Environmental reporting in the Australian mining industry : complying with regulation or meeting international best practice?

It is nearly 10 years since the introduction of s 299(1)(f) Corporations Act , which requires the disclosure of information regarding a company's environmental performance within its annual report. This provision has generated considerable debate in the years since its introduction, fundamentally between proponents of either a voluntary or mandatory environmental reporting framework. This study examines the adequacy of the current regulatory framework. The environmental reporting practices of 24 listed companies in the resources industries are assessed relative to a standard set by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. These Guidelines are argued to represent "international best practice" in environmental reporting and a "scorecard" approach is used to score the quality of disclosure according to this voluntary benchmark. Larger companies in the sample tend to report environmental information over and above the level required by legislation. Some, but not all companies present a stand-alone environmental/sustainability report. However, smaller companies provide minimal information in compliance with s 299(1)(f) . The findings indicate that "international best practice" environmental reporting is unlikely to be achieved by Australian companies under the current regulatory framework. In the current regulatory environment that scrutinises s 299(1)(f) , this article provides some preliminary evidence of the quality of disclosures generated in the Australian market.

The Waitangi Tribunal and the regulation of Maori protest

Much of the current academic and political discourse related the development and operations of the Waitangi Tribunal over its first twenty years portray it as a forum that provided Māori with a meaningful avenue for settling Treaty grievances compared to the formal legal systems performance in the preceding 100 years. In contrast, we argue that from its inception and throughout much of the 1980s, the Waitangi Tribunal functioned primarily as an informal justice forum that assisted the New Zealand state’s regulation of Māori Treaty activism during the transition from a Fordist to a Post-Fordist mode of capital accumulation.

Too sleepy to drive : self-perception and regulation of driving when sleepy

Background: Sleepiness is a direct contributor to a substantial proportion of fatal and severe road cashes. A number of technological solutions designed to detect sleepiness have been developed, but self-awareness of increasing sleepiness remains a critical component in on-road strategies for mitigating this risk. In order to take appropriate action when sleepy, drivers’ perceptions of their level of sleepiness must be accurate. Aims: This study aimed to assess capacity to accurately identify sleepiness and self-regulate driving cessation during a validated driving simulator task. Participants: Participants comprised 26 young adult drivers (20-28 years). The drivers had open licenses but no other exclusion criteria where used. Methods: Participants woke at 5am, and took part in a laboratory-based hazard perception driving simulation, either at mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Established physiological measures (including EEG) and subjective measures (sleepiness ratings) previously found sensitive to changes in sleepiness levels were utilised. Participants were instructed to ‘drive’ until they believed that sleepiness had impaired their ability to drive safely. They were then offered a nap opportunity. Results: The mean duration of the drive before cessation was 39 minutes (±18 minutes). Almost all (23/26) of the participants then achieved sleep during the nap opportunity. These data suggest that the participants’ perceptions of sleepiness were specific. However, EEG data from a number of participants suggested very high levels of sleepiness prior to driving cessation, suggesting poor sensitivity. Conclusions: Participants reported high levels of sleepiness while driving after very moderate sleep restriction. They were able to identify increasing sleepiness during the test period, could decide to cease driving and in most cases were sufficiently sleepy to achieve sleep during the daytime session. However, the levels of sleepiness achieved prior to driving cessation suggest poor accuracy in self-perception and regulation. This presents practical issues for the implementation of fatigue and sleep-related strategies to improve driver safety.

Anthropogenic landscape change promotes asymmetric dispersal and limits regional patch occupancy in a spatially structured bird population

1. Local extinctions in habitat patches and asymmetric dispersal between patches are key processes structuring animal populations in heterogeneous environments. Effective landscape conservation requires an understanding of how habitat loss and fragmentation influence demographic processes within populations and movement between populations. 2. We used patch occupancy surveys and molecular data for a rainforest bird, the logrunner (Orthonyx temminckii), to determine (i) the effects of landscape change and patch structure on local extinction; (ii) the asymmetry of emigration and immigration rates; (iii) the relative influence of local and between-population landscapes on asymmetric emigration and immigration; and (iv) the relative contributions of habitat loss and habitat fragmentation to asymmetric emigration and immigration. 3. Whether or not a patch was occupied by logrunners was primarily determined by the isolation of that patch. After controlling for patch isolation, patch occupancy declined in landscapes experiencing high levels of rainforest loss over the last 100 years. Habitat loss and fragmentation over the last century was more important than the current pattern of patch isolation alone, which suggested that immigration from neighbouring patches was unable to prevent local extinction in highly modified landscapes. 4. We discovered that dispersal between logrunner populations is highly asymmetric. Emigration rates were 39% lower when local landscapes were fragmented, but emigration was not limited by the structure of the between-population landscapes. In contrast, immigration was 37% greater when local landscapes were fragmented and was lower when the between-population landscapes were fragmented. Rainforest fragmentation influenced asymmetric dispersal to a greater extent than did rainforest loss, and a 60% reduction in mean patch area was capable of switching a population from being a net exporter to a net importer of dispersing logrunners. 5. The synergistic effects of landscape change on species occurrence and asymmetric dispersal have important implications for conservation. Conservation measures that maintain large patch sizes in the landscape may promote asymmetric dispersal from intact to fragmented landscapes and allow rainforest bird populations to persist in fragmented and degraded landscapes. These sink populations could form the kernel of source populations given sufficient habitat restoration. However, the success of this rescue effect will depend on the quality of the between-population landscapes.

