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Panic buying of toilet rolls in Australia began in early March 2020. This was related to the realisation that the novel coronavirus was spreading across the country. To the general population the impact of the virus was unknown. Gradually the federal government started closing the country's borders. The panic buying of toilet rolls was not unique to Australia. It happened across all societies that used toilet paper rather than water to clean after defecation and urination. However, research suggests that the panic buying was most extreme in Australia. This article argues that the panic buying was closely linked to everyday notions of Western civilisation. Pedestal toilets and toilet paper are key aspects of civilisation and the fear of the loss of toilet paper is connected to anxiety about social breakdown, the loss of civilisation. This is the fear manifested in the perceived threat posed by the virus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses experiences of everyday racism as narrated by South Sudanese refugee-background informants living in Australia. The paper draws on accounts of verbal and physical attacks reported during a sociolinguistic interview about the refugee experience and adaptation to the Australian lifestyle. The study contributes to the exploration of features of refugee narratives, using the socio-interactional approach to narrative analysis. Selected stories about racism are explored using positioning theory, paying attention to the discursive strategies narrators use to position themselves in the interactional world of the interview setting as well as the story-world. Their narratives demonstrate that despite the harsh experiences of everyday racism, they position themselves as resilient and strong individuals. They do this by drawing on their refugee history and making references to harder times. However, the stories also reveal their mitigation strategies to soften the accounts and either downplay or deny racism. However, by sharing their stories and making explicit evaluative statements about social injustice, they mobilise their agency to make their story heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sub-Saharan African-born community in Australia is significantly underrepresented in health research, partly, due to challenges associated with collecting their primary data. Based on experience from a mixed-method study comprising 24 in-depth interviews and a survey of 253 participants in the community, this communication paper highlights a number of 'high-level' practical issues that might be encountered when collecting primary data from the community and provides suggestions for future studies. Included in this paper is a brief discussion of important lessons from the fieldwork that are critical for achieving successful data collection from the community. The lessons include difficulty of proving external validity for samples drawn from the community, difficulty of developing a reliable sampling frame, challenges in selecting appropriate support organisations, risk of low response to surveys and language barrier. The study concludes that understanding the ethnic diversities in this community and engaging appropriate support organisations are critical to achieving a successful data collection experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant educational disruption globally. When the pandemic forced schools to switch to emergency home-schooling, parental engagement in education became more critical. Some parents found home-schooling as an opportunity to form stronger relationships with their children. Others acquired an enhanced insight into their children's schoolwork. However, the emerging literature shows that, as not all parents were equally positioned to support their children's learning at home, emergency home-schooling has resulted in a significant learning loss. Guided by the concept of capital interaction, this article reports on a qualitative case study that investigated the experiences of 20 migrant parents in Victoria, Australia. A thematic analysis of the data reveals challenges associated with parental self-efficacy, financial hardship, language and technological barriers, time constraints, and disengagement and exhaustion. Remote learning may return in the future, and we must prepare for such disruption by improving equitable access to education delivered online and at home. To this end, the paper outlines some policy ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the logistic planning, the important focus of international student mobility programmes in social work is on the field supervision process and measuring its outcome. Without a social work council in India for setting uniform standards in field education, this paper proposes a framework for field supervision to support inbound mobility students in India. The study predominantly explores the qualitative experiences of field supervisors from India, Israel, and Australia on fieldwork supervision. The themes evolved from the study are focused on the supervision process, strategies followed, challenges faced, and outcome measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Families of choice is an important framework used to think about non-heterosexual people's attachments. This means the family of origin has received limited attention when theorising their relationships. This group has often been considered in relation to coming out, which centralises the importance of sexuality for understanding kinship ties. This paper extends the limited, but growing scholarship on non-heterosexual people, and their families of origin. It does this by drawing on a larger project on the lives of gay men of South Asian descent, in Australia. Results demonstrate that attachment through blood, shared history, emotions, and obligations, firmly embed gay South Asian men in their families of origin, even when there is disapproval of their sexuality. More broadly, the study resists framing the respondents and findings in culturally essentialist terms, premised on an 'East' versus 'West' binary. It argues that by resisting such orientalism we can see similarities pertaining to families of origin across different contexts, and in doing so, produce queer scholarship able to speak across divides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stand-alone strangulation offence was introduced in Queensland, Australia in 2016. One of the elements of the Queensland strangulation offence is that the victim did not consent to the strangulation. This paper reviews the harms and dangers associated with strangulation before overviewing the debates about the use of strangulation during sex. Drawing on focus group discussions conducted with domestic violence support workers and men's behaviour change workers, we discuss four overlapping themes identified in the discussions. These were perceptions that: strangulation during sex is normalised; consent is not informed; it happens in the context of coercive control; and the requirement of consent opens a loophole in the strangulation offence. Considering the issues raised, and the clear risks and harms, we suggest that consideration should be given to whether it is ever possible to consent to strangulation and we consider possible reforms such as following the two-tiered approaches to consent used in the England and Wales law and elsewhere in Australia. We also conclude that law reforms such as these are partial solutions and there is significant need for more community education about the risks and harms of strangulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Rupert Murdoch announced in April 2004 that he intended to see his company, News Corporation, reincorporated in the United States, two competing representations of the 'media