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The Australian Pharmacy Council (APC) is the national accreditation authority for pharmacy education and training in Australia. In 2020, APC published revised Accreditation Standards and a new Performance Outcomes Framework (POF). The POF details expected performance for pharmacy students at the point of graduation and for pharmacy graduates on completion of postgraduate training. The APC and the pharmacist regulator, the Pharmacy Board of Australia collaborated on a project to develop workplace‐based assessment (WBA) tools for use in assessing performance of pharmacy graduates in the postgraduate training period. The objectives of the project were to; identify and develop an initial suite of WBA tools; develop accompanying guidance and supporting documentation; seek feedback from stakeholders; and pilot the WBA tools in community and hospital settings. The WBA tools were developed through consultative process overseen by a group of education experts (a Technical Working Group) and a governance group. The latter comprising members from the Pharmacy Board and APC. The Technical Working Group agreed on the tools to develop based on an available Intern Year Assessment Blueprint and the tools were then drafted by a consultant. APC held consultative forums and a pilot study to gather feedback from intern pharmacists and preceptors. The project resulted in development of a suite of three types of WBA tools; Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), Case Based Discussions (CbD), and In Training Assessment (ITA) activities covering six areas of focus. All types of tools that were initially agreed upon were made available for use. The WBA tools address 15 performance outcomes in the POF. Future direction will involve further evaluation of the tools in diverse practice settings and expansion of the current suite of tools to cover additional performance outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia is unusual among developed countries both in lacking fleet‐wide vehicle carbon dioxide emission standards and in having a very low takeup of all‐electric vehicles. This paper outlines how fleet‐wide vehicle carbon dioxide emission standards operate and identifies mechanisms by which their absence might lead to a low takeup of electric vehicles in countries such as Australia. Although hard to verify one of those mechanisms in Australia (higher prices charged for all‐electric vehicles), it is easy to verify the unusually low number of models of all‐electric models made available for sale. The paper also outlines Australia's slow 15‐year journey towards standards, pointing to the possible role of political machinations and political caution in delaying their introduction. It identifies one group of employees with much to lose from a rapid uptake of electric vehicles—motor mechanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of development projects (e.g., new roads, mines, dams) are frequently required to assess and manage their impacts on threatened biodiversity. Here, we propose that the environmental legislation and standards that mandate such assessments are failing those threatened species and ecological communities listed as vulnerable. Using a case study of Australia's key environmental legislation, we highlight that vulnerable ecological communities receive no statutory protection, while vulnerable species are held to a less stringent standard in the impact assessment process compared with those that are endangered or critically endangered. In the 19 years since Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 was enacted, four times as many vulnerable species have declined in their threat status than have improved. Beyond Australia, we demonstrate the global relevance of this issue, as it applies to internationally recognized best practice impact assessment guidelines. These cases provide a cautionary tale: without greater attention and stricter assessment criteria in the impact assessment process, the vulnerable species of today risk becoming the endangered species of tomorrow, with all the attendant costs and missed opportunities for recovery that this implies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance management has been hailed by its proponents as an essential tool to enhance public service performance. Yet, its actual capacity to improve public service performance continues to be questioned by many academics. This research on a small group of Australian Public Service employees examines their perceptions on the efficacy of the performance management system in their agencies. The study respondents did not believe that their work behaviours had significantly changed in response to performance management. Obstacles to high performance include perceptions of a poorly designed performance measurement system, an inadequate level and mix of rewards offered, and inconsistencies in the implementation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses changes in the labour market in terms of the specific activities that workers perform in Australia. The analysis uses an interface of the United States Government's Occupational Information Network (O*NET) Generalised Worker Activities (GWA) taxonomy and Australian census employment data to provide an understanding of how the labour market has changed in terms of nine areas of work, such as physical activities and administering. Findings suggest that the intensity of worker activities in Australia has increased substantially for the whole of the labour force over a thirty-five-year period; however, these trends differ for different types of jobs, namely full-time and part-time work for men and women. When the worker activities are disaggregated into O*NET's nine areas of work, the results show marked increases in worker activities requiring interaction and mental processes and declines in areas that require physical activities. Implications for the labour market include the necessity for a continuing policy to improve methods to train and retrain the Australian labour force and the need for continued investment in the education sector well into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many public agencies now face dual pressures to meet external accountability demands on one hand, and improve their internal performance on the other. This begs the question whether the demands that are made on public agencies to externally report on their performance have a limited or wide ranging impact on the utilization of performance indicators (PIs) for internal improvements. This article addresses this question via a small group of public agencies and public accountability authorities in Australia. It also examines the main factors that affect the use of PIs for decision making. The evidence suggests that the agencies use PIs more for meeting external reporting requirements than for achieving internal improvements. Various constraints on the use of PIs were identified, mainly technical problems, and to a lesser extent, political and organizational issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance auditing (PA) is an important vehicle for assessing Value for Money (VFM) of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), as well as providing assurance to the Parliament and to the public about the accountability for the supporting strategic and operational frameworks. Experience to date with PPPs in Australia has been limited and mixed in terms of results. Few projects have reached the mature stage, let alone been completed. It has been suggested that we can learn from the audit approaches and systems developed by the National Audit Office in the UK. Australian Audit Offices need to ensure that they have robust PA/VFM auditing systems, analytical methodologies and tools in place to undertake quality evaluations at various stages of a PPP, but experience to date at federal and state levels also indicates that there is still a lot to do to get the basis elements of PPPs 'right'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both anecdotal and empirical lines of evidence have pointed out that frequent binge drinking has far more serious consequences than occasional bingeing. As a result, a lower penalty for heavy drinking will be estimated by combining the heavy bingers with individuals who binge on rare occasions and are not necessarily less productive. This article explores the drinking-earnings relationship based on a finer distinction between frequent and occasional bingeing, and an extension to female subjects. It finds that frequent bingers experience reduced earnings whereas non-bingers and occasional bingers earn a positive premium over abstainers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarises results from an evaluation of the adequacy and utility of the Australian Competency Standards for Entry-Level Occupational Therapists © (OT AUSTRALIA, 1994a). It comprised a two-part study, incorporating an online survey of key national stakeholders ( n  = 26), and 13 focus groups ( n  = 152) conducted throughout Australia with occupational therapy clinicians, academics, OT AUSTRALIA association and Occupational Therapy Registration Board representatives, as well as university program accreditors. The key recommendations were that: (i) urgent revision to reflect contemporary practice, paradigms, approaches and frameworks is required; (ii) the standards should exemplify basic competence at graduation (not within two years following); (iii) a revision cycle of five years is required; (iv) the Australian Qualifications Framework should be retained, preceded by an introduction describing the scope and nature of occupational therapy practice in the national context; (v) access to the standards should be free and unrestricted to occupational therapists, students and the public via the OT AUSTRALIA (national) website; (vi) the standards should incorporate a succinct executive summary and additional tools or templates formatted to enable occupational therapists to develop professional portfolios and create working documents specific to their workplace; and (vii) language must accommodate contextual variation while striking an appropriate balance between providing instruction and encouraging innovation in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many public agencies now face dual pressures to meet external accountability demands on one hand, and improve their internal performance on the other. This begs the question whether the demands that are made on public agencies to externally report on their performance have a limited or wide ranging impact on the utilization of performance indicators (PIs) for internal improvements. This article addresses this question via a small group of public agencies and public accountability authorities in Australia. It also examines the main factors that affect the use of PIs for decision making. The evidence suggests that the agencies use PIs more for meeting external reporting requirements than for achieving internal improvements. Various constraints on the use of PIs were identified, mainly technical problems, and to a lesser extent, political and organizational issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perry in this journal draws on two new sources to challenge claims by Dalziel (2002) and Peetz (2005) about relatively weak labour productivity growth in New Zealand after the introduction of its Employment Contracts Act (ECA) in 1991. While new data raise further research questions, they do not overturn our original conclusions. Whether the ECA contributed to higher labour input growth compared with Australia, it failed to improve labour productivity growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has embarked on a strategic mission to 'embed' business integrity. Five key priorities have been identified: (1) a focus on outcomes; (2) the development of initiatives to help retail investors manage and protect wealth; (3) the introduction of new investigative techniques to reduce systemic problems; (4) the reduction of red tape in the administrative function; and (5) the facilitation of inward and outward investment. These are enveloped within a wide-ranging strategic review. The review may succeed in reconstituting the parameters of capital-market regulation. Its success, however, will be dependent on whether the agency can align the ethos of market participants with its conception of integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International studies document strong evidence that chief executive officer (CEO) remuneration is positively correlated with corporate performance. Prior Australian studies, however, find no positive link between CEO pay and market performance. In the present paper we re-examine the association between Australian CEO remuneration and firm performance using standard empirical models from the international literature. We find that in every respect the Australian evidence is consistent with international findings for firms of the USA, UK and Canada. In particular, we document CEO pay–performance association as positive and statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses methods used in the construction of estimates of productivity in Australian industries and offers guidance for their use and interpretation. Policy reforms have been implemented to increase Australia's productivity performance since the 1980s. Concerns about an aging population have emphasized the importance of continuing strong productivity growth within the context of projections of a diminished workforce. This concern has produced an interest in monitoring and explaining productivity trends. The Australian Bureau of Statistics produces the official productivity estimates that constitute the 'headline' measures. They are aggregate productivity estimates for the Australian market sector. In addition, the Productivity Commission constructs and publishes annual industry level productivity estimates.