The iatrogenic reflex and belief that repression can coercively suppress asymmetric coercive violence : does very robust action by the government decrease functional support for insurgents?

Non-state insurgent actors are too weak to compel powerful adversaries to their will, so they use violence to coerce. A principal objective is to grow and sustain violent resistance to the point that it either militarily challenges the state, or more commonly, generates unacceptable political costs. To survive, insurgents must shift popular support away from the state and to grow they must secure it. State actor policies and actions perceived as illegitimate and oppressive by the insurgent constituency can generate these shifts. A promising insurgent strategy is to attack states in ways that lead angry publics and leaders to discount the historically established risks and take flawed but popular decisions to use repressive measures. Such decisions may be enabled by a visceral belief in the power of coercion and selective use of examples of where robust measures have indeed suppressed resistance. To avoid such counterproductive behaviours the cases of apparent 'successful repression' must be understood. This thesis tests whether robust state action is correlated with reduced support for insurgents, analyses the causal mechanisms of such shifts and examines whether such reduction is because of compulsion or coercion? The approach is founded on prior research by the RAND Corporation which analysed the 30 insurgencies most recently resolved worldwide to determine factors of counterinsurgent success. This new study first re-analyses their data at a finer resolution with new queries that investigate the relationship between repression and insurgent active support. Having determined that, in general, repression does not correlate with decreased insurgent support, this study then analyses two cases in which the data suggests repression seems likely to be reducing insurgent support: the PKK in Turkey and the insurgency against the Vietnamese-sponsored regime after their ousting of the Khmer Rouge. It applies 'structured-focused' case analysis with questions partly built from the insurgency model of Leites and Wolf, who are associated with the advocacy of US robust means in Vietnam. This is thus a test of 'most difficult' cases using a 'least likely' test model. Nevertheless, the findings refute the deterrence argument of 'iron fist' advocates. Robust approaches may physically prevent effective support of insurgents but they do not coercively deter people from being willing to actively support the insurgency.

The Convergence Review and the future of Australian content regulation

This article examines the place of Australian and local content regulation in the new media policy framework proposed by the Convergence Review. It outlines the history of Australian content regulation and the existing policy framework, before going on to detail some of the debates around Australian content during the Review. The final section analyses the relevant recommendations in the Convergence Review Final Report, and highlights some issues and problems that may arise in the new framework.

A review of the pharmacobiotic regulation of gastrointestinal inflammation by probiotics, commensal bacteria and prebiotics.

The idea that microbes induce disease has steered medical research toward the discovery of antibacterial products for the prevention and treatment of microbial infections. The twentieth century saw increasing dependency on antimicrobials as mainline therapy accentuating the notion that bacterial interactions with humans were to be avoided or desirably controlled. The last two decades, though, have seen a refocusing of thinking and research effort directed towards elucidating the critical inter-relationships between the gut microbiome and its host that control health/wellness or disease. This research has redefined the interactions between gut microbes and vertebrates, now recognizing that the microbial active cohort and its mammalian host have shared co-evolutionary metabolic interactions that span millennia. Microbial interactions in the gastrointestinal tract provide the necessary cues for the development of regulated pro- and anti-inflammatory signals that promotes immunological tolerance, metabolic regulation and other factors which may then control local and extra-intestinal inflammation. Pharmacobiotics, using nutritional and functional food additives to regulate the gut microbiome, will be an exciting growth area of therapeutics, developing alongside an increased scientific understanding of gut-microbiome symbiosis in health and disease.

Driver sleepiness self-regulation : physiological and subjective evidence

Introduction: Sleepiness contributes to a substantial proportion of fatal and severe road crashes. Efforts to reduce the incidence of sleep-related crashes have largely focussed on driver education to promote self-regulation of driving behaviour. However, effective self-regulation requires accurate self-perception of sleepiness. The aim of this study was to assess capacity to accurately identify sleepiness, and self-regulate driving cessation, during a validated driving simulator task. Methods: Participants comprised 26 young adult drivers (20-28 years) who had open licenses. No other exclusion criteria where used. Participants were partially sleep deprived (05:00 wake up) and completed a laboratory-based hazard perception driving simulation, counterbalanced to either at mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Established physiological measures (i.e., EEG, EOG) and subjective measures (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale), previously found sensitive to changes in sleepiness levels, were utilised. Participants were instructed to ‘drive’ on the simulator until they believed that sleepiness had impaired their ability to drive safely. They were then offered a nap opportunity. Results: The mean duration of the drive before cessation was 36.1 minutes (±17.7 minutes). Subjective sleepiness increased significantly from the beginning (KSS=6.6±0.7) to the end (KSS=8.2±0.5) of the driving period. No significant differences were found for EEG spectral power measures of sleepiness (i.e., theta or alpha spectral power) from the start of the driving task to the point of cessation of driving. During the nap opportunity, 88% of the participants (23/26) were able to reach sleep onset with an average latency of 9.9 minutes (±7.5 minutes). The average nap duration was 15.1 minutes (±8.1 minutes). Sleep architecture during the nap was predominately comprised of Stages I and II (combined 92%). Discussion: Participants reported high levels of sleepiness during daytime driving after very moderate sleep restriction. They were able to report increasing sleepiness during the test period despite no observed change in standard physiological indices of sleepiness. This increased subjective sleepiness had behavioural validity as the participants had high ‘napability’ at the point of driving cessation, with most achieving some degree of subsequent sleep. This study suggests that the nature of a safety instruction (i.e. how to view sleepiness) can be a determinant of driver behaviour.