Population ageing and the politics of demographic alarmism : implications for the nursing profession

Objectives
This article provides a brief examination of the prejudices and politics framing current public debate on population ageing in Australia and the possible implications of this for the allocation of required health and social sector resources. The role and responsibility of nurses and professional nursing organisations to engage in and influence public policy debate concerning the health and social care of older people is highlighted.

Setting
Australia

Subjects
Australia's ageing population and succeeding generations over the next 40 years

Primary argument
According to the Australian government, population ageing in Australia is poised to cause unmanageable chaos for the nation's public services. The cost of meeting the future health and social care needs of older Australians is predicted to be unsustainable. Officials argue that government has a stringent responsibility to ration current and future resources in the health and social care sector, cautioning that if this is not done, the nation's public services will ultimately collapse under the strain of the ever increasing demands placed on these services by older people. This characterisation of population ageing and its consequences to the nation's social wellbeing may however be false and misleading and needs to be questioned.

Conclusion
The nursing profession has a fundamental role to play in ensuring responsible debate about population ageing and contributing to public policy agenda setting for the effective health and social care of Australia's ageing population.

The politics of developing reference standards for nutrient intakes : the case of Australia and New Zealand

Objective Nutrient Reference Values (NRV) are evidence-based benchmarks for assessing the dietary adequacy of individuals and population groups as well as informing public health nutrition policies and programmes. The present paper presents the findings of an analysis of the views of submitters to a draft document associated with the development of the 2006 NRV for Australia and New Zealand. The aim of the study was to explore how these views were reflected in the policy-making process and final policy document.

Design The information necessary to fulfil this aim required access to stakeholder submissions to the NRV development process and this necessitated exploiting the provisions of the Commonwealth of Australia’s Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 1982. We understand that the present research represents the first time that an FOI request seeking information about a National Health and Medical Research Council food and nutrition policy process has been made and therefore is novel in its approach to public health nutrition policy analysis.

Results The analysis of stakeholder submissions identified that stakeholders had particular concerns about the conduct of the review process and the future application of the nutrient values to policy and programmes. There is a lack of evidence that the majority of stakeholder comments were addressed in the final NRV document.

Conclusion Although these findings cannot be interpreted to assess the validity or otherwise of the set nutrient values, they do raise questions about the process for their development and the adequacy of the final document to reflect the views of key stakeholders.

Memory, photography, and the politics of abuse : the ambiguous nature of photography

Critical commentary on Australian artist Bill Henson’s work including the series Untitled 1994-1995 which represented Australia at the Venice Biennale is frequently framed within the discourse of the ‘white cube’. Its contextualisation in predominantly art historical and formalist perspectives tends to operate as a mechanism that denies affective and embodied dimensions of meaning making. Much the same could be said of the work of Marian Drew who uses road kill in her photographic still life works. However, the ‘distancing’ in these works is also achieved through historical allusion, which at the same time reactivates the fl ow of emotional empathy and desire. In this paper, I ask the question: “What distinguishes the work of these two artists with media images of torture?”

My attempt to address this question will involve a narrative re-reading of selected works of Henson and Drew incorporating notions of affect, identification, memory and desire as processes which operate non-discursively, but which are inseparable from memory and lived experiences. This will permit a double exposure of the work of these artists. Within a psychoanalytical context, my re-reading will be used to extend an understanding of the now familiar press and Internet images of the torture of Iraqi prisoners.

As a metaphor for desire and ideology, photography operates within manifest and latent registers. I will argue that certain forms of photographic practice may be understood in terms of a politics of abuse — instantiating an uneven differentiation of power between actants, the winning (forcefully or otherwise) of consent or complicity, the silencing of refusal of resistance and/or the incriminating of the ‘victim’ — whilst at the same time upholding the claim of verisimilitude and aesthetic or ethical intent. Critical engagement with such practices is crucial to an understanding of the relationship between institutional discourses, trauma and abuse in contemporary society.

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.

