Academics and activists in the policy process : engagement with Australian media inquiries 2011-13

After its narrow re-election in June 2010, the Australian Labor government undertook a series of public inquiries into reform of Australian media, communications and copyright laws. One important driver of policy reform was the government’s commitment to building a National Broadband Network (NBN), and the implications this had for existing broadcasting and telecommunications policy, as it would constitute a major driver of convergence of media and communications access devices and content platforms. These inquiries included: the Convergence Review of media and communications legislation; the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) review of the National Classification Scheme; the Independent Media Inquiry (Finkelstein Review) into Media and Media Regulation; and the ALRC review of Copyright and the Digital Economy. One unusual feature of this review process, discussed in the paper, was the degree to which academics were involved in the process, not simply as providers of expert opinion, but as review chairs seconded from their universities. This paper considers the role played by activist groups in all of these inquiries and their relationship to the various participants in the inquiries, as well as the implications of academics being engaged in such inquiries, not simply as activist-scholars, but as those primarily responsible for delivering policy review outcomes. The latter brings to the forefront issues arising in from direct engagement with governments and state agencies themselves, which challenges traditional understandings of the academic community as “critical outsiders” towards such policy processes.

High frequency high power converters for industrial applications

The main contribution of this project was to investigate power electronics technology in designing and developing high frequency high power converters for industrial applications. Therefore, the research was conducted at two levels; first at system level which mainly encapsulated the circuit topology and control scheme and second at application level which involves with real-world applications. Pursuing these objectives, varied topologies have been developed and proposed within this research. The main aim was to resolving solid-state switches limited power rating and operating speed while increasing the system flexibility considering the application characteristics. The developed new power converter configurations were applied to pulsed power and high power ultrasound applications for experimental validation.

Making the train : re-conceptualising accessibility for intra-urban rail travel

Australian authorities have set ambitious policy objectives to shift Australia’s current transport profile of heavy reliance on private motor cars to sustainable modes. Improving accessibility of public transport is a central component of that objective. Past studies on accessibility to public transport focus on walking time and/or waiting time. However, travellers’ perceptions of the interface leg journeys may depend not only on these direct and tangible factors but also on social and psychological factors. This paper extends previous research that identified five salient perspectives of rail access by means of a statement sorting activity and cluster analysis with a small sample of rail passengers in three Australian cities (Zuniga et al, 2013). This study collects a new data set including 144 responses from Brisbane and Melbourne to an online survey made up of a Likert-scaled statement sorting exercise and questionnaire. It employs factor analysis to examine the statement rankings and uncovers seven underlying factors in the exploratory manner, i.e., station, safety, access, transfer, service attitude, traveler’s physical activity levels, and environmental concern. Respondents from groups stratified by rail use frequency are compared in terms of their scores of those factors. Findings from this study indicate a need to re-conceptualize accessibility to intra-urban rail travel in agreement with current policy agenda, and to target behavioral intervention to multiple dimensions of accessibility influencing passengers’ travel choices. Arguments in this paper are not limited to intra-urban rail transit, but may also be relevant to public transport in general.

Making the train : re-conceptualising accessibility for intra-urban rail travel

Australian authorities have set ambitious policy objectives to shift Australia’s current transport profile of heavy reliance on private motor cars to sustainable modes. Improving accessibility of public transport is a central component of that objective. Past studies on accessibility to public transport focus on walking time and/or waiting time. However, travellers’ perceptions of the interface leg journeys may depend not only on these direct and tangible factors but also on social and psychological factors. This paper extends previous research that identified five salient perspectives of rail access by means of a statement sorting activity and cluster analysis with a small sample of rail passengers in three Australian cities (Zuniga et al, 2013). This study collects a new data set including 144 responses from Brisbane and Melbourne to an online survey made up of a Likert-scaled statement sorting exercise and questionnaire. It employs factor analysis to examine the statement rankings and uncovers seven underlying factors in the exploratory manner, i.e., station, safety, access, transfer, service attitude, traveler’s physical activity levels, and environmental concern. Respondents from groups stratified by rail use frequency are compared in terms of their scores of those factors. Findings from this study indicate a need to re-conceptualize accessibility to intra-urban rail travel in agreement with current policy agenda, and to target behavioral intervention to multiple dimensions of accessibility influencing passengers’ travel choices. Arguments in this paper are not limited to intra-urban rail transit, but may also be relevant to public transport in general.