mogul' came to dominate the press's interpretation of this event. The first of these 'Murdoch representations' was the most common, and painted an image of a successful entrepreneur, a 'celebrity CEO'. Yet, the second 'Murdoch representation' painted a different image, a more detailed portrait, with critical attention paid to the modus operandi of the world's most notorious media proprietor. This article deconstructs these representations of Murdoch, a mythic fracturing of image resulting from the political economy of the Australian press. In essence, the article explores issues of media diversity, myth and ideology, and the propensity of the press for critical, impartial, journalism. The empirical data are drawn from an analysis of two of Australia's pre-eminent newspapers: The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a tribute to the late Steve Crook who shared with us the excitement of research on environmentalism. As we predicted, environmental activism in Australia remains socially circumscribed, but its scope, and the scope of environmental concerns, have been widening. Differentiation and proliferation of environmental issues combine with social diffusion and routinization. The pro- portion of people who see the environment as a salient issue continues to be relatively high, in spite of an increasing competition from new issue concerns, including security and illegal migration. The new `white' environmental issues enter the public arena reflecting widespread (though less urgent) concerns about genetic modification of food-crops and cloning of human tissue - all interpreted as `interference with nature'. The `white' environmental issues attract the concern of new social categories of `conscience environmentalists' who are more likely to be women, tend to be older, religious; and less attracted by green organizations. They are also less metropolitan in their location, and not as leftist and postmaterial in their value preferences as their `green' and `brown' predecessors. The formation of the `white' environmental issue cluster and constituency opens the way for new ideological reinterpretations of environmental outlook - and for new political alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe and exemplify a theoretical perspective for the analysis of music as symbolic action in critical studies of discourse. We use deployments of music by legislatures in Australia, the UK, and the USA as exemplar cases to develop foundations for a critical, non-semiotic perspective that sees music work as gestalt complexes of physical and cultural forces that move people towards or away from specific actions and attitudes. In presenting our perspective we critique some semiotic assertions about music that are commonplaces in discourse studies and elsewhere. Our cases draw on news reports and scholarly discourse about the use of music as a means of torture in warfare and as a means of purifying urban public spaces by keeping youth and homeless people out of them at night. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Hospital in the Home models are rapidly expanding in response to increasing bed pressures. This study examined patient and multidisciplinary health professional perceptions of a new geriatric evaluation and management and rehabilitation hospital in the home service in Australia. The service was unique, as adults of all ages with a variety of rehabilitation or geriatric evaluation and management needs were within scope. Methods: A qualitative descriptive approach was used with a consumer co-researcher and a consumer advisor being integral to decision-making. Patient feedback was collected via a paper-based patient satisfaction survey between August 2020 and February 2022. Additionally, interviews with current and past staff were conducted from July to November 2021. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted for qualitative data and descriptive statistics used for quantitative data. Results: Patient surveys were analysed (n = 199, 42.2% response rate) with 60.8% of participants aged 75 years or over and 26.6% speaking a language other than English. High satisfaction was expressed. Feelings of comfort, familiarity, convenience, and reassurance were voiced. A person-centred approach enhanced involvement in care. Challenges included carer burden and clear communication. Sixteen staff (33% response rate) were interviewed. In general, staff said the service was inclusive and responsive, and the home environment beneficial, particularly for patients from culturally diverse backgrounds. A strong hospital partnership and comprehensive multidisciplinary approach were vital. Challenges included fragmentation due to part-time roles and combining with a pre-existing acute hospital in the home service. Conclusions: This qualitative exploration of staff and patients' perceptions of a geriatrician-led, multidisciplinary geriatric evaluation and management and rehabilitation hospital in the home service demonstrated that it was person-centred and optimised patients' control and ownership of care. The inclusive service parameters ensured responsiveness to diverse needs whilst allowing earlier return home from hospital, both of which are vital for quality patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic low back pain is characterised by multiple and overlapping biological, psychological, social and broader dimensions, affecting individuals' lives. Multidisciplinary pain services have been considered optimal settings to account for the multidimensionality of chronic low back pain but have largely focused on cognitive and behavioural aspects of individuals' pain. Social dimensions are usually underexplored, considered outside or beyond healthcare professionals' scope of practice. Employing Actor Network Theorist Mol's concept multiplicity, our aim in this paper is to explore how a pain service's practices bring to the fore the social dimensions of individuals living with low back pain. Drawing on 32 ethnographic observations and four group exchanges with the service's clinicians, findings suggest that practices produced multiple enactments of an individual with low back pain. Although individuals' social context was present and manifested during consultations at the pain service (first enactment: 'the person'), it was often disconnected from care and overlooked in 'treatment/management' (second enactment: 'the patient'). In contrast, certain practices at the pain service not only provided acknowledgement of, but actions towards enhancing, individuals' social contexts by adapting rules and habits, providing assistance outside the service and shifting power relations during consultations (third enactment: 'the patient-person'). We therefore argue that different practices enact different versions of an individual with low back pain in pain services, and that engagement with individuals' social contexts can be part of a service's agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from an investigation of nature-based practices, from the perspectives of 10 academics/educators from six nations. Participants engaged in a focus group exploring the prevalence and inclusion of nature in social work practice and education. While the study focused on individual members' experiences and perspectives, the findings highlight important context-specific factors for including nature within social work to reconnect humans with nature for health, well-being, healing, and justice. An Integrative Environmental Model for social work is proposed to assist future practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic scholarship analyses how citizenship law reforms such as longer residency requirements and tougher language tests reinforce culturally exclusionary national narratives. Citizenship ceremonies however, have largely