Career in writing : Judah Waten and the cultural politics of a literary career

This thesis examines the literary career of Judah Waten (1911-1985) in order to focus on a series of issues in Australian cultural history and theory. The concept of the career is theorised as a means of bringing together the textual and institutional dimensions of writing and being a writer in a specific cultural economy. The guiding question of the argument which re-emerges in different ways in each chapter is: in what ways was it possible to write and to be a writer in a given time and place? Waten's career as a Russian-born, Jewish, Australian nationalist, communist and realist writer across the middle years of this century is, for the purposes of the argument, at once usefully exemplary and usefully marginal in relation to the literary establishment. His texts provide the central focus for individual chapters; at the same time each chapter considers a specific historical moment and a specific set of issues for Australian cultural history, and is to this extent self-contained. Recent work in narrative theory, literary sociology and Australian literary and cultural studies is brought together to revise accepted readings of Waten's texts and career, and to address significant absences or problems in Australian cultural history. The sequence of issues shaping Waten's career in writing is argued in terms of the following conjunctions of theoretical and historical categories: proletarianism, modernity and theories of the avant-garde; the "e;migrant"e; writer and minority literatures; realism, political purpose and narrative self-situation; communism, nationalism and literary practice in the cold war; utopianism and the "e;literary witness"e; narrative of the Soviet Union; assimilationism, multicultural theory and the "e;non-Anglo-Celtic"e; writer; theories of autobiographical writing, and autobiography in Waten's career. The purpose of the thesis is not to discover a single key to Waten's writing across the oeuvre but rather to plot the specific occasions of this writing in the context of the structure of a career and the cultural institutions within which it was formed.

After hours schools as core to the spatial politics of in-betweeness

In this article the authors draw on a larger study in which their overall concern is to illustrate how diasporic identifications develop through a range of scales related to self, family, community, nation and beyond. They consider the Melbourne Greek community as an exemplar of diasporic experience and use it as a case study for their investigation, which is aimed at exploring how transcultural literacies relate to spaces which complicate and enrich identifications. In this article they consider the role of 'after hours' schools in the shaping of diasporic identities. These are community-based schools where Greek language and culture is taught. Commonly, classes are held on Saturday morning or in the evenings during the week. Such schools operate in classrooms that are rented from 'real' schools. By existing in spaces that are commonly occupied by mainstream day schools, students who attend 'after hours' schools experience a form of marginalisation that is also a right of passage. Here the authors argue that such 'in-between' spaces assist with the formation of 'in-between' identities that are emblematic of globalization.

Performing Pedagogy and the re(construction) of global/local selves

The eighth chapter, written by Gayle Morris, is entitled “Performing pedagogy and the re (construction) of global/local selves.” Morris tackles a unique perspective with regard to globalization and education. A major characteristic of today’s globalized world is the diversity of people living within societies and communities. Classrooms in public schools and universities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Britain are comprised of students from all parts of the world, a reality which is increasing the challenges faced by teachers and policy makers. Morris particularly discusses second language teaching and learning and the inadequacy of second language educators who are mostly approaching from “White/mainstream” positivist models and approaches to language teaching (p. 137). Morris highlights the “fixing” of immigrants and ethnic minority identity, and how the inefficient training of ESL teachers is affecting the global/ local selves of students. This chapter is invaluable contribution in this volume given the number of immigrants to western countries is on the rise.

Prediction politics : the politics of econometric modelling in Australia

Examines the scepticism that accompanies econometric modelling in Australia in the context of the shift from public to commercial funding. It subsequently assesses scientific status claims while arguing that taking the politics of econometric modelling seriously promotes both better debate and better policy formation.

Fertile bodies - the sexual politics of contraception : a radical feminist perspective

A critical feminist investigation of the sexual politics of contraception over the last hundred years, within an international context. It is contended that the very idea of contraception perpetuates a "heterosexual monoculture of the body" and as a consequence, men can continue to avoid taking responsibility for their "uncontrolled" fertility.