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Leaving parliament is often a time of significant financial, employment and emotional difficulty for MPs. However, few studies have examined the support provided by parliaments to departing and former members. Consequently, parliaments lack access to best-practice case studies to improve the transitional experience for MPs. This article develops five benchmarks for supporting former MPs, covering transitional financial assistance; retirement income; career, financial, life transitions and redundancy counselling; mental health and medical services; and social and networking opportunities. These benchmarks are used to assess the support provided to former members by 22 selected 'professional parliaments'. Although most of these parliaments offer adequate retirement income, none currently provide sufficient transitional financial assistance for MPs who depart before pensionable age. In all cases, improvements are also required to mental health and other counselling services. Most parliaments provide adequate social and networking opportunities. Implementing and extending these measures will improve the transitional experience of former MPs and enhance democratic rotation by reducing impediments to high-quality candidates from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds from seeking political office, while easing the exit of MPs who are ready to leave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents the experiences of three early career academics trying to establish a network of early career academics (ECAs) in a middle-ranked university in Australia. The changing context of academia means that ECAs face considerable challenges in understanding and negotiating effective career paths. Some of the issues encountered include insecure employment arrangements; unclear and shifting expectations; heavy workloads and competing demands; and conflicting experiences around the collegiate culture of academia. As research and teaching institutions, universities must ensure the ongoing development of new academics. While there is a growing interest in exploring the issues confronted by new academics, much remains to be done to better understand, and improve, the pathways of academic development. To this end we reflect on our efforts to establish an ECA network that aimed to enhance professional development, facilitate an improved research culture and establish an informal peer support network. We did so through establishing an online presence for sharing information, hosting a series of professional development seminars and hosting a 2.5 day writing retreat. Our experiences suggest that, while efforts to enhance the capacity of ECAs are worthwhile, the very same pressures that our network was attempting to address were simultaneously creating barriers to ECA involvement in the network and its activities.

Australia's offshore immigration detention centers are characterized by a culture of secrecy that keeps human rights abuses hidden. Yet, detainees are employing new technologies and media to narrate their experiences of incarceration. This article examines the potentials and limitations of bearing witness and exercising acoustic agency through podcasting. It provides a case study of The Messenger podcast in which a refugee detained on Manus Island exchanges voice messages with an Australian journalist. It finds that podcasting can breach the secrecy that sustains a punitive detention regime and evoke empathy in listeners through the affective nature of voice. However, podcasting is limited by the sense of distance produced by prerecorded and edited sound and by the risk of creating echo chambers through the selective nature of podcast consumption. Finally, we adapt, develop, and argue for the concept of earwitnessing as a practice of responsible and political listening to injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The act of witnessing connects audiences with distant suffering. But what happens when bearing witness becomes severely restricted? External parties, including the mainstream news media, are constrained from accessing Australia's offshore immigration detention centres. The effect is that people seeking asylum are hidden from the public and excluded from national debates. Some detainees have adopted social media as a platform to communicate their stories of flight, and their experiences of immigration detention, to a wider audience. This article examines the ways in which social media, and particularly Facebook, has facilitated what we call self-represented witnessing. We analyse two public Facebook pages to assess how detainees use such social media networks to document their experiences, and we observe the interaction between detainees, other social media users and mainstream media. Significantly, these social media networks enable detained asylum seekers to conduct an unmediated form of self-represented witnessing that exposes human rights abuses and documents justice claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents the experiences of three early career academics trying to establish a network of early career academics (ECAs) in a middle-ranked university in Australia. The changing context of academia means that ECAs face considerable challenges in understanding and negotiating effective career paths. Some of the issues encountered include insecure employment arrangements; unclear and shifting expectations; heavy workloads and competing demands; and conflicting experiences around the collegiate culture of academia. As research and teaching institutions, universities must ensure the ongoing development of new academics. While there is a growing interest in exploring the issues confronted by new academics, much remains to be done to better understand, and improve, the pathways of academic development. To this end we reflect on our efforts to establish an ECA network that aimed to enhance professional development, facilitate an improved research culture and establish an informal peer support network. We did so through establishing an online presence for sharing information, hosting a series of professional development seminars and hosting a 2.5 day writing retreat. Our experiences suggest that, while efforts to enhance the capacity of ECAs are worthwhile, the very same pressures that our network was attempting to address were simultaneously creating barriers to ECA involvement in the network and its activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia and Indonesia have engaged in cooperation on asylum policy since the late 1990s, bilaterally on immigration detention and people-smuggling agreements, and multilaterally through the Bali Process. Seen from a global perspective, this form of cooperation is one of many such bilateral and multilateral agreements that stymie the ability of asylum-seekers to gain effective and durable protection. This article argues that policy transfer theory can explain how these agreements are achieved, their political implications, and their outcome for the refugee regime and the asylum-seekers reliant on the regime for protection. In the case study of Australia and Indonesia, the authors argue that the cooperation is best understood as a form of ‘incentivised policy transfer’, whereby Australia has provided substantial financial and diplomatic incentives to Indonesia to adopt policies consistent with Australia's own. The implications for asylum-seekers in the Asia-Pacific region are substantial, and include an increase in the use of immigration detention in Indonesia and the introduction of border security measures that restrict the ability of asylum-seekers to reach territory where they may claim protection under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The pressing issue of homelessness in Australia is largely caused by a shortage of affordable accommodation. Unexpected results from a study into the experiences of homeless families, however, revealed that many people held the perception that asylum seekers, refugees and migrants are given greater priority by welfare agencies for housing assistance. Analysis of the interview data is used to illustrate how public and political discourses circulating at the time of the interviews may have contributed to these views. The article also discusses the extent to which xenophobia in the Australian community has links with feelings of economic insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 2000, Australia has provided significant levels of funding and resources to encourage Indonesia to use immigration detention to deter asylum seekers from making the onward journey to Australia. In this way Australia has effectively extended its domestic policy of immigration detention beyond its own national borders. The provision of Australian funding for detention in Indonesia has resulted in an increased propensity of Indonesian officials to detain. This article examines the outcomes and implications of this transfer of immigration detention policy for asylum seekers and refugees in Indonesia. It draws on interviews conducted with individuals who have spent time in Indonesia’s immigration detention centres, and Indonesian immigration officials, to assess the conditions of the detention centres. The particular arrangement between Australia and Indonesia, however, fails adequately to protect the human rights of immigration detainees. Ultimately, the detention of asylum seekers in Indonesia serves as one more barrier to finding effective protection in the Asia-Pacific region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the history of four islands used for incarceration in Australia: the 'secondary punishment' of convicts on Norfolk Island; the management and quarantine of indigenous people on Palm Island; the quarantine of all new migrants and visitors on Bruny Island; and the incarceration of enemy aliens on Rottnest Island. Incarceration has been used throughout Australia's history as a method of social and political control, targeting categories of people perceived to pose a threat to the racial composition, social cohesion, or national security of the Australian community. By providing a space both separate and invisible to the community, Australia's carceral islands served as a solution to a recurring problem for a young nation apprehensive about the composition, durability and security of its community. The human consequences of incarceration could be devastating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]