Obligatory dangerousness criteria in the involuntary commitment and treatment provisions of Australian mental health legislation

Abstract Objective Involuntary commitment and treatment (IC&T) of people affected by mental illness may have reference to considerations of dangerousness and/or need for care. While attempts have been made to classify mental health legislation according to whether IC&T has obligatory dangerousness criteria, there is no standardised procedure for making classification decisions. The aim of this study was to develop and trial a classification procedure and apply it to Australia's mental health legislation. Method We developed benchmarks for ‘need for care’ and ‘dangerousness’ and applied these benchmarks to classify the mental health legislation of Australia's 8 states and territories. Our focus was on civil commitment legislation rather than criminal commitment legislation. Results One state changed its legislation during the course of the study resulting in two classificatory exercises. In our initial classification, we were able to classify IC&T provisions in legislation from 6 of the 8 jurisdictions as being based on either ‘need for care’ or ‘dangerousness’. Two jurisdictions used a terminology that was outside the established benchmarks. In our second classification, we were also able to successfully classify IC&T provisions in 6 of the 8 jurisdictions. Of the 6 Acts that could be classified, all based IC&T on ‘need for care’ and none contained mandatory ‘dangerousness’ criteria. Conclusions The classification system developed for this study provided a transparent and probably reliable means of classifying 75% of Australia's mental health legislation. The inherent ambiguity of the terminology used in two jurisdictions means that further development of classification may not be possible until the meaning of the terms used has been addressed in case law. With respect to the 6 jurisdictions for which classification was possible, the findings suggest that Australia's mental health legislation relies on ‘need for care’ and not on ‘dangerousness’ as the guiding principle for IC&T. Keywords: Involuntary commitment; Mental health legislation; Dangerousness; Australia

Reasonable adjustment and the assessment of students with disabilities: Australian legal issues and trends

Student assessment is particularly important, and particularly controversial, because it is the means by which student achievement is determined. Reasonable adjustment to student assessment is of equal importance as the means of ensuring the mitigation, or even elimination, of disability related barriers to the demonstration of student achievement. The significance of reasonable adjustment is obvious in the later years of secondary school, and in the tertiary sector, because failure to adjust assessment may be asserted as the reason a student did not achieve as well as anticipated or as the reason a student was excluded from a course and, as a result, from future study and employment opportunities. Even in the early years of schooling, however, assessment and its management are a critical issue for staff and students, especially in an education system like Australia’s with an ever increasing emphasis on national benchmarks testing. This paper will explain the legislation which underpins the right to reasonable adjustment in education in Australian schools. It will give examples of the kinds of adjustment which may be made to promote equality of opportunity in the area of assessment. It will also consider some of the controversies which have confronted, or which, it may be speculated, are likely to confront Australian education institutions as they work towards compliance with reasonable adjustment laws.

Exceptional teachers for disadvantaged schools

A major issue facing Australia is addressing an education system that OECD’s data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show is of high quality, but low equity. In other words, while Australian schools score relatively high in terms of international benchmarks related to quality, the same cannot be said in relation to indicators of social background or socioeconomic status (SES). The federal and state responses to this dilemma can be found in a coordinated national agenda targeting social inclusion. Two key policy areas within this agenda relate directly to the Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools Project (ETDS). These are the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) and the National Partnership Agreements on Low Socio-economic Status School Communities and Improving Teacher Quality.

Third sector partnerships : opportunities and risks

The establishment by the Prime Minister of the Community Business Partnerships Board along with recent taxation reform has drawn attention to corporate philanthropy in Australia. Definitions and models are needed as each of the potential partners – government, corporations and nonprofit organisations – attempts to come to grips with opportunities. The intending partners will need to determine their responsibilities and desired outcomes so that they may work effectively towards mutually beneficial working relationships. Performance indicators need to be determined, benchmarks developed and best practice promoted. A dearth of research exists in this area (Burch, 1998; Industry Commission Report, 1995; Lyons & Hocking, 1998). More exhaustive research, collection and analysis of appropriate data will aid the process. This particular research indicates a lack of understanding between corporations and nonprofit organisations. There are risks inherent in the proposed partnerships, such as inability to reach agreement, potential for increased costs, and failure to deliver by one of the partners. This paper assesses opportunities and risks, suggests topics for high level debate, and indicates models for the development of partnerships.

