Journal articles on the topic 'Economic assistance, Australian Fiji'

China’s political, economic and cultural influence is steadily rising in Fiji and the Pacific region as a whole. The Sino–Fiji cooperation deepened at multiple levels after the Fijian military assumed power through a coup d’état and removed the civilian government from power in late 2006. This ‘undemocratic behaviour’ infuriated the two regional powers—Australia and New Zealand who then applied sanctions on Fiji, particularly the military brass, and encouraged their counterparts as well as multilateral aid organisations to ‘punish’ Fiji’s military ‘regime’. The military government in order to derail the impact of sanctions from its traditional donors adopted the ‘Look North Policy’, which was opening cooperation with China and attracting Chinese investment in Fiji. China welcomed the friendship gesture and furnished Fiji with financial assistance. This Chinese friendship was also due to Taiwanese involvement in the region, which was providing aid for diplomatic recognition and support at the UN. The ‘microstates’ hold about 7 per cent of UN votes. Both China and Taiwan need their votes at multilateral organisations and given that these microstates are mostly aid-dependent economies, initiated an era of Chequebook diplomacy, which is basically money for diplomatic recognition in the case of Taiwan or acceptance of One China Policy in the case of China. The microstates have time and again switched between China and Taiwan and played one against the other to get more aid money out of their diplomatic rivalry. The Sino–Taiwan aid competition in the Pacific forced US to make a strong comeback and ensure that China under the pretext of denying Taiwan space in the region actually spies on the US activities in the region. As a result, the US and its regional allies have significantly increased their foreign aid to the island nations in order to coax them to diminish their level of financial dependence on China. So far, they have not been successful enough and China’s aid package has gone far beyond the level US is giving. Today, China is the second largest donor to the region and largest financier to Fiji. Fiji has become the ace in this game as it is the regional hub of the Pacific Island states. Bearing the current high level of aid competition between traditional and emerging donors in mind, it is too early to judge whether Chinese aid will cause more harm to Fiji than benefit or vice versa. It also entirely depends on the Fijian government as to how much it relies on Chinese aid and how clean Chinese are with their soft loans. China has been blamed for not being clear and specific about the terms and conditions of its concessional loans. This vagueness and secrecy that is associated with Chinese aid been a cause for concern, especially among traditional donors.

The development assistance programs of Australia, China and Taiwan impact each other’s geopolitical interests in the South Pacific region. This “aid triangle” has recently undergone a significant transformation. Previously, the interests of Australia and China aligned in competing against Taiwan for political influence in the region. However, since 2008, China-Taiwan relations have warmed and their aid contest in the South Pacific has been largely put on hold. This has ameliorated Taiwan’s conflict with Australia, and the two countries have increased their development assistance cooperation. However, China’s role in undermining Australia’s policy towards Fiji, and the global deterioration in China’s relations with a US coalition (including Australia), have potentially increased the competitive aspects of the Sino-Australian side of the triangle.

Climate change is one of the most crucial challenges identified in this century for the Pacific Region, such as Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and many more. Citizens of Fiji have gone through peculiarly climatic and weather conditions over the past years like globalization, which had led to many consequences, especially in the agricultural sector which is the main income of many livelihoods not only in Fiji but in other Pacific countries as well. Climatic conditions have been changing adversely from past decades, such as temperature, rise in the sea level, precipitation changes, atmospheric composition changes, flooding, and tropical cyclones. These changes have led to alterations in the environment, thus, affecting crop and livestock production in the agricultural system. For instance, crops that require specific soil and temperature situations are vastly influenced when the temperature level changes suddenly, making the crops vulnerable to adapt to the alterations and therefore, the crops eventually die. Likewise, animal species also get affected by temperature changes, such as heat stress which specifically affects the fertility of male and female livestock. Due to these events, Fiji’s economies have also been affected since agriculture plays a vital role in boosting our economy through local market sales and exporting. Thereby, this review illustrates the impacts of climate change and ways to move forward/ solutions, for example, FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and Pacific Islands Climate Change Assistance Program (PICCAP) have supported Fiji in bringing adaptation programs for preparing farmers and all other individuals on the upcoming climatic conditions such as adapting tolerant crops that can handle droughts and other adverse weather conditions.

Higher Education Studies wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Their help and contributions in maintaining the quality of the journal are greatly appreciated. Higher Education Studies is recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please contact us for the application form at: hes@ccsenet.org Reviewers for Volume 10, Number 1 Antonina Lukenchuk, National Louis University, USA Aynur Yürekli, İzmir University of Economics, Turkey Bahar Gün, İzmir University of Economics, Turkey Barbara N. Martin, University of Central Missouri, USA Cristina Sin, CIPES (Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies), Portugal Deniz Ayse Yazicioglu, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey Donna.Smith , The Open University, UK Hüseyin Serçe, Selçuk University, Turkey James Badger, University of North Georgia, USA Laith Ahmed Najam, Mosul University, IRAQ Meric Ozgeldi, Mersin University, Turkey Mpoki Mwaikokesya, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania Nicos Souleles, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus Olusola Ademola Olaniyi, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Saudi Arabia Prashneel Ravisan Goundar, Fiji National University, Fiji Robin Rawlings, Walden University, USA Sadeeqa Sadeeqa, Lahore College for Women University Lahore, Pakistan Savitri Bevinakoppa, Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia Semiyu Adejare Aderibigbe, University of Sharjah, UAE Teguh Budiharso, Center of Language and Culture Studies, Indonesia Yousef Ogla Almarshad, Aljouf University, Saudi Arabia

Higher Education Studies wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Their help and contributions in maintaining the quality of the journal are greatly appreciated. Higher Education Studies is recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please find the application form and details at http://recruitment.ccsenet.org and e-mail the completed application form to hes@ccsenet.org. Reviewers for Volume 9, Number 2 Abdelaziz Mohammed, Albaha University, Saudi Arabia Alina Mag, University Lucian Blaga of Sibiu, Romania Anna Liduma, University of Latvia, Latvia Antonina Lukenchuk, National Louis University, USA Arbabisarjou Azizollah, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Iran Ausra Kazlauskiene, Siauliai University, Lithuania Aynur Yürekli, İzmir University of Economics, Turkey Bahar Gün, İzmir University of Economics, Turkey Bo Chang, Ball State University, USA Evrim Ustunluoglu, Izmir University of Economics, Turkey Gamze Kasalak, Akdeniz University, Turkey Gregory S. Ching, Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan Jisun Jung, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Karsten Krauskopf, University of Potsdam, Germany Lung-Tan Lu, Fo Guang University, Taiwan Meric Ozgeldi, Mersin University, Turkey Mirosław Kowalski, University of Zielona Góra, Poland Oana-Mihaela Rusu, Unviersity of Iasi, Romania Olusola Ademola Olaniyi, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Saudi Arabia Prashneel Ravisan Goundar, Fiji National University, Fiji Rafizah Mohd Rawian, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia Ranjit Kaur Gurdial Singh, The Kilmore International School, Australia Sumita Chowhan, Jain University, India Tuija A. Turunen, University of Lapland, Finland Uher Ivan, University P.J.Safarika Kosice, Slovakia Zahra Shahsavar, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran

AbstractPacific island countries (PICs), ever since their independence during the second half of the last century, have been among the world's top ten recipients of official development assistance (ODA) on a per capita basis. Until the mid 1990s, most of them were receiving aid from their erstwhile colonial masters for budgetary support. With the introduction of reforms in ODA delivery in the late 1990s with focus on program and project-tied aid, it was expected that aid would directly facilitate creation of much-needed growth enhancing infrastructures, physical as well as social, since domestic savings were found to be insufficient to finance them. However, continued stagnation in some PICs and deterioration in some others have been causing concerns. This paper seeks to examine the effectiveness of aid by undertaking a case study of Fiji, which has a longer time series data needed for econometric investigation. Based on the study's findings, the paper lists some policy conclusions relevant to the region.

This paper first describes briefly the scope of the no-fault motor accident schemes which operate in Australia. It then sets out and evaluates the benefits payable under each for losses of an economic nature. These are benefits for hospital, medical, nursing, rehabilitation and like needs created by injuries in a motor accident ; for informal nursing services and assistance in the home, the need for which is similarly created ; for loss of earning capacity resulting from such accidents ; and for death so resulting. It does not deal with benefits for loss of a non-economic nature, such as pain and suffering (for which, as such, compensation is not generally payable under the schemes) and impairment. It nevertheless concludes that most benefits for loss of an economic nature should be integrated with the Australian social security system and that the true role of a no-fault scheme is to compensate for permanent impairment, since there is no general disability benefit payable under the social security system.

There is a discursive split in Australian arts policy between subvention of the arts justified in terms of ‘humanistic’ objectives and subvention of the arts justified in terms of ‘economic’ objectives. It is possible to locate the emergence of this particular split to the 1976 Industries Assistance Commission Report, Assistance to the Performing Arts. Over the last two decades, these policy objectives have been constructed as in competition. This paper traces the history of the construction of the ‘arts as industry’ in Australian arts policy. In conclusion, it queries the more recent terms in which ‘arts as industry’ policy objectives have been set as in opposition to ‘public provision’ models of arts subvention.

Except for emergencies and for technical assistance for raising skills and institution building, foreign aid to Pacific island countries (PICs) for budgetary support has been phased out since the late 1990s. Because of the small sized domestic markets, foreign direct investment (FDI) is small and is confined to development of tourism infrastructure. On the other hand, inward remittances received from the rising number of islanders migrating overseas for work are increasing, far exceeding aid and FDI. However, influence of remittances on economic growth depends on financial sector development (FSD) for mobilizing the savings from the remittance receipts for domestic investment. This paper assesses the role of FSD in the nexus between remittances and economic growth through a panel study of five major PICs, namely Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. The study findings show that the ongoing efforts for strengthening FSD have to be stepped up by focusing on financial inclusion through spread of branchless banking and promotion of information and communication technology.

Higher Education Studies wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Their help and contributions in maintaining the quality of the journal are greatly appreciated. Higher Education Studies is recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please find the application form and details at http://recruitment.ccsenet.org and e-mail the completed application form to hes@ccsenet.org. Reviewers for Volume 9, Number 4 Abdelaziz Mohammed, Albaha University, Saudi Arabia Alina Mag, University Lucian Blaga of Sibiu, Romania Ana Maria Carneiro, University of Campinas, Brazil Anna Liduma, University of Latvia, Latvia Antonina Lukenchuk, National Louis University, USA Arwa Aleryani, Saba University, Yemen Aynur Yürekli, İzmir University of Economics, Turkey Bahar Gün, İzmir University of Economics, Turkey Bo Chang, Ball State University, USA Deniz Ayse Yazicioglu, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey Dibakar Sarangi, Teacher Education and State Council for Educational research and Training, India Donna.Smith, The Open University, UK Geraldine N. Hill, Elizabeth City State University, USA Hüseyin Serçe, Selçuk University, Turkey Jisun Jung, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Kartheek R. Balapala, University Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia Laith Ahmed Najam, Mosul University, Iraq Lung-Tan Lu, Fo Guang University, Taiwan Mei Jiun Wu, University of Macau, China Meric Ozgeldi, Mersin University, Turkey Najia Sabir, Indiana University Bloomington, USA Okedeyi Sakiru Abiodun, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Nigeria Prashneel Ravisan Goundar, Fiji National University, Fiji Qing Xie, Jiangnan University, China Rafizah Mohd Rawian, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia Ranjit Kaur Gurdial Singh, The Kilmore International School, Australia Sadeeqa Sadeeqa, Lahore College For Women University Lahore, Pakistan Samuel Byndom, Parkland College, USA Semiyu Adejare Aderibigbe, American University in the Emirates, UAE Suat Capuk, Adiyaman University, Faculty of Education, Turkey Teguh Budiharso, Center of Language and Culture Studies, Indonesia Tuija A. Turunen, University of Lapland, Finland Xiaojiong Ding, Shanghai Normal University, China Zahra Shahsavar, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran

It is widely understood that households with low economic resources and poor labourmarket attachment are at considerable risk of food insecurity in Australia. However, little is knownabout variations in food insecurity by receipt of specific classes of social assistance payments thatare made through the social security system. Using newly released data from the 2016 HouseholdExpenditure Survey, this paper reports on variations in food insecurity prevalence across a range ofpayment types. We further investigated measures of financial wellbeing reported by food-insecurehouseholds in receipt of social assistance payments. Results showed that individuals in receiptof Newstart allowance (11%), Austudy/Abstudy (14%), the Disability Support Pension (12%),the Carer Payment (11%) and the Parenting Payment (9%) were at significantly higher risk of foodinsecurity compared to those in receipt of the Age Pension (<1%) or no payment at all (1.3%). Resultsfurther indicated that food-insecure households in receipt of social assistance payments enduredsignificant financial stress, with a large proportion co-currently experiencing “fuel” or “energy”poverty. Our results support calls by a range of Australian non-government organisations, politicians,and academics for a comprehensive review of the Australian social security system

ABSTRACT Many small and remote nations of the South Pacific depend primarily on subsistence fisheries for their livelihoods. The foreshores of many of these nations are fringed by coral reefs, on which very active marine ecological systems depend. Oil spills in these areas would have a serious effect both on these systems and on the islands’ economic activities. As part of the International Maritime Organization technical assistance program for Pacific Island nations, the Australian government has carried out a number of missions to develop marine pollution contingency plans. This paper discusses the essential issues for these plans, which are often based on an assumption of low risk, but need to recognize the severe effect that a pollution incident would have on the community and the environment. The linking of national plans with effective regional assistance arrangements is also discussed.

The pressing issue of homelessness in Australia is largely caused by a shortage of affordable accommodation. Unexpected results from a study into the experiences of homeless families, however, revealed that many people held the perception that asylum seekers, refugees and migrants are given greater priority by welfare agencies for housing assistance. Analysis of the interview data is used to illustrate how public and political discourses circulating at the time of the interviews may have contributed to these views. The article also discusses the extent to which xenophobia in the Australian community has links with feelings of economic insecurity.

Background/Introduction:The WHO has recommended the inclusion of rehabilitation capabilities in EMTs responding to disasters and health emergencies since 2013. Likewise, the importance of rehabilitation input across the continuum of care for patients experiencing COVID-19 illness has been highlighted since the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Despite recognition of the role and value of rehabilitation, both in EMTs and the management of COVID-19, evidence that EMTs activated in response to COVID-19 have deployed rehabilitation professionals remains limited.Objectives:This paper will describe the experiences of the Australian Medical Assistance Team (AUSMAT) in deploying rehabilitation professionals as an integrated capability of multi-disciplinary EMTs responding to COVID-19 health emergencies.Method/Description:In response to COVID-19 emergencies in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Timor-Leste, and the Solomon Islands, AUSMAT deployed rehabilitation professionals alongside multi-disciplinary EMTs on four occasions in 2021-2022. The rehabilitation professionals engaged in direct clinical care and capacity-building activities.Results/Outcomes:The work of the deployed AUSMAT rehabilitation professionals facilitated important capacity building and support for local rehabilitation staff and services, enhanced the time critical multi-disciplinary training of local nursing and medical staff, and improved the quality of clinical care of COVID-19 patients.Conclusion:AUSMAT’s experience has demonstrated that the deployment of rehabilitation professionals as part of a multi-disciplinary team adds significant value to the work of EMTs responding to COVID-19 health emergencies. Nursing and medical staff cannot readily replicate the knowledge, skills, and perspectives of rehabilitation professionals. Appropriately skilled rehabilitation professionals should be deployed to support national rehabilitation staff when EMTs respond to health emergencies.

Contemporary theoretical debates point to a transformation of societies and social organisations away from universal forms of mass production and consumption, organised through mass institutions, towards smaller, diversified, entrepreneurial units linked together by new forms of market and network co-ordination. This greater diversity is also held to be a feature of service users who require individually fashioned solutions to non-standard problems and tailored products for their different tastes.Applications of these accounts of social and economic transformation to the public sector propose similar patterns to those evident in private industry and in regional communities. The large, standardised bureaucracy is seen to give way to de-coupled, multiple agency models of service delivery within a new type of welfare state.The study uses interviews and surveys (n = 365) with service delivery staff in the Australian employment assistance sector where transformations of this type have recently been sponsored by government. These data indicate that many of the key propositions of the post-Fordist account are valid. Smaller, non-unionised units dominate the new order and services are devolved to the local level. However a number of the expected patterns of flexible specialisation, diversity and networking are not found, suggesting marked differences and possible tensions between public and private sector forms of organisational development in the new order.

Objective: This study examines the extent and nature of stalking victimisation in a random community sample. Method: A postal survey was distributed to 3700 adult men and women selected from the electoral roll in the State of Victoria. Outcome measures included the lifetime and annual cumulative incidence of stalking, the duration and methods of harassment, rates of associated violence and responses to victimisation. Results: Almost one in four respondents (23.4%;432) had been stalked, the unwanted behaviour they were subjected to being both repeated and fear-provoking. One in 10 (197) had experienced a protracted course of stalking involving multiple intrusions spanning a period of at least one month. Women were twice as likely as men to report having been stalked at some time in their lives, though the rates of victimisation in the 12 months prior to the study did not differ significantly according to gender. Younger people were significantly more likely than older respondents to report having been stalked. Victims were pursued by strangers in 42% of cases. The most common methods of harassment involved unwanted telephone calls, intrusive approaches and following. Associated threats (29%) and physical assaults (18%) frequently arose out of the stalking. Significant social and economic disruption was created by the stalking for 63% of victims. Most sought assistance to manage their predicament (69%). Conclusions: The experience of being stalked is common and appears to be increasing. Ten percent of people have been subjected at some time to an episode of protracted harassment. Assaults by stalkers are disturblingly frequent. Most victims report significant disruption to their daily functioning irrespective of exposure to associated violence.

Nullity law in Australia and Fiji provides that marriages can be void on various grounds, including duress and fraud. Despite some differences, United Kingdom (UK) law says marriages can be void or voidable on similar grounds. Courts in each jurisdiction have granted annulment in cases of forced marriage where duress “threatens life and limb”. Courts now say lesser force or threats, including pressure to comply with religious or traditional duty, can nullify marriage. Yet courts continue to require high level force such as passport confiscation, physical abuse, threats of eviction from the family home, and economic harm. This, as with allegations of fraud which receive short shrift, results from returning to common law authorities decided before migration resulted in significant demographic changes, particularly regarding culture and religion. UK authority draws a distinction between “forced” and “arranged” marriages, saying nullity is granted rightly in cases of the former, yet because “culture” “sanctifies” the latter, refusing nullity is right. Yet is this distinction valid? Should such marriages be recognised by Australian, Fijian and UK courts as contracted with full and free consent of the parties? An exploration of contemporary cases against the common law background to fraud and duress as nullity grounds indicates that allowing culture to be the measure denies women’s (and sometimes men’s) entitlement to contract marriage with full and free consent according to international human rights law.

