The review of Australia's asylum laws and policies: a case for strengthening Parliament's role in protecting rights through post-enactment scrutiny

The central contention of this article is that there is a need for greater involvement of legislators in overseeing a systematic and rights-based scrutiny of the impact of legislation and policy. The recent operation of Australia s asylum laws and policies, in particular provides an illustration of the reforms required. Challenges to the rights of non-citizens in Australia and other jurisdictions serve as a reminder of the extent of change required before rights are firmly entrenched in the processes of government. A useful step forward would be to enhance the role of legislators in setting the criteria and agenda for post-enactment scrutiny in light of issues raised during pre-legislative scrutiny.

Idea Competitions under scrutiny: Acquisition, intelligence or public relations mechanism?

Idea Competitions (ICs) are becoming a popular mechanism chosen by firms to perform Open Innovation. They are a way to engage with external sources of knowledge such as individual entrepreneurs and small firms who are asked to submit ideas and compete for a prize. However, little is known about the success of ICs as acquisition mechanisms. The researchers conducted interviews in five multinational companies to evaluate the effects of using ICs as an acquisition mechanism. Although still preliminary, the results of this study show that the success of ICs as an acquisition mechanism remains uncertain because their output (i.e. the number of ideas acquired) is often low compared to the input (i.e. the number of ideas submitted) and effort required to run them (e.g. to vet ideas). Across the cases observed, ICs appear to be more successful at identifying and acquiring early-stage ideas, particularly those outside the current business focus. The study shows that ICs deliver other functional benefits such as improved intelligence and public relations and that these need to be considered as part of the evaluation of the IC's success. The paper concludes by discussing the conditions in which ICs are implemented and the implications for Open Innovation theory. © 2013 Elsevier Inc.

Replacing the ASBO with the injunction to prevent nuisance and annoyance: a plea for legislative scrutiny and amendment

In May 2013, the Coalition Government introduced a Bill which if passed will streamline the tools available to tackle anti-social behaviour. One of their proposals is to replace the controversial anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) with what is termed an Injunction to Prevent Nuisance and Annoyance (IPNA). Although designed to tackle criminal and sub-criminal behaviour, this new intervention will be a purely civil order replacing the civil-criminal hybrid ASBO. This article explores some of the more troubling aspects of this part of the Bill including its expansive definition of anti-social behaviour, the avoidance of due process protections, the extensive restrictions that respondents may face and the likely impact of its use on young people. With legislation presently under Parliamentary scrutiny, this article calls for amendments to avoid the most problematic aspects of the ASBO being not just replicated but amplified.

Success, satisfaction and scrutiny: the business benefits of involving residents

This document summarises work to develop a compelling business case for landlord investment in resident involvement. Its key argument is involvement not only assists in improving satisfaction and service delivery, but also provides value for money.

Recognition of "difference" in Shari'a: a feminist scrutiny through the lens of substantive equality

The paper looks at the works of notable Islamic feminists to examine whether Islam can be reconciled with a substantive approach to gender equality. Located within contemporary feminist debates related to gender equality, it considers the Qur’anic verses related to two controversial areas of Shari’a law, namely, duty of obedience and polygamy, to explore how Islamic scriptures perceive ‘difference’ and its implications for substantive equality-based legal reforms in a Muslim society.

Portugal: manifest for the republic education or teacher education under scrutiny

Starting from the analysis of a Manifest placed in the World Wide Web in order to gather signatures, the paper discusses the arousal of a wide spread movement of scepticism in the so called Portuguese “civil socie ty” against the overall result of almost forty years of uninterrupted educational reform that has taken place in Portugal since the late sixties and has lead to an increasing percentage of illiteracy and innumeracy. That Manifest is presented as part of a broader movement, deeply rooted in the Portuguese society, and silent so far, which is becoming stronger and has now strength enough to be part of the political agenda. It is also our concern to unveil an emerging trend of blaming sciences of education and badly trained teachers as responsible for the poor outcome of our schooling system.

The state under scrutiny: public opinion, stateness and government performance in Latin America

Includes bibliography

Japan’s whaling plan under scrutiny

Eighteen years after initiating scientific whaling in Antarctic waters, Japan presented a new and more ambitious program to the International Whaling Commission (IWC); the proposal was made in early June during the IWC’s annual meeting in Ulsan, Korea. Japan now wishes to more than double its annual catch of Antarctic minke whales (from about 440 to 935), and to expand lethal sampling to include an additional yearly take of 50 humpback and 50 fin whales. Unlike catches for commercial whaling, scientific catches are unregulated. Since 1987, Japan has taken some 6,800 minke whales from Antarctic waters, despite ongoing criticism of the relevance and direction of Japan’s research. The IWC was set up to regulate commercial whaling and to conserve whale populations, under the authority of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. Following a well-documented failure of management that led to the collapse of most global whale populations, the IWC set a zero quota for commercial whaling (the moratorium). This was made effective from 1986. Norway, the former Soviet Union and Japan initially objected to the moratorium, but Japan withdrew its objection and ceased commercial whaling in 1988.

Further Scrutiny of Scientific Whaling

Normile reports on Japan's expanded scientific whaling program and notes that "Canada, the United States, the Soviet Union, South Africa, and Japan were among several countries that [conducted scientific whaling] before 1982 [the year the IWC passed the worldwide commercial moratorium on whaling], but in recent years Japan has stood alone." Although true, this statement omits three equally important points.

A scrutiny of hard pion chiral perturbation theory

In the recently proposed framework of hard pion chiral perturbation theory, the leading chiral logarithms are predicted to factorize with respect to the energy dependence in the chiral limit. We have scrutinized this assumption in the case of vector and scalar pion form factors FV;S(s) by means of standard chiral perturbation theory and dispersion relations. We show that this factorization property is valid for the elastic contribution to the dispersion integrals for FV;S(s) but it is violated starting at three loops when the inelastic four-pion contributions arise.