Were regulatory changes in reporting "abnormal items" justified? : evidence of intra-period classificatory earnings management practices in Australia

Purpose Managers generally have discretion in determining how components of earnings are presented in financial statements in distinguishing between ‘normal’ earnings and items classified as unusual, special, significant, exceptional or abnormal. Prior research has found that such intra-period classificatory choice is used as a form of earnings management. Prior to 2001, Australian accounting standards mandated that unusually large items of revenue and expense be classified as ‘abnormal items’ for financial reporting, but this classification was removed from accounting standards from 2001. This move by the regulators was partly in response to concerns that the abnormal classification was being used opportunistically to manage reported pre-abnormal earnings. This study extends the earnings management literature by examining the reporting of abnormal items for evidence of intra-period classificatory earnings management in the unique Australian setting. Design/methodology/approach This study investigates associations between reporting of abnormal items and incentives in the form of analyst following and the earnings benchmarks of analysts’ forecasts, earnings levels, and earnings changes, for a sample of Australian top-500 firms for the seven-year period from 1994 to 2000. Findings The findings suggest there are systematic differences between firms reporting abnormal items and those with no abnormal items. Results show evidence that, on average, firms shifted expense items from pre-abnormal earnings to bottom line net income through reclassification as abnormal losses. Originality/value These findings suggest that the standard setters were justified in removing the ‘abnormal’ classification from the accounting standard. However, it cannot be assumed that all firms acted opportunistically in the classification of items as abnormal. With the removal of the standardised classification of items outside normal operations as ‘abnormal’, firms lost the opportunity to use such disclosures as a signalling device, with the consequential effect of limiting the scope of effectively communicating information about the nature of items presented in financial reports.

School Leadership, Literacy and Social Justice : The Place of Local School Curriculum Planning and Reform

School reform is a matter of both redistributive social justice and recognitive social justice. Following Fraser (Justice interruptus: critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. Routledge, New York, 1997), we begin from a philosophical and political commitment to the more equitable redistribution of knowledge, credentials, competence, and capacity to children of low socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic minority and Indigenous communities whose access, achievement, and participation historically have “lagged” behind system norms and benchmarks set by middle class and dominant culture communities. At the same time, we argue that the recognition of these students and their communities’ lifeworlds, knowledges, and experiences in the curriculum, in classroom teaching, and learning is both a means and an end: a means toward improved achievement measured conventionally and a goal for reform and alteration of mainstream curriculum knowledge and what is made to count in the school as valued cultural knowledge and practice. The work that we report here was based on an ongoing 4-year project where a team of university teacher educators/researchers have partnered with school leadership and staff to build relationships within community. The purpose has been to study whether and how engagement with new digital arts and multimodal literacies could have effects on students “conventional” print literacy achievement and, secondly, to study whether and how the overall performance of a school could be generated through a focus on professional conversations and partnerships in curriculum and instruction – rather than the top-down implementation of a predetermined pedagogical scheme, package, or approach.

Evaluation of precision time synchronisation methods for substation applications

Many substation applications require accurate time-stamping. The performance of systems such as Network Time Protocol (NTP), IRIG-B and one pulse per second (1-PPS) have been sufficient to date. However, new applications, including IEC 61850-9-2 process bus and phasor measurement, require accuracy of one microsecond or better. Furthermore, process bus applications are taking time synchronisation out into high voltage switchyards where cable lengths may have an impact on timing accuracy. IEEE Std 1588, Precision Time Protocol (PTP), is the means preferred by the smart grid standardisation roadmaps (from both the IEC and US National Institute of Standards and Technology) of achieving this higher level of performance, and integrates well into Ethernet based substation automation systems. Significant benefits of PTP include automatic path length compensation, support for redundant time sources and the cabling efficiency of a shared network. This paper benchmarks the performance of established IRIG-B and 1-PPS synchronisation methods over a range of path lengths representative of a transmission substation. The performance of PTP using the same distribution system is then evaluated and compared to the existing methods to determine if the performance justifies the additional complexity. Experimental results show that a PTP timing system maintains the synchronising performance of 1-PPS and IRIG-B timing systems, when using the same fibre optic cables, and further meets the needs of process buses in large substations.