ABSTRACTIn this article we explore the importance of ‘everyday discrimination’ and other psycho-social variables for psychological wellbeing, considering differences according to age, gender and socio-economic position. Using employee survey data collected within Australian organisations we explore a statistically reliable model of the relationship between aspects of the psycho-social work environment, psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction. The employee survey was carried out in two phases during mid-2007 and mid-2008 in a national university, two international freight terminals of a large international airline, a national manufacturing company and the roadside assistance division of a motoring organisation. Structural Equation Modelling was used to configure a model including psycho-social factors: respect, support, training, job insecurity and personally meaningful work. Everyday discrimination and consultation with supervisor were considered in terms of their direct effect on psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction and their indirect effect via the psycho-social factors enumerated above. Importantly, this generalised model attempts to describe the interrelations of these factors effectively for various age groups, gender and socio-economic position. We identify age, gender and socio-economic differences in the strength and relative importance of these relationships. A further validation study with an independent sample will be required to verify the model proposed in this article. The implications for the design of workplace interventions concerned with age discrimination are discussed.

Prime Minister John Howard’s behaviour often considered conservative and “Anti- Asian”, no exception to Indonesia. John Howard viewed Indonesia did not have a strategic position for Australia’s national interests. This study answered the question on “how did the dynamic of Australia-Indonesia bilateral relations at Prime Minister John Howard’s era in 1996-2007?”. At his administration, John Howard issued numbers of policy towards Indonesia, which are the policy related to East Timor issue, counterterrorism cooperation, the policy of Pacific Solution, assistance for tsunami disaster in Aceh that happened in 2004. These policies apparently made impacts to Australia- Indonesia bilateral relations. During eleven years administration of Prime Minister John Howard, the bilateral relations between Australia-Indonesia has experienced its dynamics of ebb and flow. These dynamics primarily caused by policies that Prime Minister John Howard issued, which gave more benefit to the Australian Government and created imbalance relations between two countries. Therefore, it became more interesting to be discussed for further study regarding which policies that gave more benefit for the Australian Government and in a contrary gave less benefit to Indonesian Government, thus the position of two countries became an imbalance in bilateral relations context. This research is expected to be a reference for other researchers who will examine the bilateral relations between Australia-Indonesia in John Howard’s era because there are still many aspects between the two countries relations that have not been elaborated by the researcher, namely economic, education and socio-cultural.

Mutual obligation – the idea that those who receive assistance in times of need should be required to ‘give something back’ – is the driving force behind the current social security reform agenda in Australia. After more than a decade of intense reform, the Australian Government is considering a reform blueprint based on the recommendations of a Welfare Reform Reference Group. These include proposals to increase mutual obligation requirements on the unemployed and that sole parents and disability support pensioners should be required to demonstrate some form of social or economic participation in return for receiving income support. Results from a national survey of public opinion are used to explore community views on a range of mutual obligation requirements for the unemployed. The analysis indicates that there is support for mutual obligation for the young and long-term unemployed, but not for others, such as the older unemployed, those caring for young children and those with a disability. Most people also see mutual obligation as implying action on the part of government to reduce unemployment and ease the plight of the unemployed.

Improving the water-limited yield of dryland crops and farming systems has been an underpinning objective of research within the Australian grains industry since the concept was defined in the 1970s. Recent slowing in productivity growth has stimulated a search for new sources of improvement, but few previous research investments have been targeted on a national scale. In 2008, the Australian grains industry established the 5-year, AU$17.6 million, Water Use Efficiency (WUE) Initiative, which challenged growers and researchers to lift WUE of grain-based production systems by 10%. Sixteen regional grower research teams distributed across southern Australia (300–700 mm annual rainfall) proposed a range of agronomic management strategies to improve water-limited productivity. A coordinating project involving a team of agronomists, plant physiologists, soil scientists and system modellers was funded to provide consistent understanding and benchmarking of water-limited yield, experimental advice and assistance, integrating system science and modelling, and to play an integration and communication role. The 16 diverse regional project activities were organised into four themes related to the type of innovation pursued (integrating break-crops, managing summer fallows, managing in-season water-use, managing variable and constraining soils), and the important interactions between these at the farm-scale were explored and emphasised. At annual meetings, the teams compared the impacts of various management strategies across different regions, and the interactions from management combinations. Simulation studies provided predictions of both a priori outcomes that were tested experimentally and extrapolation of results across sites, seasons and up to the whole-farm scale. We demonstrated experimentally that potential exists to improve water productivity at paddock scale by levels well above the 10% target by better summer weed control (37–140%), inclusion of break crops (16–83%), earlier sowing of appropriate varieties (21–33%) and matching N supply to soil type (91% on deep sands). Capturing synergies from combinations of pre- and in-crop management could increase wheat yield at farm scale by 11–47%, and significant on-farm validation and adoption of some innovations has occurred during the Initiative. An ex post economic analysis of the Initiative estimated a benefit : cost ratio of 3.7 : 1, and an internal return on investment of 18.5%. We briefly review the structure and operation of the initiative and summarise some of the key strategies that emerged to improve WUE at paddock and farm-scale.

AbstractThe European Union (EU) has become an important global actor in numerous areas. It is an economic giant, a key actor in global trade and trade negotiations. It leads talks on environment and it is the biggest provider of assistance to the developing world. It is the largest contributor to the United Nations budget and its peacekeeping missions are present in all major conflicts. With such prominent global presence, it would seem that when the EU speaks, the world listens. This paper assesses whether new public communicative spaces are emerging between the European Union and the rest of the world, including Australia. It first argues that supranational developments in the EU have encouraged an important shift in which international political communication is no longer equated with the boundaries of the nation state. It goes on to illustrate how the emergent Euro-polity is developing an important strategy for communication not only with its own Member States and their citizens but also with the world. To test how the new communication environment is received outside the EU, encounters of the Australian media with the European Union are analysed. The results tend to confirm the European Union’s existing fears of being largely unheard.

The oblique nature of control over assets of a trust has always been challenging when personal asset distribution is at issue. This is no more apparent than in the context of Family Law. Complex organisational arrangements may make sense when considering tax planning or asset protection strategies, however, they may present difficulties for the application of sections 79 and 75 of the Family Law Act 1975. Specific difficulties are experienced when dissecting the economic structures of professionals, where the issues of professional and business intangible assets and tangible assets are held within service trust structures, intertwined with personal professional wages, incorporated professional entities, professional distributions and family distributions. Service trust arrangements have become popular for Australian professionals, such as, doctors, accountants, lawyers and engineers due to their tax effectiveness which passed the court’s test in the 1978 case FCT v Phillips. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has issued ‘safe harbour’ rules for the operation of service trust arrangements which may provide some, in principle, assistance to Family Law decision making. This paper investigates the Family Law issues with respect to partner distributions where a service trust structure is in place. In this regard, the paper considers the business structuring concepts including the rights and roles of those associated with trusts, particularly the exercising of control. Secondly, the paper reviews the courts decisions with respect to looking through business trust structures with reference to the reasoning expressed in past judgements. Finally, the paper considers the Family Law distribution effects of tangible and intangible assets when professional services are encased within a Philips Trust type structure. This paper should be of interest to those involved, or potentially involved, in Family Law asset distribution. Specifically, legal and professional advisors, such as lawyers, accountants and valuation professionals. The paper’s objective is to assist in clarifying the complex issues of understanding business structures underpinning the transaction based cash flows between entities and their potentially intertwined equity.

BackgroundIn addition to the health burden caused by mental illnesses, these conditions contribute to economic disadvantage because of their impact on labour force participation.AimsTo quantify the cost of lost savings and wealth to Australians aged 45–64 who retire from the labour force early because of depression or other mental illness.MethodCross-sectional analysis of the base population of Health&WealthMOD, a microsimulation model built on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers and STINMOD, an income and savings microsimulation model.ResultsPeople who are not part of the labour force because of depression or other mental illness have 78% (95% CI 92.2–37.1) and 93% (95% CI 98.4–70.5) less wealth accumulated respectively, compared with people of the same age, gender and education who are in the labour force with no chronic health condition. People who are out of the labour force as a result of depression or other mental illness are also more likely to have the wealth that they do have in cash assets, rather than higher-growth assets such as superannuation, home equity and other financial investments.ConclusionsThis lower accumulated wealth is likely to result in lower living standards for these individuals in the future. This will compound the impact of their condition on their health and quality of life, and put a large financial burden on the state as a result of the need to provide financial assistance for these individuals.

The archipelagic nation of Solomon Islands in the sw Pacific experienced a debilitating internal conflict between 1998 and 2003. What began as an ethnic conflict evolved into a wider breakdown of law and order that led to the progressive collapse of government, closure of commercial enterprises and threat of national bankruptcy. In mid-2003 the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (ramsi) was mobilised and deployed under the auspices of the Pacific Islands Forum. Led and largely funded by the Australian government, ramsi sought to restore security and stability to the troubled nation through a combination of policing and law enforcement, institutional strengthening with central government agencies and measures aimed at reviving and growing the national economy. Ten years later and the mission is undergoing drawdown and the transition of its development programs into regular bilateral and multilateral aid programs. While ramsi has made a substantial contribution to the restoration of security and stability in the aftermath of conflict, many outstanding challenges remain. These include issues of political economy and how these are impacting on the quality of governance, service delivery and nation-building, as well as longstanding structural issues with the formal economy, set against prevailing patterns of population growth and internal migration. These challenges are examined in the context of Solomon Islands socio-economic characteristics and recent history with a view to assessing the country’s prospects for enduring stability in the post-ramsi era.

AbstractThe dual career couple is a contemporary and growing phenomenon in western industrialised nations. There are numerous human resource management issues associated with the dual career couple. The focus of this paper is on just one of these issues — employee relocation. The research reported here found that dual career employees are concerned about their partner's career prospects and unless current career levels can be maintained for the trailing partner, organisations may experience relocation resistance. Of specific interest in the Australian context is that organisations with operations in country areas may be particularly affected, since country areas are less likely to offer desirable career opportunities for trailing partners. Further, organisational mobility expectations frequently force couples to decide which partner's career will take precedence. Historically it has been the male partner's career, even in dual career relationships. The findings from this study suggest that such decisions are becoming more complex, with couples placing greater emphasis on economic and quality of life concerns. Traditionally, organisations have relied on employee mobility as a career development strategy. However, greater emphasis on long-term human resource planning is advocated to facilitate career development strategies which are less reliant on geographical relocation. Further, if organisations are to retain their dual career employees, relocation assistance packages may need re-assessment to reflect the needs of those employees who are unwilling to sacrifice their partners' careers for the sake of their own.

AbstractThe dual career couple is a contemporary and growing phenomenon in western industrialised nations. There are numerous human resource management issues associated with the dual career couple. The focus of this paper is on just one of these issues — employee relocation. The research reported here found that dual career employees are concerned about their partner's career prospects and unless current career levels can be maintained for the trailing partner, organisations may experience relocation resistance. Of specific interest in the Australian context is that organisations with operations in country areas may be particularly affected, since country areas are less likely to offer desirable career opportunities for trailing partners. Further, organisational mobility expectations frequently force couples to decide which partner's career will take precedence. Historically it has been the male partner's career, even in dual career relationships. The findings from this study suggest that such decisions are becoming more complex, with couples placing greater emphasis on economic and quality of life concerns. Traditionally, organisations have relied on employee mobility as a career development strategy. However, greater emphasis on long-term human resource planning is advocated to facilitate career development strategies which are less reliant on geographical relocation. Further, if organisations are to retain their dual career employees, relocation assistance packages may need re-assessment to reflect the needs of those employees who are unwilling to sacrifice their partners' careers for the sake of their own.

Approximately 16.5% of feral camel removal under the Australian Feral Camel Management Project (AFCMP) was by commercial means, via mustering for transport to abattoir (9.3%) and pet-meating in the field (7.2%). The challenges of commercial use of feral camels as a removal method include: variable density, mobility and distribution of the feral camel population; achieving landholder collaboration; accessibility to remote areas by road; availability of yard infrastructure and trucking capacity; and distance to slaughter facilities and end-markets. However, the AFCMP recognised commercial use as important to some Aboriginal communities, bringing a range of economic and social benefits as well as environmental outcomes in terms of reduced feral camel density. To facilitate mustering offtake, a removal assistance scheme was developed, whereby a formal landholder agreement was entered into with various legal requirements, including animal welfare. The agreement incentivised removal of both sexes: payments were for cow camels received at abattoir, but with a concurrent requirement for approximately equal sexes to be delivered to abattoir in an annual contract period. Additional project costs included contract development and oversight, landholder engagement, training and animal welfare auditing. Pet-meating, by way of ground culling and in-field butchering for meat storage in mobile refrigeration units, was also supported by the AFCMP via measures to increase harvest efficiency such as satellite tracking, aerial spotting and improved road access. However, pet-meating ceased mid-project due to changed industry demands. Post-AFCMP, mustering operations continue to service market demand for camel meat. The camel industry is also looking to camel farming to ensure greater continuity and quality of supply than can be achieved through wild harvest.

Wastewater reclamation and reuse is being viewed increasingly as a sustainable approach to integrated water resources management in many countries including Australia. The technical feasibility of reclamation and reuse has been demonstrated by a number of successful projects. The current state-of-the art of reclamation technologies can produce water of any desired quality (including potable quality). However, the increasing number of efficient treatment processes has made the selection of an optimum treatment train a difficult task for planners and decision-makers. A decision support system (DSS) can be particularly useful in wastewater reclamation and reuse as it can provide assistance in the evaluation and selection of treatment alternatives for a given reuse application before exhaustive simulation or pilot studies are conducted. This paper highlights the ongoing research on the development of a computer based DSS named MOSTWATAR(©) (which stands for Model for Optimum Selection of Technologies for WAstewater Treatment And Reuse). MOSTWATAR(©) has a database of the performance characteristics and costs of commonly used reclamation technologies and an optimization module based on genetic algorithms to generate and optimize treatment trains. It also contains detailed reuse guidelines applicable in the various Australian States. This model is intended to assist planners and decision-makers in the techno-economic assessment of reclamation technologies and aid in the selection of the best 5 treatment trains for a given end use and location, wastewater characteristics, and flow rate. This paper describes salient features of the MOSTWATAR(©) package and demonstrates its application to a case study. The results from user-generated options are presented and it is shown that this model can be a very useful tool for selecting the best treatment trains for wastewater reclamation and reuse.

The article analyzes the support for the US market, where the government has allocated almost $ 22.2 billion for the development of dairy cattle. direct and indirect subsidies to the country's dairy sector (35.02 c/l), which is equivalent to 73% of farmers' milk sales, showed relatively high domestic support, export subsidies, conservation programs, risk management programs, disaster relief programs, loan programs, crop insurance, livestock support. Surveys to support the Indian market, which ranks second in the world in raw milk production (9.5%), have shown that almost 80% of small-scale farmers are small-scale farmers. Milk collection is carried out by 130 thousand dairy cooperatives. NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) under DEDS, provides for subsidies of up to 25% of costs. China is investing heavily in the construction of large dairy farms and livestock complexes with up to 100,000 cows. The Australian market produces 9.3 million tonnes of milk, of which 36% is exported and is the world's fourth exporter of dairy products (6% of the world market). Australia's dairy cattle are characterized by a small amount of direct government support. During 2015-2016, agriculture received financial and commercial assistance over $ 147 million. US in the form of payments to farms. It has been established that price forecasting plays an important role in regulating the milk market in Australia, on the basis of which the profile Ministry, taking into account world prices, generates milk price indices. Analysis of milk production in Switzerland has shown that it remains highly subsidized. In 2013, state support for milk producers amounted to CHF 1.8 billion, incl. direct subsidies are estimated at 1.5 billion Swiss francs, which is 61 thousand Swiss francs per dairy farm, or 0.41 Swiss francs per 1 liter of milk. The state support system for dairy cattle in Canada has been found to include the following instruments: import tariffs that restrict dairy imports; minimum guaranteed prices for raw milk that are set at the maximum amount of milk sold to the dairies within the quota; a system of direct payments to farmers for milk production within the quota. The amount of direct payments per 1 liter of milk is set annually by the government. In order to support Canadian producers in technological modernization aimed at improving the efficiency of milk production, a dairy farm investment program (DFIP) is implemented with state support of $ 250 million. USA According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Iceland, Japan, Norway and Switzerland, the level of support for dairy producers exceeds on average 70% of the gross income of farmers, in Canada, the EU, Hungary, Korea and the USA the amount of support is 40-55%. An analysis of the support for the development of dairy cattle in the EU countries showed that the following instruments are allocated for these purposes: production restrictions (milk production quotas); government interventions and storage; Establishment of product sales regulations / regulations; the dairy package (including regulating contractual relations in the dairy sector); foreign trade (import regulations, export subsidies); government subsidies. It is found that the main factor that increases the profitability of dairy production in developed countries is the improvement of quality and differentiation of the range. Major factors contributing to the successful development of dairy cattle are increased government support and economical use of resources. Also used are a set of financial incentives, including reducing the tax burden. Key words: Livestock, milk market, domestic support, development programs, cooperation, financial incentives, subsidies, import tariffs, quotas.

The vulnerability of urban environments in continental regions to earthquake forces was explicitly demonstrated in Australia's devastating Newcastle earthquake on December 28, 1989. This moderately-sized earthquake of Richter magnitude ML 5.6 (Moment magnitude M 5.3) claimed 13 lives, damaged more than 70,000 properties and left an estimated total loss of about $AU (1991) 4 billion. The need for an earthquake mitigation programme in Australia was thus clearly established. It is for this reason that a multidisciplinary approach involving seismology, geology, engineering, insurance, local government and emergency services is being followed to study this event and its consequences. The earthquake source is defined as being on a thrust fault trending NW-SE dipping 75° to the NE, with a depth of focus at 11.5 km, source radius of 1.86 km, stress drop of at least 24 bars and a displacement along the rupture surface of at least 310 mm. The epicentre is located at 32.95°S, 151.61°E close to Boolaroo, about 15 km SW of the City of Newcastle, and with an epicentral error of about + 15 km. More than 100,000 observations from damage and felt reports are being analysed and integrated with the wide experiences gained in the rescue, recovery and renewal phases that have extended over the two years since the event. The specific issue of the geotechnical aspects is of great importance. It is being considered from the view of urban geology (surface alluvial sediments), rather than from theoretical considerations, to explain the major extent of building damage on the alluvial areas, amplification and liquefaction. Apart from the immediate "causes" of damage, serious consideration is being given to the long-term effects which have resulted in the latent and recurrent defects to buildings. The engineering findings from the Newcastle earthquake are discussed in detail. While it is uneconomical and not necessary to design a structure to withstand the greatest likely earthquake without damage in Australia, the cost of providing strength to resist very high intensity loads must be weighed against the importance of the structure and probability of the earthquakes, particularly in areas such as this with relatively little known seismic histories. Lessons for local government authorities who had not previously considered seismic activity are addressed. Based on the response and recovery of the City of Newcastle, the lessons include the development of a recovery management plan, revision of building regulations and the requirements for hazard mitigation. Unfortunately, several misconceptions about some aspects of the consequences of this earthquake have arisen. These concern the limitations of some analyses, use of selected data sets rather than all the available data and apparent lack of understanding of complex, rather than singular, causal relationships. Implications for the engineering, insurance and possibly the legal professions need to be considered. The potential to reduce losses in future earthquakes in Australia through an earthquake mitigation programme is now an achievable goal. The scenarios of such an event occurring at a different time or in a different city can be addressed, based on the Newcastle and other international experiences. Sufficient information is available to prepare the revised Australian earthquake loading code as a reliable and practical document for use by engineers. The consequences of the 1989 Newcastle earthquake have also captured the interest of researchers from many other continental areas of the Earth who must consider preparations for similar situations. All aspects of the study ultimately lead to the preparedness of urban communities to deal with such consequences with the assistance of emergency services agencies to minimize the social and economic traumas that will inevitably occur.

