Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Australian Federal Government'

This thesis is a study of the federal Australian Labor Party (ALP) in Opposition. It seeks to identify the various factors that shape the political direction of the party when it is out of office by examining three important periods of Labor Opposition. It is argued in the first period (1967-72) that the main factor in the party’s move to the left was the radicalisation that occurred in Australian (and global) politics. Labor in Opposition is potentially more subject to influence by extra-parliamentary forces such as trade unions and social movements. This was true for this period in the case of the reinvigorated trade union movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, whose policy impacts on the ALP under Gough Whitlam are examined in detail. While every one of the party's policies cannot be attributed to the tumult of the period, it is argued that Labor's Program embodied the mood for social change. The second period (1975-83) records a much different experience. After Labor's Dismissal from office in November 1975, the enduring conclusion drawn by the party was that it had failed in government as economic managers, and that in future it would need to embrace responsible economic management and to jettison programmatic-style reform. This conclusion was accepted and argued by both federal leaders during this time, Gough Whitlam (1975-77) and Bill Hayden (1977-83). The thesis argues that the key reason for Labor's abandonment of reformist politics was the dramatic shift in the economic context wrought by the collapse of the post-war boom in 1974, which undermined the economic basis of the Program. The degree to which 'economic responsibility' governed Labor's approach to policy-making is highlighted through case studies of uranium mining and the Prices-Incomes Accord. The final period of Opposition (1996-2001) commences with the party’s landslide defeat at the 1996 Federal Election. Under the leadership of Kim Beazley, the party continued in the pro-free market policy tradition of Labor Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. In conjunction with this, it employed a 'small-target' strategy that pitched its electoral success on community anger towards the government, rather than any alternative policies of the Opposition. The free-market policy continuity is set in the context of the ideological effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, in the aftermath of which all political players accepted that there was no real alternative to the market. Furthermore, the overall state of the Australian and world economies was not conducive to a return to 'tax and spend' policies. The party’s bipartisanship on globalisation and economic rationalism effectively robbed it of an alternative political approach to that of the Coalition. Thus, in a sense it was hemmed into the 'small-target' strategy. The thesis concludes by comparing and contrasting the three periods, and assigning weight to the various factors that shape Labor in Opposition.

The Australian Federal government has well-defined guidelines for undertaking program evaluations. Advertising and Public Relations campaigns support program aims, and are subject to the same guidelines. However, an examination of actual practice in the Australian Federal government, as observed by the Office of Government Information and Advertising in Canberra, suggests that there are significant differences in the extent to which Public Relations campaigns, as opposed to advertising campaigns, are systematically evaluated. Evaluation theory, Public Relations theory, strategic planning theory, and public administration theory provide insights into methods of managing and reporting on communication campaigns designed to forward government objectives. A literature review and an assessment of existing models of Public Relations evaluation were undertaken, and a synthesis of several theoretical and practical approaches led to the construction of a model of Public Relations evaluation which could be applied to Australian government communication campaigns.

Through the late 20th century, global society experienced waves of unprecedented political and institutional change, but Australia came to be identified as "constitutionally speaking... the frozen continent", unable or unprepared to comprehensively modernise its own fundamental laws (Sawer 1967). This thesis opens up a subject basic to, but largely unexplored in debate about constitutional change: the territorial foundations of Australian constitutional thought. Our conventional conclusions about territory are first, that Australia's federal system has settled around a 'natural' and presumably final territorial structure; and second, that this is because any federal system such as possessed by Australia since 1901 is more decentralised and therefore more suitable than any 'unitary' one. With federalism coming back into vogue internationally, we have no reason to believe our present structure is not already the best. Reviewing the concepts of territory underpinning colonial and federal political thought from 1815 to the present day, this thesis presents a new territorial story revealing both these conclusions to be flawed. For most of its history, Australian political experience has been based around a richer, more complex and still evolving range of territorial ideas. Federalism is fundamental to our political values, but Australians have known more types of federalism, emerging differently in time and place, than we customarily admit. Unitary values have supplied important symbols of centralisation, but for most of our history have also sought to supply far less centralised models of political institutions than those of our current federal experience. Since the 1930s, in addition to underutilising both federal and unitary lines of imported constitutional theory, Australian politics has underestimated the extent to which our institutional treatment of territory has itself become unique. Despite its recent fall from constitutional discourse, territory is also again on the rise. While political debate has been poorly placed to see it, Australia has experienced a recent resurgence in ideas about territorial reform, offering the promise of a better understanding of the full complexity of our constitutional theory and a new 'unfreezing' of the assumption that territorially, Australia will never change. This thesis seeks to inform these vital new debates.

