Conflict or consensus : an investigation of stakeholder concerns during the participation process of major infrastructure and construction projects in Hong Kong

Public participate in the planning and design of major public infrastructure and construction (PIC) projects is crucial to their success, as the interests of different stakeholders can be systematically captured and built into the finalised scheme. However, public participation may not always yield a mutually acceptable solution, especially when the interests of stakeholders are diverse and conflicting. Confrontations and disputes can arise unless the concerns or needs of the community are carefully analysed and addressed. The aim of the paper is to propose a systematic method of analysing stakeholder concerns relating to PIC projects by examining the degree of consensus and/or conflict involved. The results of a questionnaire survey and a series of interviews with different entities are provided, which indicate the existence of a significant divergence of views among stakeholder groups and that conflicts arise when there is a mismatch between peoples’ perception concerning money and happiness on the one hand and development and damages on the other. Policy and decision-makers should strive to resolve at least the majority of conflicts that arise throughout the lifecycle of major PIC projects so as to maximise their chance of success.

Charity law review and civil society : paving the way from alienation to social inclusion in Northern Ireland ; the resonance with experience in Australia

This paper considers the opportunity, presented by the forthcoming charity law review in Northern Ireland, for adjusting the charity law framework so as to focus charitable activity on the circumstances typical of societies in conflict or experiencing transition. This opportunity is one for broadening the definition of 'charitable purpose' to include activities directed towards forestalling alienation and facilitating social inclusion. It would include rehabilitating the victims of social confrontation and developing related services of advocacy, mediation and reconciliation. It argues that a creative response to this opportunity could address the current social inclusion agenda and thereby contribute to the consolidation of civil society in this jurisdiction. It suggests that the experience in Northern Ireland, as an exemplar of a society in transition, has a resonance with the experience in Australia. It further suggests that it could also have a relevance for approaching the management of tensions within or between nations where people may otherwise come to perceive themselves as alienated...

Charity and Civil Society

Charity remains a leading brand in society, continuing to command public goodwill and response. It is underpinned by a long tradition and law – both raising questions for the wider public as well as ‘specialists’, about ‘modernisation’ and coherence.

Indigenous knowledge and effective parent–school partnerships : issues and insights

Towards the last decade of the last millennium, Indigenous knowledge was central to international scholarly debates relating to decolonising knowledge. Indigenous scholars, particularly those from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, advanced many of these debates. They argued for Indigenous knowledge to be used as the epistemological standpoint for intellectual engagements and the methodology for resisting colonial constructions of the colonised other (Rigney 1997; Smith 1999, 2005). However, the challenge of engaging Indigenous knowledge to inform research and educational processes, in many respects, is still a contested debate in Western-oriented universities and institutions of higher education. This chapter discusses findings of the Parent–School Partnership Initiative (hereafter referred to as PSPI) project conducted by the Oodgeroo Unit staff and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Focus Group for the Caboolture Shire, in South East Queensland. The state government sponsored initiative examined factors that promote and enhance parent–school engagement with students’ schooling, and contributed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ learning and completion of secondary schooling within the participating schools. We argue in this chapter for the importance of recognising Indigenous knowledge and its place in enhancing parent–school partnerships.

Eat, drink and be civil : sociability and the cafe

The article investigates the ascendency of the cafe in the current period of urbanism. I suggest that “going for a coffee” is less about coffee and more about how we connect with others in a mobile world, when flexible work hours are increasingly the norm and more people are living alone than any other period in history. The café also plays a role in the development of civil discourse and civility, and plays an important role in the development of cosmopolitan civil societies.

The divine right of ...judges

Poem published in Free Speech segment of NTEU Newletter.

Towards designing digital noticeboards with a remote indigenous community

This position paper reflects upon the opportunities and challenges of designing a digital noticeboard system with a remote indigenous community that supports their aspirations for both internal and external communication. The project itself has evolved from a relationship built through ecological work between scientists and the local community on the Groote Eylandt archipelago to study native populations of animal species over the long term. In the course of this work the aspiration has emerged to explore how digital noticeboards might promote and communicate aspects of work and life on the island through both the web and touchscreen noticeboards. This paper introduces the community, the context and the history of the project. We then reflect upon the science project and its outcomes, in order to draw lessons for extending what we see as a pragmatic and relationship based approach towards design.