Abstract Background The construction and development of Dawan district has further promoted the innovative application of cultural resources, brought the long-standing Lingnan culture into the international stage, and become an important carrier and tool to strengthen international cultural exchanges and promote economic cooperation and development. Dawan district. Gauze, as a traditional and ancient manual weaving and dyeing process, has been listed in the national intangible cultural heritage list. It is on the verge of disappearing and in urgent need of rescue. Lightweight business wear is playing an increasingly important role in today's consumer market and has become a cultural image card to convey friendship and mutual assistance. This paper studies the innovative design of light and thin business clothing, and deeply integrates the two elements of shuisha and Lingnan culture, especially the changes of people's emotional behavior towards culture in the process of communication. At present, there is no relevant research report. Topics and Methods Take water yarn as the carrier, transform Lingnan traditional culture into design elements, deeply integrate light and thin business clothing design, explore the new visual expression and process production of traditional water yarn in style, color and pattern, and give new artistic expression to traditional water yarn. The author studies the application status of gauze in related fields of cultural industry, including the advantages and limitations of gauze; Difficulties in design and production; Advantages and limitations of washing gauze clothing style types, styles and patterns. This paper will explain how to overcome the compatibility problem of the combination of light and thin business clothes and washed yarn, and put forward practical solutions from the aspects of fabric and technology. The research methods include creative practice, literature analysis, observation, field investigation and expert discussion. At the same time, the emotional behavior of water conservancy workers in various places was investigated. This study adopts the profile of mood states (POMS), which was compiled by Australian scholars grore and prapavessis in 1992 and revised by Professor Zhu Beili. It is considered to be a good tool to study emotional states. The average reliability of the scale is 0.71, which is in the standard value of 0.60 ~ 0.82. There are 40 adjectives in the questionnaire, which are divided into seven subscales: tension, anger, fatigue, depression, energy, panic and self-esteem. The corresponding score scale of 0-4 was used. The final result (TMD) of the total score of mood state is five negative emotion scores minus two negative emotion scores, plus a constant of 100 for correction. Results The deep integration of “water yarn + Lingnan cultural elements + light business dress” will broaden the design field of water yarn and endow it with new artistic expression to meet the needs of the times. The combination of water yarn and other textile fabrics can improve the problems of single color, thin texture and high cost of water yarn. Through the summary of creative practice, it is found that there has been a new breakthrough in traditional technology and modern design, and found a new research perspective, which provides a theoretical basis for the application of traditional water yarn in fashion design. Conclusion This study is not only conducive to revitalizing local culture, promoting the flow of innovative elements and continuously improving the value of urban culture, but also has practical application value for the inheritance and innovation of intangible cultural heritage, and is ready for transformation. From “China's garment industry” to “China's manufacturing industry”. Acknowledgements This paper is wrote by He Xiaochun and it is a research project of Guangdong Literary & Art Vocational College, Guangdong Province Education Science “13th Five-Year Plan” 2020. Project name: Research on Innovative Design of Traditional Watered Gauze in Light Business wear under the Background of Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao Greater Bay Area Construction, Project Number: 2020GXJK313).

Field-based research programs offer students a singular opportunity to understand that today there are no simple scientific, economic or socio-political answers to the complex questions facing governments, communities, and local organizations. Through their research, students can gain a first-hand appreciation that decision making in the real world is a mix of all these disciplines, and that they have a vital role to play in participating in this process. According to the most recent Open Doors report (2006), issued by the Institute of International Education, about 206,000 US students studied abroad in 2004/5. While about 55% studied in Europe, an increasing number studied in other host countries around the world. Social science and physical science students comprised about 30% of all US study abroad students in this period. While study abroad programs encompassing a field research component are still in the minority, an increasing number of home institutions and field-based providers are supporting and conducting these types of programs. As the student papers in this Special Issue of Frontiers demonstrate, there is high quality work being produced by undergraduates in settings as diverse as France, Thailand, Kenya, South Africa and Mali. For these students this opportunity was likely a new experience, involving living and studying in international settings; dealing with language and culture differences; matriculating in programs operated by host country universities, independent program providers, or their home institution’s international program; and learning how to conduct research that meets professional standards. Much has been written and discussed regarding pre-departure orientation of US students studying abroad, along with studies and evaluations of the study abroad experience. Less discussion and research has focused on the experiences of the on-site faculty and staff who host students and incorporate field-based research into their courses and programs. These courses and programs involving student research include the following types: • International university-based research, in which the student conducts research on a topic as part of a course or term paper; • Independent field-based research, in which the student identifies a topic, organizes the project, and conducts the field work, analysis, write-up, etc. for an overall grade; • Collective field-based research, in which students, working under the guidance of a professor (either US or international), conduct a research project as part of a US-based course, or complementary to the professor’s research focus; • Client-focused, directed, field-based research in which the research conducted is in response to, or in collaboration with, a specific client ranging from an NGO, to a corporation, to an indigenous community, or a governmental agency. The purpose of this article is to describe some of the issues and challenges that on-site faculty and staff encounter in preparing and supporting US undergraduate students to conduct formal research projects in international settings in order to maximize their success and the quality of their research. The perspectives described below have been gathered through informal surveys with a range of international program faculty and staff; discussions with program managers and faculty; and through our own experience at The School for Field Studies (SFS), with its formal directed research model. The survey sought responses in the following areas, among others: preparing students to conduct successfully their field-based research in a different socio-cultural environment; the skill building needs of students; patterns of personal, cultural, and/or technical challenges that must be addressed to complete the process successfully; and, misconceptions that students have about field-based research. Student Preparation Students work either individually or in groups to conduct their research, depending on the program. In either case on-site faculty and staff focus immediately on training students on issues ranging from personal safety and risk management, to cultural understanding, language training, and appropriate behavior. In programs involving group work, faculty and staff have learned that good teamwork dynamics cannot be taken for granted. They work actively with students in helping them understand the ebb and flow of groups, the mutual respect which must be extended, and the active participation that each member must contribute. As one on-site director indicates, “Students make their experience what it is through their behavior. We talk a lot about respecting each other as individuals and working together to make the project a great experience.” Cultural and sensitivity training are a major part of these field-based programs. It is critical that students learn and appreciate the social and cultural context in which they will conduct their research. As another on-site director states, “It is most important that the students understand the context in which the research is happening. They need to know the values and basic cultural aspects around the project they will be working on. It is not simply doing ‘good science.’ It requires understanding the context so the science research reaches its goal.” On-site faculty and staff also stress the importance of not only understanding cultural dynamics, but also acting appropriately and sensitively relative to community norms and expectations. Language training is also a component of many of these programs. As a faculty member comments, “Students usually need help negotiating a different culture and a new language. We try to help the students understand that they need to identify appropriate solutions for the culture they are in, and that can be very difficult at times.” Skill Building Training students on the technical aspects of conducting field-based research is the largest challenge facing most on-site faculty and staff, who are often struck by the following: • A high percentage of students come to these programs with a lack of knowledge of statistics and methods. They’ve either had very little training in statistics, or they find that real world conditions complicate their data. According to one faculty member, “Statistics are a big struggle for most students. Some have done a class, but when they come to work with real data it is seldom as black and white as a text book example and that leads to interpretation issues and lack of confidence in their data. They learn that ecology (for example) is often not clear, but that is OK.” • Both physical and social science students need basic training in scientific methodology in order to undertake their projects. Even among science majors there is a significant lack of knowledge of how to design, manage and conduct a research project. As a program director states, “Many students begin by thinking that field research is comprised only of data collection. We intensively train students to understand that good research is a process that begins with conceptualization of issues, moves into review of relevant literature, structures a research hypothesis, determines indicators and measurements, creates the research design, collects data, undertakes analysis and inference. This is followed by write-up in standard scientific format for peer review and input. This leads to refining earlier hypotheses, raising new questions and initiating further research to address new questions.” Consistently, on-site faculty have indicated that helping students understand and appreciate this cycle is a major teaching challenge, but one that is critical to their education and the success of their various field research projects. • The uncertainty and ambiguity that are often present in field research creates challenges for many students who are used to seeking ‘the answer in the book.’ On-site faculty help students understand that science is a process in which field-based research is often non-linear and prone to interruption by natural and political events. It is a strong lesson for students when research subjects, be they animal or human, don’t cooperate by failing to appear on time, or at all, and when they do appear they may have their own agendas. Finally, when working with human communities, student researchers need to understand that their research results and recommendations are not likely to result in immediate action. Program faculty help them to understand that the real world includes politics, conflicting attitudes, regulatory issues, funding issues, and other community priorities. • Both physical and social science students demonstrate a consistent lack of skill in technical and evidence-based writing. For many this type of writing is completely new and is a definite learning experience. As a faculty member states, “Some students find the report writing process very challenging. We want them to do well, but we don’t want to effectively write their paper for them.” Challenges The preceding points address some of the technical work that on-site faculty conduct with students. Faculty also witness and experience the ‘emotional’ side of field-based research being conducted by their students. This includes what one faculty member calls “a research-oriented motivation” — the need for students to develop a strong, energized commitment to overcome all the challenges necessary to get the project done. As another professor indicates, “At the front end the students don’t realize how much effort they will have to expend because they usually have no experience with this sort of work before they do their project.” Related to this is the need for students to learn that flexibility in the research process does not justify a sloppy or casual approach. It does mean a recognition that human, political, and meteorological factors may intervene, requiring the ability to adapt to changed conditions. The goal is to get the research done. The exact mechanics for doing so will emerge as the project goes on. “Frustration tolerance” is critical in conducting this type of work. Students have the opportunity to learn that certain projects need to incorporate a substantial window of time while a lengthy ethics approval and permit review system is conducted by various governmental agencies. Students learn that bureaucracies move at their own pace, and for reasons that may not be obvious. Finally, personal challenges to students may include being uncomfortable in the field (wet, hot, covered in scrub itch) or feeling over-tired. As a faculty member states, “Many have difficulty adjusting to the early mornings my projects usually involve.” These issues represent a range of challenges that field-based research faculty and staff encounter in working with undergraduate students in designing and conducting their research projects around the world. In my own experience with SFS field-based staff, and in discussions with a wide variety of others who work and teach on-site, I am consistently impressed by the dedication, energy and commitment of these men and women to train, support and mentor students to succeed. As an on-site director summarizes, essentially speaking for all, “Fortunately, most of the students attending our program are very enthusiastic learners, take their limitations positively, and hence put tremendous effort into acquiring the required skills to conduct quality research.” Summary/Conclusions Those international program faculty and staff who have had years of experience in dealing with and teaching US undergraduates are surprised that the US educational system has not better prepared students on subjects including statistics, scientific report formatting and composition, and research methodologies. They find that they need to address these topics on an intensive basis in order for a substantial number of students to then conduct their research work successfully. Having said this, on-site faculty and staff are generally impressed by the energy and commitment that most students put into learning the technical requirements of a research project and carrying it out to the best of their abilities. Having students conduct real field-based research, and grading these efforts, is a very concrete method of determining the seriousness with which a student has participated in their study abroad program. Encouraging field-based research is good for students and good for study abroad because it has the potential of producing measurable products based on very tangible efforts. In a number of instances students have utilized their field research as the basis for developing their senior thesis or honors project back on their home campus. Successful field research has also formed the basis of Fulbright or Watson proposals, in addition to other fellowships and graduate study projects. An increasing number of students are also utilizing their field research, often in collaboration with their on-site program faculty, to create professional conference presentations and posters. Some of these field-based research models also produce benefits for incountry clients, including NGOs, corporations and community stakeholders. In addition to providing the data, analyses, technical information, and recommendations that these groups might not otherwise be able to afford, it is a concrete mechanism for the student and her/his study abroad program faculty and staff to ‘give back’ to local stakeholders and clients. It changes the dynamic from the student solely asking questions, interviewing respondents, observing communities, to more of a mutually beneficial relationship. This is very important to students who are sensitive to this dynamic. It is also important to their program faculty and staff, and in most cases, genuinely appreciated by the local stakeholders. In essence, community identified and responsive research is an excellent mechanism for giving to a community — not just taking from it. An increasing interest in conducting field-based research on the part of US universities and their students may have the effect of expanding the international destinations to which US students travel. A student’s sociological, anthropological, or environmental interest and their desire to conduct field research in that academic discipline, for example, may help stretch the parameters of the student’s comfort level to study in more exotic (non-traditional) locales. Skill building in preparing for and conducting field-based research is an invaluable experience for the student’s future academic and professional career. It is a fairly common experience for these students to indicate that with all the classroom learning they have done, their study abroad experience wherein they got their hands dirty, their comfort level stretched, their assumptions tested, and their work ethic challenged, provided them with an invaluable and life changing experience. Conducting field-based research in an international setting provides real world experience, as the student papers in this edition of Frontiers attest. It also brings what may have only been academic subjects, like statistics, and research design and methodology, to life in a real-conditions context. On a related note, conducting real field-based work includes the requirement to endure field conditions, remote locations, bad weather, personal discomforts, technological and mechanical breakdowns, and sometimes dangerous situations. Field research is hard work if it is done rigorously. In addition, field work often includes non-cooperating subjects that defy prediction, and may confound a neat research hypothesis. For a student considering a profession which requires a serious commitment to social or physical science field work this study abroad experience is invaluable. It clarifies for the student what is really involved, and it is helpful to the student in assessing their future career focus, as they ask the critical question — would I really want to do this as a fulltime career? US education needs to bridge better the gap between the physical and social sciences. Students are done a disservice with the silo-type education that has been so prevalent in US education. In the real world there are no strictly scientific, economic, or sociological solutions to complex, vexing problems facing the global community. Going forward there needs to be interdisciplinary approaches to these issues by decision makers at all levels. We need to train our students to comprehend that while they may not be an ecologist, or an economist, or a sociologist, they need to understand and appreciate that all these perspectives are important and must be considered in effective decision-making processes. In conclusion, education abroad programs involving serious field-based research are not a distraction or diversion from the prescribed course of study at US home institutions; rather, they are, if done well, capable of providing real, tangible skills and experience that students lack, in spite of their years of schooling. This is the reward that is most meaningful to the international program faculty and staff who teach, mentor and support US students in conducting their field-based research activities. As an Australian on-site program director stated, “there are relatively few students who are adequately skilled in these (field research) areas when they come to our program. Most need a lot of instruction and assistance to complete their research projects, but that of course is part of what we’re all about — helping students acquire or improve these critical skills.” This is the real service that these programs and on-site faculty and staff offer to US undergraduates. Paul Houlihan, President The School for Field Studies

This article assesses the historical political economy of the Australian automotive industry alongside the paradigmatic policy shift in economic policy away from protection towards neoliberalism and globalisation. It focuses on the politics of policy change and government assistance, providing a detailed historical narrative of the development and decline of the Australian automotive industry. From the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s, policy-makers oversaw the decline and fall of the Australian automotive industry. The process of decline occurred within a long-term cycle of new assistance, declining protection, new investment, inadequate restructuring, weak profitability, declining market share, and new assistance. Each cycle, however, was unable to stave off renewed crisis and eventual demise. Over the same period, Australian policy-makers transformed the economy from one of the most protectionist in the developed world to one of the most open. The article outlines the impact of neoliberalism on the automotive industry and analyses what the decline of the industry tells us about how the neoliberal policy structure operates in the ‘actually existing’ political economy. It argues that while the burgeoning neoliberal policy structure in the 1980s and 1990s acted to restrict the range of policy choices available for restructuring the industry, the domestic politics of industry assistance acted to restrict the neoliberal colonisation of the policy agenda. Neoliberal governance has had to contend with political imperatives for continuing assistance, while, at the same time, those political imperatives have been increasingly shaped by neoliberalism. JEL codes: L50, L62

Abstract A description is provided for Capronia pilosella, found on unidentified, very rotten wood. Some information on its morphological characteristics, associated organisms and substrata, dispersal and transmission, habitats and economic impacts is given, along with details of its geographical distribution (Asia (China, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Taiwan), Australasia (Australia, Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Northern Territory, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, New Zealand), Europe (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, UK), North America (Canada, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, USA, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York), Pacific Ocean (Fiji), South America (Argentina, Brazil, Amazonas)).

ObjectiveSmall Island Developing States (SIDS) struggle with implementing multisectoral tobacco control measures, and health sector actors often lack capacity to forge multisectoral commitment. This study aims to explore the sources and dynamics of authority that can enable multisectoral collaboration despite the divergence of policy agendas in tobacco control.MethodsWe applied a qualitative, explorative case study design, with data collection and analysis guided by an analytical framework that identifies sources and dynamics of authority. Seventy interviews were conducted in Fiji and Vanuatu between 2018 and 2019.ResultsThe key features shaping multisectoral coordination for tobacco control in Fiji and Vanuatu are the expert, institutional, capacity-based and legal authority that state and non-state actors have in tobacco governance. The amount of authority actors can secure from these sources was shown to be influenced by their performance (perceived or real), the discourse around tobacco control, the existing legal tools and their strategic alliances. SIDS vulnerabilities, arising from small size, isolation and developing economies, facilitate an economic growth discourse that reduces health sector actors’ authority and empowers protobacco actors to drive tobacco governance.ConclusionsOur results highlight the need for terms of engagement with the tobacco industry to enable governments to implement multisectoral tobacco control measures. Expanding assistance on tobacco control among government and civil society actors and increasing messaging about the impact of economic, trade and agricultural practices on health are essential to help SIDS implement the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Responsibility for children impacts on women’s and men’s paid and unpaid work. Paid and unpaid work impact on each other. Aiming to ‘allow men and women to care equally for their families’ frames the issue as one of gender equality. While this is valid, sharing responsibility for children is also a matter of equity between parents and non-parents. The unpaid work of caring for children is an economic input, and the person who contributes this work is likely to suffer the consequences of reduced labour market earning. In Australia, there is some recognition of these matters, with government assistance to most families with the costs of raising children. As we develop a better understanding of how the work of caring for young children restricts parents’ ability to earn labour market income we will be better placed to develop realistic resourcing models. This study presents a new way of looking at income data and highlights the need for further research into incomes following childbearing and the way that incomes vary between women and men, and with the age of the youngest child.