Between 1974 and 1983 the Australian federal government, responding to the increasing demands of grassroots activists, passed a series of legislation that successfully altered the federal relationship in Australia by transferring political responsibility for the environment from the state governments to the federal government in Canberra. To better illustrate this process, this thesis will utilize Tasmania as an emblematic case study. The first part of this thesis is a social history that analyzes the development of environmental consciousness in Tasmania. This analysis spans from the cultural impact of the extinction of the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) on the island populace and culminates in the well-documented protests against the damming of the Serpentine and Franklin Rivers. This analysis will illustrate the failures of the state government to address public concerns and how this facilitated the transition of the focus of lobbying from the state to the federal level. The second part of this thesis is a legal history, looking at the legislation that was passed during this period that facilitated the transfer and explains the constitutional basis and effectiveness of the legislation. Through these two separate studies, this thesis will expand the existing Australian historiography, which has largely kept political and social analyses of the environmental movement separated, by integrating the two historical narratives. This thesis offers three contributions to Australian historiography. First, this research shows that the constitutional reformation that occurred under the governments of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, and Bob Hawke was driven not by government initiative but, rather, by grassroots demands, and illustrate a need to further integrate the studies of social and political history so as to better pursue the histoire totale of Australia. Second, this thesis also helps contribute to the still nascent study of extinction’s socio-cultural impact on human societies with its particular emphasis on the extinction of the thylacine as the genesis of Tasmanian environmentalism. Third, it offers a detailed legal dissection of the federal government’s early environmental legislation and the constitutional foundations for Canberra’s acquisition of this responsibility.
Graduate Studies, College of (Okanagan)
Graduate

This study examines ways in which Australian governments, at national and state level, have developed policy responses to the issue of regional service delivery in the post new public management environment. It argues that new public management has changed many institutional arrangements in Australia and led to new public policy approaches based on those reforms. The study compares the approaches taken by federal and state governments in determining service levels for regional communities. The period under consideration is 1996-2001, coinciding first with the election of new NSW and federal governments and their subsequent re-election. Four cases studies are used to analyse a range of activities designed to provide services at local and regional levels, identifying key indicators of policy successes based on coordinated and integrated regional services combined with technology-based solutions that can be adapted to local community needs. The research draws on new governance theory and principles of effective coordination to propose a new model for determining appropriate service delivery. This model highlights the importance of local participation in decision-making, a regional planning focus, social and environmental sustainability, and the engagement of local communities as key determinants of regional policy success.

Public policies are, at once, the means for articulation of political philosophies and processes, the conduits for conversion of political and bureaucratic decisions into actions and the means by which the electorate can assess government performance. Public policy processes offer a means of achieving social and economic change and they are a primary justification for the existence of governmental systems. On these counts, identification of the elements of policy processes and the ways they interact with each other is essential to an understanding of the relationships between public policy decisions, systems of democratic government and their connections with wider society. This thesis goes behind the facade of public policy outcomes and analyses the processes involved in arriving at policy decisions. Linkages are traced between political theories, the processes of public policy decisions and final policy outcomes. This involves, first, an examination and critique of liberal-democratic theories. Second, there is detailed examination of pluralist democratic practice, which is the prevailing political paradigm of modern western liberal-democratic societies. The analysis finds substantial evidence of gross distortions in the process relative to normative theories. Plain causes are the institutionalisation of special interests to the exclusion of wider public interests and inadequate accountability of governments and bureaucracies for their actions. Policy processes in pluralist systems are examined and it is concluded that the social environment, institutional influences and factors which affect the behaviour of institutions are key elements explaining public policy decisions. The capacity for pluralism to significantly influence policy outcomes depends largely on the degree and nature of access to the public policy process at various points. In examining the role of government institutions in public policy processes, it is argued that a clear distinction between the elected legislature and the administrative bureaucracy is artificial and misleading. Further, there is evidence that public service bureaucrats can become captives of their particular client groups and, thus, less accessible to the full range of relevant interests. These problems are exacerbated by the two-party Westminster model of representative democracy which tends to concentrate power in cabinet government, resulting in a decline in the importance of parliament as a deliberative and scrutinising bodies. This dissertation develops the view that there are significant causal links between institutional philosophies and values and the dominant disciplines within institutions. It is also argued that growing professionalism in bureaucracies and a tendency for functional divisions of public policy to be in broad symmetry with the divisions of the professions, tends to intensify the influence of particular professional disciplines on related areas of public policy. The critique of liberal-democratic theories and the related discussion of factors affecting policy processes in a pluralist system are used to identify the essential elements of public policy processes. It is proposed that all policy processes contain the four elements of pluralism, access, accountability and planning which are interactively related. Differences in emphasis given to these elements in the policy process explains the nature of individual policy decisions. Thus, the normative policy process datum model provides both a static and dynamic framework for analysing policy decisions. In order to examine the theoretical arguments in an empirical context, the policy processes of the Australian Federal Government, in the area of industry assistance, are analysed. This policy arena contains all the 'raw material' of pluralist processes and is, therefore, a fertile area for analysis. Furthermore, operating within this policy arena is the Industries Assistance Commission [IAC], a bureaucratic institution which is quite unlike traditional administrative structures. The IAC has, prima-facie, all of the features of the policy process datum model; it operates in an open mode, it encourages a range of pluralistic inputs, it has a highly professional planning function and, because its policy advice is published, it encourages scrutiny and accountability of itself, other actors in the bureaucracy and the elected government. The IAC operates in a rational-comprehensive mode. The analysis concludes that the IAC was established in part to be a countervailing force to restore some balance in the industry policy arena. In this it has been partly successful - the distributive policy decisions of governments have come under much greater scrutiny than in the past and other areas of the bureaucracy have been forced to operate more frequently in a rational-comprehensive mode, rather than as advocates of sectional interests. The IAC has itself limited its range of objectives, however, and has tended to become a computational organisation, isolating its core economic [planning] technology from the interactive processes of the policy process model, i.e. pluralism, access and accountability. By protecting its essential philosophy in this way, the IAC runs the risk of becoming less influential in the overall policy process. Using the policy process model as a datum, and the empirical experience of the IAC and the policy arena in which it operates, several options for administrative reform are examined. A summary agenda for administrative change is proposed which revolves around ways of achieving balanced pluralistic inputs, a greater degree of access, better bureaucratic and government accountability and ways of exploiting but controlling technocratic planning expertise. Emphasis is placed on the need to achieve enriched interactive flows between each of these key elements. If these conditions can be met, it is proposed that a revised and improved administrative bureaucracy will emerge.