escaped scholarly attention. Drawing on Australia as a case study, this article addresses that gap. After examining how Australian citizenship is performed at ceremonies, this article argues that although the government states that citizenship ceremonies should welcome new citizens, deep suspicions about the cultural diversity of migrants are also conveyed. This paper contributes to an understanding of how citizenship ceremonies reinforce culturally exclusionary national narratives, even where the legal criteria for acquiring citizenship status is non-discriminatory. This paper also illustrates how citizenship ceremonies are important sites for the construction and communication of legal identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia is one of a handful of countries offering permanent settlement to refugees. It also has some of the harshest border-controlling measures. Drawing on Derrida's writing on hospitality, and related work on hospitality's affective and spatial dimensions, we examine the micropolitics of hospitality towards forced migrants in an Australian city (Brisbane). Our interest is in the affordances of affective hospitality to interrupt practices of differential inclusion in the city. The first part of the paper examines practices of embedded activism in health and education encounters, while the second part explores affect's influence on the protest sensibility in urban movements against mandatory detention. The paper furthers understandings of the embodied and affective dimensions of hospitality in social justice work performed in urban spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female genital fashioning practices, a term encompassing a range of temporary and permanent options for cosmetic genital alteration, are becoming an increasingly prominent part of contemporary beauty regimes. Drawing on a series of 11 small focus groups and 10 interviews with 34 Australian women aged 18–30, this paper explores the ways that cisgender young women negotiate a combination of social pressures, pleasures and influences in their decisions to engage with genital fashioning. These pressures are described by women to emanate from broad social norms, sexual partners, family members, and peer groups. The women in this study demonstrate a nuanced and critical awareness of the cultural context which they inhabit but deploy postfeminist narratives of self-care and enjoyment to make sense of genital fashioning practices. The paper contributes to scholarship on postfeminism by demonstrating the ways that women creatively use the discursive tools available to enable critical reflection on notions of choice. At the same time, the findings in this study constitute an empirical contribution to critiques of postfeminism to reveal the limitations of postfeminist reasoning which ultimately works to curtail or impede the identification of structural problems and constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how women think about men's bodies as objects of desire. It reports on one part of a larger qualitative study on men's bodywork practices in contemporary Australia. Drawing on material from three focus groups with 24 Australian women of varying ages, sexual orientations and backgrounds, the paper considers how women experience, understand and reflect on their desire for men and men's bodies. It also explores themes such as the connection women draw between what a man's body looks like and what it can do, how attraction is experienced, the meaning making women engage in as they think about men and men's bodies, and the broader politics of sexuality and objectification that inform their perceptions and ideas. These experiences are set against ideas in post-feminist thinking on women's sexual desire and debates on their sexual empowerment. The paper argues that these women are grappling with tensions between their personal experiences of sexual objectification and a feminist ethics relating to their active and reflexive projects of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Elite communities' are the areas where the wealthy, and even 'superrich', live, socialize and raise their children as future economic and financial elites; they are the places where a few lead socially and economically privileged lives. Earlier studies have concentrated on the inner dynamics of these settings, focusing on the way residents are constructed and socialized as elites through their social, communicative and aesthetic abilities that are perceived as exemplary in contemporary neoliberal society. In this paper, we broaden the perspective, by exploring how these areas contribute to polarization, that is, how they generate distinctions based on money, morals and manners that are peculiar to neoliberalism's idealization of 'entrepreneurship', 'self-management', 'leadership' and the pursuit of an 'active lifestyle'. Our data come from two major ethnographic studies: one conducted between 2010 and 2015 of Sweden's wealthiest community, Djursholm, that is populated by the country's business and financial elites; the other conducted between 2016 and 2019 of three of Australia's most prestigious and economically privileged suburbs, Toorak (Melbourne), Mosman (Sydney) and Cottesloe (Perth). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: From 2018, the Schools Up North (SUN) programme worked with three remote Australian schools to enhance their capability and resilience to support the wellbeing and mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff. This paper explores the implementation of SUN during the first two years of COVID-19 (2020–2021). Method: Using grounded theory methods, school staff, other service providers and SUN facilitators were interviewed, with transcripts and programme documents coded and interrelationships between codes identified. An implementation model was developed. Results: The SUN approach was place-based, locally informed and relational, fostering school resilience through staff reflection on and response to emerging contextual challenges. Challenges were the: community lockdowns and school closures; (un)availability of other services; community uncertainty and anxiety; school staff capability and wellbeing; and risk of educational slippage. SUN strategies were: enhancing teachers' capabilities and resources, facilitating public health discussions, and advocating at regional level. Outcomes were: enhanced capability of school staff; greater school-community engagement; student belonging and engagement; a voice for advocacy; and continuity of SUN's momentum. Conclusions: The resilience approach (rather than specific strategies) was critical for building schools' capabilities for promoting students and staff wellbeing and provides an exemplar for remote schools globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian children from regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas exhibit lower educational outcomes than their peers in metropolitan areas. The mechanisms driving the comparatively poorer educational outcomes of children in RRR areas, however, are not well understood. This paper proposes and tests two sets of factors that may be responsible for these disparities: population socio-demographic composition and school climate. Using rich survey and linked administrative data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 9,248 observations), we estimate the relative contribution of these sets of factors to RRR children's disadvantage in NAPLAN numeracy test scores. Our results indicate that both socio-demographic and school climate factors account for part of the educational disparities between children in RRR and metropolitan areas. These findings suggest that hybrid policy approaches that tackle both the social determinants of educational success and use schools as an