Revisiting the trajectories of special teacher education in China through policy and practice

The preparation, recruitment, work, and career of teachers are important in education. This is no exemption for special education. However, the shortage of qualified teachers serving students with disabilities has long been an international problem. In China, both the quantity and the quality of special education teachers are of concern. This places unrelenting pressure on special teacher education. Given its growing size and challenges, special teacher education has received increasing attention from research, policy, and practice. However, there is a dearth of scholarship published in English to address these issues. To the best of our belief and knowledge, there is no systematic, comprehensive, and contextualised examination of special teacher education in China to date. This paper aims to make a contribution in this regard. First, we present the complexities of the Chinese context in which special teacher education is situated. Second, we synthesise recent literature on special teacher education in China through an extensive review of the relevant studies scattered in English publications. Third, we provide insights into special teacher education in China, regarding its trajectory of policy making, its history of development, and its strategies and challenges. Finally, we conclude our paper with some practical recommendations to aid the future development of special teacher education.

The heterogeneous cluster ensemble method using hubness for clustering text documents

We propose a cluster ensemble method to map the corpus documents into the semantic space embedded in Wikipedia and group them using multiple types of feature space. A heterogeneous cluster ensemble is constructed with multiple types of relations i.e. document-term, document-concept and document-category. A final clustering solution is obtained by exploiting associations between document pairs and hubness of the documents. Empirical analysis with various real data sets reveals that the proposed meth-od outperforms state-of-the-art text clustering approaches.

Does a functional activity programme improve function, quality of life, and falls for residents in long term care? Cluster randomised controlled trial

Objective To assess the effectiveness of an activity programme in improving function, quality of life, and falls in older people in residential care. Design Cluster randomised controlled trial with one year follow-up. Setting 41low level dependency residential carehomes in New Zealand. Participants 682 people aged 65 years or over. Interventions 330 residents were offered a goal setting and individualised activities of daily living activity programme by a gerontology nurse, reinforced by usual healthcare assistants; 352 residents received social visits. Main outcome measures Function (late life function and disability instruments, elderly mobility scale, FICSIT-4

More than merely wicked : regulating sewage discharges and other unspeakable problems in environmental policy-making and planning

While the communicative turn in policy-making has encouraged the public deliberation of policy decisions it has arguably had a more limited impact on the ability of public processes to deal with wicked problems. Wicked policy problems are characterised by high levels of complexity, uncertainty and divergence of values. However, some wicked problems present the additional challenge of high levels of psychosocial sensitivity and verbal proscription. Because these unspeakable policy problems frequently involve a significant moral dimension, the regulation of intimate processes or bodies, and strong elements of abjection and symbolic pollution they are quite literally problems that we don’t like to think about or talk about. However, the potential environmental and social impacts of these problems require that they be addressed. In this paper I present the preliminary findings of a research project focussed on the idea of the unspeakable policy problem and how its unspeakable nature can impact upon public participation and policy and environmental outcomes.

Control, shift, insert : living and enacting policy in teachers' day/night work

This thesis investigates the experiences of teachers who trialled an electronic curriculum and assessment tool in the wider context of text-mediated ruling relations organising their work. Problematised as policy and text, this tool is interrogated as a 'solution' to problems perceived in teachers' work in an era of increased accountability. It provides evidence that teachers' work is shaped by forces operating outside their control and mediated by the policy discourses and subjectivities available to them.

Convergent media policy : the Australian case

This chapter considers the implications of convergence for media policy from three perspectives. First, it discusses what have been the traditional concerns of media policy, and the challenges it faces, from the perspectives of public interest theories, economic capture theories, and capitalist state theories. Second, it looks at what media convergence involves, and some of the dilemmas arising from convergent media policy including: (1) determining who is a media company; (2) regulatory parity between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media; (3) treatment of similar media content across different platforms; (4) distinguishing ‘big media’ from user-created content, and: (5) maintaining a distinction between media regulation and censorship of personal communication. Finally, it discusses attempts to reform media policy in light of these changes, including Australian media policy reports from 2011-12 including the Convergence Review, the Finkelstein Review of News Media, and the Australian Law Reform Commission’s National Classification Scheme Review. It concludes by arguing that ‘public interest’ approaches to media policy continue to have validity, even as they grapple with the complex question of how to understand the concept of influence in a convergent media environment.

Searching for value : the influence of policy and reform on nurses’ sense of value in long-term aged care in Australia.

Contemporary literature on long-term aged care focuses heavily on issues associated with the recruitment and retention of nursing staff, such as job satisfaction and attitudes towards caring for older people. This paper aims to highlight one aspect of a larger study of registered nurses' experiences in long-term aged care in Australia and the influence that government policy and reform has in shaping that experience. This insight into aspects of nurses' everyday experience also contributes to a broader understanding of job satisfaction in long-term care. Findings from this study suggest that registered nurses experience tension in their search for value in their practice, which incorporates professional, political and social mediators of value and worth. These issues are discussed in relation to the impact of policy and reform on nurses' sense of value in long-term aged care and highlight the need for sensitive policy initiatives that support issues of value in nursing practice.