Global civil society and adult education for social change : a postcolonial perspective

Adult education plays an important role in global economic development and features prominently in debates about changing requirements of post-industrial knowledge societies. This dominant technical-instrumental understanding of adult education in public discourse masks the transformative function of certain types of adult education - that is, the possibilities of adult education to improve social justice issues such as workers’ rights, human rights, civic participation in governance and socially just development. Given the increasing social stratification between and within the North and South in the global era, the potential of adult education to effect social change has been rediscovered by organisations within global civil society, namely international non-governmental organisations (INGOs). The broad objective of this research was to carry out an in-depth qualitative case study of a human rights advocacy program provided by a Northern INGO predominantly operating within the global South. The study analyses how participants see this program in terms of its potential to contribute to progressive social change in their home communities across the Asia-Pacific region. The following questions guided the study: 1. To what extent does this adult education program challenge existing systems of domination and marginalisation? 2. How did completion of the program affect participants’ views of their abilities to facilitate social action within their communities? Data sources for this research were interviews with 19 participants and staff and questionnaires from 28 participants of the program from a variety of countries in the Asia-pacific region. The gap in the literature that this study addressed is that existing empirical research sidelines the analysis of the globalisation, adult education, and social change nexus from a perspective that takes the marginalised other seriously, tending instead to mirror the material subjugation of the South in discursive practices. Social change is highly context-specific and strategies to advance it depend on the way in which people understand their reality and are affected by adverse social conditions. The present study employed a postcolonial framework that provided a holistic approach to analysing adult education for social change inclusive of material, political, and social conditions and the interplay between these from the local to the global level. The program convincingly exemplified an example of adult education for counter-hegemonic resistance against the dominant neoliberal discourse. It achieved this by enabling participants, based on Freirian pedagogical principles, to locate the problem of social change and frame their strategies to address it within mutually constitutive local and global developments and the discourses that describe them. It provided the underpinning knowledge and skills for effective advocacy and created opportunities to build networks between various stakeholders. At minimum, most advocates accord their participation in the program a supporting role in enhancing their ability to examine causes for social injustices and ways to address these. Some advocates even regarded their program participation as fundamental in understanding these issues. Almost all participants reported an increased skill-set that enabled them to become more effective advocates.

High court determines that it cannot be assumed that hot chips are only eaten at lunch

In Strong v Woolworth Ltd (t/as Big W) (2012) 285 ALR 420 the appellant was injured when she fell at a shopping centre outside the respondent’s premises. The appellant was disabled, having had her right leg amputated above the knee and therefore walked with crutches. One of the crutches came into contact with a hot potato chip which was on the floor, causing the crutch to slip and the appellant to fall. The appellant sued in negligence, alleging that the respondent was in breach of its duty of care by failing to institute and maintain a cleaning system to detect spillages and foreign objects within its sidewalk sales area. The issue before the High Court was whether it could be established on the balance of probabilities as to when the hot chip had fallen onto the ground so as to prove causation in fact...

Valuing diversity : a multiliteracies project in a remote Indigenous community

This chapter draws attention to the complex nature of teachers’ work when working with linguistically and culturally diverse students and their communities in an era of new literacies. One multiliteracies project undertaken within a remote Indigenous community in the Torres Straits, Far North Queensland, Australia, is presented. The discussion considers understandings of student diversity as articulated in the Australian Curriculum documents, designs of meaning for written and visual text and the various components of pedagogy introduced into a multiliteracies project. The chapter concludes by highlighting the usefulness of the ‘wide, but not vague’ multiliteracies approach and the importance of an explicit grammar for written and visual text, for meeting the literacy learning needs of one group of 21st century learners.