intervention site are required to close the achievement gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate activists and environmental communicators stress that addressing the climate crisis requires both global and local advocacy for transformational change-making. While journalists in small, rural communities are known to actively advocate on issues for the common good, there has been little investigation of local media advocacy on climate change in rural Australia: a region at the forefront of global heating. This paper analyses the accounts of local journalists of their media coverage of the School Strikes 4 Climate in rural and regional Australia, as an empirical entry point for a conceptual discussion of local media advocacy in reporting climate change. We find that normative ideas about journalism coupled with polarised community views on climate change hindered these journalists from taking an advocacy stance. We explore and critique the tacit 'quiet advocacy' practices used by these journalists reporting on climate in rural and regional Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'It is difficult to talk to my children about sex' – this anxiety has long been established in sex education literature, along with the beneficial role of improved parent–child communication for sexual health and relationship outcomes. However, the insights gained from this literature have been under-researched in migrant families, and has resulted in the 'whitening' of parent guides that provide 'tips' for parents. This article asks critical questions about the politics of race and representation that structure these documents. In the main, these questions rest on concerns about who these guides speak to. On the surface, the documents speak to everyone, through an inclusive terminology and phraseology that references 'all parents' and 'our worries'. However, this paper asks: What does it do, and what is produced, to speak about parents in the general? How does the production of an assumed 'singular/universal' parent serve to 'other' the experiences a racially diverse parents, and render a broader range of experiences invisible? To explore this question, this article undertakes a critical discourse analysis of parent guides in Australia. It interrogates the normative frameworks that scaffold and structure the guides, and in the main argues that despite gestures toward inclusion, a very particular kind of parent lies at the heart of the documents. In addition, the article moves from deconstruction to think through what parent sex education guides might look like it they were better designed to account for difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African Australian diasporic literature has drawn attention to the anti-Black racism Black African young people endure in everyday Australia. By drawing on a multi-method approach consisting of social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews, this paper explores the use of social media by Black African young people (n=15) to visibilise their experiences of racism. We situate the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, as a significant ‘turning point’ when the social media practises of our participants radically transformed. Our findings indicate that prior to the murder of George Floyd, participants evoked careful boundaries around the type of racial content they posted for fear of the punishments or backlash that could occur if they disrupted the white racial comfort of their friends and followers. After the murder of Floyd, participants used the resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement to visibilise their own experiences of anti-Black racism and racial violence in Australia, sharing content on social media that marked whiteness, demanded safety and challenged white silence and performative allyship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction provides an overview of the collection of papers in this special issue on genealogies of indefinite detention. This collection of papers builds on the work of Professor Penny Pether (1957 - 2013), in particular her book proposal, '"Perverts," "terrorists," and business as usual: Comparative Indefinite Detentions before and after 9/11'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At times of crisis, existing institutional arrangements of societies are thrown into question. Crises that occur in multiple societies simultaneously present rare opportunities for comparative empirical analysis. Social theory can reveal the framing conditions of the responses to crises and the sources of variations between them. This paper compares the immediate responses of the Australian, UK and US governments to the global COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with regard to financing lockdowns, and points out significant differences between the three approaches. Drawing on Polanyi's method of institutional analysis, we compare the responses of these same national groups to an earlier crisis, the Japanese prisoner of war camps during the Second World War, to show similar patterns of integration recurring eight decades apart. This analysis shows that aspects of moral economies that are not usually apparent can become pronounced during crises, and points to the importance of enduring social imaginaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to better understand the lively city with reference to recent analysis of sonic affects, bodily sensations and emotions. The notion of 'hearing contacts', as it is usually deployed in discussion of the lively city, emphasises the social interactions with other people in a rather narrow anthropocentric way. Yet, it overlooks the diversity of felt and affective dimensions of city sounds. This paper takes up this challenge by bringing Deleuze and Guattari's notion of territory into conversation with Greimas's semiotic square. In doing so, this paper offers a compelling theoretical framework to better understand the sonic sensibilities of listening and hearing to provide a clearer sense of how people decide to attach specific meanings to sound, and which ones they do not. The paper first reviews various theoretical approaches to sound and the city. Next, the paper turns to an ethnographic account of sound and city-centre urban life recently conducted in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. This research seeks to better understand the ways bodily dispositions to sonic affects, materials and cultural norms helped participants territorialise the city centre, distinguishing 'energetic buzz', 'dead noise', 'dead quiet' and 'quiet calm'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditions and warranties, which are generally referred to as policy terms in insurance contracts, are crucial in the determination of the rights and obligations of the contracting parties. The article examines the enforcement of policy terms in insurance contracts at common law and the legislative measures that have been deployed in some common law countries, including Nigeria, the United Kingdom and Australia, to ensure fairness as well as to balance the inequality in the bargaining power of the contracting parties. In as much as the principle of freedom of contract will generally be honoured by the court, the paper argues that through legislative intervention in policy terms in these countries, the principle is being discountenanced with, in appropriate cases, in order to effectuate the just and reasonable expectation of the insured. It concludes by proffering suggestions to identified lacunae in the Nigerian Insurance law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a discourse of 'ethical artificial intelligence' has emerged and gained international traction in response to widely publicised AI failures. In Australia, the discourse around ethical