Abstract Background Mental ill-health can impact an individual’s capacity to interact with others, make decisions, and cope with social challenges. This is of particular importance for many Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) individuals who may be at various stages of the acculturation process. The increasing diversity of the Australian population necessitates informed and culturally relevant services that meet the needs of a changing demographic. However the extant research on the mental health needs of CALD Australians is limited. This study aimed to further our understanding of the mental health needs of young CALD Australians by exploring the mental health concerns and social factors exhibited by CALD individuals accessing community based youth mental health services in two major cities. Methods We performed a series of logistic regression models to ascertain if a concert of factors (i.e., clinical, socio-economic, criminal justice system involvement, child maltreatment, social support) were associated with CALD status Results Comparisons across factors revealed no significant differences between groups. A small number of correlates differentiated between CALD and non-CALD participants (mental illness diagnosis during childhood, family history of mental illness/suicide, sensation seeking, sensitivity to punishment, maternal overprotection) however these factors were no longer meaningful after adjustment for multiple comparisons. Conclusions In help-seeking mainstream youth populations, cultural differences across clinical and environmental factors appear to be minimal.

Foreign aid forms an important part of a state’s identity within the international system. The established dichotomy saw developed countries giving aid, while developing countries were receiving it. Nevertheless, China’s ‘rise’, along with that of other ‘emerging economies’, changed such a dualist view; or at least undermined the traditional concept of aid giving. China is becoming a world power, it is the second largest economy, yet it is still within the group of developing countries. However, it provides a considerable amount of foreign aid worldwide. This is destabilizing the established understandings of aid regimes, as set by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors since the 1950s. In particular, the rise of China in Timor-Leste as an important aid contributor, but working outside the leading aid regime, is affecting the most prominent donor in the country, Australia. Moreover, the rapidly growing presence of China in Timor-Leste seems well received by the local government, although criticism arose amongst the population. Thus, this paper attempts to analyse the issue from different levels. Firstly, it will analyse how China managed to “break” the monopoly of Australian aid by accessing Timor-Leste. It will then explicate the principles and the practices of Chinese aid, and will attempt to establish whether Chinese aid has produced a positive economic impact on Timor-Leste and its people. Finally, this paper suggests that Chinese aid is not challenging, neither threatening the Australian aid assistance in Timor-Leste; rather Chinese aid offers an alternative way of giving aid, and which can also convey to Australia with the possibilities of establishing mutual benefits and effective partnerships with the recipient countries.

Using the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project (MADIP), which combines health, tax, welfare and demographic data with student data, our analysis looked at the relationship between income support and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university completion rates. IntroductionDomestic undergraduate university completion rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are significantly lower (40%) than non-Indigenous students (66%). Few prior studies have used population level matched data from multiple agencies to analyse the determinants of Australian Indigenous completion rates. Objectives and ApproachWe aimed to quantify the major determinants driving the completion rates of Indigenous students in Australian undergraduate university courses compared with domestic non-Indigenous students. We used the Higher Education Information Management System (HEIMS) linked to the MADIP creating approximately 555, 000 records. A Random forest tree was constructed to determine the most important indicators for outcome of interest which were then used for matching and statistical analysis. Summary statistics and a binomial logit was used on the matched sample to confirm significance. ResultsWe found that Indigenous students are more likely to start university belonging to around three equity groups such as having a lower socio-economic status background, older commencement age and being the first member of their family to attend university. However, Indigenous status remains a significant contributor to lower completion rates after controlling for a wide range of equity groups. One factor that has a positive influence on Indigenous university completion rates is access to study assistance. Completion rates for Indigenous students who were not members of other equity groups on income support was 70 per cent compared to 57 per cent for similar students on no income support. Conclusion / ImplicationsThese linked datasets provide the opportunity to better evaluate the drivers of completion rates of Australian Indigenous students to inform and evaluate policy reforms.

In our changing world where university students are demanding a greater say in their tertiary education, and in particular are demanding a greater flexibility in the way they receive their instruction, it is imperative that we investigate and experiment with course delivery strategies that fulfil these expectations. Online delivery of learning materials is not new, nor is it the panacea for all problems, but it does offer certain advantages for both teachers and students. The flexibility of using the Web may suit certain teaching activities, but more importantly may suit the learning styles and commitments of the students. In the current economic climate students may have to juggle university activities with employment, potentially missing some of the structured teaching and learning sessions. In addition they may not have time to use campus-based course materials or seek face-to-face assistance from staff. An Australian benchmark survey of the first-year experience (Mclnnis, James and McNaught, 1995), found the pressures of part-time work made it extremely difficult for some students to fulfil course expectations. A 1998 survey of firstyear science students at the University of Sydney revealed that 54 per cent of full-time students are undertaking some form of employment, with 31 per cent working ten hours or more per week during semester, and 14 per cent working over fifteen hours per week (Peat and Franklin, 1998). A small shift away from courses comprising all face-to-face activities to courses with a mix of face-to-face and online activities has the potential to help those very students who may otherwise give up when the pressure of time and other commitments seems too difficult to cope withDOI:10.1080/0968776000080206

Abstract Background Mental health problems are a significant social issue that have multiple consequences, including broad social and economic impacts. However, many individuals do not seek assistance for mental health problems. Limited research suggests martial arts training may be an efficacious sports-based mental health intervention that potentially provides an inexpensive alternative to psychological therapy. Unfortunately, the small number of relevant studies and other methodological problems lead to uncertainty regarding the validity and reliability of existing research. This study aims to examine the efficacy of a martial arts based therapeutic intervention to improve mental health outcomes. Methods/design The study is a 10-week secondary school-based intervention and will be evaluated using a randomised controlled trial. Data will be collected at baseline, post-intervention, and 12-week follow-up. Power calculations indicate a maximum sample size of n = 293 is required. The target age range of participants is 11–14 years, who will be recruited from government and catholic secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia. The intervention will be delivered in a face-to-face group format onsite at participating schools and consists of 10 × 50–60 min sessions, once per week for 10 weeks. Quantitative outcomes will be measured using standardised psychometric instruments. Discussion The current study utilises a robust design and rigorous evaluation process to explore the intervention’s potential efficacy. As previous research examining the training effects of martial arts participation on mental health outcomes has not exhibited comparable scale or rigour, the findings of the study will provide valuable evidence regarding the efficacy of martial arts training to improve mental health outcomes. Trial registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Register ACTRN12618001405202. Registered 21st August 2018.

Abstract Background There has been an accumulation of evidence on the importance of action on the social determinants of health to reduce global and national health equity. Yet there has been little effective systematic action by governments. This is commonly attributed to the absence of political will. Despite its importance, however, little research has examined how political will might be created or prevented. Methods This paper reports on the results of eight case studies of the extent to which Australian public policy is likely to contribute to reducing health inequities. 192 participants were interviewed including public servants, politicians and their staff, non-government organisation workers and community members. The transcripts were interrogated with the assistance of NVivo software to determine lessons about the creation or destruction of political will. The case studies were of: national primary health care policy, crucial determinants of health (work conditions, internet access, urban planning, social welfare, trade) and an automotive plant closure. Results We found the following factors to be important in determining the extent of political will for health equity, whether: path dependency was present; the issue would impact on staying in or winning government; political philosophies stressed collectivism or individualism; there were negative or positive social constructions of groups affected by the policies; economic and/or biomedical framings were dominant; elites (especially business interests) lobbied against the policies; and there was effective civil society and policy advocacy in favour of the policies. Conclusions Building on our insights from our case studies of action for political will, we conclude with a series of questions to guide the work of public health activists and policy advocates working to support existing and to create new political will in multiple contexts. Key messages The creation of political will is vital to the adoption of policies supportive of health equity. Analysis of 8 policy case studies points to how advocacy can most effectively create political will.

On 29 September 1999, Senator Jocelyn Newman, the Australian Government's Minister for Family and Community Services, delivered a controversial address to the National Press Club in Canberra. The delivery had been delayed a week and it was widely rumoured that the Minister had been forced to remove some of the more controversial proposals (see Senate Question Time on 29 September, for instance). The speech, entitled "The Future of Welfare in the 21st Century", announced plans to tackle a supposed trend towards welfare dependency by creating an "active" rather than a "passive" welfare system set within the Government's policy of "Mutual Obligation": a system that focusses on "capacity and ability" (Newman para. 42) and "what people can do" rather than what they can't do (para. 44). This article, however, questions whether the welfare system projected for the future will be enabling for those who use it, or whether income-based social divisions will become further entrenched. Since taking government in 1996, the Coalition's policies have included privatisation of previously government-run utilities and services and restructuring of the economy and industrial relations to assure Australia's place in 'globalisation'. Restructuring the welfare system is but the next step. Speeches such as this one are typically part of the process by which governments expound their 'vision' for the future, announce policy directions and generate public feedback and, had the speech not been delayed a week, it would normally have attracted considerably less attention. However, with the approaching 'end of the millennium' and increasing evidence that economic restructuring and globalisation are not benefiting everyone, debates about the integration of social and economic policies have been a concern for politicians, press and policy-makers for some time (see for instance reporting of the "Australia Unlimited" Conference). While party polling may indicate support for reform (McGregor 28) there is also a perception that society is becoming a "meaner" place (Dickens 22-3). My method derives from the work of Teun A. van Dijk on ideological analysis. He maintains that ideologies function to co-ordinate the activities and thinking of group members so that the group's interests are protected and their goals realised (24). Our social identity is formed in part by our membership of particular groups. In talk and writing we promote the interests of our group by highlighting the positive things our group (the ingroup) has done and minimising or mitigating the negative things. Conversely, we highlight the negative aspects of those not in our group (the outgroup) and minimise their positive aspects (van Dijk 33). This type of analysis is designed to uncover group ideologies (26), not personal positions, and so when I attribute something to "the Minister" it is in her position as member of a group with social and political power whose interests are served by particular social and economic policies. I do not attribute it to Jocelyn Newman personally. At the most obvious level, the Minister constructs the Government as ingroup and the Opposition as outgroup. She does this by highlighting the achievements of her government while highlighting the failures of the Opposition. For instance, paragraph six says: ... the Howard Government has embarked upon a range of challenging and difficult policy agenda. We have reformed the tax system, so that it supports our new economic and social structures -- not those of the 1930s. We have reformed workplace relations in this country so that it supports the flexible and productive workplaces needed to provide jobs. As a result of our sound economic management, we have enjoyed strong, non-inflationary economic growth with low interest rates, and high employment growth. This is all the more remarkable when considered in the context of the Asian economic crisis. By contrast, she says: "the Opposition has failed to support responsible economic policy" and implies that their policies amount to "empty promises" which would be damaging if carried through (para. 11). There is ingroup/outgroup definition at a more subtle level also. The Minister uses "we" in paragraphs three to five to refer to a broad coalition of Government and community and presents the Government's own interests as being the interests of the broader group, thereby implying that they are really only one interest group when it comes to social and economic policy. Paragraph six reinforces this by showing that "we" (the community) have benefitted from the reforms that "we" (the Government) have embarked upon. This blurring of group boundaries between Government and community is also a way of shifting responsibility as I shall show shortly below. Before that, it is informative to look at the way welfare recipients are classified. They are not described as doing anything positive. The exception is "older women who have spent their lives caring for others" (para. 35), but who are then characterised as "uncertain" and "discouraged" (para. 35). Caring for others (generally undervalued in our individualistic society) is to be seen as a limited-time option only, with work being the ultimate goal (para. 48-53). Passivity and dependency are both devalued in our society -- praise is generally reserved for people who are active while "economic security and independence" (para. 9) are assumed to be everyone's goals. In the speech, however, people receiving welfare payments are defined in terms of: the welfare they receive (e.g. 53, 46, 39, 29, etc); their lack of income (e.g. 46, 15, etc.); their lack of paid work (e.g. 24, 25, 26,31, 33, 35, etc.); their age (e.g. 19, 23, 29, 35, 36, etc.); their family responsibilities (e.g. 24, 25, 26, 27, 35, etc); or their disabilities (e.g. 38, 39, 40, etc.). Even the words used are passive rather than active: "people on passive welfare assistance" rather than an active verb like "claiming" or even "receiving". Again, "no adult in paid work" (para. 24), "out of paid work" (para. 25), and "worklessness" (para. 26) are all attributes implying passivity. If she had used instead the expression 'non-working' it would at least imply the possibility of working, which is active. The term dependency commonly has associations with childhood and addiction which partly carry over to the term "welfare dependency" used by the Minister to describe the state of those receiving income support. These people may still be part of the community (para. 31), but they are contrasted with the community proper: the taxpayers (para. 19) and "hard working men and women of this country" who underwrite them (para. 32). The new welfare system places people receiving income support under obligation. They are expected to "help themselves" (para. 12, 13, 20), contribute to the economy and society (para. 12, 13), and "use every opportunity to become self-supporting" (para. 19). It becomes clear that the obligation on these people is to do whatever they can to get themselves into sufficient paid work so that they no longer need income support. The specified social contribution is minimal (para. 18, 48, 47, 37, 50). The duty of the responsible citizen is primarily economic -- to get a self-supporting job (para. 29-30). As we have seen, then, the ingroup consists of the Government and those members of the community who have benefited from the Government's economic reforms. The outgroup consists of those people who, due to low wages or unemployment, are dependent on income support -- i.e. those who have not benefitted from the Government's economic reforms. I now want to return to the matter of responsibility and the blurred boundaries between Government and community referred to above. The policies, reforms and initiatives are credited to the government (para. 15, 16, and 19 for example), but the responsibilities lie with "the community" and "the individual" (para. 17). "The community" is not a clearly defined entity, yet the Minister says that it "must and should provide income support" for those who cannot get a job despite their best efforts in the case of a genuine failure of the labour market (para. 31) -- a situation she has already claimed does not exist (para. 6). Throughout the sections on "People with disabilities" and "Parenting Payment", the Minister uses "we" inclusively (Government and community) when talking about what should be done for 'them' and non-inclusively (Government only) when talking about specific programs (50). The effect, as mentioned above, is to assert that the interests of one are the interests of both, but also to transfer the responsibility for doing something for 'them' to the broader community group. Together with the statement that "the community needs to think carefully and thoroughly" about "our" approach to income support and assistance (38), this blurring of boundaries prepares for the announcement of a Reference Group to "guide the development of a comprehensive Green Paper on welfare reform" (54). This "high-level" group will be "seeking submissions from interest groups and the broader community" (56), but the terms of reference and ultimate policies will be set by the government. I would suggest that "we" is used strategically in this speech to create in ordinary community members a sense of inclusion, ownership and responsibility for policies in which they ultimately will have little say. But by transferring the sense of responsibility in this way, the government removes from itself total responsibility when those policies fail. Will welfare in the coming years really be about enabling people to develop their capacities? I would suggest this is not possible while the people concerned are still conceptualised in terms of passivity and deficiency, and are regarded as not being part of 'our' group, not sharing 'our' interests. Rather, this speech projects a future where those who are self-supporting are encouraged to assume a position of superiority to those who are not, while their own interests are subsumed in the economic and social agendas of the Government. This speech also suggests a society where the only capacity that counts is the capacity to earn an income and people's responsibility to one another is limited to these terms. It seems clear that while the Government will continue to set the rules, it will continue to shirk provision of services, instead handing that responsibility to an ill-defined "community" and increasing the community's sense that those who receive welfare are somehow responsible for their own situation because they have not accepted their "responsibility" and "obligation" to help themselves. Is an economically driven, socially divided society what we want to create as we enter a new century? References "Australia Unlimited." Special Liftout. Weekend Australian 8-9 May 1999. Department of Family and Community Services. "Reference Group on Welfare Reform: Request for Public Submissions." Weekend Australian 23-4 Oct. 1999: 19. Dickens, Barry. "The Price of Kindness on Mean Streets." Weekend Australian 1-2 Jan. 2000: Review 22-23. McGregor, Richard. "Operation Dole Bludger." Weekend Australian 28-9 Aug. 1999: Focus 28. Newman, Jocelyn. "The Future of Welfare in the 21st Century." National Press Club, Canberra. 29 Sep. 1999. 10 Jan. 2000 <http://www.facs.gov.au/internet/newman.nsf/v1/sdiscusswelfare.htm>. Shanahan, Dennis. "Jobless Put Straight to Work." Australian 17 Dec. 1999: 1. Van Dijk, Teun A. "Opinions and Ideologies in the Press." Approaches to Media Discourse. Ed. Allan Bell and Peter Garrett. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 21-63. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Lisa Gunders. "Welfare in the Future -- What Kind of Society?." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.9 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/welfare.php>. Chicago style: Lisa Gunders, "Welfare in the Future -- What Kind of Society?," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 9 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/welfare.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Lisa Gunders. (2000) Welfare in the future -- what kind of society?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(9). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0001/welfare.php> ([your date of access]).

