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The PhD by Publication offers doctoral students an opportunity to focus on publishing during their candidature. A considerable body of literature has explored questions of legitimacy, consistency and quality of this model of scholarship, while students have reflected on how this approach helped build a publishing track record and develop skills associated with writing scholarly articles [Jackson, D. (2013). Completing a PhD by publication: A review of Australian policy and implications for practice. "Higher Education Research & Development," 32(3), 355-368; Robins, L., & Kanowski, P. (2008). PhD by publication: A student's perspective. "Journal of Research Practice," 4(2), 1-20]. However, there is a need to explore how this approach both shapes and reflects the student experience of doctoral studies. This auto-ethnographical article analyses my own experience of the PhD by Publication. On the one hand, this method suited my multidisciplinary research topic and approach to research and assisted the flexibility and creativity of my research. On the other, I began to view my value as a researcher and the value of my research, in terms of the quantitative performance metrics of research in output, citation counts and h-index. Concept of performativity, I analyse how the PhD by Publication potentially reshapes what it is to be a doctoral student, and how the value of doctoral students is construed by themselves and others within their university.

We write as Australian youth work educators. We consider some of the ethical challenges involved in teaching youth work 'in a warm climate', situated in the diaspora of English youth work but where youth work also has a uniquely Australian character, placing us in an ethically liminal space in our teaching between an understanding of youth work that is robustly defended as being both 'good' and 'true', and what we do, which is different from this, and has its own character and strengths. We situate this in the policy history of youth work in Australia, particularly in the 'neoliberal turn' that this has taken in the last four decades which has created ethical challenges for us, just as it has for those elsewhere. Two guiding questions shape this paper. The first is, given our differences, what challenges do we face in maintaining connections with 'good' youth work and its value base as traditionally defined and defended in England, and relatedly, given that policy and funding regimes in the UK seem to be aligning more with an Australian model, is there anything that the youth work community in the UK can learn from the Australian experience? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically analyses the policy discourse that accompanied the introduction of the 'New Employment Services Model' (NESM) into the Australian social security system. Critical policy discourse analysis of documents presenting reforms to employment services provision shows that the NESM embeds a logic of activation that construes job seekers both as passive units requiring external motivation (through 'employment support' and 'mutual obligation'), and as active agents responsible for their own situation. This contradictory logic results in inconsistencies between the espoused aims of the reforms and the experience of those subject to the policy mechanisms. Analysis of departmental outcomes data illustrates the inconsistent operational consequences of the conflation of 'targeted compliance' and 'support.' Due to the technological automation of activation processes, the real discursive innovation of the NESM is one of 'digital depoliticization,' whereby the moralizing assumptions that inform punitive activation are embedded and therefore concealed in the policy technology. The operational effect is to subordinate the achievement of employment to compliance with mutual obligation requirements as a structured aim of employment services provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the causes and potential solutions to, student attrition. With student attrition rates reaching between 30 and 50 per cent in the United States, and over 20 per cent in Australia, the inability of higher education institutions to retain their students is a significant issue. This paper cites key risk factors which place students at risk of non-completion, which include mental health issues, disability, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Furthermore, first year students and higher degree by research students are susceptible to attrition. The capacity of a student to develop a sense of belonging within the higher education institution is recognised by this paper as a being a critical factor determining student retention. The creation of a caring, supportive and welcoming environment within the university is critical in creating a sense of belonging. This can be achieved by the development of positive student/faculty relationships, the presence of a well resourced counselling centre and the encouragement of diversity and difference.

This article explores discursive legitimation of intensified conditionality in Australian social security policy, by the association of responsible consumption with a revised construction of Australian identity. Discursive rationalization of the use of cashless debit cards to constrain consumption choices by citizens is situated in representations of Australian identity and social citizenship. Against growing empirical evidence of a lack of conclusive efficacy and emergent social harms, political rationalizations for the card's introduction assert a normative Australian way of life that frames card users as 'flawed consumers,' lacking in the characteristics of imagined Australian citizenship. The compatibility of this imagined Australian identity with the values of market liberalism completes the substitution of market citizenship for its antecedent welfare state conception of citizenship based on rights. In this substitution, the idea of a right to social protection is subordinated to conditional support that promotes the sentiment that social welfare is 'un-Australian.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show how policy discourses construct consumer choice, performance measurement and quality standards as key technologies in the marketisation of disability services and aged care in Australia. The emergence of performance outcome measurement and increased consumer access to these through diverse consumer facing and interactive platforms enables the state to "govern at a distance" through the management and shaping of outcome indicators rather than delivery of services. The state does this by creating market competition and establishing outcomes which reflect the construction people using services as informed and rational consumers rather than citizens. This construction and operationalisation frame marketisation as a rational solution to broken systems, assume choice is unproblematic and ignore diverse capacities to access and use information, resource differentials and contextual variables such as market maturity and service availability. The benign marketisation of human services thus discriminates against those who are already marginalised and disadvantaged unless equity strategies are clearly in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human Centred Design (HCD) is emerging in Australia as a participatory approach to service design in social work and human services organisations. In this article, we reflect upon our incorporation of HCD into a core unit offered to final-year students in a Bachelor of Social Work (Honours) degree, as part of a collaboration between design and social work academics. We highlight successes and challenges, and identify adaptations that can provide HCD with a stronger strength-based, critical approach that better aligns with critical social work education. We provide suggestions for social work practitioners and educators around implementing HCD, in ways that inspire critical and reflexive thinking, promote social justice and focus on designing for progressive, structural and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic is both a health and an economic