AI does not accord with the reality of AI deployment in the public sector. Drawing on institutional ethnographic approaches, this paper describes the misalignments between how technology is described in government documentation, and how it is deployed in social service delivery. We argue that the propagation of ethical principles legitimates established new public management strategies, and pre-empts questions regarding the efficacy of AI development; instead positioning implementation as inevitable and, provided an ethical framework is adopted, laudable. The ethical AI discourse acknowledges, and ostensibly seeks to move past, widely reported administrative failures involving new technologies. In actuality, this discourse works to make AI implementation a reality, ethical or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to investigate whether multi/inter-disciplinary research activities are related to research impact and publication counts of scholars. Since researchers with very high levels of multi/inter-disciplinarity might be able to target complex problems, we would expect them to receive more credits than their colleagues with a stronger disciplinary orientation. We analysed Web of Science (WoS) indexed publications of all associate and full professors from a random sample of Australian universities in physics, chemistry and biology (1980–2014). Australian Fields of Research (FoR) codes assigned to journals were used to calculate the diversification of authors' publications. The number of citations in the first 3 years, number of 10% most frequently cited papers, and citation impact percentile were used for impact assessment. A few indicators were used to measure the diversity including 'extent of diversification (ED)' (number of distinct FoR codes divided by the number of publications) and 'diversification ratio (DR)' (ratio of the publications falling outside the dominant code to the total number of publications). A total of 47.76% of biologists' publications, 35.23% of physicists' publications and 20.36% of chemists' publications were published in journals assigned to fields other than the Australian associate and full professors' fields. Publications from biologists had the largest values of diversification. Women (compared with men) and associate professors (compared with full professors) in chemistry, biology and overall were more probably to publish diversely. ED was negatively correlated with output and citation impact. DR also had a negative but weak correlation with the number of publications and 10% most frequently cited paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the employment experiences of immigrants of African background in the Australian labor market. Drawing on the findings from a qualitative study conducted in South East Queensland, the paper identifies several barriers and challenges faced by Africans to meaningful employment and labor market success. The paper indicates the need to develop targeted policies to eliminate employment discrimination, reduce barriers to meaningful employment for good settlement and successful integration of African immigrants to Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A policy problem is a discursive construction, and the way in which the problem is framed determines both the nature of the policy responses and the possibility of resolving it. In this paper, drawing on critical frame analysis, we examined three major equity policies in the Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. In mapping out framing and reasoning devices of the policies, our analytical interest is to highlight the representation of inequality as a problem and unmask underlying assumptions of the equity responses. The findings show that disadvantage in Australia's ECEC sector has been framed as a lack of access, limited navigational capacity and cultural exclusion; and the framings are underpinned by economic, educational and social rationales. The analysis also reveals problematic categories, issue-omissions and conceptual shifts within the texts. The paper draws practical implications of the frame contradictions and silences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent geographical attention to smart places has underlined the key point that smart places are made : crafted incrementally over time and woven through existing sites and contexts. Work on analysing the crafting of 'actually existing' smart cities has turned to describing and characterising the processes through which smart cities are made and, within this, the interplay and relative significance of accidental versus purposeful smart cities has come to the fore. Drawing on the concept of dispositif to capture the simultaneity of piecemeal and opportunistic change with deliberate strategy, this paper furthers these debates using examples of two places within the Sydney Metropolitan Region, Australia: Newcastle and Parramatta. Through their analysis we identify the evolving interplay of a priori drivers, ad hoc initiatives and post hoc strategies evident in the crafting of smart cities. Understanding the emergence of actually existing smart cities, we conclude, is sharpened and strengthened by the concept of dispositif, through its attention to processes characterised by non-linear, overlapping and recursively combined drivers that are not without purposeful, strategic intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: By applying the tripartite framework of family language policy, this study seeks to gain insight into heritage language maintenance of Polish families in Melbourne. To this end, an integrative investigation of family language policy encapsulating the heritage language perceptions, practices and management will be employed. Methodology: Based on the data collected through the online questionnaire supplemented with in-depth interviews, quantitative and qualitative analyses have been conducted to obtain a sociolinguistic picture of the convoluted dependencies. Data and analysis: The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and coded according to the grounded theory approach. The recurrent themes were noted. The existing social patterns were conceptualised through the process of constant comparison. The excerpts selected for analysis illustrate how critical have been the informants' beliefs and practices concerning heritage language maintenance. Findings and conclusions: The data analyses of the researched families disclose a wide range of practices where certain discrepancies are observed between declarations and the actual language behaviours. It also emerges that without parents' reinforcement and establishing the heritage language as a default means of communication at home, children suffer from lower productive skills. Originality: This paper delves into how Polish is maintained as a heritage language by the second generation of Polish-speaking immigrants. It explores the Polish community, one of the well-established yet understudied groups that make up multicultural Australia. It unfolds an account of the dynamics of family language policy, illustrating how they are constantly negotiated, contested and formed by parents. Significance/implications: The findings contribute to the ongoing discussion of language policies and heritage language maintenance by demonstrating that the hardship and distress resulting from heritage language acquisition as well as language maintenance are incumbent primarily on family language policy. The researched group is an average-size immigrant community situated in the context with limited institutional support resolving down to Polish Saturday schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a reconstruction of the Holocene evolution of the Inskip Peninsula in SE Queensland. The peninsula links two major dune fields, the Cooloola Sand