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The 2013 Defence White Paper places greater emphasis than its predecessors on defence engagement, and begins to link regional security to the defence of Australia itself. It does not explain, however, what Australia has to do to achieve its objectives, or what commitments it would have to enter to do so. Overall, the White Paper moves towards a reinterpretation of 'self-reliance' that focuses more on the way in which Australia would operate in a coalition conflict, but developing a new defence strategy that links force structure, posture and employment to the achievement of Australia's strategic objectives is left to future White Papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2013 White Paper reaffirms the centrality of the US Alliance for Australia. It identifies a number of concrete areas for future cooperation and provides the foundation for developing greater strategic ties with China while remaining firmly anchored in the US camp. It is less clear, however, when it comes to Australia's future contribution to burden-sharing within the Alliance. Putting actions behind the goal to play a greater role in Southeast Asia will be an important litmus test for the alliance relationship. In many ways, the White Paper reflects a phase of re-orientation in the Alliance: away from operations further afield towards the increasing security dynamics in Australia's own region. As the future of China's trajectory-and US-Sino strategic relations—is still very much uncertain, the 'hedging' approach taken White Paper's approach makes sense. What happens if US-Sino strategic relations become more competitive is left to another day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This summary paper for the symposium provides a brief overview of the papers by Craig Veitch, John Beard and Max Kamien that deal with the environmental, socioeconomic and political descriptors of ‘rurality’. Those three papers deal with a number of fundamental truths about rural and remote health, including the fact that internal migration is an important and poorly understood factor in determining community and health outcomes. A brief treatment of the issue suggests that selective internal migration is likely to mean that the burden of illness in rural and remote areas is even higher than that suggested by the published figures. The paper then asserts that thinking in the rural and remote health sector in Australia focuses largely on the negative aspects of the current characteristics of rural areas. A self-evident definition of ‘rurality’ is offered that has it defined by the set of factors that currently characterise places, communities and individuals outside the major cities. The paper suggests that each of these characteristics has an upside or benefit, as well as a downside or risk, and that giving greater attention to the former will provide a better basis for informing rural health policy and practice than the deficit view alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2000 the Howard government formed a consultative committee to review defence policy and gauge public opinion on defence issues. It concentrated on the impact of budgetary stringency and dramatic strategic change and supported increased defence spending on equipment to cater for high-level threats. Was there a thorough review? Inconsistencies occurred in the reports developed from the review and statements made by senior policy-makers while it was being conducted. The way the review was undertaken points to conceptual tensions in Australia's strategic culture and serious problems with entrenched interests in the services. Unless these challenges are addressed, a thorough review of defence policy cannot be undertaken. The review process itself needs to be reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the wholesale destruction of priceless and irreplaceable historical records in Australia during World War II. Impact of Australia's involvement in the war on the policy on waste materials; Features of the plan for the salvage of waste materials; Results of salvage collection in the country; Four types of salvage activities; Historical records destroyed during the campaign.

The application of engagement strategies to ensure democracy of decisions is increasingly valued and adopted by governments to ensure trust in the process and ownership of the outcome. This paper describes the approach and methods used to engage early childhood education and care (ECEC) and outside school hours care (OSHC) stakeholders in the contemporizing and updating of Australia's national Approved Learning Frameworks (ALFs): Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (EYLF) and My Time Our Place: Framework for School Age Care (MTOP). Theoretical underpinnings of a robust stakeholder engagement strategy ensured a range of methods were developed to communicate with and encourage participation by the diversity of stakeholders who are invested in ECEC and OSHC in Australia -- broadly defined as approved providers, teachers, educators, families, children and young people, regulatory authorities and other professionals who provide support and advice. A mixed-method, sequential 3-Stage design was developed to gather the insights, responses, and perspectives of stakeholders who provided, worked in, used, attended, or supported ECEC and/or OSHC settings. Stakeholder feedback included survey ratings and written comments, focus group and panel discussions, educator documentation and video-diaries, and the writings, talking, and drawings of children and young people. Evaluation methods focus on the number, diversity, and depth of stakeholder responses. In conclusion, we reflect on the usefulness, benefits, limitations, and effectiveness of our approach to participatory engagement to inform government policy development and decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of Australians use the private health system every year. They should receive safe, high-quality, value-based care. However, poor policy and inadequate regulation of medical technology is driving low-value care at great expense to consumers and the broader health system. Key drivers include the Prescribed List of Medical Devices and Human Tissue, gaps in quality and safety controls for devices being used, and marketing and conflicts of interest. All of these should be addressed to reduce low-value care in Australia's private health system, so consumers are protected from harm and limited health budgets are used effectively. What is known about the topic? With health expenditure rising unsustainably, there is a growing focus on ways to reduce low-value care to improve health outcomes and eliminate unnecessary costs. What does this paper add? This paper details drivers of low-value care in Australia's private health system and recommendations to overcome them. Drivers include the Prescribed List of Medical Devices, gaps in safety and quality controls, and conflicts of interest and marketing. What are the implications for practitioners? These insights are relevant to clinicians, researchers, policymakers, consumers and health business leaders with an interest in low-value care. This article belongs to the Special Issue: Value-based Healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis in the 2013 White Paper of international defence engagement highlights the important co-operative activities that Australian Defence Force personnel and Defence officials conduct in, and with, other countries. These activities can create vital synergies for Australia, but their benefits should be neither assumed nor overstated. In