crisis. Economically, lockdowns across Australia have devastated business and industry, creating immediate spikes in under‐ and unemployment. These impacts intersect with the precarious labour market of casualised and "gig" economy work, where young workers constitute an established and substantial group. While negatively impacting upon many young people's lives, in recent decades precarious employment has also been normalised for young people as they are encouraged to understand themselves as self‐reliant and entrepreneurial in their working lives. Yet, these workers have been largely abandoned in the government's economic response to COVID‐19. The economic impact and government response to the pandemic substantially disadvantage young people. This article analyses the impact of new government initiatives: the "JobKeeper" wage subsidy scheme, "JobSeeker" payments and early access to superannuation, "JobMaker" economic recovery plan and the redesign of university fees. These initiatives compound preexisting youth policy of low welfare levels, youth wages and high university fees to economically burden young people. Contrasting the repeated expression of anything pandemic related as "unprecedented", we argue that the economic abandonment of young people in the immediate COVID‐19 crisis continues a decades‐long precedent in Australia of economically disadvantaging young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trauma associated with resettling in a new country is considerable for young people who have experienced (forced) migration. The loss of place and loss of connection with family and friends is significant. Resettlement in unfamiliar, suburban and rural places can accentuate this sense of loss. In Australia, the difficulty of this challenge is amplified by nationalistic discourses of Australian identity and citizenship, which construct and preserve a particularly British notion of 'Australian-ness'. This article explores the relationship between place and displacement and problematises the development and use of nationalistic identities as a spatial management method for creating social division and exacerbating the impacts of displacement, particularly for young people resettling in a new environment following (forced) migration. Building on this we suggest that theorisations of space, place and belonging offer new opportunities for social work education to enhance students' understanding of displacement and social work practice, particularly in relation to young peoples' experiences of (forced) migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Australian policy makers’ use of quantification and technologies of government to implement the project of Australian wheat export market liberalisation. I draw upon policy documents to analyse how quantification has been used to construct a simplified, governable conception of the wheat industry. Policy makers, I suggest, acted upon this constructed reality through assemblages of technologies such as performance objectives, audit, cost-benefit analysis and econometric modelling to facilitate wheat export market deregulation. In addition, this paper shows how quantification was used to delegitimise the social consequences of deregulation and marginalise farmers’ opposition to this shift. Thus, the erasure of the social world enabled policy makers to construct economic objectives such as efficiency and productivity as serving the national interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse of Australian public policy refers regularly to the concept of ‘efficiency’ as though the meaning of this term is self-evident and shared by all stakeholders in the policy process. Efficiency is constructed as a primary objective of policy, as an ambition which is unequivocally ‘good’. This focuses discussion on what policy change is needed to maximise efficiency, rather than the more pertinent question, of ‘Why efficiency?’ This article examines how efficiency is described and justified in a collection of Australian policy documents produced in the past 25 years by government departments, agencies and inquiries, and by mainstream lobby groups and consulting firms. These policy documents portray efficiency as essential in raising consumers’ living standards. In turn, living standards are narrowed, centring on satisfaction of consumers’ wants through markets, by firms. I build on Pusey’s argument that efficiency injures, rather than improves, quality of life for many people. Measures in the interests of maximising efficiency, such as casualisation, outsourcing and disaggregation of jobs, have contributed to an increasingly insecure existence for many, particularly those on society’s margins. As a result, I argue that rather than seeking to maximise efficiency for the betterment of society, efficiency is pursued in spite of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Government’s Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper aims to create a profitable and resilient Australian agriculture sector. In doing so, the White Paper emphasises farmers’ individual responses to the structural problems which have undermined farmers’ profitability, such as consolidated commodities markets. In particular, the White Paper recommends that farmers shape their farming practice to make their farms more attractive to private investors. This is presented as a normal response to farm profitability concerns. Farms are portrayed as investment targets and securing investment is framed as an essential skill of the modern farmer. To understand how this discursive construction has been made possible, this article develops a genealogical analysis of changing constructions of farmers, farming and of the role of the State. This research reveals the subtle discursive shifts which have helped shift responsibility for farming, from the State, to the self-reliant individual, and most recently, towards the private sector. Whereas the construct of the self-reliant, independent farmer has been used to facilitate deregulation of agricultural industries, this recent shift in power towards the private sector may potentially undermine farmers’ autonomy and increase dependence on private sector investment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2008, the statutory marketing powers held by the Australian Wheat Board were dismantled, with the decision by the Federal Government to deregulate the export wheat market. This article snowball sampled 22 small-to-medium sized wheat growers in Victoria’s western Wimmera to qualitatively research how they perceived this policy affected their operations. Although deregulation was intended to create a competitive market, wheat growers felt the level of competition in their region, specifically, at local receival sites, was minimal and referred to instances where they had lost money from selling to grain traders who became insolvent, owing significant sums of money which substantially affected growers’ wheat marketing. Additionally, participants felt they lacked power in the open market, which was counter-posed by the power, and occasionally predatory behaviour, of some grain traders, and contributed to feelings of insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article draws on the concept of cultural humility, to describe and analyze a decolonizing approach to co-designing a primary prevention basketball program for young African-Australian people in Melbourne, Australia. We explore the potential for genuine collaboration and power-sharing with a culturally diverse community through collaboratively developing the co-design process and resultant program design. This article highlights the central role of UBUNTU in the co-design process, prioritizing African ways of knowing, being, and doing within a Westernized social work and design context. Through reporting on the stages of program design, we offer an example of how Indigenous knowledges and philosophies such as UBUNTU might be incorporated into co-design through cultural humility. We suggest this allows for a transformation of design tools and processes in ways that undermine oppressive and marginalizing power imbalances in design and social work., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.