Mass to the south and K'gari (Fraser Island) to the north. Geomorphic features of this peninsula include remnant parabolic dunes, numerous beach ridges with foredunes, and a series of spits. Together these features provide insight into Holocene coastal evolution and changing marine conditions. A remnant beach ridge/foredune complex at the northern portion of Inskip may have been connected to K'gari and a river/tidal channel near Rainbow Beach township which separated it from the Cooloola Sand Mass to the south. This channel avulsed northward in the early mid-Holocene (after 8.8 ka) with spit development from the south. This was followed by a phase of beach-ridge/foredune complex development that started by ~6.7 ka. Stratigraphic evidence from the highest and best developed parabolic dunes in the northern portion of Inskip Peninsula indicates dune development from the mid-Holocene beach complex by 4.8 ka. Beach ridges with foredunes continued to prograde but notably declined in size during the late-Holocene. In the latest Holocene (<4.8 ka) many of the late-Holocene beach ridges/foredune complexes have been truncated by a re-orientation of the shoreline and longshore sediment transport has promoted the growth of the modern spit at the northern end of the peninsula. Erosive and longshore processes continue to be highly active because of tidal interactions between Great Sandy Strait and the Coral Sea. This detailed study of Inskip Peninsula's evolution aids significantly in future coastal management decisions, and provides evidence for World Heritage Area extension for the Cooloola Sand Mass, including the incorporation of Inskip Peninsula itself. It also contributes to the global understanding to coastal evolution in an area of strong wave and tidal interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hospitals are places where patients are unwell, where patients and their families may be upset, confused, frustrated, in pain, and vulnerable. The likelihood of these experiences and emotions manifesting in anger and aggressive behaviour is high. In this paper, we describe the involvement of a clinical ethics service responding to a request to discuss family aggression within a rehabilitation department in a large paediatric hospital in Australia. We suggest two key advantages of involving a clinical ethics service in discussions about how to respond to family aggression. First, the process of ethics deliberation provides an opportunity for clinicians to be involved in the solution by articulating their perspectives, tolerance levels, and general concerns about the effects of family aggression towards staff. Second, supporting clinicians to articulate and identify the impact of parental aggression directly counters the disadvantages of the more blunt zero-tolerance policy response, which is necessarily imposed from the top down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bucket dredging to mine and extract gold and tin from rivers is a global industry that has had a range of negative effects on physical environments. These include the destruction of riparian soil profiles and structures, artificial channel straightening and loss of in-stream biodiversity. In this paper we evaluate the immediate effects and long-term consequences of bucket dredging on rivers in Victoria and New South Wales during the period 1900–1950. High quality historical sources on dredge mining are integrated with geospatial datasets, aerial imagery and geomorphological data to analyse the scale of the dredging industry, evidence for disturbance to river channels and floodplains and current land use in dredged areas. The study demonstrates that the environmental impact of dredging was altered but not reduced by anti-pollution regulations intended to control dredging. An assessment of river condition 70–100 years after dredge mining ceased indicates that floodplains and river channels continue to show the effects of dredging, including bank erosion, sediment slugs, compromised habitat and reduced agricultural productivity. These findings have significant implications for river and floodplain management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire has a long history in Australia and is a key driver of vegetation dynamics in the tropical savanna ecosystems that cover one quarter of the country. Fire reconstructions are required to understand ecosystem dynamics over the long term but these data are lacking for the extensive savannas of northern Australia. This paper presents a multiproxy palaeofire record for Marura sinkhole in eastern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. The record is constructed by combining optical methods (counts and morphology of macroscopic and microscopic charcoal particles) and chemical methods (quantification of abundance and stable isotope composition of pyrogenic carbon by hydrogen pyrolysis). This novel combination of measurements enables the generation of a record of relative fire intensity to investigate the interplay between natural and anthropogenic influences. The Marura palaeofire record comprises three main phases: 4600–2800 cal BP, 2800–900 cal BP and 900 cal BP to present. Highest fire incidence occurs at ~4600–4000 cal BP, coinciding with regional records of high effective precipitation, and all fire proxies decline from that time to the present. 2800–900 cal BP is characterised by variable fire intensities and aligns with archaeological evidence of occupation at nearby Blue Mud Bay. All fire proxies decline significantly after 900 cal BP. The combination of charcoal and pyrogenic carbon measures is a promising proxy for relative fire intensity in sedimentary records and a useful tool for investigating potential anthropogenic fire regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While attention to the 'ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, in Australia, has significantly increased in the past two decades, historical records referring to this peculiar manifestation of organised crime in the country date back almost a century. This research is situated in between studies on mafia mobility and studies on the nature of mafia-type organised crime in Italy and in Australia. Relying on archival research, fieldwork and focus groups with law enforcement agencies across most Australian jurisdictions, this paper will essentially argue that there is in Australia an on-going criminal system that is made of ethnically hybrid criminal networks - predominantly made of, but not limited to, Calabrian ethnicity. Ethnic solidarity and traditional norms and values of the 'ndrangheta, embedded in Calabrian migrant culture, provide the roof to these networks' behaviours and organisation. This paper will discuss how the resilience of this mafia in Australia is linked to the capacity of 'ndrangheta clans to maintain different heads - to be polycephalous - all differently and equally important: their organisational head is stable and culturally homogeneous, their (mafia-type) behaviours are constant, flexible and rooted in ethnic solidarity, and their activities are very dynamic, but hybrid in their ethnic composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A distinction is often made between the “choice” of not having children and the claim that having children is “natural”. What disappears in this distinction is the fact that having children is most often a choice. This choice, however, is rendered invisible through the naturalisation of parenthood as a normatively expected aspect of adulthood. Whilst this argument is not new, the topic of how heterosexual couples come to decide to have children has received relatively little attention within the academic literature. This paper reports on findings from the first stage of a longitudinal interview study focused on Australian middle-class heterosexual