Digitisation of books in Australia for the public good

The National Cultural Policy (NCP) Discussion Paper highlights that the ‘National Broadband Network, with its high-speed broadband, will enable new opportunities for developing and delivering Australian content and applications reflecting our diverse culture and interests’.1 A significant source of content and knowledge is our books, in particular, out of print, in copyright books and books in the public domain. More and more people, especially those who are digitally literate, will demand that the store of knowledge in these hard-to-find (and at times, decaying) books be digitised and made readily accessible on the internet...

Implementing a systematic process for rapidly embedding sustainability within chemical engineering education: a case study of James Cook University, Australia

Sustainability has emerged as a primary context for engineering education in the 21st Century, particularly the sub-discipline of chemical engineering. However, there is confusion over how to go about integrating sustainability knowledge and skills systemically within bachelor degrees. This paper addresses this challenge, using a case study of an Australian chemical engineering degree to highlight important practical considerations for embedding sustainability at the core of the curriculum. The paper begins with context for considering a systematic process for rapid curriculum renewal. The authors then summarise a 2-year federally funded project, which comprised piloting a model for rapid curriculum renewal led by the chemical engineering staff. Model elements contributing to the renewal of this engineering degree and described in this paper include: industry outreach; staff professional development; attribute identification and alignment; program mapping; and curriculum and teaching resource development. Personal reflections on the progress and process of rapid curriculum renewal in sustainability by the authors and participating engineering staff will be presented as a means to discuss and identify methodological improvements, as well as highlight barriers to project implementation. It is hoped that this paper will provide an example of a formalised methodology on which program reform and curriculum renewal for sustainability can be built upon in other higher education institutions.

Prescriptions for reform of Australia's superannuation tax concessions

The highly controversial and often politicised issue of Australia’s retirement savings regime featured prominently throughout the two day Federal Government’s October 2011 Tax Forum. Calls for reform of this regime are by no means new. Reform debate over the years has focused on each of the three separate pillars: the age pension, compulsory superannuation, and voluntary saving, as well as the interaction of those three elements. However, recently there has been a significant shift away from reliance on the age pension, with its associated risks falling to the government, to a defined contributions scheme where the associated risks fall to the individual taxpayer. Consequently, Australia’s superannuation regime is predominantly subject to current debate, and, as such, the subject of this article. This article considers the history of Australia’s retirement savings regime, along with a framework for evaluating the superannuation tax concessions. It then discusses the recommendations of the Australian Future Tax System (AFTS) Review Panel and ensuing debate at the Tax Forum. Finally, it suggests two proposals to achieve the objectives of the AFTS Review in relation to retirement, those objectives being a system which is broad and adequate, acceptable to individuals, robust, simple and approachable, and finally sustainable. The first, whilst potentially requiring some tinkering’, is relatively simple and a blue print has already been provided to the Federal Government – the adoption of Recommendations 18 and 19 of the AFTS Review. The second is one of management. Superannuation concessions are fundamentally categorised as tax expenditures and the management of these tax expenditures, not just the reporting, should be undertaken.

Throwing out the baby (boomers) with the bathwater : corporate sagacity or business blunder

This paper will focus on the group of people who were born between 1946 and 1962 immediately after the Second World War when servicemen and women returned from the forces and started families. They have been named the baby boomers because of their numbers. In Australia it is estimated that there are four million baby boomers who are approaching retirement age. The paper raises the question of whether the attitudes we have about older workers need to change and mature. Evidence for questioning entrenched myths about older staff in the work force will be discussed.

Prediction and measurement of multiuser MIMO-OFDM channel in rural Australia

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has recently conducted a technology demonstration of a novel fixed wireless broadband access system in rural Australia. The system is based on multi user multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MU-MIMO-OFDM). It demonstrated an uplink of six simultaneous users with distances ranging from 10 m to 8.5 km from a central tower, achieving 20 bits s/Hz spectrum efficiency. This paper reports on the analysis of channel capacity and bit error probability simulation based on the measured MUMIMO-OFDM channels obtained during the demonstration, and their comparison with the results based on channels simulated by a novel geometric optics based channel model suitable for MU-MIMO OFDM in rural areas. Despite its simplicity, the model was found to predict channel capacity and bit error rate probability accurately for a typical MU-MIMO-OFDM deployment scenario.