This paper explores the effects of labour movement into nonfarm activities on household production choices in rural Vietnam. It finds that agricultural production declines and there are negative effects on farm revenue. However, these conclusions are limited in the north. Households in the north readjust their production structure by investing in livestock and other crops that require less labour. Rice farmers in the south have managed to keep their rice production unaffected by hiring more labour, and investing more capital to switch to less labour-intensive farming. The evidence of relaxing liquidity constraints is found, at least in the short run. While the decline in agricultural revenue in the north suggests some level of substitution between farming and nonfarm activities, the stability in rice production at the national level brings good news to policy makers and food security in Vietnam, despite rapid structural change over the past decades. Keywords Nonfarm, food security, rice self-sufficiency, agricultural transformation, household agricultural production References Akram-Lodhi, A.H., 2005. Vietnam’s agriculture: processes of rich peasant accumulation and mechanisms. Journal of Agrarian Change, 5(1), pp.73–116.Barrett, B., Reardon, T. and Webb, P., 2001. Nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural Africa: concepts, dynamics, and policy implications. Food Policy, 26, pp. 315–331.Brennan, D. et al., 2012. Rural-urban migration and Vietnamese agriculture. In Contributed paper at the 56th AARES Annual Conference. Fremantle, Western Australia.Dang, KS., Nguyen, NQ., Pham, QD., Truong, TTT. and Beresford, M 2006. Policy reform and the transformation of Vietnamese agriculture, in Rapid growth of selected Asian economies: lessons and implications for agriculture and food security, Policy Assistance Series 1/3, FAO, Bangkok.De Brauw, A., 2010. Seasonal Migration and Agricultural Production in Vietnam. Journal of Development Studies, 46(1), pp.114–139.Glewwe, P., Dollar, D. and Agrawal, N., 1994. Economic growth, poverty, and household welfare in Vietnam, World Bank, Washington, DC.Haggblade, S., Hazell, P. and Reardon, T., 2007. Transforming the rural nonfarm economy. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland.Hazell, P. and Rahman, A., 2014. New directions for smallholder agriculture 1st ed., Oxford University Press, New York.Hoang, T.X., Pham, C.S. and Ulubaşoǧlu, M., 2014. Non-farm activity, household expenditure, and poverty reduction in rural Vietnam: 2002-2008. World Development, 64, pp.554–568.Huang, J., Wang, X. and Qiu, H.G., 2012. Small-scale farmers in China in the face of modernization and globalization, International Institute for Environment and Development/HIVOS, London.Kajisa, K., 2007. Personal networks and non-agricultural employment: the case of a farming village in the Philippines. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 55(4), pp.668–707.Kilic, T, Carletto, C, Miluka, J. and Savastano, S., 2009. Rural nonfarm income and its impact on agriculture: Evidence from Albania. Agricultural Economics, 40(2), pp.139–60.Lanjouw, J. and Lanjouw, P., 2001. The rural non-farm sector: issues and evidence from developing countries. Agricultural Economics, 26, pp.1–23.Li, L., 2013. Migration, remittances, and agricultural productivity in small farming systems in Northwest China. China Agricultural Economic Review, 5(1), pp.5–23. Minot, N., 2006. Income diversification and poverty in the Northern Uplands of Vietnam, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC.Minot, N. and Goletti, F., 1998. Export liberalization and household welfare: the case of rice in Vietnam. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 80(4), pp.738–749.Nguyen, H.Q., 2017. Analyzing the economies of crop diversification in rural Vietnam using an input distance function. Agricultural Systems, 157, pp. 148-156.Oseni, G. and Winters, P., 2009. Rural nonfarm activities and agricultural crop production in Nigeria. Agricultural Economics, 40(2), pp.189–201.Otsuka, K., Liu, Y. and Yamauchi, F., 2013. Factor endowments, wage growth, and changing food self-sufficiency: Evidence from country-level panel data. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 95(5), pp. 1252–1258.Pham, VH, Nguyen, TMH, Kompas, T, Che, TN. and Bui, T., 2015. Rice production, trade and the poor: regional effects of rice export policy on households in Vietnam. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 66(2), pp. 280–307.Pingali, P.L., Xuan, V.T. and Khiem, N.T., 1998. Prospects for sustaining Vietnam’s re-acquired rice export status. Food Policy, 22(4), pp. 345–358.Rozelle, S., Taylor, J.E. and DeBrauw, A., 1999. Migration, remittances, and agricultural productivity in China. American Economic Review, 89(2), pp.287–291.Stampini, M. and Davis, B., 2009. Does non-agricultural labor relax farmers’ credit constraints? Evidence from longitudinal data for Vietnam. Agricultural Economics, 40(2), pp.177–188.Taylor, J.E. and Martin, P.L., 2001. Human capital: migration and rural population change. In G. Rausser & B. Gardner, eds. Handbook of Agricultural Economics, vol 1A. New York: Elsevier Science, pp. 457–511.Taylor, J.E., Rozelle, S. and De Brauw, A., 2003. Migration and incomes in source communities: a new economic of migration perspective from China. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 52(1), pp.75–101.Taylor, J.E. and Lybbert, T., 2015. Essentials of Development Economics, University of California Press, Berkeley.Thirwall, A.P., 2006. Growth and development with special reference to developing economies 8th ed., Palgrave Macmillan, New York.van de Walle, D. and Cratty, D., 2004. Is the emerging non-farm market economy the route out of poverty in Vietnam? Economics of Transition, 12(2), pp.237–274.Warr, P., 2009. Aggregate and sectoral productivity growth in Thailand and Indonesia, Working Papers in Trade and Development, 2009/10, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, Australian National University.Warr, P., 2014. Food insecurity and its determinants. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 58(4), pp. 519-37.Weiss, C.R., 1996. Exits from a declining sector: econometric evidence from a panel of upper-Austrian farms 1980-1990, Working Paper No. 9601, Department of Economics, University of Linz.Wiggins, S, Kirsten, J. and Llambí, L., 2010. The future of small farms. World Development, 38(10), pp. 1341–48.World Bank, 2006. Vietnam: business, Development Report No 34474-VN, Hanoi, Vietnam. KeywordsNonfarm, food security, rice self-sufficiency, agricultural transformation, household agricultural production References Akram-Lodhi, A.H., 2005. Vietnam’s agriculture: processes of rich peasant accumulation and mechanisms. Journal of Agrarian Change, 5(1), pp.73–116.Barrett, B., Reardon, T. and Webb, P., 2001. Nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural Africa: concepts, dynamics, and policy implications. Food Policy, 26, pp. 315–331.Brennan, D. et al., 2012. Rural-urban migration and Vietnamese agriculture. In Contributed paper at the 56th AARES Annual Conference. Fremantle, Western Australia.Dang, KS., Nguyen, NQ., Pham, QD., Truong, TTT. and Beresford, M 2006. Policy reform and the transformation of Vietnamese agriculture, in Rapid growth of selected Asian economies: lessons and implications for agriculture and food security, Policy Assistance Series 1/3, FAO, Bangkok.De Brauw, A., 2010. Seasonal Migration and Agricultural Production in Vietnam. Journal of Development Studies, 46(1), pp.114–139.Glewwe, P., Dollar, D. and Agrawal, N., 1994. Economic growth, poverty, and household welfare in Vietnam, World Bank, Washington, DC.Haggblade, S., Hazell, P. and Reardon, T., 2007. Transforming the rural nonfarm economy. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland.Hazell, P. and Rahman, A., 2014. New directions for smallholder agriculture 1st ed., Oxford University Press, New York.Hoang, T.X., Pham, C.S. and Ulubaşoǧlu, M., 2014. Non-farm activity, household expenditure, and poverty reduction in rural Vietnam: 2002-2008. World Development, 64, pp.554–568.Huang, J., Wang, X. and Qiu, H.G., 2012. Small-scale farmers in China in the face of modernization and globalization, International Institute for Environment and Development/HIVOS, London.Kajisa, K., 2007. Personal networks and non-agricultural employment: the case of a farming village in the Philippines. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 55(4), pp.668–707.Kilic, T, Carletto, C, Miluka, J. and Savastano, S., 2009. Rural nonfarm income and its impact on agriculture: Evidence from Albania. Agricultural Economics, 40(2), pp.139–60.Lanjouw, J. and Lanjouw, P., 2001. The rural non-farm sector: issues and evidence from developing countries. Agricultural Economics, 26, pp.1–23.Li, L., 2013. Migration, remittances, and agricultural productivity in small farming systems in Northwest China. China Agricultural Economic Review, 5(1), pp.5–23. Minot, N., 2006. Income diversification and poverty in the Northern Uplands of Vietnam, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC.Minot, N. and Goletti, F., 1998. Export liberalization and household welfare: the case of rice in Vietnam. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 80(4), pp.738–749.Nguyen, H.Q., 2017. Analyzing the economies of crop diversification in rural Vietnam using an input distance function. Agricultural Systems, 157, pp. 148-156.Oseni, G. and Winters, P., 2009. Rural nonfarm activities and agricultural crop production in Nigeria. Agricultural Economics, 40(2), pp.189–201.Otsuka, K., Liu, Y. and Yamauchi, F., 2013. Factor endowments, wage growth, and changing food self-sufficiency: Evidence from country-level panel data. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 95(5), pp. 1252–1258.Pham, VH, Nguyen, TMH, Kompas, T, Che, TN. and Bui, T., 2015. Rice production, trade and the poor: regional effects of rice export policy on households in Vietnam. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 66(2), pp. 280–307.Pingali, P.L., Xuan, V.T. and Khiem, N.T., 1998. Prospects for sustaining Vietnam’s re-acquired rice export status. Food Policy, 22(4), pp. 345–358.Rozelle, S., Taylor, J.E. and DeBrauw, A., 1999. Migration, remittances, and agricultural productivity in China. American Economic Review, 89(2), pp.287–291.Stampini, M. and Davis, B., 2009. Does non-agricultural labor relax farmers’ credit constraints? Evidence from longitudinal data for Vietnam. Agricultural Economics, 40(2), pp.177–188.Taylor, J.E. and Martin, P.L., 2001. Human capital: migration and rural population change. In G. Rausser & B. Gardner, eds. Handbook of Agricultural Economics, vol 1A. New York: Elsevier Science, pp. 457–511.Taylor, J.E., Rozelle, S. and De Brauw, A., 2003. Migration and incomes in source communities: a new economic of migration perspective from China. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 52(1), pp.75–101.Taylor, J.E. and Lybbert, T., 2015. Essentials of Development Economics, University of California Press, Berkeley.Thirwall, A.P., 2006. Growth and development with special reference to developing economies 8th ed., Palgrave Macmillan, New York.van de Walle, D. and Cratty, D., 2004. Is the emerging non-farm market economy the route out of poverty in Vietnam? Economics of Transition, 12(2), pp.237–274.Warr, P., 2009. Aggregate and sectoral productivity growth in Thailand and Indonesia, Working Papers in Trade and Development, 2009/10, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, Australian National University.Warr, P., 2014. Food insecurity and its determinants. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 58(4), pp. 519-37.Weiss, C.R., 1996. Exits from a declining sector: econometric evidence from a panel of upper-Austrian farms 1980-1990, Working Paper No. 9601, Department of Economics, University of Linz.Wiggins, S, Kirsten, J. and Llambí, L., 2010. The future of small farms. World Development, 38(10), pp. 1341–48.World Bank, 2006. Vietnam: business, Development Report No 34474-VN, Hanoi, Vietnam.