Introductory Indigenous Studies in Education : Reflection and the Importance of Knowing

Although the demand for pre-service teachers to be better informed about Indigenous issues in Australia has been broadly articulated, it is reasonably new for universities to make Indigenous studies a compulsory area of study, or to define what is meant by 'Indigenous education'. This book was motivated by the growing necessity for an approach to Indigenous education that would include more than just a summarising of Indigenous history and traditional culture. It is useful for anyone with an interest in challenging their ideas about culture, identity and history in Australia.

Re/presenting readings of the indigenous literary terrain

In this study I investigate the spectrum of authoring, publishing and everyday reading of three texts - My Place (Morgan 1987), Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance (Pedersen and Woorunmurra 1995) and Carpentaria (Wright 2006). I have addressed this study within the field of production and consumption, utilising amongst others the work of Edward Said (1978, 1983) and Stanley Fish (1980). I locate this work within the holism of Kombu-merri philosopher, Mary Graham's 'Aboriginal Inquiry' (2008), which promotes self-reflexivity and a concern for others as central tenets of such inquiry. I also locate this work within a postcolonial framework and in recognition of the dynamic nature of that phenomenon I use Aileen MoretonRobinson's (2003) adoption of the active verb, "postcolonising"(38). In apprehending selected texts through the people who make them and who make meaning from them - authors, publishers and everyday readers, I interviewed members of each cohort within a framework that recognises the exercise of agency in their respective practices as well as the socio-historical contexts to such textual practices. Although my research design can be applied to other critical arrangements of texts, my interest here lies principally in texts that incorporate the subjects of Indigenous worldview and Indigenous experience; and in texts that are Indigenous authored or Indigenous co-authored.

Do the myths still exist? Revisiting people’s negative beliefs about organ donation upon death

The prevalence of myths preventing people partial to donation in Australia from consenting is unknown. Respondents (N = 468: 381 donors, 26 non-donors, 61 undecided) were surveyed about their (negative) donation beliefs. Approximately 30% of donors were neutral or supported negative beliefs about organ allocation, especially donation to undesirable organ recipients and a black market organ trade. Confusion about brain death, lack of family and religious support, and discomfort with donation were negative beliefs endorsed by some respondents irrespective of donor preference. Proportionally, donors had greater trust in hospitals/doctors than other groups. Some myths still exist but may vary with donation preference.

Predictors of young people’s charitable intentions to donate money : an extended theory of planned behavior perspective

An extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) was used to predict young people’s intentions to donate money to charities in the future. Students (N = 210; 18-24 years) completed a questionnaire assessing their attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control [PBC], moral obligation, past behavior and intentions toward donating money. Regression analyses revealed the extended TPB explained 61% of the variance in intentions to donate money. Attitude, PBC, moral norm, and past behavior predicted intentions, representing future targets for charitable giving interventions.

Examining Exposure of Motorcycles at Signalized Intersections

Crash statistics in Singapore from 2001 to 2005 have shown that motorcycles are involved in about 54% of intersection crashes. The overall involvement of motorcycles in crashes as the not-at-fault party is about 43% but at intersections, the corresponding percentage is increased to 57%. Quasi-induced exposure estimates show that the motorcycle exposure rate at signalized intersections is 41.7% even though motorcycles account for only 19% of the vehicle population. This study seeks to examine in greater details, the problem of motorcycle exposure at signalized intersections. In particular, the exposure arising from potential crashes with red light running vehicles from the conflicting stream at four signalized intersections is investigated. The results show that motorcycles are more exposed because they tend to accumulate near the stop-line during the red phase to facilitate an earlier discharge during the initial period of the green which is the more vulnerable period. At sites where there are more weaving opportunities because the lanes are wider or where there are exclusive right-turn lanes, the accumulation is higher and hence an increased exposure is observed. The analysis also shows that the presence of heavy vehicles tends to decrease motorcycle exposure as their weaving opportunities become restricted as well as there is a greater reluctance for them to weave past or queue alongside the heavy vehicles and their effects intensify for narrower lane width.