particular, they need to be assessed in the broader context of the White Paper's narrative, which is focused primarily on a rationalisation of the gap between the ends and means of defence policy. In that context, the role of Australia's international defence engagement risks being portrayed disproportionately. In the most critical dimension of such engagement, the alliance relationship with the United States, Australia's capacity for burden-sharing and value-adding is diminishing, not expanding. In other forms of international defence engagement, the White Paper's emphases seem designed to compensate for budgetary shortfalls and other deficiencies elsewhere in the policy narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family violence is becoming increasingly visible in Australia, with many state and federal governments taking on more responsibility to address family violence and its impacts on those affected. Current efforts are focused on practice frameworks, identifying and responding to risk factors, and social justice frameworks including legislating against family violence in a range of jurisdictions and addressing more broadly the structural and cultural forces that perpetuate violence and further oppress those victimised. Family violence is not unique to Australia, with prevalence rates internationally suggesting family violence occurs irrespective of country, race, age, culture, effectiveness of social policies or socioeconomic status. This paper explores relevant foundational concepts of Bowen family systems theory (BFST) as it relates to family violence and explores opportunities to evolve practice in this area. BFST offers a unique contribution towards addressing family violence, particularly in relation to the public health challenge of addressing family polyvictimisation. The paper also explores how BFST conceptualises family violence and the role of the professional in working with the family as a single emotional unit. The unique focus of BFST on observing and defining self within the emotional family unit through observation of the underlying multigenerational emotional patterns of functioning provides unique opportunities to evolve and develop both the capacity of clinicians and responses to families who are navigating the serious and challenging impacts of family violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crime rates in Australia have declined or been steady over the past decade yet prison populations are at all-time highs. Similarly, unemployment rates have been low but unemployment for those ex-prisoners seeking work is very high. In this paper, we draw on the findings of an Australia-wide survey of government-funded employment service providers who support working-aged Australians including ex-prisoners in their search for work. We find that the heterogeneity of the needs of ex-prisoners coupled with the frugality and inflexibility of government policies and practices frustrates the abilities of these agencies to provide services to this target group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted countries all over the world, not only in relation to public health responses, but on multiple other societal levels. The pandemic has uncovered structural inequalities within and across societies and highlighted how race remains a powerful lens through which public policy responses are constructed and pursued. This paper examines (im)mobilities in Australia in the context of Asian, and more specifically Chinese-Australian citizens and residents, and how these have been framed in racialized discourses that justified exclusionary practices reminiscent of the White Australia ideology. The paper focuses on how Chinese Australians' mobilities have been (mis)represented and attacked in public and political discourse with particular attention to the situation of Chinese international students' (im)mobilities. Our conceptual attention in this paper, however, is not only on the racialization of mobilities but also immobilities, underpinned by an understanding of the relationality between Othered 'migrants' and hosts, as well as between mobility and immobility. We conclude by discussing future patterns of mobility, how these will impact prospective migrants including international students, and what future forms of mobilities might mean for Australia as a country highly dependent on migrants for its economic, social and cultural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technologies have enhanced the capacity for organisations across many sectors to produce, publish, and disseminate research in a variety of formats, and a great deal of it is sought and used in public policy and practice‐related research, yet this diversity is often overlooked in studies of research use. While the need for diverse research sources and formats for public policy and practice is increasingly acknowledged, there have been few studies which articulate and categorise what this diversity looks like in practice, and how research is filtered and selected based on genre, source, and other facets. This article reports on a large‐scale online survey and semi‐structured interviews with research users across multiple sectors in Australia on the materials they access and use for policy and practice work. The results indicate that research users are active information seekers who require online access to diverse genres and formats produced by a range of sources and sectors. However, respondents also faced many barriers to research use, including the cost of subscriptions for academic journals, discoverability of reports and data, poor management of publications by organisations including government, and the time required for filtering and evaluation. Based on these findings I argue that policy research requires a far greater variety of genres and sources than is generally recognised with implications for the way research use and the research publishing system is understood and managed in Australia. Points for practitioners: Policy research and implementation requires diverse online sources and resources from multiple sectors, including reports, discussion papers, evaluations, and data, produced by organisations (grey literature), as well as journals and books.However, this paper finds there are major barriers to discovery, filtering, and access to diverse research publications for practitioners, resulting in poor productivity and policy outcomes.To improve the use of evidence for policy and practice, we must invest in efficient discovery, access, and management systems for diverse research publications. Summary at a glance Research publications used for public policy and practice in Australia are far more diverse, dynamic, and multisector than is generally recognised with implications for the way we understand and manage the research publishing system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate political activity by large firms has increased in a range of western countries and in Australia. There has also been an increased tendency for large firms to lobby individually on firm-centred agendas. Both trends have seen large firms engaging in institutional adaptation, primarily through developing dedicated government relations functions (GRF). The last research on this topic in Australia was thirty years ago (Bell and Warhurst [1993]. "Business Political Activism and Government Relations in Large Companies in Australia." Australian Journal of Political Science 28: 201–220.) and this paper updates this earlier research. It also frames the relevant developments as an important set of institutional challenges, not only for government relations (GR) managers within corporate hierarchies, but also in interacting with and influencing other key institutional interlocutors, especially government policy makers. The way in which GR managers deal with such challenges through building supportive relations with key internal and external interlocutors, and especially how this shapes the business-government relationship more broadly, is a key focus of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2007, 'Closing the Gap' between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people has been an ambition of Australian state and federal governments in areas including education, employment, and health. This paper examines media responses to government policies aimed at closing the achievement gap in schools. The paper analyses print and online newspaper articles in national and capital city/state-based newspapers that reported on the implementation and success of Closing the Gap policies in Australia's schools. The paper argues that media narratives are often based on NAPLAN results, data sourced from the MySchool website, or newspaper-created metrics that support their own narrative. This paper highlights the narratives being purported to readers via the selective nature of newspaper data, and subsequently how these narratives attempt to influence the public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia has been widely condemned for its harsh and comprehensive external border controls that seek to control the inward mobility of would-be asylum seekers through visa denial, interdiction and offshore detention. Less widely discussed is the fact that internal controls have been repeatedly ramped up over the past two decades. This includes the administrative removal of lawfully-present non-citizens following visa cancellation on character grounds under s501 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). Automatic visa cancellation was introduced in 2014 for non-citizens sentenced to a prison term of 12  months or more, or for certain offences, bypassing individualised decision-making and raising the spectre of a visa cancellation pipeline feeding a highly automated deportation machinery. In an age of increasingly automated forms of governance, a key question that arises is the role that has been played by automated systems in achieving what has been a seismic shift in practice, and the normative implications of any developments towards automation within the visa cancellation and removal systems. This paper outlines the shift towards automation in other systems of governance in Australia—most notably the notorious Robodebt scheme—before examining automation in Australia’s visa cancellation system. Documentary analysis of recent parliamentary inquiries, independent reports and government policy is used to piece together the development of inter-agency data exchange practices and automation over three specific periods—historical practice pre-2014, post-2014 to the present, and proposed future developments. We conclude that Australia’s s501 visa cancellation system is neither automated nor automatic. Rather, the 2014 law reform gave rise to a ‘surveillance fantasy’ with immense consequences for non-citizens, particularly those who face long days in immigration detention at the conclusion of their prison sentence. We show that while concerns about increasing automation are well-founded, systems based on less sophisticated forms of information handling and reliant on human decision-making nevertheless continue to raise age-old questions concerning efficiency, accuracy and fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in how policy processes can better incorporate the values of the communities they serve, yet policymakers face numerous challenges when they seek to embed values into policies. This paper builds on existing values research to develop a bespoke policy values framework for Australia, based on the popular notion of a 'fair go'. While the fair go is often associated with a narrow set of equality and procedural justice values, we show that it has a much wider range of historical and contemporary meanings, which taken together provide a useful starting point for understanding policy values important to Australians. We apply our framework to two policy domains—housing and immigration—to show that it offers an effective heuristic to help policymakers understand key value priorities and conflicts in these policy areas. The paper provides theoretical insights regarding the role of values in policymaking and offers a practical tool for use when designing, implementing, and evaluating policies. Points for practitioners: Community values should inform public policy decision‐making in a democracy. However, incorporating values into policy is difficult because of the wide range of different values to consider, the need to manage tensions and conflicts between values, and the time pressures often faced by policymakers.The popular and enduring notion of the 'fair go' embodies multiple value positions, which cover a range of different values that matter to Australians, making it a good basis for an Australian policy values framework.Our fair go values framework is designed to serve as a heuristic for policymakers when designing and evaluating public policies. It is not intended as a comprehensive guide to value debates in all policy areas, but offers a starting point for quickly appreciating the key value priorities and conflicts in relation to a policy issue. Policymakers should wherever possible follow up with detailed research to understand the complex value debates of different policy issue areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia has a long history of privately owned utility price regulation, one that is little known. This price control was designed to restrain the market power of several utilities (gas, rail, tramways, electricity, and water). The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to establish what types of price control that were used in Australia in the utilities sector before the First World War and to determine the degree to which this price control influenced efficiency. As price levels in this era were set in legislation, the lack of flexibility led to less-than-optimal outcomes, and eventually and led to new approaches were developed after 1912 to the utilities that remained in private ownership, and in some cases influenced the movement in Australia towards government control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project Synergy is a digital mental health tool for assessment, referral and follow-up of people with mental health problems. The Australian federal government Department of Health entered an AUD33 million formal funding arrangement with InnoWell, a proprietary company vehicle (primarily the consultancy firm PwC and University of Sydney) to continue development of Project Synergy. This followed an initial federal National Health and Medical Research Council grant of AUD5.5 million over the previous 3 years. However, based on the assessment of peerreviewed research data, the Project Synergy/InnoWell platform does not seem to have demonstrated clinical outcomes of healthcare value to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the approaches to poverty elimination adopted by the UK government White Paper on international development and the Australian government's review of its overseas aid programme (Ausaid Review). Both documents adopt sustainable poverty reduction/elimination as the key policy leitmotiv of overseas aid policy. However, a difference of approach is in evidence. The UK White Paper ventriloquizes the DAC and