couples planning for a first child. A thematic analysis of interviews conducted with 10 couples found that a paired contrast was often made between what were constructed as “childless others”, and a “natural” or “innate” desire to have children. The naturalisation of a desire to have children, however, was problematised when participants spoke about expectations from family members that participants should have children. The paper concludes by considering how the relationship between parenthood and adulthood may be a specifically class-based narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Trash, dirt, glitch' offers an introduction to a cluster devoted to trash, dirt and glitch – concepts that, in aesthetic and artistic domains, firmly merit joint exploration. In fashion and urban design, music, art and other aesthetic practices, the trashy, the dirty and the glitchy interconnect in complex choreographies, in discourses and practices where they are framed as benefit rather than bother. For this cluster, the authors asked four scholars in media, design and fashion to examine the interconnections between trash, dirt and glitch as affirmatively charged categories. They do so through in-depth studies of 'dirt(y)' and glitch-based sound-making practices and media art in Australia (Caleb Kelly); German electronic and glitch music (Jakko Kemper); dirt and trash aesthetics in sneaker fashion and (especially but not only) US-based grunge subcultures (Ekaterina Kulinicheva); and discourses of dirt and disorder in the creative industry in Russia (Margarita Kuleva). This introduction contextualizes their findings and offers tools to theorize the present-day interest in dirt-, trash-, and glitch-based aesthetics as an imperfect turn. This turn we envision not as an unprecedented shift, but as the latest in a series of socio-technologically motivated historical imperfect turns. The imperfect turn that we witness today is not without its flaws – but, as we argue below, it can facilitate important social interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: An understanding of the cultural aspects of suicidal behavior is essential for the development of culturally appropriate suicide prevention and intervention strategies. Aims: This study explored the attitudes toward youth suicide in 686 Italian, Indian and Australian undergraduate students (18–24 years old). Method: A 21-item suicide attitude inventory titled Attitude towards Youth Suicide (AtYS) scale, included in this paper, was used in the three samples. Results: Four factors were extracted, labeled negative attitudes toward suicide, belief that suicide was not preventable, suicide as acceptable and normal, and the existence of risk signs for suicide. Country differences were found for all four subscales, with Indian students having the most negative attitudes toward suicide. Sex differences were found in all three countries with women, on the whole, having less negative attitudes toward suicide, more belief in the preventability of suicide in India and more belief in risk signs for suicide in Italy. Conclusion: Attitudes are linked to suicide in a complex manner. More quantitative and qualitative studies, including in lower-income and non-English speaking Western societies, are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial concentration of recently arrived immigrants in gateway cities and suburbs is usually seen as undesirable by urban academics and policy makers. This paper presents a counter-argument that the concentration of disadvantaged new immigrants in the form of humanitarian refugees and their families can, and does, result in positive outcomes for those groups. In part, our argument is based on making a distinction between people-based disadvantage and place-based disadvantage. The paper examines the changing nature of place-based ‘advantage’ for immigrants in Australian gateway cities through a focus on two metropolitan locations, Auburn (Sydney) and Springvale (Melbourne), known as popular destination suburbs for recent immigrants. While these two cases validate the benefits of such gateway suburbs, they also demonstrate that the capacity of recent migrants to emulate concentrated settlement patterns is now significantly undermined by changes in the labour market and affordability problems in the housing market. The paper concludes with a discussion on the possible future of gateway suburbs and the implications of this shift for the wellbeing of particular groups of disadvantaged residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this special issue provide support for continued scrutiny of interactional competence (IC) as an important component of the speaking construct. The contributions underscore the complex nature of IC and remind us of the multiple factors that affect any construct definition. At the same time, each study offers insights into those factors through their explorations of IC. In this final paper, we first briefly review key findings from the papers that confirm what is already known about IC and that provide new information to our understanding of the construct of IC. After summarizing points of convergence and of divergence, we turn to a discussion of areas that require additional targeted attention and offer four generalizations as starting points for research. In the final section, we take a critical look at the challenges associated with including IC in the speaking construct and the implications of the studies in this special issue for the relationship between IC and proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify what aviation experts consider to be the key features of effective communication by examining in detail their commentary on a 17-minute segment of recorded radiotelephony discourse between a Russian pilot and a Korean air traffic controller. The segment was played to three practising pilots and three air traffic controllers. Their commentary on the qualities of communication displayed in the interaction was recorded and coded thematically, using a grounded ethnography approach. The analysis revealed that although the Russian pilot was viewed as having limited English proficiency, the strategies he used to make himself understood were evaluated positively as fulfilling the requirements of the professional role. By contrast, the Korean air traffic controller, although not evaluated as having limited proficiency, was criticized for his lack of professional knowledge. The discourse analysis and the feedback given by these expert informants highlight not only the nature of the miscommunication arising in unexpected situations, but also the multiple factors that may contribute to it. While language proficiency is clearly an issue, there are many other sources of miscommunication that emerge during the exchange. These findings are used to critique the narrow, language-focused oral proficiency construct as articulated in the holistic descriptors and the rating scale stipulated by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, 2010) as the basis for tests of aviation English worldwide. Instead the paper proposes an expanded construct of oral communication incorporating elements of professional knowledge and behaviour with a focus on interactional competence specific to this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of the increasing migration of black Africans to Australia, this paper seeks to raise conversations about the meta-discourses of Otherness in the Australian society. The paper aims to provide insights into black Africans' experience of othering and being othered in Australia. The paper draws from a broader study which examined the lived experiences of Africans in South East Queensland and highlights that the presentation of white as norm in Australia, one of or the institutional and social contexts that create conditions reinforcing othering practices, is perpetuated, especially, when the racial order in society is not acknowledged and challenged. The paper proposes that the condition of Africans in Australia may not just be explained by their immigration status or their lack of skills but linked to how they are positioned and constructed in Australia as visible 'Others.