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The Australian Association of Social Workers has campaigned for many years for the registration of social workers in Australia, but with little success to date. This paper critically examines the key arguments for and against registration with reference to academic and government policy literature from international jurisdictions (primarily New Zealand and England) where government regulation of social work already exists. This review of existing literature found that arguments in favour of registration broadly centre on two main assumptions. They are improved protection of clients and amplification of professional standing. The findings indicate that there is only limited empirical evidence as to whether registration does in fact lift the professional standing of social workers or protect consumers from substandard practice. We conclude that further research is required to examine whether registration of social workers is justified in Australia, and particularly to ascertain whether the regulation of social workers generally or in specific practice areas such as child protection can realistically take place independently of the large number of human service practitioners who are not social work trained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of activism have inspired geographers for many years, but most of this work has focused on relatively short time-frames, events and struggles. This paper suggests that there is much to be gained from a greater engagement with issues of time and time--spaces. It outlines and applies the contrasting conceptions of chrono/chora and kairo/topos notions of time--space as potentially useful ways to interrogate geographies of activism. The paper focuses on two specific forms of activism--an Australian women's 'Heritage Project' and a New Zealand 'Fishbowl' evaluation of a community development programme--to show how politics is contingent on diverse temporal as well as spatial conditions. It reveals the complex navigations that are made as these politics are negotiated via both mutual learning processes and the forging of new activist--state relations. It is concluded that these 'timely partnerships' have involved moving beyond adversarial conceptions of 'state' and 'activist', but at the risk of reconstituting activism as 'social capital.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of equity measures in Australian and New Zealand policing, involving nine police departments, from 2003/4 to 2007/8. The findings were mixed. Overall, the number of sworn female officers in both countries continued to trend slowly upwards, with an average of 26.6 per cent in Australia and 17.1 per cent in New Zealand in 2007/8. However, recruit numbers appeared to have peaked around 33 per cent and were in decline in most departments where data were available. Women continued to move up the ranks in all departments, but there were still very few women in senior ranks. Although women were not separating at a higher rate than men, they were more likely than men to resign. While more positive than earlier appraisals of equity in Australia, the findings continue to reflect inadequate data collection that would address long-term inequity issues. The labour force participation rate of women in Australia has increased significantly over the last few decades. However, women are not necessarily focusing on traditional career paths but rather see employment opportunities as one of many options that include family and lifestyle balance. Nevertheless, it is argued here that police organisations should remain committed to gender equity. Affirmative action and other gender equity strategies are considered necessary to encourage greater participation by women, for the benefits to women of a policing career and for the wider good of the community and police organisations themselves. Better diagnostic data and visible commitment are required to support this objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguing for the merits of an antipodean perspective that embraces the linked historical and current relations between Tasman, British and other worlds, this paper focuses on the majoritarian responses of those of English ancestry in Britain and within the British diaspora to wide ranging changes that potentially challenge their national supremacy in both contexts. After briefly assessing some of the approaches to exploring the identities of the 'English/British' separately in Australia and New Zealand, some suggestions are made about how majoritarian narratives are best reframed, conceptually and methodologically, both within the antipodes and the broader contexts within which they have always been placed. The adoption of an antipodean perspective is deemed necessary in order to understand how changes in majority status and shifts in national identity are mutually constituted within and across the above worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the now entrenched historiography of the Australian Settlement and New Zealand variations thereof. Against the central premise of this historiography, that a particular regime of domestic insulation and external orientation to the British market constrained development and persisted unchanged until the neo-liberal restructuring of the 1980s, it is argued here that the political economy of the beginning of the 20th century was profoundly destabilized by the Depression. As a result, a new, Keynesian regime was established in New Zealand from the late 1930s and in Australia a few years latter. The entrenchment of this regime depended upon adoption by remade conservative parties by the end of the 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fathers' rights movement in England has recently been given a huge boost by the involvement of Bob Geldof who has become their influential mouthpiece in the media and elsewhere. The movement has also diversified and adopted more high profile tactics more akin to those used in Australia and New Zealand. These tactics have challenged family law to adopt a principle of pure equality between mothers and fathers and demands that, on divorce or separation, children should be shared equally. In this paper it is argued that this demand ignores entirely the experiences of children who have lived an `equal shares' arrangement for many years and that it reduces children to passive objects who can have no voice in a system designed only to create equality between adults. It is argued that rather than pushing the principles of family law back towards simplistic notions of equality, what is needed is a policy based on recognition rather than rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces this journal's supplement which features some of the best papers presented at the third Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference, held in Melbourne on November 16-19, 2003. The conference was titled "Bridging the Gap: Research and Values to Policy and Practice." The papers published in this issue have gone through the usual refereeing process for the "Journal of Health Services Research and Policy."