World Summit social policy targets and ambitiously elevates its own departmental policy and values to that of government policy overall--though without specifying the instruments by which this consistency can be assured. The silence on the resource implications of the overriding objective of poverty elimination, in terms of budgetary provision, could create a credibility gap between intentions and programme implementation. The Ausaid Review, on the other hand, hones its cutting edge on the complex, often self-serving array of development programmes that are often lacking in focus and harboured from external scrutiny by an overprotective bureaucracy. The Review suggests the adoption of a single value statement of 'poverty reduction through sustainable development' by which all programmes should be judged. The predominantly Australian-based tertiary education scholarship programme is criticized for pandering to domestic educational constituencies and reflecting a weak linkage to poverty reduction. However, in the final analysis the narrow geographical focus of the programme, the privileged status of PNG and the level of tied aid remain substantially intact--despite serious question marks over their poverty content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilient healthcare (RHC) emphasises the importance of adaptive capacity to respond to unanticipated crises such as the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic but there are few examples of RHC research focusing on the decisions taken by macro level policy makers. The Smaggus et al paper analyses the actions of two governments in Canada and Australia as described in media releases from a resilience perspective. The paper clearly articulates the need for conceptual clarity when analysing system resilience, and integrates three theoretical perspectives to understand the types of government responses and how they were related to resilience. The paper makes a valuable contribution to the developing RHC evidence base, but challenges remain in identifying conceptual frameworks, researching macro level resilience, including identifying and accessing reliable macro level data sources, analysing interactions between macro, meso and micro system levels, and understanding how resilience manifests at different temporal and spatial scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral public policy (BPP) has become increasingly popular with governments across the globe but what defines it in practice? It is not a concrete concept, encompassing a series of instruments, evaluation methods and theoretical influences. Using the findings from an ethnographic study of a behavioral insights team in the Australian Government this paper interrogates how BPP has been translated from these discrete components into practice by policymakers. This research posits that a significant degree of adaptation has taken place during this translation process. Participants could be referring to multiple different things when speaking about and implementing BPP, sometimes even communicating at cross-purposes. This paper incorporates Bevir and Rhodes 'traditions' to existing policy translation research to further interrogate how actors make meaning from and adapt ideas like BPP. This framework makes it possible to explore which translations carry greater influence and asks what this means for the BPP agenda moving forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young women in Australia experience serious risks from intimate partner violence (IPV) as a form of family violence. However, there has been a lack of attention to the impact of this on young women and, as a result, these risks are not well understood. This article critically examines existing literature, policy and research and in doing so, specifically explores the ways in which young women aged between 10 and 20 years old are represented and positioned in contemporary family violence discourses. Framed by a review of socio-political and cultural history, the paper highlights the early colonial, patriarchal foundations of Australia, which have specific implications for the challenges that contemporary young women experience in situations of IPV. With a particular emphasis on the Australian context, this article employs both an intersectional and critical feminist lens, with a key focus on the dimensions of adolescent development and youth social geographies. Focusing specifically on these dimensions, including development, gender and age, highlights the important role that feminist social work perspectives and practices can contribute to uncovering, understanding and responding to young women's experiences of intimate partner violence through policy and advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the changing currency of languages in the context of migration and mobility based on case studies of Filipino migrants in Australia. Drawing on two sociolinguistic studies conducted with and for Filipino migrants, I highlight how the "monolingual mindset" (Clyne, 2008) reinforced by the "White-English complex" (Piller, Torsh, & Smith-Khan, 2023) negatively impact on the value and currency of Philippine languages. As an alternative, I offer the concept multilingual mindset as an inclusive framework for valuing multilingual migrants in the diaspora. I first introduce the linguistic ecology and national language policies of both the Philippines and Australia to set the scene for my argument. I then map out the migration trends in both countries and the simultaneous socio-political events that have driven the growth of Filipino migration in Australia and introduce the two sociolinguistic studies with and for (Blackledge, 2006; Tetteh, 2015) Filipino migrants. This is followed by the presentation and critical discussion of three key conceptual arguments of this paper derived from these studies. Employing the "monolingual mindset" (Clyne, 2008) and "White-English complex" (Piller et al., 2023) as lenses, I then critically discuss how these concepts are detrimental to heritage language maintenance and inclusive multilingualism and argue that the maintenance of migrant languages in the diaspora would best be facilitated by an adoption of a multilingual mindset. The paper concludes with a discussion on the significance of the multilingual mindset to sociolinguistic studies and migration linguistics (Borlongan, 2023), in general, and to language attitudes, language practices, and language policies across different sectors, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Projections for the number of people displaced by climate change globally are startling and vary from 100 million to 1 billion; however, a widely repeated prediction is for 200 million by the mid-twenty-first century. Although difficult to estimate, some proportion of these people will cross borders and end up in Global North countries. This paper offers a provocation on the implications for Australian cities. It reviews Australia's significant strategic planning policies in light of a possible mid-future surge in environmental migrants and considers how such policies could better prepare Australian cities. The paper concludes that a National Urban Policy could strengthen strategic preparedness for environmental migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a central policy of the Chinese government. This paper analyses the evolution of BRI narratives from 2013 to 2020 in Australian newspaper journalism. In the field of media and communications, there has been a lack of analysis regarding the BRI narratives in Australia. By employing frame analysis, this paper fills in the gap to record