Green buildings for greying people : a case study of a retirement village in Australia

Purpose With an increasingly ageing population and widespread acceptance of the need for sustainable development in Australia, the demand for green retirement villages is increasing. This paper aims to identify the critical issues to be considered by developers and practitioners when embarking on their first green residential retirement project in Australia. Design/methodology/approach In view of the lack of adequate historical data for quantitative analysis, a case study approach is employed to examine the successful delivery of green retirement villages. Face-to-face interviews and document analysis were conducted for data collection. Findings The findings of the study indicate that one of the major obstacles to the provision of affordable green retirement villages is the higher initial costs involved. However, positive aspects were identified, the most significant of which relate to: the innovative design of site and floor plans; adoption of thermally efficient building materials; orientation of windows; installation of water harvesting and recycling systems, water conservation fittings and appliances; and waste management during the construction stage. With the adoption of these measures, it is believed that sustainable retirement development can be achieved without significant additional capital costs. Practical implications The research findings serve as a guide for developers in decision making throughout the project life-cycle when introducing green features into the provision of affordable retirement accommodation. Originality/value This paper provides insights into the means by which affordable green residential retirement projects for aged people can be successfully completed.

Re-constructing Asianness in Australia : Yumi Umiumare, Owen Leong, and the remobilisation of monstrosity

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Australia’s relationship with its Asian neighbours has been the subject of ongoing aesthetic, cultural and political contestations. As Alison Richards has noted, Australia’s colonial legacy, its Asia-Pacific location, and its ‘white’ self-perception have always made Australia’s relations with Asia fraught. In the latter part of the twentieth century, the paradoxes inherent in Australia’s relationships with and within the Asian region became a dominant theme in debates about nation, nationhood and identity, and prompted a shift in the construction of ‘Asianness’ on Australian stages. On the one hand, anxiety about the multicultural policy of the 1970s and 1980s, and then Prime Minister Paul Keating’s push for greater economic, cultural and artistic exchange with Asia via policies such as the Creative Nation Cultural Policy (1994), saw large numbers of Australians latch on to the reactionary, racist politics of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party. As Jacqueline Lo has argued, in this period Asian-Australians were frequently represented as an unassimilable Other, a threat to Australia’s ‘white’ identity, and to individual Australians’ jobs and opportunities. On the other hand, during the same period, a desire to counter the racism in Australian culture, and develop a ‘voice’ that would distinguish Australian cultural products from European theatrical traditions, combined with the new opportunities for cross-cultural exchange that came with the Creative Nation Cultural Policy to produce what Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo have characterised as an Asian turn in Australian theatre...

History of critical criminology in Australia

Those working in the critical criminology tradition have been centrally concerned with the social construction, variability and contingency of the criminal label. The concern is no less salient to a consideration of critical criminology itself and any history of critical criminology (in Australia or elsewhere) should aim itself to be critical in this sense. The point applies with equal force to both of the terms ‘critical’ and ‘criminology’. The want of a stable theoretical object has meant that criminology itself needs to be seen not as a distinct discipline but as a composite intellectual and governmental hybrid, a field of studies that overlaps and intersects many others (sociology, law, psychology, history, anthropology, social work, media studies and youth studies to name only a few). In consequence, much of the most powerful work on subjects of criminological inquiry is undertaken by scholars who do not necessarily define themselves as criminologists first and foremost, or at all. For reasons that should later become obvious this is even more pronounced in the Australian context. Although we may appear at times to be claiming such work for criminology, our purpose is to recognize its impact on and in critical criminology in Australia.

Copyright in databases in Australia

A database will be protected under Australian law if it is a literary work; expressed in material form; meets the originality test; and has a relevant connection with Australia. Facts and data in themselves are not protected by copyright. However, a collection of data, a dataset, or a database may be protected by copyright if it is sufficiently original. Whether a work is sufficiently original to be protected by copyright depends on whether it has been produced by the application of independent intellectual effort by the author/s, which may involve the exercise of skill, judgement, or creativity in selecting, presenting, or arranging the information. This summary synthesises recent cases regarding originality in factual compilations.

