985. It examines the pull from the country and the push from the capitals for decentralisation. Ballarat (Victoria) and Bathurst (N.S.W.) are used as case studies. Introductory chapters describe the historic pattern of population distribution in the two Colonies/States and discuss theories about the spatial distribution of population and industry. Chapters recounting and discussing the history and politics of decentralisation in Victoria and N.S.W. are organised in three periods: 1885-1940; 1940-1965; 1965-1985. A more decentralised distribution of population in Victoria and N.S.W. was almost always widely accepted as being in the public interest. Decentralisation rose and fell recurrently on the issue attention cycle. The pull from the country was fragmented and locally self-interested. The push from the capitals occurred only when life or its quality was perceived as threatened because of factors related to city size. Governments in both States introduced micro policies ostensibly to counter formidable centralising forces. In the 1970s there was an abortive attempt to implement a selective decentralisation policy in N.S.W. The thesis argues that decentralisation did not happen because: (1) there was not a consistent set of values and goals underlying the pull and push; (2) there was never a sustained, unified constituency for decentralisation, even in the country; (3) the power to influence, subvert or obstruct decentralisation policies was too widely diffused; (4) insufficient account was taken in decentralisation policymaking of the underlying economic, social and political dynamics.

Celebrating difference

This thesis examines short fiction and some poetry by writers from four different Australian cultural communities, the Indigenous community, and the Jewish, Chinese and Middle-Eastern communities. I have chosen to study the most recent short fiction available from a selection of writing which originates from each culture. In the chapters on Chinese-Australian and Middle-Eastern Australian fiction I have examined some poetry if it contributes to the subject matter under discussion. In this study I show how the short story form is used as a platform for these writers to express views on their own cultures and on their identity within Australian society. Through a close examination of texts this study reveals the strategies by which many of these narratives provide an imaginative literary challenge to Anglo-Celtic cultural dominance, a challenge which contributes to the political nature of this writing and the shifting nature of the short story genre. This study shows that by celebrating difference these narratives can act as a site of resistance and show a capacity to reflect and instigate cultural change. This thesis examines the process by which these narratives create a dialogue between cultures and address the problems inherent in diverse cultural communities living together.

At the limits : postcolonial and hyperreal translations of Australian poetry

This dissertation employs the methodologies of postcolonial theory and hyperreal theory (following Baudrillard), in order to investigate articulations of identity, nation and representation in contemporary Australian poetry. Informed by a comparative analysis of contemporary Latin American poetry and cultural theory (in translation), as a means of re-examining the Australian context, this dissertation develops a new transnational model of Australian poetics. The central thesis of this dissertation is that contemporary Australian poetry engages with the postcolonial at its limits. That is, at those sites of postcoloniality that are already mapped by theory, but also at those that occur beyond postcolonial theory. The hyperreal is understood as one such limit, traceable within the poetry but silenced in conventional postcolonial theory. As another limit to the postcolonial, this dissertation reads Latin American poetry and theory, in whose texts postcolonial theory is actively resisted, but where postcolonial and hyperreal poetics nevertheless intersect. The original critical context constructed by this dissertation enables a new set of readings of Australian identity through its poetry. Within this new interpretative context, the readings of contemporary Australian poetry articulate a psycho-social postcoloniality; offer a template for future transactions between national poetry and global politics; and develop a model of the postcolonial hyperreal.

Poetry and silence : "a sequence of disappearances"

[No Abstract]