The application of financial ratios in analysing nonprofit organisations

Historically ratios have been used to assess the financial standing of profit organisations. It would be expected the role which such ratios play in analysing nonprofit organisations would be considerably different due to the lack of profit motive. Many traditional ratios are based on profitability as a benchmark. The nonprofit sector plays an important role in society yet to date there has been no research carried out on financial statement analysis for nonprofit organisations in Australia. This paper examines ratios of a group of nonprofit organisations and assesses the applicability of the traditional profit-based ratios to nonprofit organisations. Financial statements of a sample of charities registered in Queensland are analysed. The traditional profitability, liquidity and financial stability ratios are analysed and calculated wherever practicable and compared to the typical benchmarks used in profit analysis.

Striving to achieve best practice in heart failure disease management

Based on a national audit of chronic heart failure (CHF) management programmes (CHF-MPs) conducted in 2006, Driscoll et al identified a disproportionate distribution ranging from 0 to 4.2 programmes/million population in the various states of Australia with many programmes not following best practice.1 We welcome their proposal to develop national benchmarks for CHF management and acknowledge the contributions of the Heart Foundation and health professionals in finalising these recommendations.2 We would like to share the Queensland experience in striving towards best practice with the number of CHF-MPs increasing from four (at the time of the 2006 survey) to 23, equating to 5.0 programmes/million population. Queensland now has a state-wide heart failure service steering committee with a focus on the development of CHF-MPs supported by a central coordinator...

Future directions in course quality assurance

The Course Quality Assurance System at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has as its centrepiece an exemplar of data visualisation known as the Individual Course Report (ICR). This report provides every course coordinator with an annual snapshot of their performance data evaluated against QUT and national benchmarks. In this article, the impact of the ICR is explored through the case study of one undergraduate course identified as underperforming. The case study features an innovative, ethnographic approach to working with course teams and highlights the importance of context, collaboration and appropriate support in creating evidence-based action plans for course improvement.

Computational experiments involving population size for FPGA-based implementation of a GA for the TSP

The feasibility of using an in-hardware implementation of a genetic algorithm (GA) to solve the computationally expensive travelling salesman problem (TSP) is explored, especially in regard to hardware resource requirements for problem and population sizes. We investigate via numerical experiments whether a small population size might prove sufficient to obtain reasonable quality solutions for the TSP, thereby permitting relatively resource efficient hardware implementation on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Software experiments on two TSP benchmarks involving 48 and 532 cities were used to explore the extent to which population size can be reduced without compromising solution quality, and results show that a GA allowed to run for a large number of generations with a smaller population size can yield solutions of comparable quality to those obtained using a larger population. This finding is then used to investigate feasible problem sizes on a targeted Virtex-7 vx485T-2 FPGA platform via exploration of hardware resource requirements for memory and data flow operations.