Industry policy, finance and the AIDC : Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s

This thesis, conceived within a Marxist framework, addresses key conceptual issues in the writing and theorising on industry policy in post second world- war Australia. Broadly, the thesis challenges the way that industry policy on the left of politics (reflected in the social democratic and Keynesian positions) has been constructed as a practical, progressive policy agenda. Specifically, the thesis poses a direct challenge to the primacy of the ‘national’ in interpreting the history of industry policy. The challenge is to the proposition that conflicts between national industry and international finance arose only from the mid 1980s. On the contrary, as will be seen, this is a 1960s issue and any interpretation of the debates and the agendas surrounding industry policy in the 1980s must be predicated on an understanding of how the issue was played out two decades earlier. As was the case in the 1960s, industry policy in the 1980s has been isolated from two key areas of interrogation: the role of the nation state in regulating accumulation and the role of finance in industry policy. In the 1950s and more so in the 1960s and early 1970s there was a reconfiguration of financing internationally but it is one that did not enter into industry policy analysis. The central concern therefore is to simultaneously sketch the historical political economy on industry policy from the 1950s through to the early 1970s in Australia and to analytically and empirically insert the role of finance into that history. In so doing the thesis addresses the economic and social factors that shaped the approach to industry finance in Australia during this critical period. The analysis is supported by a detailed examination of political and industry debates surrounding the proposal for, and institution of, a key national intervention in the form of the Australian Industry Development Corporation (AIDC).

Enabling open access to and re-use of publicly funded research data in Malaysian public universities : a legal and policy analysis

Numerous statements and declarations have been made over recent decades in support of open access to research data. The growing recognition of the importance of open access to research data has been accompanied by calls on public research funding agencies and universities to facilitate better access to publicly funded research data so that it can be re-used and redistributed as public goods. International and inter-governmental bodies such as the ICSU/CODATA, the OECD and the European Union are strong supporters of open access to and re-use of publicly funded research data. This thesis focuses on the research data created by university researchers in Malaysian public universities whose research activities are funded by the Federal Government of Malaysia. Malaysia, like many countries, has not yet formulated a policy on open access to and re-use of publicly funded research data. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to develop a policy to support the objective of enabling open access to and re-use of publicly funded research data in Malaysian public universities. Policy development is very important if the objective of enabling open access to and re-use of publicly funded research data is to be successfully achieved. In developing the policy, this thesis identifies a myriad of legal impediments arising from intellectual property rights, confidentiality, privacy and national security laws, novelty requirements in patent law and lack of a legal duty to ensure data quality. Legal impediments such as these have the effect of restricting, obstructing, hindering or slowing down the objective of enabling open access to and re-use of publicly funded research data. A key focus in the formulation of the policy was the need to resolve the various legal impediments that have been identified. This thesis analyses the existing policies and guidelines of Malaysian public universities to ascertain to what extent the legal impediments have been resolved. An international perspective is adopted by making a comparative analysis of the policies of public research funding agencies and universities in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia to understand how they have dealt with the identified legal impediments. These countries have led the way in introducing policies which support open access to and re-use of publicly funded research data. As well as proposing a policy supporting open access to and re-use of publicly funded research data in Malaysian public universities, this thesis provides procedures for the implementation of the policy and guidelines for addressing the legal impediments to open access and re-use.

Asset allocation policy, returns and expenses of superannuation funds : recent evidence based on default options

We examine the asset allocation, returns, and expenses of superannuation funds whose assets are mainly invested in default investment options between 2004 and 2012. A majority of these funds fail to earn returns commensurate with their strategic asset allocation policy. It appears that much of the variation of returns between the funds might be a result of their engaging in significant active management of assets. Our results indicate that returns from active management are negatively related to expenses. We also find strong evidence of economies of scale existing in these superannuation funds across different size categories.

Road crashes and long term disabilities : Implications for policy and its implementation in Cambodia

The number of road crashes leading to disabilities is increasing alarmingly and constitutes a significant public health problem in many countries. So far, very few studies have been conducted to explore the impacts on persons with disabilities due to road crashes, and their families. This gap in the literature is especially large for low income countries such as Cambodia. This review explored relevant publications to provide background on persons in Cambodia with disabilities due to road crashes and their families. The review adds to the limited knowledge base in this area and has the potential to provide information on contextual issues relevant to the experience of disability in other developing countries, such as poverty, stigma and lack of resources. The findings of this review form the first part of a PhD study that will contribute to the development of informed policy change leading towards a safer system for all road users, including persons with disabilities.