Wandering the aisles of my local Woolworths in April this year, I noticed a large number of chocolate bilbies replacing chocolate rabbits. In these harsh economic times it seems that even the Easter bunny is in danger of losing his Easter job. While the changing shape of Easter chocolate may seem to be a harmless affair, the expulsion of the rabbit from Easter celebrations has a darker side. In this paper I look at the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby, and the implications this mediated conservation move has for living rabbits in the Australian ecosystem. Essential to this discussion is the premise that studies of ecology must take into account the impact of media and culture on environmental issues. Of particular interest is the role of narrative, and the way the stories we tell about rabbits determine how they are treated in real life. While I recognise that the Australian bilby’s struggle for survival is a tale which should be told, I also argue that the vilification of the European-Australian rabbit is part of the native/invasive dualism which has ceased to be helpful, and has instead become a motivator of unproductive violence. In place of this simplified dichotomous narrative, I propose an ethic of "ecological remembrance" to combat the totalising eradication of the European rabbit from the Australian environment and culture. The Bilby vs the Bunny: A Case Study in "Media Selection" Easter Bunny says, ‘Bilby, I want you to have my job.You know about sharing and taking care.I think Australia should have an Easter Bilby.We rabbits have become too greedy and careless.Rabbits must learn from bilbies and other bush creatures’. The lines above are taken from Ali Garnett and Kaye Kessing’s children’s story, Easter Bilby, co-published by the Australian Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation as part of the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the eco-politically correct Easter bilby. The first chocolate bilbies were made in 1982, but the concept really took off when major chocolate retailer Darrell Lea became involved in 2002. Since this time Haigh’s chocolate, Cadbury, and Pink Lady have also released delicious cocoa natives for consumption, and both Darrell Lea and Haigh’s use their profits to support bilby assistance programs, creating the “pleasant Easter sensation” that “eating a chocolate bilby is helping save the real thing” (Phillips). The Easter bilby campaign is a highly mediated approach to conservation which demonstrates the new biological principle Phil Bagust has recognised as “media selection.” Bagust observes that in our “hybridised global society” it is impossible to separate “the world of genetic selection from the world of human symbolic and material diversity as if they exist in different universes” (8). The Australian rabbit thrives in “natural selection,” having adapted to the Australian environment so successfully it threatens native species and the economic productivity of farmers. But the rabbit loses out in “cultural selection” where it is vilified in the media for its role in environmental degradation. The campaign to conserve the bilby depends, in a large part, on the rabbit’s failures in “media selection”. On Good Friday 2012 Sky News Australia quoted Mike Drinkwater of Wild Life Sydney’s support of the Easter bilby campaign: Look, the reason that we want to highlight the bilby as an iconic Easter animal is, number one, rabbits are a pest in Australia. Secondly, the bilby has these lovely endearing rabbit-like qualities. And thirdly, the bilby is a beautiful, iconic, native animal that is struggling. It is endangered so it’s important that we do all we can to support that. Drinkwater’s appeal to the bilby’s “endearing rabbit-like qualities” demonstrates that it is not the Australian rabbit’s individual embodiment which detracts from its charisma in Australian society. In this paper I will argue that the stories we tell about the European-Australian rabbit’s alienation from Indigenous country diminish the species cultural appeal. These stories are told with passionate conviction to save and protect native flora and fauna, but, too often, this promotion of the native relies on the devaluation of non-native life, to the point where individual rabbits are no longer morally considerable. Such a hierarchical approach to conservation is not only ethically problematic, but can also be ineffective because the native/invasive approach to ecology is overly simplistic. A History of Rabbit Stories In the Easter Bilby children’s book the illustrated rabbit offers to make itself disappear from the “Easter job.” The reason for this act of self-destruction is a despairing recognition of its “greedy and careless” nature, and at the same time, its selfless offer to be replaced by the ecologically conscious Bilby. In this sacrificial gesture is the implicit offering of all rabbit life for the salvation of native ecosystems and animal life. This plot line slots into a much larger series of stories we have been telling about the Australian environment. Libby Robin has observed that settler Australians have always had a love-hate relationship with the native flora and fauna of the continent (6), either devaluing native plants, animals, and ecosystems, or launching into an “overcompensating patriotic strut about the Australian biota” (Robin 9). The colonising dynamic of early Australian society was built on the devaluation of animals such as the bilby. This was reflected in the introduction of feral animals by “acclimatisation societies” and the privileging of “pets” such as cats and dogs over native animals (Plumwood). Alfred Crosby has made the persuasive argument that the invasion of Australia, and other “neo-European” countries, was, necessarily, more-than-human. In his work, Ecological Imperialism, Crosby charts the historical partnership between human European colonisers in Indigenous lands and the “grunting, lowing, neighing, crowing, chirping, snarling, buzzing, self-replicating and world-altering avalanche” (194) of introduced life that they brought with them. In response to this “guilt by association” Australians have reversed the values in the dichotomous colonial dynamic to devalue the introduced and so “empower” the colonised native. In this new “anti-colonial” story, rabbits signify a wound of colonisation which has spread across and infected indigenous country. J. M. Arthur’s (130) analysis of language in relation to colonisation highlights some of the important lexical characteristics in the rabbit stories we now tell. He observes that the rabbits’ impact on the county is described using a vocabulary of contamination: “It is a ‘menace’, a ‘problem’, an ‘infestation’, a ‘nuisance’, a ‘plague’” (170). This narrative of disease encourages a redemptive violence against living rabbits to “cure” the rabbit problem in order to atone for human mistakes in a colonial past. Redemptive Violence in Action Rabbits in Australia have been subject to a wide range of eradication measures over the past century including shooting, the destruction of burrows, poisoning, ferreting, trapping, and the well-known rabbit proof fence in Western Australia. Particularly noteworthy in this slaughter has been the introduction of biological control measures with the release of the savage and painful disease Myxomatosis in late December 1950, followed by the release of the Calicivirus (Rabbit Haemorrhage Disease, or RHD) in 1996. As recently as March 2012 the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries announced a 1.5 million dollar program called “RHD Boost” which is attempting to develop a more effective biological control agent for rabbits who have become immune to the Calicivirus. In this perverse narrative, disease becomes a cure for the rabbit’s contamination of Australian environments. Calicivirus is highly infectious, spreads rapidly, and kills rabbits en masse. Following the release of Calicivirus in 1995 it killed 10 million rabbits in eight weeks (Ponsonby Veterinary Centre). While Calicivirus appears to be more humane than the earlier biological control, Myxomatosis, there are indications that it causes rabbits pain and stress. Victims are described as becoming very quiet, refusing to eat, straining for breath, losing coordination, becoming feverish, and excreting bloody nasal discharge (Heishman, 2011). Post-mortem dissection generally reveals a “pale and mottled liver, many small streaks or blotches on the lungs and an enlarged spleen... small thrombi or blood clots” (Coman 173). Public criticism of the cruel methods involved in killing rabbits is often assuaged with appeals to the greater good of the ecosystem. The Anti-Rabbit research foundation state on their Website, Rabbit-Free Australia, that: though killing rabbits may sound inhumane, wild rabbits are affecting the survival of native Australian plants and animals. It is our responsibility to control them. We brought the European rabbit here in the first place — they are an invasive pest. This assumption of personal and communal responsibility for the rabbit “problem” has a fundamental blind-spot. Arthur (130) observes that the progress of rabbits across the continent is often described as though they form a coordinated army: The rabbit extends its ‘dominion’, ‘dispossesses’ the indigenous bilby, causes sheep runs to be ‘abandoned’ and country ‘forfeited’, leaving the land in ‘ecological tatters’. While this language of battle pervades rabbit stories, humans rarely refer to themselves as invaders into Aboriginal lands. Arthur notes that, by taking responsibility for the rabbit’s introduction and eradication, the coloniser assumes an indigenous status as they defend the country against the exotic invader (134). The apprehension of moral responsibility can, in this sense, be understood as the assumption of settler indigeneity. This does not negate the fact that assuming human responsibility for the native environment can be an act of genuine care. In a country scarred by a history of ecocide, movements like the Easter Bilby campaign seek to rectify the negligent mistakes of the past. The problem is that reactive responses to the colonial devaluation of native life can be unproductive because they preserve the basic structure of the native/invasive dichotomy by simplistically reversing its values, and fail to respond to more complex ecological contexts and requirements (Plumwood). This is also socially problematic because the native/invasive divide of nonhuman life overlays more complex human politics of colonisation in Australia. The Native/Invasive Dualism The bilby is currently listed as an “endangered” species in Queensland and as “vulnerable” nationally. Bilbies once inhabited 70% of the Australian landscape, but now inhabit less than 15% of the country (Save the Bilby Fund). This dramatic reduction in bilby numbers has multiple causes, but the European rabbit has played a significant role in threatening the bilby species by competing for burrows and food. Other threats come from the predation of introduced species, such as feral cats and foxes, and the impact of farmed introduced species, such as sheep and cattle, which also destroy bilby habitats. Because the rabbit directly competes with the bilby for food and shelter in the Australian environment, the bilby can be classed as the underdog native, appealing to that larger Australian story about “the fair go”. It seems that the Easter bilby campaign is intended to level out the threat posed by the highly successful and adaptive rabbit through promoting the bilby in the “cultural selection” stakes. This involves encouraging bilby-love, while actively discouraging love and care for the introduced rabbits which threaten the bilby’s survival. On the Rabbit Free Australia Website, the campaign rationale to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby claims that: Very young children are indoctrinated with the concept that bunnies are nice soft fluffy creatures whereas in reality they are Australia’s greatest environmental feral pest and cause enormous damage to the arid zone. In this statement the lived corporeal presence of individual rabbits is denied as the “soft, fluffy” body disappears behind the environmentally problematic species’ behaviour. The assertion that children are “indoctrinated” to find rabbits love-able, and that this conflicts with the “reality” of the rabbit as environmentally destructive, denies the complexity of the living animal and the multiple possible responses to it. That children find rabbits “fluffy” is not the result of pro-rabbit propaganda, but because rabbits are fluffy! That Rabbit Free Australia could construe this to be some kind of elaborate falsehood demonstrates the disappearance of the individual rabbit in the native/invasive tale of colonisation. Rabbit-Free Australia seeks to eradicate the animal not only from Australian ecosystems, but from the hearts and minds of children who are told to replace the rabbit with the more fitting native bilby. There is no acceptance here of the rabbit as a complex animal that evokes ambivalent responses, being both worthy of moral consideration, care and love, and also an introduced and environmentally destructive species. The native/invasive dualism is a subject of sustained critique in environmental philosophy because it depends on a disjunctive temporal division drawn at the point of European settlement—1788. Environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren points out that the divide between animals who belong and animals who should be eradicated is “fundamentally premised on the reification of a specific historical moment that ignores the changing and dynamic nature of ecologies” (11). Mark Davis et al. explain that the practical value of the native/invasive dichotomy in conservation programs is seriously diminished and in some cases is becoming counterproductive (153). They note that “classifying biota according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and morality does not advance our understanding of ecology” (153). Instead, they promote a more inclusive approach to conservation which accepts non-native species as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low). Recent research into wildlife conservation indicates a striking lack of evidence for the case that pest control protects native diversity (see Bergstromn et al., Davis et al., Ewel & Putz, Reddiex & Forsyth). The problematic justification of “killing for conservation” becomes untenable when conservation outcomes are fundamentally uncertain. The mass slaughter which rabbits have been subjected to in Australia has been enacted with the goal of fostering life. This pursuit of creation through destruction, of re-birth through violent death, enacts a disturbing twist where death comes to signal the presence of life. This means, perversely, that a rabbit’s dead body becomes a valuable sign of environmental health. Conservation researchers Ben Reddiex and David M. Forsyth observe that this leads to a situation where environmental managers are “more interested in estimating how many pests they killed rather than the status of biodiversity they claimed to be able to protect” (715). What Other Stories Can We Tell about the Rabbit? With an ecological narrative that is failing, producing damage and death instead of fostering love and life, we are left with the question—what other stories can we tell about the place of the European rabbit in the Australian environment? How can the meaning ecologies of media and culture work in harmony with an ecological consciousness that promotes compassion for nonhuman life? Ignoring the native/invasive distinction entirely is deeply problematic because it registers the ecological history of Australia as continuity, and fails to acknowledge the colonising impact of European settlement on the environment. At the same time, continually reinforcing that divide through pro-invasive or pro-native stories drastically simplifies complex and interconnected ecological systems. Instead of the unproductive native/invasive dualism, ecologists and philosophers alike are suggesting “reconciliatory” approaches to the inhabitants of our shared environments which emphasise ecology as relational rather than classificatory. Evolutionary ecologist Scott P. Carroll uses the term “conciliation biology” as an alternative to invasion biology which focuses on the eradication of invasive species. “Conciliation biology recognises that many non-native species are permanent, that outcomes of native-nonnative interactions will vary depending on the scale of assessment and the values assigned to the biotic system, and that many non-native species will perform positive functions in one or more contexts” (186). This hospitable approach aligns with what Michael Rosensweig has termed “reconciliation ecology”—the modification and diversification of anthropogenic habitats to harbour a wider variety of species (201). Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Mark Bekoff encourages a “compassionate conservation” which avoids the “numbers game” of species thinking where certain taxonomies are valued above others and promotes approaches which “respect all life; treat individuals with respect and dignity; and tread lightly when stepping into the lives of animals”(24). In a similar vein environmental philosopher Deborah Bird Rose offers the term “Eco-reconciliation”, to describe a mode of “living generously with others, singing up relationships so that we all flourish” (Wild Dog 59). It may be that the rabbit cannot live in harmony with the bilby, and in this situation I am unsure of what a conciliation approach to ecology might look like in terms of managing both of these competing species. But I am sure what it should not look like if we are to promote approaches to ecology and conservation which avoid the simplistic dualism of native/invasive. The devaluation of rabbit life to the point of moral inconsiderability is fundamentally unethical. By classifying certain lives as “inappropriate,” and therefore expendable, the process of rabbit slaughter is simply too easy. The idea that the rabbit should disappear is disturbing in its abstract approach to these living, sentient creatures who share with us both place and history. A dynamic understanding of ecology dissipates the notion of a whole or static “nature.” This means that there can be no simple or comprehensive directives for how humans should interact with their environments. One of the most insidious aspects of the native/invasive divide is the way it makes violent death appear inevitable, as though rabbits must be culled. This obscures the many complex and contingent choices which determine the fate of nonhuman life. Understanding the dynamism of ecology requires an acceptance that nature does not provide simple prescriptive responses to problems, and instead “people are forced to choose the kind of environment they want” (189) and then take actions to engender it. This involves difficult decisions, one of which is culling to maintain rabbit numbers and facilitate environmental resilience. Living within a world of “discordant harmonies”, as Daniel Botkin evocatively describes it, environmental decisions are necessarily complex. The entanglement of ecological systems demands that we reject simplistic dualisms which offer illusory absolution from the consequences of the difficult choices humans make about life, ecologies, and how to manage them. Ecological Remembrance The vision of a rabbit-free Australia is unrealistic. As organisation like the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation pursue this future ideal, they eradicate rabbits from the present, and seek to remove them from the past by replacing them culturally with the more suitable bilby. Culled rabbits lie rotting en masse in fields, food for no one, and even their cultural impact in human society is sought to be annihilated and replaced with more appropriate native creatures. The rabbits’ deaths do not turn back to life in transformative and regenerative processes that are ecological and cultural, but rather that death becomes “an event with no future” (Rose, Wild Dog 25). This is true oblivion, as the rabbit is entirely removed from the world. In this paper I have made a case for the importance of stories in ecology. I have argued that the kinds of stories we tell about rabbits determines how we treat them, and so have positioned stories as an essential part of an ecological system which takes “cultural selection” seriously. In keeping with this emphasis on story I offer to the conciliation push in ecological thinking the term “ecological remembrance” to capture an ethic of sharing time while sharing space. This spatio-temporal hospitality is focused on maintaining heterogeneous memories and histories of all beings who have impacted on the environment. In Deborah Bird Rose’s terms this is a “recuperative work” which commits to direct dialogical engagement with the past that is embedded in the present (Wild Country 23). In this sense it is a form of recuperation that promotes temporal and ecological continuity. Eco-remembrance aligns with dynamic understandings of ecology because it is counter-linear. Instead of approaching the past as a static idyll, preserved and archived, ecological remembrance celebrates the past as an ongoing, affective presence which is lived and performed. Ecological remembrance, applied to the European rabbit in Australia, would involve rejecting attempts to extricate the rabbit from Australian environments and cultures. It would seek acceptance of the rabbit as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low), and aim for recognition of the rabbit’s impact on human society as part of dynamic multi-species ecologies. In this sense ecological remembrance of the rabbit directly opposes the goal of the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia to eradicate the European rabbit from Australian environment and culture. On the Rabbit Free Australia website, the section on biological controls states that “the point is not how many rabbits are killed, but how many are left behind”. The implication is that the millions upon millions of rabbit lives extinguished have vanished from the earth, and need not be remembered or considered. However, as Deborah Rose argues, “all deaths matter” (Wild Dog 21) and “no death is a mere death” (Wild Dog 22). Every single rabbit is an individual being with its own unique life. To deny this is tantamount to claiming that each rabbit that dies from shooting or poisoning is the same rabbit dying again and again. Rose has written that “death makes claims upon all of us” (Wild Dog 19). These are claims of ethics and compassion, a claim that “we look into the eyes of the dying and not flinch, that we reach out to hold and to help” (Wild Dog 20). This claim is a duty of remembrance, a duty to “bear witness” (Wiesel 160) to life and death. The Nobel Peace Prize winning author, Elie Wiesel, argued that memory is a reconciliatory force that creates bonds as mass annihilation seeks to destroy them. Memory ensures that no life becomes truly life-less as it wrests the victims of mass slaughter from “oblivion” and allows the dead to “vanquish death” (21). In a continent inhabited by dead rabbits—a community of the dead—remembering these lost individuals and their lost lives is an important task for making sure that no death is a mere death. An ethic of ecological remembrance follows this recuperative aim. References Arthur, Jay M. The Default Country: A Lexical Cartography of Twentieth-Century Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Bagust, Phil. “Cuddly Koalas, Beautiful Brumbies, Exotic Olives: Fighting for Media Selection in the Attention Economy.” “Imaging Natures”: University of Tasmania Conference Proceedings (2004). 25 April 2012 ‹www.utas.edu.au/arts/imaging/bagust.pdf› Bekoff, Marc. “First Do No Harm.” New Scientist (28 August 2010): 24 – 25. Bergstrom, Dana M., Arko Lucieer, Kate Kiefer, Jane Wasley, Lee Belbin, Tore K. Pederson, and Steven L. Chown. “Indirect Effects of Invasive Species Removal Devastate World Heritage Island.” Journal of Applied Ecology 46 (2009): 73– 81. Botkin, Daniel. B. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Carroll, Scott. P. “Conciliation Biology: The Eco-Evolutionary Management of Permanently Invaded Biotic Systems.” Evolutionary Applications 4.2 (2011): 184 – 99. Coman, Brian. Tooth and Nail: The Story of the Rabbit in Australia. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1999. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 – 1900. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Davis, Mark., Matthew Chew, Richard Hobbs, Ariel Lugo, John Ewel, Geerat Vermeij, James Brown, Michael Rosenzweig, Mark Gardener, Scott Carroll, Ken Thompson, Steward Pickett, Juliet Stromberg, Peter Del Tredici, Katharine Suding, Joan Ehrenfield, J. Philip Grime, Joseph Mascaro and John Briggs. “Don’t Judge Species on their Origins.” Nature 474 (2011): 152 – 54. Ewel, John J. and Francis E. Putz. “A Place for Alien Species in Ecosystem Restoration.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2.7 (2004): 354-60. Forsyth, David M. and Ben Reddiex. “Control of Pest Mammals for Biodiversity Protection in Australia.” Wildlife Research 33 (2006): 711–17. Garnett, Ali, and Kaye Kessing. Easter Bilby. Department of Environment and Heritage: Kaye Kessing Productions, 2006. Heishman, Darice. “VHD Factsheet.” House Rabbit Network (2011). 15 June 2012 ‹http://www.rabbitnetwork.org/articles/vhd.shtml› Low, Tim. New Nature: Winners and Losers in Wild Australia. Melbourne: Penguin, 2002. Phillips, Sara. “How Eating Easter Chocolate Can Save Endangered Animals.” ABC Environment (1 April 2010). 15 June 2011 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/04/01/2862039.htm› Plumwood, Val. “Decolonising Australian Gardens: Gardening and the Ethics of Place.” Australian Humanities Review 36 (2005). 15 June 2012 ‹http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-July-2005/09Plumwood.html› Ponsonby Veterinary Centre. “Rabbit Viral Hemorrhagic Disease (VHD).” Small Pets. 26 May 2012 ‹http://www.petvet.co.nz/small_pets.cfm?content_id=85› Robin, Libby. How a Continent Created a Nation. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007. Rose, Deborah Bird. Reports From a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004. ——-. Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2011. Rosenzweig, Michael. L. “Reconciliation Ecology and the Future of Species Diversity.” Oryx 37.2 (2003): 194 – 205. Save the Bilby Fund. “Bilby Fact Sheet.” Easterbilby.com.au (2003). 26 May 2012 ‹http://www.easterbilby.com.au/Project_material/factsheet.asp› Van Dooren, Thom. “Invasive Species in Penguin Worlds: An Ethical Taxonomy of Killing for Conservation.” Conservation and Society 9.4 (2011): 286 – 98. Wiesel, Elie. From the Kingdom of Memory. New York: Summit Books, 1990.