Classification—Content Regulation and Convergent Media

On 24 March 2011, Attorney-General Robert McClelland referred the National Classification Scheme to the ALRC and asked it to conduct widespread public consultation across the community and industry. The review considered issues including: existing Commonwealth, State and Territory classification laws the current classification categories contained in the Classification Act, Code and Guidelines the rapid pace of technological change the need to improve classification information available to the community the effect of media on children and the desirability of a strong content and distribution industry in Australia. During the inquiry, the ALRC conducted face-to-face consultations with stakeholders, hosted two online discussion forums, and commissioned pilot community and reference group forums into community attitudes to higher level media content. The ALRC published two consultation documents—an Issues Paper and a Discussion Paper—and invited submissions from the public. The Final Report was tabled in Parliament on 1 March 2012. Recommendations: The report makes 57 recommendations for reform. The net effect of the recommendations would be the establishment of a new National Classification Scheme that: applies consistent rules to content that are sufficiently flexible to be adaptive to technological change; places a regulatory focus on restricting access to adult content, helping to promote cyber-safety and protect children from inappropriate content across media platforms; retains the Classification Board as an independent classification decision maker with an essential role in setting benchmarks; promotes industry co-regulation, encouraging greater industry content classification, with government regulation more directly focused on content of higher community concern; provides for pragmatic regulatory oversight, to meet community expectations and safeguard community standards; reduces the overall regulatory burden on media content industries while ensuring that content obligations are focused on what Australians most expect to be classified; and harmonises classification laws across Australia, for the benefit of consumers and content providers.

Talking it through : the case for the use of conversation analytic approaches in the analysis of news journalism

This study makes out the case for the use of the Conversational Analytic method as a research approach that might both extricate and chronicle the features of the journalism interview. It seeks to encourage such research to help inform understanding of this form and to provide further lessons as to the nature of journalism practice. Such studies might follow many paths but this paper focuses more particularly on the outcomes for the debate as to the continued relevance of "objectivity" in informing journalism professional practice. To make out the case for the veracity of CA as a means through which the conduct of journalism practice might be explored the paper examines: the theories of the interaction order that gave rise to the CA method; outlines the key features of the journalism interview as explicated through the CA approach; outlines the implications of such research for the establishment of the standing of "objectivity". It concludes as to the wider relevance of such studies of journalism practice for a fracturing journalism field, which suffers from a lack of benchmarks to measure the public benefit of the range of forms that now proliferate on the internet.

Challenges facing carbon dioxide labelling of construction materials

In the absence of a benchmarking mechanism specifically designed for local requirements and characteristics, a carbon dioxide footprint assessment and labelling scheme for construction materials is urgently needed to promote carbon dioxide reduction in the construction industry. This paper reports on a recent interview survey of 18 senior industry practitioners in Hong Kong to elicit their knowledge and opinions concerning the potential of such a carbon dioxide labelling scheme. The results of this research indicate the following. A well-designed carbon dioxide label could stimulate demand for low carbon dioxide construction materials. The assessment of carbon dioxide emissions should be extended to different stages of material lifecycles. The benchmarks for low carbon dioxide construction materials should be based on international standards but without sacrificing local integrity. Administration and monitoring of the carbon dioxide labelling scheme could be entrusted to an impartial and independent certification body. The implementation of any carbon dioxide labelling schemes should be on a voluntary basis. Cost, functionality, quality and durability are unlikely to be replaced by environmental considerations in the absence of any compelling incentives or penalties. There are difficulties in developing and operating a suitable scheme, particularly in view of the large data demands involved, reluctance in using low carbon dioxide materials and limited environmental awareness.

International stock market linkages : are overnight returns on the U.S. Market informative?

Based on the theory of international stock market co-movements, this study shows that a profitable trading strategy can be developed. The U.S. market return is considered as overnight information by ordinary investors in the Asian and the European stock markets, and opening prices in local markets reflect the U.S. overnight return. However, smart traders would either judge the impact of overnight information more correctly, or predict unreleased information. Thus, the difference between expected opening prices based on the U.S. return and actual opening prices is counted as smart traders’ prediction power, which is either a buy or a sell signal. Using index futures price data from 12 countries from 2000 to 2011, cumulative returns on the trading strategy are calculated with taking into account transaction costs. The empirical results show that the proposed trading strategy generates higher riskadjusted returns than that of the benchmarks in 12 sample countries. The trading performances for the Asian markets surpass those for the European markets because the U.S. return is the only overnight information for the Asian markets whereas the Asian markets returns are additional information to the European investors.