Satisfiers and dissatisfiers for international students of higher education : an exploratory study in Australia

This paper explores the main satisfiers and dissatisfiers for international students in Australia’s higher educational sector. Using a critical incident technique, this study is conducted with international students of higher education in Australia. Four categories of satisfiers and dissatisfiers emerge from the data which are related to individual performance, quality of the educational service, socialisation, and living conditions.

A baseline study of Australia's community recycling enterprises(CRE)

This report presents the findings on a baseline study of Australia's community recycling enterprises(CREs). The study sought to document the activities and impacts of these enterprises and to understand the conditions under which they succeed. The purposes of the research were to generate evidence that can contribute to the development of practice and policy support for CREs, and to provide information that is useful to community groups wishing to establish new CREs. The study included a review of the existing literature in relation to CREs, an online survey of Australian CREs, and in-depth case studies of three CREs from various regions within Australia

Livestock production in a changing climate : adaptation and mitigation research in Australia

Climate change presents a range of challenges for animal agriculture in Australia. Livestock production will be affected by changes in temperature and water availability through impacts on pasture and forage crop quantity and quality, feed-grain production and price, and disease and pest distributions. This paper provides an overview of these impacts and the broader effects on landscape functionality, with a focus on recent research on effects of increasing temperature, changing rainfall patterns, and increased climate variability on animal health, growth, and reproduction, including through heat stress, and potential adaptation strategies. The rate of adoption of adaptation strategies by livestock producers will depend on perceptions of the uncertainty in projected climate and regional-scale impacts and associated risk. However, management changes adopted by farmers in parts of Australia during recent extended drought and associated heatwaves, trends consistent with long-term predicted climate patterns, provide some insights into the capacity for practical adaptation strategies. Animal production systems will also be significantly affected by climate change policy and national targets to address greenhouse gas emissions, since livestock are estimated to contribute ~10% of Australia’s total emissions and 8–11% of global emissions, with additional farm emissions associated with activities such as feed production. More than two-thirds of emissions are attributed to ruminant animals. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities facing livestock industries in Australia in adapting to and mitigating climate change. It examines the research needed to better define practical options to reduce the emissions intensity of livestock products, enhance adaptation opportunities, and support the continued contribution of animal agriculture to Australia’s economy, environment, and regional communities.

Land use conflict across the airport fence : competing urban policy, planning and priority in Australia

Land use planning within and surrounding privatised Australian capital city airports is a fragmented process as a result of: current legislative and policy frameworks; competing stakeholder priorities and interests; and inadequate coordination and disjointed decision-making. Three Australian case studies are examined to detail the context of airport and regional land use planning. Stakeholder Land Use Forums within each case study have served to inform the procedural dynamics and relationships between airport and regional land use decision-making. This article identifies significant themes and stakeholder perspectives regarding on-airport development and broader urban land use policy and planning. First, it outlines the concept of the “airport city” and examines the model of airport and regional “interfaces.” Then, it details the policy context that differentiates on-airport land use planning from planning within the surrounding region. The article then analyses the results of the Land Use Forums identifying key themes within the shared and reciprocal interfaces of governance, environment, economic development and infrastructure. The article concludes by detailing the implications of this research to broader urban planning and highlights the core issues contributing to the fragmentation of airport and regional land use planning policy.

Double standards in special medical research : questioning the discrepancy between requirements for medical research involving incompetent adults and medical research involving children

Medical research represents a substantial departure from conventional medical care. Medical care is patient-orientated, with decisions based on the best interests and/or wishes of the person receiving the care. In contrast, medical research is future-directed. Primarily it aims to contribute new knowledge about illness or disease, or new knowledge about interventions, such as drugs, that impact upon some human condition. Current State and Territory laws and research ethics guidelines in Australia relating to the review of medical research appropriately acknowledge that the functions of medical care and medical research differ. Prior to a medical research project commencing, the study must be reviewed and approved by a Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). For medical research involving incompetent adults, some jurisdictions require an additional, independent safeguard by way of tribunal or court approval of medical research protocols. This extra review process reflects the uncertainty of medical research involvement, and the difficulties surrogate decision-makers of incompetent adults face in making decisions about others, and deliberating about the risks and benefits of research involvement. Parents of children also face the same difficulties when making decisions about their child’s research involvement. However, unlike the position concerning incompetent adults, there are no similar safeguards under Australian law in relation to the approval of medical research involving children. This column questions why this discrepancy exists with a view to generating further dialogue on the topic.

Social enterprises and regional development : opportunities and constraints in Australia

This thesis examines the role of social enterprises in regional development and is based on comparative case studies of two regions in NSW. With a specific focus on 10 social enterprises, including both Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations, 63 interviews were conducted with a wide range of community stakeholders. Utilising a decolonising methodological approach, the study examined the social and financial needs of these organisations, as well as their contributions as regional development actors.