This study addresses the question of performance indicators for police oversight agencies through a survey of the directors of agencies in Australia and an analysis of annual reports. The findings show that a variety of targets and measures are in place. The majority of oversight bodies adopt fairly basic and largely quantitative measures on matters processed, supplemented by case study accounts of positive impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article reviews an index number framework that links changes in aggregate performance measures (such as profit, revenue, cost and total factor productivity) to changes in both the prices and quantities of key outputs and inputs. The framework provides a way of linking the aggregate performance measures to outcomes for individual customer groups, employees and owners of businesses. This information is useful to policy makers in evaluating the outcomes of economic reform, including the distributional consequences. It is also useful to regulators who need to understand and monitor both the consequences of their regulation and the response to their decisions by those being regulated. The article demonstrates that the logarithmic version of Fisher's Ideal index offers a useful way of integrating changes in profit, productivity and prices into a single analysis. The usefulness of the framework is illustrated by applying it to a data set for Australian National. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines occupational performance in Australia across three racial groups in Australia: Indigenous Australians; Asian people, defined as all those whose language spoken at home was either Chinese, Vietnamese or other forms of a South-east or East Asian language; and white people, defined as the residual category. The paper has as its starting point, observed differences in occupational attainment among the three groups in Australia and sets out to account for these observed differences on the basis of both race and non-racial attributes such as, age, education and area of residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies measuring the flow of monies into and out of U.S. mutual funds note a convexity in the performance-flow relation and offer several explanations for the apparent investor insensitivity to poor performance. In this study investor response to past performance is measured in a different setting: the Australian wholesale funds market. The results confirm that, like the U.S. mutual fund investor, institutional investors in Australia react to recent performance. However, a similar response asymmetry is not detected in most tests. Evidence that small, young funds are potential drivers of the asymmetric response effect is also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the use of appraisal and performance pay mechanisms to motivate public servants and raise the standard of public management in Queensland Australia as well as other countries. Challenge of managing the performance of employees; Merits of performance pay in government; Rationale for performance appraisal and pay; Alternative strategies for motivating public servants and encouraging best practice.