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities all over the world have activated policy support for urban consolidation in recent decades. Rationales for urban consolidation focus on its perceived ability to achieve sustainability goals, including decreased automobile dependence, increased social cohesion and greater walkability. Despite this, there are few international examples of urban consolidation policy implementation that has achieved its stated aims. This paper explores the nature and character of perceptions of urban consolidation held by urban planners, developers, architects and local politicians. The perspectives held by these ‘city shapers’ are integral to urban consolidation debates and delivery, yet the nature and character of their specific views are underexplored in urban studies literature. This paper combines the theoretical lens of Social Representations Theory with the methodological approach of Q-methodology to understand the common sense understandings of urban consolidation held by city shapers in Brisbane, Australia. It identifies, synthesises and critically discusses the social representations employed by city shapers to understand, promote and communicate about urban consolidation. Findings indicate that urban consolidation debates and justifications diverge significantly from stated policy intentions and are based on differing views on ‘good’ urban form, the role of planning and community consultation and the value of higher density housing. We conclude that there is utility and value in identifying how urban consolidation strategies are influenced by the shared beliefs, myths and perceptions held by city shapers. Understanding these narratives and their influence is fundamental to understanding the power-laden manipulation of policy definitions and development outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia has one of the most urbanised and diverse populations in the world, but there is little research that explores fleeting friendships between marginalised/racialised ethnic minority and indigenous populations. In contrast to metropolitan cities in white settler societies that have been the focus of much research, this paper focuses on the small, tropical city of Darwin in Northern Australia. This is a city that is at the centre of public debates on indigenous wellbeing, migrant integration and asylum seeker policies, with social welfare programmes that provide little opportunities for hopeful encounters among indigenous peoples and ethnic minority newcomers in surface spaces. I argue, however, that ‘grass root’ forms of creativity in an ‘underground’ car park bring their affective worlds together through a shared passion for art. The paper draws on gentle methodologies including participatory visual methods to privilege non-Western ways of inhabiting place. Through a ‘quiet politics’ and affective engagement with spacetimes both proximate and distant, the paper shows that it is possible to invoke different futures and crystallise experimental publics in the diverse city. The paper responds to a call to push the boundaries of urban research on social difference through geographies of friendship that are yet to engage with multisensory bodies, emotion, affect and art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mafia-type criminal groups belonging to, or originated from, the Calabrian ‘ndrangheta from Southern Italy, have been object of recent academic research and media attention in Australia. The Australian ‘ndrangheta, as qualified form of organised crime, poses new challenges for law enforcement in the country. This paper briefly looks at the strategies to fight organised crime in Australia, with specific focus on anti-association laws. By using a comparative approach, the paper will look at the criminalisation of mafias as qualified forms of organised crime in other two jurisdictions, Italy and the USA, to advocate for an effective mafia criminalisation in Australia. In conclusion, this paper will argue that, in order to also fight mafia phenomena, criminal law in Australia should focus on behaviours of organised crime groups rather than only on the criminalisation of proscribed associations and their illegal activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have examined the more nuanced experiential facets of self-conscious emotion from a cross-cultural perspective. The present study's aim was to investigate shame and embarrassment experiences in relation to shame logics (or appraisals), shame antecedents and intensity across cultures in Australia and Japan, drawing on Fessler's Dual Logics Model of Shame (Fessler, 2004), and applying a new instrument (The Self-Conscious Emotion Questionnaire). There were 157 participants from two cultures, Japan (75) and Australia (82) who completed both paper-based and web-based questionnaires. Previous findings showing a higher experienced shame intensity found in Japan were corroborated across all shame and embarrassment logics. While the logic of 'norm non-conformity' was the strongest logic in both cultures, the logic of 'status lowness' was prominent in Japan but not Australia, and the novel logic of 'broken positive assumptions about the self' was prominent in both cultures. Shame in Japan appeared to be stronger with an introspective 'eyes of self' but explicitly described trigger, whereas in Australia, it was more publicly 'eyes of other' and implicitly induced counter to some expectations. Findings support the Self-Conscious Emotion Questionnaire as an instrument for exploring nuanced aspects of self-conscious emotion in cross-cultural research and lend support to a novel third logic of 'broken positive assumptions about the self' in both Australian and Japanese samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The annual Australian monsoon pattern includes an onset, or the much anticipated first active monsoon period of the season, but defining the monsoon onset has proven to be problematic. Since the first Australian monsoon onset definition by Troup in 1961 there have been many others presented. There appears to be no universally accepted method to define the Australian monsoon onset, and therefore, we present here an analysis of the methods that have been proposed. The aim of this paper is to systematically review the different methods used to define the Australian monsoon onset, adding to the work that has been done by other reviews for monsoon systems around the world. For the first time, we identify the 25 different methods that have been published for the Australian monsoon/wet season onset and compare them to identify how well they align. When considering the 57 seasons where more than one onset definition is provided, the range of dates within the season can range over several months, with an average range of 44 days and the largest range within a season of 78 days. Thus, we show that different onset definitions are capturing different events altogether and pin the 'onset' to different dates throughout the progression of the north Australian wet season. Some capture a 'wet season onset' while others capture the dynamical overturning of the atmosphere (i.e. the monsoon). In conclusion, our analysis finds that there is still a lack in real-time monitoring or prognostic capabilities of monsoon onset dates as well as limited operational applicability despite a plethora of definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]