Over the past century, many books for general readers have styled sharks as “monsters of the deep” (Steele). In recent decades, however, at least some writers have also turned to representing how sharks are seriously threatened by human activities. At a time when media coverage of shark sightings seems ever increasing in Australia, scholarship has begun to consider people’s attitudes to sharks and how these are formed, investigating the representation of sharks (Peschak; Ostrovski et al.) in films (Le Busque and Litchfield; Neff; Schwanebeck), newspaper reports (Muter et al.), and social media (Le Busque et al., “An Analysis”). My own research into representations of surfing and sharks in Australian writing (Brien) has, however, revealed that, although reporting of shark sightings and human-shark interactions are prominent in the news, and sharks function as vivid and commanding images and metaphors in art and writing (Ellis; Westbrook et al.), little scholarship has investigated their representation in Australian books published for a general readership. While recognising representations of sharks in other book-length narrative forms in Australia, including Australian fiction, poetry, and film (Ryan and Ellison), this enquiry is focussed on non-fiction books for general readers, to provide an initial review. Sampling holdings of non-fiction books in the National Library of Australia, crosschecked with Google Books, in early 2021, this investigation identified 50 Australian books for general readers that are principally about sharks, or that feature attitudes to them, published from 1911 to 2021. Although not seeking to capture all Australian non-fiction books for general readers that feature sharks, the sampling attempted to locate a wide range of representations and genres across the time frame from the earliest identified text until the time of the survey. The books located include works of natural and popular history, travel writing, memoir, biography, humour, and other long-form non-fiction for adult and younger readers, including hybrid works. A thematic analysis (Guest et al.) of the representation of sharks in these texts identified five themes that moved from understanding sharks as fishes to seeing them as monsters, then prey, and finally to endangered species needing conservation. Many books contained more than one theme, and not all examples identified have been quoted in the discussion of the themes below. Sharks as Part of the Natural Environment Drawing on oral histories passed through generations, two memoirs (Bradley et al.; Fossa) narrate Indigenous stories in which sharks play a central role. These reveal that sharks are part of both the world and a wider cosmology for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Clua and Guiart). In these representations, sharks are integrated with, and integral to, Indigenous life, with one writer suggesting they are “creator beings, ancestors, totems. Their lifecycles reflect the seasons, the landscape and sea country. They are seen in the movement of the stars” (Allam). A series of natural history narratives focus on zoological studies of Australian sharks, describing shark species and their anatomy and physiology, as well as discussing shark genetics, behaviour, habitats, and distribution. A foundational and relatively early Australian example is Gilbert P. Whitley’s The Fishes of Australia: The Sharks, Rays, Devil-fish, and Other Primitive Fishes of Australia and New Zealand, published in 1940. Ichthyologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney from the early 1920s to 1964, Whitley authored several books which furthered scientific thought on sharks. Four editions of his Australian Sharks were published between 1983 and 1991 in English, and the book is still held in many libraries and other collections worldwide. In this text, Whitley described a wide variety of sharks, noting shared as well as individual features. Beautiful drawings contribute information on shape, colouring, markings, and other recognisable features to assist with correct identification. Although a scientist and a Fellow and then President of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Whitley recognised it was important to communicate with general readers and his books are accessible, the prose crisp and clear. Books published after this text (Aiken; Ayling; Last and Stevens; Tricas and Carwardine) share Whitley’s regard for the diversity of sharks as well as his desire to educate a general readership. By 2002, the CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.) also featured numerous striking photographs of these creatures. Titles such as Australia’s Amazing Sharks (Australian Geographic) emphasise sharks’ unique qualities, including their agility and speed in the water, sensitive sight and smell, and ability to detect changes in water pressure around them, heal rapidly, and replace their teeth. These books also emphasise the central role that sharks play in the marine ecosystem. There are also such field guides to sharks in specific parts of Australia (Allen). This attention to disseminating accurate zoological information about sharks is also evident in books written for younger readers including very young children (Berkes; Kear; Parker and Parker). In these and other similar books, sharks are imaged as a central and vital component of the ocean environment, and the narratives focus on their features and qualities as wondrous rather than monstrous. Sharks as Predatory Monsters A number of books for general readers do, however, image sharks as monsters. In 1911, in his travel narrative Peeps at Many Lands: Australia, Frank Fox describes sharks as “the most dangerous foes of man in Australia” (23) and many books have reinforced this view over the following century. This can be seen in titles that refer to sharks as dangerous predatory killers (Fox and Ruhen; Goadby; Reid; Riley; Sharpe; Taylor and Taylor). The covers of a large proportion of such books feature sharks emerging from the water, jaws wide open in explicit homage to the imaging of the monster shark in the film Jaws (Spielberg). Shark!: Killer Tales from the Dangerous Depths (Reid) is characteristic of books that portray encounters with sharks as terrifying and dramatic, using emotive language and stories that describe sharks as “the world’s most feared sea creature” (47) because they are such “highly efficient killing machines” (iv, see also 127, 129). This representation of sharks is also common in several books for younger readers (Moriarty; Rohr). Although the risk of being injured by an unprovoked shark is extremely low (Chapman; Fletcher et al.), fear of sharks is prevalent and real (Le Busque et al., “People’s Fear”) and described in a number of these texts. Several of the memoirs located describe surfers’ fear of sharks (Muirhead; Orgias), as do those of swimmers, divers, and other frequent users of the sea (Denness; de Gelder; McAloon), even if the author has never encountered a shark in the wild. In these texts, this fear of sharks is often traced to viewing Jaws, and especially to how the film’s huge, bloodthirsty great white shark persistently and determinedly attacks its human hunters. Pioneer Australian shark expert Valerie Taylor describes such great white sharks as “very big, powerful … and amazingly beautiful” but accurately notes that “revenge is not part of their thought process” (Kindle version). Two books explicitly seek to map and explain Australians’ fear of sharks. In Sharks: A History of Fear in Australia, Callum Denness charts this fear across time, beginning with his own “shark story”: a panicked, terror-filled evacuation from the sea, following the sighting of a shadow which turned out not to be a shark. Blake Chapman’s Shark Attacks: Myths, Misunderstandings and Human Fears explains commonly held fearful perceptions of sharks. Acknowledging that sharks are a “highly emotive topic”, the author of this text does not deny “the terror [that] they invoke in our psyche” but makes a case that this is “only a minor characteristic of what makes them such intriguing animals” (ix). In Death by Coconut: 50 Things More Dangerous than a Shark and Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of the Ocean, Ruby Ashby Orr utilises humour to educate younger readers about the real risk humans face from sharks and, as per the book’s title, why they should not be feared, listing champagne corks and falling coconuts among the many everyday activities more likely to lead to injury and death in Australia than encountering a shark. Taylor goes further in her memoir – not only describing her wonder at swimming with these creatures, but also her calm acceptance of the possibility of being injured by a shark: "if we are to be bitten, then we are to be bitten … . One must choose a life of adventure, and of mystery and discovery, but with that choice, one must also choose the attendant risks" (2019: Kindle version). Such an attitude is very rare in the books located, with even some of the most positive about these sea creatures still quite sensibly fearful of potentially dangerous encounters with them. Sharks as Prey There is a long history of sharks being fished in Australia (Clark). The killing of sharks for sport is detailed in An American Angler in Australia, which describes popular adventure writer Zane Grey’s visit to Australia and New Zealand in the 1930s to fish ‘big game’. This text includes many bloody accounts of killing sharks, which are justified with explanations about how sharks are dangerous. It is also illustrated with gruesome pictures of dead sharks. Australian fisher Alf Dean’s biography describes him as the “World’s Greatest Shark Hunter” (Thiele), this text similarly illustrated with photographs of some of the gigantic sharks he caught and killed in the second half of the twentieth century. Apart from being killed during pleasure and sport fishing, sharks are also hunted by spearfishers. Valerie Taylor and her late husband, Ron Taylor, are well known in Australia and internationally as shark experts, but they began their careers as spearfishers and shark hunters (Taylor, Ron Taylor’s), with the documentary Shark Hunters gruesomely detailing their killing of many sharks. The couple have produced several books that recount their close encounters with sharks (Taylor; Taylor, Taylor and Goadby; Taylor and Taylor), charting their movement from killers to conservationists as they learned more about the ocean and its inhabitants. Now a passionate campaigner against the past butchery she participated in, Taylor’s memoir describes her shift to a more respectful relationship with sharks, driven by her desire to understand and protect them. In Australia, the culling of sharks is supposedly carried out to ensure human safety in the ocean, although this practice has long been questioned. In 1983, for instance, Whitley noted the “indiscriminate” killing of grey nurse sharks, despite this species largely being very docile and of little threat to people (Australian Sharks, 10). This is repeated by Tony Ayling twenty-five years later who adds the information that the generally harmless grey nurse sharks have been killed to the point of extinction, as it was wrongly believed they preyed on surfers and swimmers. Shark researcher and conservationist Riley Elliott, author of Shark Man: One Kiwi Man’s Mission to Save Our Most Feared and Misunderstood Predator (2014), includes an extremely critical chapter on Western Australian shark ‘management’ through culling, summing up the problems associated with this approach: it seems to me that this cull involved no science or logic, just waste and politics. It’s sickening that the people behind this cull were the Fisheries department, which prior to this was the very department responsible for setting up the world’s best acoustic tagging system for sharks. (Kindle version, Chapter 7) Describing sharks as “misunderstood creatures”, Orr is also clear in her opposition to killing sharks to ‘protect’ swimmers noting that “each year only around 10 people are killed in shark attacks worldwide, while around 73 million sharks are killed by humans”. She adds the question and answer, “sounds unfair? Of course it is, but when an attack is all over the news and the people are baying for shark blood, it’s easy to lose perspective. But culling them? Seriously?” (back cover). The condemnation of culling is also evident in David Brooks’s recent essay on the topic in his collection of essays about animal welfare, conservation and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams. This disapproval is also evident in narratives by those who have been injured by sharks. Navy diver Paul de Gelder and surfer Glen Orgias were both bitten by sharks in Sydney in 2009 and both their memoirs detail their fear of sharks and the pain they suffered from these interactions and their lengthy recoveries. However, despite their undoubted suffering – both men lost limbs due to these encounters – they also attest to their ongoing respect for these creatures and specify a shared desire not to see them culled. Orgias, instead, charts the life story of the shark who bit him alongside his own story in his memoir, musing at the end of the book, not about himself or his injury, but about the fate of the shark he had encountered: great whites are portrayed … as pathological creatures, and as malevolent. That’s rubbish … they are graceful, mighty beasts. I respect them, and fear them … [but] the thought of them fighting, dying, in a net upsets me. I hope this great white shark doesn’t end up like that. (271–271) Several of the more recent books identified in this study acknowledge that, despite growing understanding of sharks, the popular press and many policy makers continue to advocate for shark culls, these calls especially vocal after a shark-related human death or injury (Peppin-Neff). The damage to shark species involved caused by their killing – either directly by fishing, spearing, finning, or otherwise hunting them, or inadvertently as they become caught in nets or affected by human pollution of the ocean – is discussed in many of the more recent books identified in this study. Sharks as Endangered Alongside fishing, finning, and hunting, human actions and their effects such as beach netting, pollution and habitat change are killing many sharks, to the point where many shark species are threatened. Several recent books follow Orr in noting that an estimated 100 million sharks are now killed annually across the globe and that this, as well as changes to their habitats, are driving many shark species to the status of vulnerable, threatened or towards extinction (Dulvy et al.). This is detailed in texts about biodiversity and climate change in Australia (Steffen et al.) as well as in many of the zoologically focussed books discussed above under the theme of “Sharks as part of the natural environment”. The CSIRO’s Field Guide to Australian Sharks & Rays (Daley et al.), for example, emphasises not only that several shark species are under threat (and protected) (8–9) but also that sharks are, as individuals, themselves very fragile creatures. Their skeletons are made from flexible, soft cartilage rather than bone, meaning that although they are “often thought of as being incredibly tough; in reality, they need to be handled carefully to maximise their chance of survival following capture” (9). Material on this theme is included in books for younger readers on Australia’s endangered animals (Bourke; Roc and Hawke). Shark Conservation By 1991, shark conservation in Australia and overseas was a topic of serious discussion in Sydney, with an international workshop on the subject held at Taronga Zoo and the proceedings published (Pepperell et al.). Since then, the movement to protect sharks has grown, with marine scientists, high-profile figures and other writers promoting shark conservation, especially through attempts to educate the general public about sharks. De Gelder’s memoir, for instance, describes how he now champions sharks, promoting shark conservation in his work as a public speaker. Peter Benchley, who (with Carl Gottlieb) recast his novel Jaws for the film’s screenplay, later attested to regretting his portrayal of sharks as aggressive and became a prominent spokesperson for shark conservation. In explaining his change of heart, he stated that when he wrote the novel, he was reflecting the general belief that sharks would both seek out human prey and attack boats, but he later discovered this to be untrue (Benchley, “Without Malice”). Many recent books about sharks for younger readers convey a conservation message, underscoring how, instead of fearing or killing sharks, or doing nothing, humans need to actively assist these vulnerable creatures to survive. In the children’s book series featuring Bindi Irwin and her “wildlife adventures”, there is a volume where Bindi and a friend are on a diving holiday when they find a dead shark whose fin has been removed. The book not only describes how shark finning is illegal, but also how Bindi and friend are “determined to bring the culprits to justice” (Browne). This narrative, like the other books in this series, has a dual focus; highlighting the beauty of wildlife and its value, but also how the creatures described need protection and assistance. Concluding Discussion This study was prompted by the understanding that the Earth is currently in the epoch known as the Anthropocene, a time in which humans have significantly altered, and continue to alter, the Earth by our activities (Myers), resulting in numerous species becoming threatened, endangered, or extinct. It acknowledges the pressing need for not only natural science research on these actions and their effects, but also for such scientists to publish their findings in more accessible ways (see, Paulin and Green). It specifically responds to demands for scholarship outside the relevant areas of science and conservation to encourage widespread thinking and action (Mascia et al.; Bennett et al.). As understanding public perceptions and overcoming widely held fear of sharks can facilitate their conservation (Panoch and Pearson), the way sharks are imaged is integral to their survival. The five themes identified in this study reveal vastly different ways of viewing and writing about sharks. These range from seeing sharks as nothing more than large fishes to be killed for pleasure, to viewing them as terrifying monsters, to finally understanding that they are amazing creatures who play an important role in the world’s environment and are in urgent need of conservation. This range of representation is important, for if sharks are understood as demon monsters which hunt humans, then it is much more ‘reasonable’ to not care about their future than if they are understood to be fascinating and fragile creatures suffering from their interactions with humans and our effect on the environment. Further research could conduct a textual analysis of these books. In this context, it is interesting to note that, although in 1949 C. Bede Maxwell suggested describing human deaths and injuries from sharks as “accidents” (182) and in 2013 Christopher Neff and Robert Hueter proposed using “sightings, encounters, bites, and the rare cases of fatal bites” (70) to accurately represent “the true risk posed by sharks” to humans (70), the majority of the books in this study, like mass media reports, continue to use the ubiquitous and more dramatic terminology of “shark attack”. The books identified in this analysis could also be compared with international texts to reveal and investigate global similarities and differences. While the focus of this discussion has been on non-fiction texts, a companion analysis of representation of sharks in Australian fiction, poetry, films, and other narratives could also be undertaken, in the hope that such investigations contribute to more nuanced understandings of these majestic sea creatures. 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In Australia the “intimacy” of citizenship (Berlant 2), is often used to reinforce subscription to heteronormative romantic and familial structures. Because this framing promotes discourses of moral failure, recent political attention to sexuality and same-sex couples can be filtered through insights into coalitional affiliations. This paper uses contemporary shifts in Australian politics and culture to think through the concept of coalition, and in particular to analyse connections between sexuality and governmentality (or more specifically normative bias and same-sex relationships) in what I’m calling post-coalitional Australia. Against the unpredictability of changing parties and governments, allegiances and alliances, this paper suggests the continuing adherence to a heteronormatively arranged public sphere. After the current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard deposed the previous leader, Kevin Rudd, she clung to power with the help of independents and the Greens, and clichés of a “rainbow coalition” and a “new paradigm” were invoked to describe the confused electorate and governmental configuration. Yet in 2007, a less confused Australia decisively threw out the Howard–led Liberal and National Party coalition government after eleven years, in favour of Rudd’s own rainbow coalition: a seemingly invigorated party focussed on gender equity, Indigenous Australians, multi-cultural visibility, workplace relations, Austral-Asian relations, humane refugee processing, the environment, and the rights and obligations of same-sex couples. A post-coalitional Australia invokes something akin to “aftermath culture” (Lambert and Simpson), referring not just to Rudd’s fall or Howard’s election loss, but to the broader shifting contexts within which most Australian citizens live, and within which they make sense of the terms “Australia” and “Australian”. Contemporary Australia is marked everywhere by cracks in coalitions and shifts in allegiances and belief systems – the Coalition of the Willing falling apart, the coalition government crushed by defeat, deposed leaders, and unlikely political shifts and (re)alignments in the face of a hung parliament and renewed pushes toward moral and cultural change. These breakdowns in allegiances are followed by swift symbolically charged manoeuvres. Gillard moved quickly to repair relations with mining companies damaged by Rudd’s plans for a mining tax and to water down frustration with the lack of a sustainable Emissions Trading Scheme. And one of the first things Kevin Rudd did as Prime Minister was to change the fittings and furnishings in the Prime Ministerial office, of which Wright observed that “Mr Howard is gone and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has moved in, the Parliament House bureaucracy has ensured all signs of the old-style gentlemen's club… have been banished” (The Age, 5 Dec. 2007). Some of these signs were soon replaced by Ms. Gillard herself, who filled the office in turn with memorabilia from her beloved Footscray, an Australian Rules football team. In post-coalitional Australia the exile of the old Menzies’ desk and a pair of Chesterfield sofas works alongside the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and renewed pledges for military presence in Afghanistan, apologising to stolen generations of Indigenous Australians, the first female Governor General, deputy Prime Minister and then Prime Minister (the last two both Gillard), the repealing of disadvantageous workplace reform, a focus on climate change and global warming (with limited success as stated), a public, mandatory paid maternity leave scheme, changes to the processing and visas of refugees, and the amendments to more than one hundred laws that discriminate against same sex couples by the pre-Gillard, Rudd-led Labor government. The context for these changes was encapsulated in an announcement from Rudd, made in March 2008: Our core organising principle as a Government is equality of opportunity. And advancing people and their opportunities in life, we are a Government which prides itself on being blind to gender, blind to economic background, blind to social background, blind to race, blind to sexuality. (Rudd, “International”) Noting the political possibilities and the political convenience of blindness, this paper navigates the confusing context of post-coalitional Australia, whilst proffering an understanding of some of the cultural forces at work in this age of shifting and unstable alliances. I begin by interrogating the coalitional impulse post 9/11. I do this by connecting public coalitional shifts to the steady withdrawal of support for John Howard’s coalition, and movement away from George Bush’s Coalition of the Willing and the War on Terror. I then draw out a relationship between the rise and fall of such affiliations and recent shifts within government policy affecting same-sex couples, from former Prime Minister Howard’s amendments to The Marriage Act 1961 to the Rudd-Gillard administration’s attention to the discrimination in many Australian laws. Sexual Citizenship and Coalitions Rights and entitlements have always been constructed and managed in ways that live out understandings of biopower and social death (Foucault History; Discipline). The disciplining of bodies, identities and pleasures is so deeply entrenched in government and law that any non-normative claim to rights requires the negotiation of existing structures. Sexual citizenship destabilises the post-coalitional paradigm of Australian politics (one of “equal opportunity” and consensus) by foregrounding the normative biases that similarly transcend partisan politics. Sexual citizenship has been well excavated in critical work from Evans, Berlant, Weeks, Richardson, and Bell and Binnie’s The Sexual Citizen which argues that “many of the current modes of the political articulation of sexual citizenship are marked by compromise; this is inherent in the very notion itself… the twinning of rights with responsibilities in the logic of citizenship is another way of expressing compromise… Every entitlement is freighted with a duty” (2-3). This logic extends to political and economic contexts, where “natural” coalition refers primarily to parties, and in particular those “who have powerful shared interests… make highly valuable trades, or who, as a unit, can extract significant value from others without much risk of being split” (Lax and Sebinius 158). Though the term is always in some way politicised, it need not refer only to partisan, multiparty or multilateral configurations. The subscription to the norms (or normativity) of a certain familial, social, religious, ethnic, or leisure groups is clearly coalitional (as in a home or a front, a club or a team, a committee or a congregation). Although coalition is interrogated in political and social sciences, it is examined frequently in mathematical game theory and behavioural psychology. In the former, as in Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation, it refers to people (or players) who collaborate to successfully pursue their own self-interests, often in the absence of central authority. In behavioural psychology the focus is on group formations and their attendant strategies, biases and discriminations. Experimental psychologists have found “categorizing individuals into two social groups predisposes humans to discriminate… against the outgroup in both allocation of resources and evaluation of conduct” (Kurzban, Tooby and Cosmides 15387). The actions of social organisation (and not unseen individual, supposedly innate impulses) reflect the cultural norms in coalitional attachments – evidenced by the relationship between resources and conduct that unquestioningly grants and protects the rights and entitlements of the larger, heteronormatively aligned “ingroup”. Terror Management Particular attention has been paid to coalitional formations and discriminatory practices in America and the West since September 11, 2001. Terror Management Theory or TMT (Greenberg, Pyszczynski and Solomon) has been the main framework used to explain the post-9/11 reassertion of large group identities along ideological, religious, ethnic and violently nationalistic lines. Psychologists have used “death-related stimuli” to explain coalitional mentalities within the recent contexts of globalised terror. The fear of death that results in discriminatory excesses is referred to as “mortality salience”, with respect to the highly visible aspects of terror that expose people to the possibility of their own death or suffering. Naverette and Fessler find “participants… asked to contemplate their own deaths exhibit increases in positive evaluations of people whose attitudes and values are similar to their own, and derogation of those holding dissimilar views” (299). It was within the climate of post 9/11 “mortality salience” that then Prime Minister John Howard set out to change The Marriage Act 1961 and the Family Law Act 1975. In 2004, the Government modified the Marriage Act to eliminate flexibility with respect to the definition of marriage. Agitation for gay marriage was not as noticeable in Australia as it was in the U.S where Bush publicly rejected it, and the UK where the Civil Union Act 2004 had just been passed. Following Bush, Howard’s “queer moral panic” seemed the perfect decoy for the increased scrutiny of Australia’s involvement in the Iraq war. Howard’s changes included outlawing adoption for same-sex couples, and no recognition for legal same-sex marriages performed in other countries. The centrepiece was the wording of The Marriage Amendment Act 2004, with marriage now defined as a union “between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others”. The legislation was referred to by the Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown as “hateful”, “the marriage discrimination act” and the “straight Australia policy” (Commonwealth 26556). The Labor Party, in opposition, allowed the changes to pass (in spite of vocal protests from one member) by concluding the legal status of same-sex relations was in no way affected, seemingly missing (in addition to the obvious symbolic and physical discrimination) the equation of same-sex recognition with terror, terrorism and death. Non-normative sexual citizenship was deployed as yet another form of “mortality salience”, made explicit in Howard’s description of the changes as necessary in protecting the sanctity of the “bedrock institution” of marriage and, wait for it, “providing for the survival of the species” (Knight, 5 Aug. 2003). So two things seem to be happening here: the first is that when confronted with the possibility of their own death (either through terrorism or gay marriage) people value those who are most like them, joining to devalue those who aren’t; the second is that the worldview (the larger religious, political, social perspectives to which people subscribe) becomes protection from the potential death that terror/queerness represents. Coalition of the (Un)willing Yet, if contemporary coalitions are formed through fear of death or species survival, how, for example, might these explain the various forms of risk-taking behaviours exhibited within Western democracies targeted by such terrors? Navarette and Fessler (309) argue that “affiliation defences are triggered by a wider variety of threats” than “existential anxiety” and that worldviews are “in turn are reliant on ‘normative conformity’” (308) or “normative bias” for social benefits and social inclusions, because “a normative orientation” demonstrates allegiance to the ingroup (308-9). Coalitions are founded in conformity to particular sets of norms, values, codes or belief systems. They are responses to adaptive challenges, particularly since September 11, not simply to death but more broadly to change. In troubled times, coalitions restore a shared sense of predictability. In Howard’s case, he seemed to say, “the War in Iraq is tricky but we have a bigger (same-sex) threat to deal with right now. So trust me on both fronts”. Coalitional change as reflective of adaptive responses thus serves the critical location of subsequent shifts in public support. Before and since September 11 Australians were beginning to distinguish between moderation and extremism, between Christian fundamentalism and productive forms of nationalism. Howard’s unwavering commitment to the American-led war in Iraq saw Australia become a member of another coalition: the Coalition of the Willing, a post 1990s term used to describe militaristic or humanitarian interventions in certain parts of the world by groups of countries. Howard (in Pauly and Lansford 70) committed Australia to America’s fight but also to “civilization's fight… of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom”. Although Bush claimed an international balance of power and influence within the coalition (94), some countries refused to participate, many quickly withdrew, and many who signed did not even have troops. In Australia, the war was never particularly popular. In 2003, forty-two legal experts found the war contravened International Law as well as United Nations and Geneva conventions (Sydney Morning Herald 26 Feb. 2003). After the immeasurable loss of Iraqi life, and as the bodies of young American soldiers (and the occasional non-American) began to pile up, the official term “coalition of the willing” was quietly abandoned by the White House in January of 2005, replaced by a “smaller roster of 28 countries with troops in Iraq” (ABC News Online 22 Jan. 2005). The coalition and its larger war on terror placed John Howard within the context of coalitional confusion, that when combined with the domestic effects of economic and social policy, proved politically fatal. The problem was the unclear constitution of available coalitional configurations. Howard’s continued support of Bush and the war in Iraq compounded with rising interest rates, industrial relations reform and a seriously uncool approach to the environment and social inclusion, to shift perceptions of him from father of the nation to dangerous, dithery and disconnected old man. Post-Coalitional Change In contrast, before being elected Kevin Rudd sought to reframe Australian coalitional relationships. In 2006, he positions the Australian-United States alliance outside of the notion of military action and Western territorial integrity. In Rudd-speak the Howard-Bush-Blair “coalition of the willing” becomes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “willingness of the heart”. The term coalition was replaced by terms such as dialogue and affiliation (Rudd, “Friends”). Since the 2007 election, Rudd moved quickly to distance himself from the agenda of the coalition government that preceded him, proposing changes in the spirit of “blindness” toward marginality and sexuality. “Fix-it-all” Rudd as he was christened (Sydney Morning Herald 29 Sep. 2008) and his Labor government began to confront the legacies of colonial history, industrial relations, refugee detention and climate change – by apologising to Aboriginal people, timetabling the withdrawal from Iraq, abolishing the employee bargaining system Workchoices, giving instant visas and lessening detention time for refugees, and signing the Kyoto Protocol agreeing (at least in principle) to reduce green house gas emissions. As stated earlier, post-coalitional Australia is not simply talking about sudden change but an extension and a confusion of what has gone on before (so that the term resembles postcolonial, poststructural and postmodern because it carries the practices and effects of the original term within it). The post-coalitional is still coalitional to the extent that we must ask: what remains the same in the midst of such visible changes? An American focus in international affairs, a Christian platform for social policy, an absence of financial compensation for the Aboriginal Australians who received such an eloquent apology, the lack of coherent and productive outcomes in the areas of asylum and climate change, and an impenetrable resistance to the idea of same-sex marriage are just some of the ways in which these new governments continue on from the previous one. The Rudd-Gillard government’s dealings with gay law reform and gay marriage exemplify the post-coalitional condition. Emulating Christ’s relationship to “the marginalised and the oppressed”, and with Gillard at his side, Rudd understandings of the Christian Gospel as a “social gospel” (Rudd, “Faith”; see also Randell-Moon) to table changes to laws discriminating against gay couples – guaranteeing hospital visits, social security benefits and access to superannuation, resembling de-facto hetero relationships but modelled on the administering and registration of relationships, or on tax laws that speak primarily to relations of financial dependence – with particular reference to children. The changes are based on the report, Same Sex, Same Entitlements (HREOC) that argues for the social competence of queer folk, with respect to money, property and reproduction. They speak the language of an equitable economics; one that still leaves healthy and childless couples with limited recognition and advantage but increased financial obligation. Unable to marry in Australia, same-sex couples are no longer single for taxation purposes, but are now simultaneously subject to forms of tax/income auditing and governmental revenue collection should either same-sex partner require assistance from social security as if they were married. Heteronormative Coalition Queer citizens can quietly stake their economic claims and in most states discreetly sign their names on a register before becoming invisible again. Mardi Gras happens but once a year after all. On the topic of gay marriage Rudd and Gillard have deferred to past policy and to the immoveable nature of the law (and to Howard’s particular changes to marriage law). That same respect is not extended to laws passed by Howard on industrial relations or border control. In spite of finding no gospel references to Jesus the Nazarene “expressly preaching against homosexuality” (Rudd, “Faith”), and pre-election promises that territories could govern themselves with respect to same sex partnerships, the Rudd-Gillard government in 2008 pressured the ACT to reduce its proposed partnership legislation to that of a relationship register like the ones in Tasmania and Victoria, and explicitly demanded that there be absolutely no ceremony – no mimicking of the real deal, of the larger, heterosexual citizens’ “ingroup”. Likewise, with respect to the reintroduction of same-sex marriage legislation by Greens senator Sarah Hanson Young in September 2010, Gillard has so far refused a conscience vote on the issue and restated the “marriage is between a man and a woman” rhetoric of her predecessors (Topsfield, 30 Sep. 2010). At the same time, she has agreed to conscience votes on euthanasia and openly declared bi-partisan (with the federal opposition) support for the war in Afghanistan. We see now, from Howard to Rudd and now Gillard, that there are some coalitions that override political differences. As psychologists have noted, “if the social benefits of norm adherence are the ultimate cause of the individual’s subscription to worldviews, then the focus and salience of a given individual’s ideology can be expected to vary as a function of their need to ally themselves with relevant others” (Navarette and Fessler 307). Where Howard invoked the “Judaeo-Christian tradition”, Rudd chose to cite a “Christian ethical framework” (Rudd, “Faith”), that saw him and Gillard end up in exactly the same place: same sex relationships should be reduced to that of medical care or financial dependence; that a public ceremony marking relationship recognition somehow equates to “mimicking” the already performative and symbolic heterosexual institution of marriage and the associated romantic and familial arrangements. Conclusion Post-coalitional Australia refers to the state of confusion borne of a new politics of equality and change. The shift in Australia from conservative to mildly socialist government(s) is not as sudden as Howard’s 2007 federal loss or as short-lived as Gillard’s hung parliament might respectively suggest. Whilst allegiance shifts, political parties find support is reliant on persistence as much as it is on change – they decide how to buffer and bolster the same coalitions (ones that continue to privilege white settlement, Christian belief systems, heteronormative familial and symbolic practices), but also how to practice policy and social responsibility in a different way. Rudd’s and Gillard’s arguments against the mimicry of heterosexual symbolism and the ceremonial validation of same-sex partnerships imply there is one originary form of conduct and an associated sacred set of symbols reserved for that larger ingroup. Like Howard before them, these post-coalitional leaders fail to recognise, as Butler eloquently argues, “gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but as copy is to copy” (31). To make claims to status and entitlements that invoke the messiness of non-normative sex acts and romantic attachments necessarily requires the negotiation of heteronormative coalitional bias (and in some ways a reinforcement of this social power). As Bell and Binnie have rightly observed, “that’s what the hard choices facing the sexual citizen are: the push towards rights claims that make dissident sexualities fit into heterosexual culture, by demanding equality and recognition, versus the demand to reject settling for heteronormativity” (141). The new Australian political “blindness” toward discrimination produces positive outcomes whilst it explicitly reanimates the histories of oppression it seeks to redress. The New South Wales parliament recently voted to allow same-sex adoption with the proviso that concerned parties could choose not to adopt to gay couples. The Tasmanian government voted to recognise same-sex marriages and unions from outside Australia, in the absence of same-sex marriage beyond the current registration arrangements in its own state. In post-coalitional Australia the issue of same-sex partnership recognition pits parties and allegiances against each other and against themselves from within (inside Gillard’s “rainbow coalition” the Rainbow ALP group now unites gay people within the government’s own party). Gillard has hinted any new proposed legislation regarding same-sex marriage may not even come before parliament for debate, as it deals with real business. Perhaps the answer lies over the rainbow (coalition). As the saying goes, “there are none so blind as those that will not see”. References ABC News Online. “Whitehouse Scraps Coalition of the Willing List.” 22 Jan. 2005. 1 July 2007 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1286872.htm›. Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Berlant, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Bell, David, and John Binnie. The Sexual Citizen: Queer Politics and Beyond. Cambridge, England: Polity, 2000. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Commonwealth of Australia. Parliamentary Debates. House of Representatives 12 Aug. 2004: 26556. (Bob Brown, Senator, Tasmania.) Evans, David T. Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities. London: Routledge, 1993. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1991. ———. The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1998. Greenberg, Jeff, Tom Pyszczynski, and Sheldon Solomon. “The Causes and Consequences of the Need for Self-Esteem: A Terror Management Theory.” Public Self, Private Self. Ed. Roy F. Baumeister. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986. 189-212. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Report. 2007. 21 Aug. 2007 ‹http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/samesex/report/index.html›. Kaplan, Morris. Sexual Justice: Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire. New York: Routledge, 1997. Knight, Ben. “Howard and Costello Reject Gay Marriage.” ABC Online 5 Aug. 2003. Kurzban, Robert, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides. "Can Race Be Erased? Coalitional Computation and Social Categorization." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98.26 (2001): 15387–15392. Lambert, Anthony, and Catherine Simpson. "Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland." M/C Journal 11.5 (2008). 20 Oct. 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/81›. Lax, David A., and James K. Lebinius. “Thinking Coalitionally: Party Arithmetic Process Opportunism, and Strategic Sequencing.” Negotiation Analysis. Ed. H. Peyton Young. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1991. 153-194. Naverette, Carlos, and Daniel Fessler. “Normative Bias and Adaptive Challenges: A Relational Approach to Coalitional Psychology and a Critique of Terror Management Theory.” Evolutionary Psychology 3 (2005): 297-325. Pauly, Robert J., and Tom Lansford. Strategic Preemption: US Foreign Policy and Second Iraq War. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Randall-Moon, Holly. "Neoliberal Governmentality with a Christian Twist: Religion and Social Security under the Howard-Led Australian Government." Eds. Michael Bailey and Guy Redden. Mediating Faiths: Religion and Socio- Cultural Change in the Twenty-First Century. Farnham: Ashgate, in press. Richardson, Diane. Rethinking Sexuality. London: Sage, 2000. Rudd, Kevin. “Faith in Politics.” The Monthly 17 (2006). 31 July 2007 ‹http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-kevin-rudd-faith-politics--300›. Rudd, Kevin. “Friends of Australia, Friends of America, and Friends of the Alliance That Unites Us All.” Address to the 15th Australian-American Leadership Dialogue. The Australian, 24 Aug. 2007. 13 Mar. 2008 ‹http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/kevin-rudds-address/story-e6frg6xf-1111114253042›. Rudd, Kevin. “Address to International Women’s Day Morning Tea.” Old Parliament House, Canberra, 11 Mar. 2008. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://pmrudd.archive.dpmc.gov.au/node/5900›. Sydney Morning Herald. “Coalition of the Willing? Make That War Criminals.” 26 Feb. 2003. 1 July 2007 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/25/1046064028608.html›. Topsfield, Jewel. “Gillard Rules Out Conscience Vote on Gay Marriage.” The Age 30 Sep. 2010. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/gillard-rules-out-conscience-vote-on-gay-marriage-20100929-15xgj.html›. Weeks, Jeffrey. "The Sexual Citizen." Theory, Culture and Society 15.3-4 (1998): 35-52. Wright, Tony. “Suite Revenge on Chesterfield.” The Age 5 Dec. 2007. 4 April 2008 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/suite-revenge-on-chesterfield/2007/12/04/1196530678384.html›.