Examines the operation of performance-based pay in the Australian public service (APS) from 1992 to 1996. Impact of this scheme on the motivation of federal public service workers employed in the senior officer grades; Background on the emergence of the scheme; Details on the operation of performance appraisal; Alternative forms of performance-based pay.

Examines the development of standards to evaluate efficiency and effectiveness of public services in Australia. Development of accountability and management through performance information; Performance information in a more contestable environment; Performance audits by the National Audit Office (NAO).

The article discusses the competencies and their uses to improve human resource management in the Department of Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs (DILGEA) in Australia. The authors explain that competency is an underlying characteristic of a person which results in effective and/or superior performance in a job or the ability to perform activities within an occupation to the standard expected in employment. It could be used as a logical foundation for the various elements of human resource management, linking job design, the selection and promotion system, staff training and development, career path planning and performance management and feedback. In addition, the used methodology and models of DILGEA and the benefits that it gets from the process are also discussed.

This paper expresses a concern that, in mirroring the Australian community, the public service is falling into the error of believing that morals and morality are out of date or at best not matters of moment. It seeks a better appreciation of the need for ethical standards in public administration and it calls for the profession itself, in the persona of the Royal Australian Institute of Public Administration, to grapple with the imponderables of these questions. A brief history is given of the public service flirting with considerations of its ethical basis, and the paper also gives some account of contemporary writing on the subject of ethics in administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]