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).

Including or excluding conflicts of interest among expert peer reviewers had little impact on funding success, a case study from Australia

Competition for research funding is intense and the opinions of an expert peer reviewer can mean the difference between success and failure in securing funding. The allocation of expert peer reviewers is therefore vitally important and funding agencies strive to avoid using reviewers who have real or perceived conflicts of interest. This article examines the impact of including or excluding peer reviewers based on their conflicts of interest, and the final ranking of funding proposals. Two 7-person review panels assessed a sample of National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia proposals in Basic Science or Public Health. Using a pre-post comparison, the proposals were first scored after the exclusion of reviewers with a high or medium conflict, and re-scored after the return of reviewers with medium conflicts. The main outcome measures are the agreements in ranks and funding success before and after excluding the medium conflicts. Including medium conflicts of interest had little impact on the ranks or funding success. The Bland–Altman 95% limits of agreement were ± 3.3 ranks and ± 3.4 ranks in the two panels which both assessed 36 proposals. Overall there were three proposals (4%) that had a reversed funding outcome after including medium conflicts. Relaxing the conflict of interest rules would increase the number of expert reviewers included in the panel discussions which could increase the quality of peer review and make it easier to find reviewers.

The implications of de‐collectivist industrial relations laws and associated developments for worker health and safety in Australia, 1996–2007

The institutional and regulatory interlinkages between industrial relations (IR) and occupational health and safety (OHS) are seldom explored in the IR literature. This article begins to address this gap by examining regulatory initiatives in Australia during a period of neoliberal government. It examines the laws enacted by the federal government during this period and events and cases arising from these laws that go some way to illustrating their effects. Evidence is also drawn from detailed research on a number of state OHS inspectorates between 2004 and 2006. It is argued that de-collectivist changes to IR laws exacerbated problems posed by the growth of flexible work arrangements and a drop in union density, weakening participatory provisions in OHS laws and promoting work arrangements that undermined OHS standards. The study provides evidence of the implications of a divergence in the trajectory of IR and OHS laws and the importance of better integrating worker protection laws.

Socio-environmental drivers and suicide in Australia: Bayesian spatial analysis

Background The impact of socio-environmental factors on suicide has been examined in many studies. Few of them, however, have explored these associations from a spatial perspective, especially in assessing the association between meteorological factors and suicide. This study examined the association of meteorological and socio-demographic factors with suicide across small areas over different time periods. Methods Suicide, population and socio-demographic data (e.g., population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (ATSI), and unemployment rate (UNE) at the Local Government Area (LGA) level were obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the period of 1986 to 2005. Information on meteorological factors (rainfall, temperature and humidity) was supplied by Australian Bureau of Meteorology. A Bayesian Conditional Autoregressive (CAR) Model was applied to explore the association of socio-demographic and meteorological factors with suicide across LGAs. Results In Model I (socio-demographic factors), proportion of ATSI and UNE were positively associated with suicide from 1996 to 2000 (Relative Risk (RR)ATSI = 1.0107, 95% Credible Interval (CI): 1.0062-1.0151; RRUNE = 1.0187, 95% CI: 1.0060-1.0315), and from 2001 to 2005 (RRATSI = 1.0126, 95% CI: 1.0076-1.0176; RRUNE = 1.0198, 95% CI: 1.0041-1.0354). Socio-Economic Index for Area (SEIFA) and IND, however, had negative associations with suicide between 1986 and 1990 (RRSEIFA = 0.9983, 95% CI: 0.9971-0.9995; RRATSI = 0.9914, 95% CI: 0.9848-0.9980). Model II (meteorological factors): a 1°C higher yearly mean temperature across LGAs increased the suicide rate by an average by 2.27% (95% CI: 0.73%, 3.82%) in 1996–2000, and 3.24% (95% CI: 1.26%, 5.21%) in 2001–2005. The associations between socio-demographic factors and suicide in Model III (socio-demographic and meteorological factors) were similar to those in Model I; but, there is no substantive association between climate and suicide in Model III. Conclusions Proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, unemployment and temperature appeared to be statistically associated with of suicide incidence across LGAs among all selected variables, especially in recent years. The results indicated that socio-demographic factors played more important roles than meteorological factors in the spatial pattern of suicide incidence.

Local music repertoire and the digitization of the international music industry: An empirical analysis 1994 – 2013

In some of the countries where there has been a rapid increase in the use of online music distribution technologies, analysts have reported about declining sales of local music repertoire (e.g. Nordgård, 2013). The analysts are concerned about such tendencies since local music repertoire accounts for a sizable share of an average country’s total recorded music sales (e.g. IFPI, 2012). This paper searches for empirical evidence that may confirm these reports in a number of music markets in North America, Europe and Australasia. The paper makes a contribution to the literature on the digital transformation of the music industry since it combines and analyses data sources that previously have not been used in this context and gives a new perspective on changing user consumption practices in the music industry. The paper also examines the variation of geographic diversity over time among international acts that become commercially successful in the countries covered by the study.