The public discourse on asylum seekers in the past year or so and the generation of hatred against them contains a strong linguistic element marking clear boundaries between 'ourselves' and the asylum seekers. I will discuss this linguistic dimension, which calls for vigilance and critical awareness in future discourses of exclusion. One of John Howard's political platforms in the victorious campaign, in which he replaced Paul Keating as Prime Minister was to liberate Australia of the 'political correctness' imposed by his opponents. In this respect, at least, he came close to the far right in Australian politics. For instance, he said of far right ex-Labor Independent Graeme Campbell: 'His attacks on political correctness echo many of the attacks I made on political correctness' (The Age, 18 June 1996). 'Political correctness' is a negative term for 'inclusive language' -- avoiding or being encouraged by stylistic or policy guidelines to avoid the choice of lexical items that may be offensive to sections of the population. The converse is the discourse of exclusion. Whether it excludes on the basis of ethnicity, religion, gender or any other basis, the discourse of exclusion creates a division between 'us' and 'them', partly on the basis of different lexical items for the two groups (Clyne, Establishing Linguistic Markers of Racism). Asylum seekers have been projected by politicians (especially those in the government) as not only different from the Australian people and therefore not belonging, but also as a threat to the Australian people. To demonstrate this projection it is worth considering some of the terms and formulations of exclusion and division that have been used. As Mungo MacCallum (41) argues, 'The first step was to get rid of the term 'refugee'; it has a long and honourable history and is generally used to describe people forced to flee from their homelands.' It might be more accurate to say that the government limited its use so that no honourable associations could be made with the current group of asylum seekers. There had been newspaper columns which had focused on the achievements and contributions to the nation of previous vintages of refugees; some communities consisted largely or entirely of refugees and their descendants, including some who had given longstanding support to the Liberal Party. The semantic narrowing of 'refugee' was illustrated in the Prime Minister's pronouncement (Herald-Sun, 8 Oct. 2001) when it was alleged that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard: 'Genuine refugees don't do that'. Thus, refugee status in the public discourse was being related to their moral representation and not to any consideration of the threat of persecution in their homeland. While refugee status was officially a legal issue, when the Prime Minister interacted with the media and the voters, the asylum seekers were already excluded by guided popular opinion, for 'I don't want people like that in Australia'. The exclusionary line based on moral grounds was echoed by Alexander Downer (The Age, 8 Oct. 2001), who described the asylum seekers as lacking the civilized behaviour to be worthy to live in Australia: 'Any civilized person wouldn't dream of treating their own children that way'. So what could the asylum seekers be called? MacCallum (2002: 43) attributes to Philip Ruddock the verbal masterstroke' of reducing the identification of the asylum seekers to a 'one word label': 'unlawful'. However, this identification came in a number of facets. They were described on both sides of parliament as 'illegals', illegal arrivals', 'illegal immigrants' (e.g. Hansard, 29 Aug. 2001). All of these terms encourage the view of intrusion. In actual fact, whether people's arrival had been authorized by the government or not, there is no such thing as an 'illegal refugee'. Other descriptions ranged from 'occasional tourists' (Gary Hardgrave, Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs; House of Representatives, 30 Aug. 2001) '; to 'café latte poor' (Senator Robert Ray, former Labor Minister for Immigration), which assumes that only the poor can be refugees. Such descriptions suggested that the asylum seekers were dishonest imposters. But the term 'illegals' lowers asylum seekers to the status of 'non-people' and this gives others the licence to treat them in a way that may be different to those who are 'people'. This is reinforced by the fact that the asylum seekers are neither nice nor poor, and therefore cannot expect to attract support from the government (and, to a large extent from the opposition). The 'bully' image of the asylum seekers was propagated by comments on the behaviour of those allegedly harming their children, described by Ruddock as 'carefully planned and premeditated' (The Age, 14 Feb. 2002). It was reinforced by Peter Reith, who described the action as a 'premeditated attempt to force their way into the country' (The Age, 8 Aug. 2001). When Kim Beazley said: 'It is not unhumanitarian (sic) to try to deter criminals' (The Age, 8 Nov. 2001), he left it to our imagination or choice whether, in supporting the government's position, he wanted to defend us from the asylum seekers or from the 'people smugglers' of whom they are victims. However he put the asylum seekers directly or by association into the criminal category. The suggestion that the asylum seekers might be economic migrants masquerading as refugees enabled the government to differentiate them from 'battlers', who are likely to support action against any 'crooks' who will take the little the battlers have away from them. So far asylum seekers as 'bad cruel people' have been differentiated from 'genuine refugees' of the past, from a nation of 'civilized', gentle, child-loving people, and from Aussie 'battlers'. 'Queue-jumper' is a term that differentiates asylum seekers from both the 'mainstream' and the succession of migrants who have come at various times. This term occurs in several debates (used e.g. by Senator Ron Boswell and Kay Ellison, 29 Aug. 2001). Firstly, it invokes the twin cultural concepts of fairness and orderliness. The 'destruction' of 'political correctness' and especially Pauline Hanson's expressed views regenerated the notion that the needy were unfairly getting something for nothing that others had to work for. This included Aborigines, recently arrived migrants or refugees, single mothers, and even the disabled. The fact that there were no queues in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or the Palestinian Territories in which people could stand to fill in immigration applications was not taken into account. Queuing is very much an Anglo concept of orderliness, reflecting the strong linear emphasis in British-derived cultures, even in academic discourse and school essays and in formal meetings as I have discussed elsewhere (e.g. Clyne, Inter-cultural Communication at Work). In another sense, the 'queue jumper' is a repugnant person to migrants of all backgrounds. The impression is gained from the designation that asylum seekers are taking the place in a tight quota of their relatives (or people like them) waiting to be admitted under the family reunion scheme. In actual fact, the number of asylum seekers recognized as refugees does not affect other categories such as family reunion, and in fact, the quota for the humanitarian category wasn't nearly filled in 2001. The government's handling of asylum seekers is thus underpinned by two types of moral principles -- the schoolmaster principle -- They have to behave themselves, otherwise they will be punished, and the schoolchild principle (based on the perception)-- It ain't fair; he pushed in. Another term that has played an important role in the asylum seeker discourse is 'border protection'. This term featured prominently in the 2001 election campaign, when both major parties vied to persuade voters that they were best equipped to protect Australia. It lives on in the public discourse and relates both to contemporary international politics and to traditional Australian xenophobia. The 2001 federal election was fought in the context of the terrorist attacks on the twin towers and the American-led coalition against international terrorism. Thus, the term 'border protection' was necessarily ambiguous. Was it terrorists or asylum seekers who were being kept out? Or were they perhaps the same people? Even though many of the asylum seekers were claiming to be escaping from persecution by the terrorists or those who were harbouring them. Maybe the linking association is with Islam? It is possible that 'border protection' (like the Liberal Party's 1998 election slogan 'For all of us') is also ambiguous enough to attract opponents of multiculturalism without alienating its supporters.2 Boat-loads of new arrivals have long caused fear among Australians. For much of Australia's British history, we were terrified of invasions from our north -- not just the 'yellow peril', it even included the Russians and the French, from whom Australians were protected by fortresses along the coast. This was immortalized in the final verse of the politically incorrect early version of Advance Australia Fair: Should foreign foe e'er sight our coast Or dare a foot to land, We'll rouse to arms like siers of yore To guard our native strand; Brittania then shall surely know, Beyond wide oceans roll Her sons in fair Australia's land Still keep a British soul, In joyful strains, etc. In fact, the entire original version of Advance Australia Fair has a predominantly exclusionist theme which contrasts with the inclusive values embodied in the present national anthem. While our 'politically correct' version has 'boundless plains to share' with 'those who've come across the seas', they are only open to 'loyal sons' in the original, which is steeped in colonial jingoism. The gender-inclusive 'Australians all' replaces 'Australia's sons' as the opening appellation. Are our politicians leading us back from an inclusive and open identity? I do not have space to go into the opposing discourse, which has come largely from academic social scientists, former prime ministers, and ministers of both major parties, current politicians of the minor parties, and journalists from the broadsheet press and the ABC. Objections are often raised against the 'demonisation' and 'dehumanisation' of the asylum seekers. In this short article, I have tried to demonstrate the techniques used to do this. The use of 'illegal' and 'queue jumper' to represent asylum seekers differentiates them from 'refugees' and 'migrants' and has removed them from any category with whom existing Australians should show solidarity. What makes them different is that they are cruel, even to their children, dishonest and imposters, badly behaved, unfair and disorderly – enemies of the Australian people, who want to deprive them of their sovereignty. It is interesting to see this in contrast to the comment of a spokesperson from Rural Australians for Refugees (AM, Radio National, 26 Jan. 2002): 'We can't recognise our country anymore which was based on fairness and fair go'. Notes This is based on 'When the discourse of hatred becomes respectable – does the linguist have a responsibility?', a paper presented at the Australian Linguistic Society conference at Macquarie University, July 2001. Some of the same data was discussed in 'The discourse excluding asylum seekers – have we been brainwashed?' Australian Language Matters 10: 3-10, by the same author. Research assistance from Felicity Grey is gratefully acknowledged. 2 I thank Felicity Meakins for this suggestion. References Clyne, Michael. Inter-Cultural Communication at Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Clyne, Michael. 'Establishing Linguistic Markers of Racism.' Language and Peace. Ed. C. Schäffner and A.Wenden. Dartmouth: Aldershot, 1995. 111-18. MacCallum, Mungo. Girt by Sea (Quarterly Essay). Melbourne: Black, 2002. Markus, Andrew. 'John Howard and the Naturalization of Bigotry.' The Resurgence of Racism. Ed. G.Gray and C.Winter. Clayton: Monash University, Department of History (Monash Publications in History 24), 1997. 79-86. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Clyne, Michael. "Saving Us From Them" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Clyne.html &gt. Chicago Style Clyne, Michael, "Saving Us From Them" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Clyne.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Clyne, Michael. (2002) Saving Us From Them. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Clyne.html &gt ([your date of access]).