the evolution of the BRI narratives in Australian journalism. This paper selects six representative journalists' works from four Australian mainstream newspapers: The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), The Age, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review (AFR). It shows how the BRI has been gradually politicized and the BRI narratives in Australian journalism shifted in tone from mostly positive to highly critical. More concretely, this paper elucidates that from 2013 to 2020, the BRI has been gradually related to allying with like-minded countries to stand up against China, human rights violations of the Chinese government in Xinjiang and Tibet, Australia's sovereignty, Australia's global order choice between China-led authoritarianism and liberal democracy, and the debt trap strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2015, religious freedom has become a heated and divisive political and public policy issue in Australia. While rarely defined or interrogated, 'religious freedom' does not exist as a value-neutral principle with a single meaning. Rather, its discursive constructions are varied and serve to promote certain interests at the expense of others. Offering a new perspective on the politics of religious freedom, this paper draws together four separate studies of the public discourse of religious freedom in Australia (spanning 35 years from 1984 to 2019) to chart how its framing has changed over time and to explore the implications of these changes. This analysis reveals three major discourses of religious freedom emerging over three phases: 'religious diversity'; 'balancing rights'; and 'freedom of belief'. This paper demonstrates how, once used to promote a progressive social agenda, religious freedom has become weaponised by the Christian Right and culture warriors in their battle to entrench in law the ongoing acceptability of discrimination against LGBTIQ+ people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landmark 2021 Resolution on Oral Health by the 74th World Health Assembly has elevated the importance of oral health into the global health policy agenda. This has led to the development and adoption of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy on Oral Health in 2022. It acknowledged the need to integrate oral health as part of universal health coverage (UHC), which is supported by national clinical leadership for oral health. Although Australia is a signatory WHO member state, it is yet to appoint a Commonwealth Chief Dental Officer to provide national clinical leadership. This commentary provides a background on the current issues on population oral health in Australia, an insight into the Australian oral healthcare system, and explores some of the challenges and learnings related to previous Commonwealth dental programs. This paper highlights why expertise in dental public health is required to steer national oral health policy that is focused on prevention and early intervention. A population oral health approach for UHC should be informed by evidence, prioritise and address oral health inequities, and be co-ordinated by national clinical leadership for oral health. What is known about the topic? Many countries, including Australia, currently do not provide universal access to affordable oral healthcare. There are significant oral health inequities that exist in Australia, particularly for priority populations who are at higher risk for oral diseases. What does this paper add? National clinical leadership on oral health is needed to implement evidence-based oral health policy. This commentary provides justification for the Australian Government to appoint a Commonwealth Chief Dental Officer. What are the implications for practitioners? Strengthening advocacy efforts by the public health practitioners and other stakeholders is important to promote oral health as a critical health issue for urgent action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sale of raw drinking milk from cows is banned in Australia due to regulatory requirements that all milk must be pasteurised. Such a prohibition is based on concern about public health and safety risks, and was upheld in the most recent review of raw milk product regulation undertaken by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). However, this decision is not one that is universally accepted, with some people challenging the conclusion that raw milk is dangerous, and choosing to still source and drink it. In this paper, the contested regulation of raw milk is examined by questioning the normative assumption that the object in question, raw milk, is a singular entity, and one which is always dangerous. Drawing on analysis of six FSANZ documents released as part of its raw milk review, this paper discusses the practices that stabilise raw milk as always risky; processes that are found to wash away the possibility of other, potentially safe, versions of raw milk. It concludes by finding that such stabilisation has tangible impacts for public health policy and regulation, including limiting the parameters within which debate can occur, and precluding the possibility that other versions of raw milk could exist, or be accounted for in food safety regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian elections are digitising. Electronic ballots, electronic certified lists, electronic scrutiny, and electronic data are becoming part of the electoral status quo. The digitisation of elections in Australia induces new vulnerabilities that malign foreign entities can exploit to subvert the nation's democratic sovereignty. Problems such as inauthenticity, data insecurity, and disinformation are amplified in today's epoch of digital era governance. Since these problems have the potential to erode the legitimacy of Australian elections, it is imperative to deepen understanding of these risks to optimise the nation's democratic resilience. Through applying a conceptual framework derived from democratic theory and public policy, this paper assesses the vulnerability of Australia's elections to foreign interference based on the Australian electoral system irrespective of adversary capabilities. It finds that Australia's federal elections are relatively secure from hard cyber security risks due to digital-analogue hybridity in electoral processes, but they are vulnerable to soft cyber risks such as digital disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: School consolidation reforms are underway in regional New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The purpose of this paper is to establish an evidence base of research literature on school consolidation in regional, rural and remote locations. Design/methodology/approach: A scoping study of empirical literature on school consolidation, with a particular focus on regional, rural and remote education, since the year 2000 was undertaken. A corpus of 35 papers were identified and subjected to analysis based on: year of publication, country of origin, unit of analysis, data sources, timeframe and theoretical model. Findings: There remains a limited evidence base for the success of school consolidation reforms for turning around student outcomes. In addition, a number of social implications are experienced by communities losing their local school. These issues are amplified in regional, rural and remote locations. Practical implications: School consolidation reforms are used by governments/systems wanting to reduce costs and address issues of student disengagement and under-achievement. Despite a lengthy history internationally, there is at best mixed evidence regarding