Work, aging, and retirement in Australia: Introduction to the special issue

Australia has an aging population and workforce, and policy makers and organizations increasingly encourage older workers to remain on the job longer and even beyond traditional retirement age. After a brief review of important demographic and political developments, we introduce the 8 articles included in this special issue on work, aging, and retirement in Australia. The articles include an overview of the Australian retirement income system, 6 articles reporting quantitative analyses of cross-sectional and longitudinal data provided by large samples of Australian workers and retirees, and a qualitative study which analyzes interviews with human resource managers. Overall, the articles demonstrate that research on work, aging, and retirement in Australia is flourishing, sophisticated, and diverse both in terms of content and methodologies. We close with a brief review of topics and research questions related to work, aging, and retirement that remain to be addressed in the Australian context in future research.

Case study 1: Nursing informatics and eHealth in Australia

There are currently many changes happening in nursing and healthcare in Australia. Healthcare reform has been high on the national government agenda and has created many changes in healthcare including eHealth. Healthcare information technologies and informatics are providing many challenges and excitement for the future of healthcare in Australia. The challenge for professional nursing organisations and nursing leaders of Australia is to be proactive in developments and initiatives for nursing to remain visible and viable in health care systems to safeguard the profession for the future as health care reform is implemented.

Rethinking connectedness : an investigation into the access of teacher professional learning in regional and remote Western Australia

Many teachers working in remote and regional areas have limited access to collegial support networks. This research aimed to examine the existing strategies that were being undertaken by the Department of Education in Western Australia, to provide professional learning to teachers in regional and remote areas. It was important to establish the perceptions of teachers’ access to professional learning from those working at the coalface in geographically dispersed areas. Consequently, the possible opportunity for improving the amount and variety of professional learning, through the application of both synchronous and asynchronous technologies was proposed. The study was guided by the primary research question: “In what ways might technology be used to support professional development of regional and remote teachers in Western Australia?” Generating descriptions of current practice of professional learning along with the teacher perceptions were central to this research endeavour. The study relied on a mixed method research approach in order to attend to the research question. The data were collected in phases, referred to as an explanatory mixed methods design. Quantitative data were collected from 104 participants to provide a general picture of the research problem. To further refine this general picture, qualitative data were collected through interviews and e-interviews of 10 teachers. Participants in the study included graduate teachers, teachers who had taught more than two years, senior teachers and Level Three teachers from seven teaching districts within Western Australia. An investigation into current practice was included in this phase and technologies available to support a professional learning community over distance were documented. The final phase incorporated the formulation of a conceptual framework where a model was developed to facilitate the successful implementation of a professional learning community through the application of synchronous and asynchronous technologies. The study has identified that travel time in order to access professional development is significant and impacts on teachers’ personal time. There are limited relief teachers available in these isolated areas which impacts on the opportunities to access professional development. Teachers face inequities, in terms of promotion, because professional development is explicitly linked to promotional opportunities. Importantly, it was found that professional learning communities are valued, but are often limited by small staff numbers at the geographic locality of the school. Teachers preferred to undertake professional learning in the local context of their district, school or classroom and this professional learning must be established at the need of the individual teacher in line with the school priorities. Teachers reported they were confident in using technology and accessing professional development online if required, however, much uncertainty surrounded the use of web 2.0 technologies for this purpose. The recommendations made from the study are intended to identify how a professional learning community might be enhanced through synchronous and asynchronous technologies.

Automatic Tonic Identification in Indian Art Music: Approaches and Evaluation

The tonic is a fundamental concept in Indian art music. It is the base pitch, which an artist chooses in order to construct the melodies during a rg(a) rendition, and all accompanying instruments are tuned using the tonic pitch. Consequently, tonic identification is a fundamental task for most computational analyses of Indian art music, such as intonation analysis, melodic motif analysis and rg recognition. In this paper we review existing approaches for tonic identification in Indian art music and evaluate them on six diverse datasets for a thorough comparison and analysis. We study the performance of each method in different contexts such as the presence/absence of additional metadata, the quality of audio data, the duration of audio data, music tradition (Hindustani/Carnatic) and the gender of the singer (male/female). We show that the approaches that combine multi-pitch analysis with machine learning provide the best performance in most cases (90% identification accuracy on average), and are robust across the aforementioned contexts compared to the approaches based on expert knowledge. In addition, we also show that the performance of the latter can be improved when additional metadata is available to further constrain the problem. Finally, we present a detailed error analysis of each method, providing further insights into the advantages and limitations of the methods.