Priorities for developing and evaluating data quality characteristics of road crash data in Australia

The National Road Safety Strategy 2011-2020 outlines plans to reduce the burden of road trauma via improvements and interventions relating to safe roads, safe speeds, safe vehicles, and safe people. It also highlights that a key aspect in achieving these goals is the availability of comprehensive data on the issue. The use of data is essential so that more in-depth epidemiologic studies of risk can be conducted as well as to allow effective evaluation of road safety interventions and programs. Before utilising data to evaluate the efficacy of prevention programs it is important for a systematic evaluation of the quality of underlying data sources to be undertaken to ensure any trends which are identified reflect true estimates rather than spurious data effects. However, there has been little scientific work specifically focused on establishing core data quality characteristics pertinent to the road safety field and limited work undertaken to develop methods for evaluating data sources according to these core characteristics. There are a variety of data sources in which traffic-related incidents and resulting injuries are recorded, which are collected for a variety of defined purposes. These include police reports, transport safety databases, emergency department data, hospital morbidity data and mortality data to name a few. However, as these data are collected for specific purposes, each of these data sources suffers from some limitations when seeking to gain a complete picture of the problem. Limitations of current data sources include: delays in data being available, lack of accurate and/or specific location information, and an underreporting of crashes involving particular road user groups such as cyclists. This paper proposes core data quality characteristics that could be used to systematically assess road crash data sources to provide a standardised approach for evaluating data quality in the road safety field. The potential for data linkage to qualitatively and quantitatively improve the quality and comprehensiveness of road crash data is also discussed.

Evolutionary relationships and divergence times among the native rats of Australia

Background The genus Rattus is highly speciose and has a complex taxonomy that is not fully resolved. As shown previously there are two major groups within the genus, an Asian and an Australo-Papuan group. This study focuses on the Australo-Papuan group and particularly on the Australian rats. There are uncertainties regarding the number of species within the group and the relationships among them. We analysed 16 mitochondrial genomes, including seven novel genomes from six species, to help elucidate the evolutionary history of the Australian rats. We also demonstrate, from a larger dataset, the usefulness of short regions of the mitochondrial genome in identifying these rats at the species level. Results Analyses of 16 mitochondrial genomes representing species sampled from Australo-Papuan and Asian clades of Rattus indicate divergence of these two groups ~2.7 million years ago (Mya). Subsequent diversification of at least 4 lineages within the Australo-Papuan clade was rapid and occurred over the period from ~ 0.9-1.7 Mya, a finding that explains the difficulty in resolving some relationships within this clade. Phylogenetic analyses of our 126 taxon, but shorter sequence (1952 nucleotides long), Rattus database generally give well supported species clades. Conclusions Our whole mitochondrial genome analyses are concordant with a taxonomic division that places the native Australian rats into the Rattus fuscipes species group. We suggest the following order of divergence of the Australian species. R. fuscipes is the oldest lineage among the Australian rats and is not part of a New Guinean radiation. R. lutreolus is also within this Australian clade and shallower than R. tunneyi while the R. sordidus group is the shallowest lineage in the clade. The divergences within the R. sordidus and R. leucopus lineages occurring about half a million years ago support the hypotheses of more recent interchanges of rats between Australia and New Guinea. While problematic for inference of deeper divergences, we report that the analysis of shorter mitochondrial sequences is very useful for species identification in rats.

Data breach notification law in the EU and Australia : where to now?

Mandatory data breach notification laws have been a significant legislative reform in response to unauthorized disclosures of personal information by public and private sector organizations. These laws originated in the state-based legislatures of the United States during the last decade and have subsequently garnered worldwide legislative interest. We contend that there are conceptual and practical concerns regarding mandatory data breach notification laws which limit the scope of their applicability, particularly in relation to existing information privacy law regimes. We outline these concerns here, in the light of recent European Union and Australian legal developments in this area.