these reforms. With a consider disparity gap between urban and regional, rural and remote school outcomes, robust evidence on the success of reforms has major policy implications for government, systems, educators and communities. Originality/value: With reforms already underway in NSW (and elsewhere), the need for a rigorous and robust evidence base, such as this scoping study, is timely and significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International tax justice issues, such as corporate tax avoidance, have gained particular salience over the past decade in an environment of financial instability and government austerity. Civil society involvement has ranged from trade unions and NGOs calling for parliamentary inquiries to civil disobedience by less established actors. Since the international financial crisis, how have levels of contentious collective action around these issues waxed and waned? Is contentiousness associated most with domestic politics or global media events like the Panama Papers? This paper uses an original hand-coded dataset from five national newspapers in the United Kingdom and Australia between 2008 and 2016. Political claims analysis (PCA) was used to collect all instances of claims around international tax justice and compare the types of actions and the different frames used by civil society actors. In both countries, mobilising grievances are generated most strongly in the period after domestic austerity policies are introduced. The qualitative coding provides evidence of accompanying frame alignment in these periods, as international taxation is problematized in terms of national revenue, demonstrating scale shift from the global to the national political stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National equity policy debates in education are often driven by issues of disadvantage, opportunity, and achievement. However, little is known about how a disadvantaged position mediates people's ability to transform opportunities into valuable achievements. Using African refugees in Australia as an empirical case, and drawing on a mixed method of research, this paper aims to address this knowledge gap. The main sources of data were policy documents, population census reports, and national higher education statistics. The findings highlight limitations with existing higher education equity policies in Australia and the extent to which African refugees have benefited from generic equity programs. In making sense of the data, the paper develops a new conceptual model by innovatively synthesizing the capability approach to social justice and a theory of social reproduction. The model offers an analytical lens to understand the dialectical interplay between objective contexts and subjective conditions that mediate substantive opportunity, conversion ability, and educational choice of the refugee youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between policy compliance, the emergence of alternate epistemes and authorities in online spaces, and the decline of trust and legitimacy in democratic institutions. Drawing on insights from public policy, regulation theory, and political theory, the paper critically engages with scholarship on "policy-takers" to illuminate the tensions of compliance and legitimacy in liberal states. It proposes a compliance--legitimacy matrix that identifies the features of policy compliance--including consent, legitimacy, expertise, and trust--and their relationship to the disaggregation of policy knowledge. The article applies this framework to a case study of social media posts that respond to policy information during the management of the Covid-19 pandemic in Australia. Through analysis of these posts, the study reveals the distrust in "the science" and experts advocated by government and the calls from skeptic groups for noncompliance with public health measures. The paper argues that public policy faces an epistemic crisis of public confidence, with significant downstream consequences for compliance with public policy initiatives that has been brought on both by the failures of states to cultivate trust in science and the government. The compliance--legitimacy matrix offers a useful tool for policymakers to anticipate and address objections from policy-takers and to preempt and diffuse their fears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Force majeure circumstances, such as those witnessed in the COVID-19 pandemic, have been used to justify new technologies of governance as policy-makers around the world began to realise the magnitude of the problem and its political implications. In Australia, the coronavirus crisis focussed attention on the vital role education plays in society and was used as an opportunity by policy-makers to reinforce an agenda that, over the past two decades, has tied education policy-making to the economy and 'national interest'. Indeed, Australia's growing federal involvement, with respect to schooling policy was continued in the pandemic as the Australian Prime Minister (PM) created a national cabinet to deal with the crisis, consisting of the PM and state and territory leaders. However, despite the ongoing ambition of a national policy agenda pursued by federal policy-makers, fault lines appeared. Informed by Foucauldian notions of discourse, governmentality and biopolitics, this paper explores how Australia's federal Coalition government endeavoured to manage the population at the outset of the pandemic and subjectified teachers as responsible in the service of the economy. While COVID-19 was a crisis in search of a narrative, federal policy-makers experienced pushback as state and territory leaders assumed control and teachers refused subject positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to explore the extent to which the South Australian flexible learning option (FLO) secondary school enrolment strategy supports some of the most vulnerable and disengaged students to simultaneously engage in secondary- and higher-education, skills and work-based learning; second, to explore the degree to which this FLO enrolment strategy addresses the United Nations (UN) principles of responsible management education and 17 sustainable development goals.Design/methodology/approach The approach includes a practice perspective, field-notes and documents analysis.Findings This paper finds the flexibility inherent in the FLO enrolment strategy goes some way to addressing inequity in education outcomes amongst those who traditionally disengage from education and work-based learning. Findings also highlight ways in which the FLO enrolment strategy addresses some of the UN principals and 17 goals.Research limitations/implications This paper supports the work of HESWBL by calling for future research into the long-term benefits of flexible education strategies that support HESWBL, through exploring the benefits to young people, from their perspective, with a view to providing accountability.Social implications The paper offers an example of a way a practice perspective can explore an education strategy that addresses “wicked problems” (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Currently, “wicked problems” that pervade member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development include intergenerational poverty, under-education and unemployment.Originality/value This paper is valuable because it explores from a practice perspective, how a secondary education enrolment strategy supports vulnerable students engage in their secondary schooling, while simultaneously supporting students achieve higher education, skills and work-based learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, a range of financial services, including education bonds, high interest personal loans and credit card debt, have long been used to help families pay for the cost of schooling. However, innovative financial technology (fintech) solutions are emerging which align with the growth of a lower risk 'buy now, pay later' phenomenon. Fintechs claim to expand financial inclusion to more people, particularly when their lending activities are compared to traditional banking services. This paper focuses on Edstart, a fintech edu-business that provides low-risk lending for families managing the cost of school fees. In conducting qualitative content analysis of Edstart's website and blog, I catalogue its market-making activities and how it is leveraging logics of school choice to create a new education service market in Australia that normalises school privatisation and the payment of school fees. I end this paper with a discussion of how school choice—as a key policy reform of governments—is associated with the rollback of the welfare state and increased levels of individual financialisation. I argue that parent consumers have become increasingly invested in choosing the 'best' school for their children, and that this often increases their level of private debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diagnostic imaging is increasingly being used in Australia to aid clinician diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making. There is concern that this increased use represents an overconsumption of inappropriate health services, which wastes finite resources and may cause direct or indirect harm to the patient. Australian health policies have primarily focused on increasing patient access to diagnostic imaging. While these policies address inequitable access and may lead to timely diagnosis and improved health outcomes, these benefits have not been weighed against the unintended harms. This perspective article will explore the unintended consequences of increasing access to diagnostic imaging as well as provide potential solutions to improve the effectiveness of policies in this area. What is known about the topic? When warranted, diagnostic imaging aids the diagnostic process by ruling in (or out) conditions that benefit from treatment and lead to improved patient outcomes. What does this paper add? This paper describes recent policies related to diagnostic imaging in Australia, discusses how increasing access may lead to unintended harms and create further inefficiencies in the system, and provides direction for future health policies in this area. What are the implications for practitioners? Addressing the inappropriate use of diagnostic imaging is crucial for the sustainability of the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community mobilisation is essential to prevent further biodiversity loss and protect the natural environment. This includes engaging in public- and private-sphere behaviours, and community support of relevant government policies. This purpose of this paper is to explore and compare the factors associated with public- and private-sphere nature conservation behaviour and policy support. We utilised data from a survey of 4,048 Australians, representative for age, gender, and geographic location, which measured engagement in nature conservation behaviours and support for diverse conservation policies. Hierarchical Multiple Regressions were conducted to assess relationships between behaviour and policy support with the key independent variables of awareness (of biodiversity issues), connection (to nature), and concern (about biodiversity issues), and socio-demographic covariates. Overall, community support for nature conservation policies was high, not just for incentive measures but for regulations and penalties. Regression models explained 22.9% of the variance in public-sphere behaviour, 30.2% of the variance in private-sphere behaviour, and 43.5% of the variance in policy support. Concern made one of the strongest contributions for all outcomes, and was substantially stronger for policy support compared to behaviour. Awareness and connection also made independent contributions to all outcomes. Socio-demographic variables explained a smaller proportion of unique variance for policy support (1.0%) compared to behaviour (public-sphere: 9.6%, private-sphere: 6.3%). Notably, for public-sphere behaviour, younger age explained almost as much variance as concern. Implications for practitioners and policymakers seeking to engage the general population in conservation support are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher shortages are a significant global problem disproportionally affecting "hardest-to-staff" schools and subjects. To better understand (inter)national policy responses to teacher shortages, this paper uses a Bacchian-inspired approach to critically examine proposals suggested as solutions in policy documents from England and Australia, and thus how the problem is being thought about especially in relation to hardest-to-staff contexts. We contend that the problem representations in the policy documents are narrowly conceived and need to be considered differently through the lenses of (re)professionalisation and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the Australian Federal Government's proposal for job training. Proposal to require all school-leavers to complete at least five years of job training; Lack of commitment by employers to on-the-job training; Lack of facilities for people to upgrade their job skills.

This article analyses the Australian Agency for International Development `s (AusAID) approach to overseas development assistance (ODA) through an examination of AusA ID's recent White Paper. The White Paper focuses on the nexus between poverty reduction and security in the Asia-Pacific region. We argue that the Paper's emphasis upon good governance as the key to poverty reduction and security is fundamentally flawed. This stems from the particular ideological and political conditions in which the Paper materialised. In focusing on good governance and security the Paper neglects more fundamental poverty reduction issues, while promoting policies that are difficult to implement and, when implemented, have highly problematic outcomes. This article examines the Australian-led intervention in Solomon Islands and the Australian aid programme in Indonesia as examples for the shortcomings of the approach articula ted in the White Paper. We conclude by examining alternative development policies that move beyond the neo-liberal orthodoxy endorsed by AusAID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to share reflections on the frontline delivery of a wrap-around secondary school re-engagement programme on compounding digital inequality during the COVID-19 lockdown. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents a deliberative reflection on practice and policy lessons learned while negotiating the digital divide during the COVID-19 lockdown in the delivery of the yourtown education youth engagement programme. Findings: Frontline youth worker practice lessons highlight the compounding effect of digital inequality on vulnerable young people who are already disengaged or disengaging from secondary education and the necessity for a reflexive, agile and adaptable practice response, particularly during unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Originality/value: This paper presents a wraparound service perspective and outlines important practice lessons gained from adapting an education re-engagement programme to respond to the COVID-19 lockdown in the Greater Brisbane area, Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dental caries, a non-communicable disease, is one of the most prevalent diseases globally and share common modifiable risk factors with obesity such as excess sugar intake. However, prioritization by governments to improve population oral health has been limited and is typically excluded from the discourse of public health policy development. Therefore, interventions that target dental caries can have other co-benefits including obesity prevention. In Victoria, Australia, local government authorities have a regulatory requirement to develop their Municipal Health and Wellbeing Plans. The aim of this paper is to identify whether prioritization for oral health by local government authorities in Victoria has changed through the subsequent renewal of the Victorian Public Health and Wellbeing Plans 2011–2015 and 2019–2023. Three desktop audits for all publicly available Municipal Health and Wellbeing Plans by local government authorities in Victoria were conducted between 2014 and 2022. Key terms related to oral health was searched within these policy documents and categorized into six indicators: (i) included oral health as a priority, (ii) linked healthy eating and oral health, (iii) supported the Achievement Program, (iv) included the Smiles 4 Miles program, (v) advocated for fluoridated drinking water, and (vi) included other strategies related to oral health. Overall, there was statistically significant reduction in five of the six indicators, with the exception for prioritization of other strategies related to oral health such as targeting excess sugar intake and smoking. A multi-sectoral approach, that includes oral health would be advantageous to address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to define what an Internet Referral Unit ('IRU') is by examining different IRUs in various jurisdictions and discerning their functions. It also makes a policy argument with respect to the implementation of an IRU in an Australian domestic setting. It does so by analysing Anglo-Saxon norms with respect to censorship and determining the best means of implementing an IRU that would give effect to rational public policy. It does so to highlight, through a legal history perspective and policy success perspective, that cybersecurity often brings with it new challenges to age-old questions. The paper posits that the establishment of an IRU would be consistent with Anglo-Saxon practice, leading to the issue of what legal frameworks would need to be established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A series of Community Pharmacy Agreements (Agreements) between the Federal government and a pharmacy-owners' body, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) have been influential policy in Australian community pharmacy (CP) since 1990. While ostensibly to support the public's access and use of medicines, the core elements of the Agreements have been remuneration for dispensing and rules that limit the establishment of new pharmacies. Criticism has focused on the self-interest of pharmacy owners, the exclusion of other pharmacy stakeholders from the Agreement negotiations, the lack of transparency, and the impact on competition. The objective of this paper is to determine the true nature of the policy by examining the evolution of the CPA from a policy theory perspective. Methods: A qualitative evaluation of all seven Agreement documents and their impact was undertaken using policy theories including a linear policy development model, Multiple Streams Framework, Incremental Theory, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the Theory of Economic Regulation, the Punctuated Equilibrium Framework, and Elite Theory. The Agreements were evaluated using four lenses: their objectives, evidentiary base, stakeholders and beneficiaries. Results: The PGA has acted as an elite organisation with long-standing influence on the policy's development and implementation. Notable has been the failure of other pharmacy stakeholders to establish broad-based advocacy coalitions in order to influence the Agreements. The incremental changes negotiated every 5 years to the core elements of the Agreements have supported the publics' access to medication, provided stability for the government, and security for existing pharmacy owners. Their impact on the evolution of pharmacists' scope of practice and through that, on the public's safe and appropriate use of medication, has been less clear. Conclusions: The Agreements can be characterised predominantly as industry policy benefiting pharmacy owners, rather than health policy. An emerging issue is whether incremental change will continue to be an adequate policy response to the social, political, and technological changes that are affecting health care, or whether policy disruption is likely to arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the influence of political traditions on policymaking at the interface of national and transnational governance. It uncovers various dimensions of influence on boundary-setting through policy change, derived from a case study examining how Australia reconceptualised longstanding freedom of residential movement and equal treatment for citizens across the Tasman. These policymaking activities spanned boundaries across policy subsystems at the interface of both domestic and transnational arenas, in response to perceived dilemmas. This paper focuses on the enabling role of neoliberal ideations to effect an agenda driven by more covert motives. In context of bilateral economic integration, conflicting traditions created a dilemma for Australia, which sought to maintain the advantages of the free labour-market whilst minimizing the problem of granting access to social security and citizenship to those perceived to be unsuitable. I find that Australia, in resolving this dilemma, allowed neoliberal conceptions of labour as a commodity, thereby enabling traditions of exclusion and border control, to override longstanding trans-Tasman traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational corporations (TNCs) shape population health both positively and negatively through their national and international social, political and economic power and influence; and are a vital commercial determinant of health. Individual and group advocacy and activism in response to corporate products, practices or policy influences can mediate negative health impacts. This paper discusses the unequal power relations existing between TNCs that promote their own financial interests, and activists and advocates who support population and environmental health by challenging corporate power. It draws on interview data from 19 respondents who informed 2 health impact assessments conducted on TNCs; 1 from the fast food industry, and 1 from the extractive industries sector. It reveals the types of strategies that civil society organizations (CSOs) have used to encourage TNCs to act in more health promoting ways. It discusses the extent to which these strategies have been effective, and how TNCs have used their power to respond to civil society action. The paper highlights the rewards, and the very real challenges faced by CSOs trying to change TNC practices related to health, within a neoliberal policy environment. It aims to provide evidence for socially oriented actors to inform their advocacy for changes in public policy or corporate practices that can contribute to improving population health and equity and tackling commercial determinants of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]