The thesis seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics of interaction between the environmental and labour movements, and the conditions under which they can cooperate and form alliances in pursuit of a sustainable development agenda which simultaneously promotes ecological and social justice goals. After developing an explanatory model of the labour-environmentalist relationship (LER) on the basis of a survey of theoretical and case-study literature, the thesis applies this model to three significant cases of labour-environmental interaction in Australia, each representing a different point on the spectrum from LER conflict to LER cooperation, during the period from 1983 to 1996. Commonly held views that there are inevitable tendencies to LER conflict, whether due to an irreconcilable "jobs versus environment" contradiction or due to the different class bases of the respective movements, are analysed and rejected. A model of the LER implicit in Siegmann (1985) is interrogated against more recent LER studies from six countries, and reworked into a new model (the Siegmann-Norton model) which explains tendencies to conflict and cooperation in the LER in terms of the respective ideologies of labour and environmentalism, their organisational forms and cultures, the national political-institutional framework and the respective places of labour and environmentalism therein, the political economy of specific sectors and regions in which LER interaction occurs, and sui generis sociological and demographic characteristics of labour and environmental actors. The thesis then discusses the major changes in the ideologies, organisational forms and political-institutional roles of the Australian labour movement which occurred during the period of the study, and their likely influence on the LER. The two processes of most importance in driving such changes were the corporatist Accord relationship between the trade union movement and Labor Party government from 1983 to 1996, and the strategic reorganisation of the trade union movement between 1988 and 1996 in response to challenges and opportunities in the wider political-economic environment. The research hypothesis is that the net effect of these changes would have been to foster tendencies towards LER conflict. The hypothesis is tested in three significant case studies, namely: (a) the interaction, often conflictual, between the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the environmental movement in debates around macroeconomic policy, economic restructuring and sustainable development from the mid-1980s onwards; (b) the complex interaction, involving elements of cooperation, disagreement and dialogue, between the environmental movement and the unions representing coal mining and energy workers in the formulation of Australia's climate change policies; and (c) the environmental policy and campaign initiatives of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union to improve workplace environmental performance and promote worker environmental education. The case studies confirmed the research hypothesis in the sense that, whilst the LER tended overall towards greater cooperation in the period of the study, the Accord relationship and union restructuring process worked to slow the growth of cooperative tendencies and sustain conflict over particular issues beyond what might otherwise have been the case. The Accord relationship served to maintain conflict tendencies due to the dominance of productivist ideologies within the ACTU, and the union movement's perseverance with this relationship after the vitiation of its progressive potential by neo-liberal trends in public policy. The tripartite Accord processes institutionalised a "growth coalition" of labour, business and the state in opposition to excluded constituencies such as the environmental movement. This was partially overcome during the period of the Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) process, which temporarily included the environmental movement as an insider in the political-institutional framework. The long-run effects of union reorganisation on the LER are difficult to determine as the new organisational forms of unions were not in place until almost the end of the period of the study. However, in the short term the disruptive effects of the amalgamations process restricted unions' capacity to engage with environmental issues. Pro-environment initiatives by the AMWU, and cooperative aspects of the coal industry unions' relationship with environmentalists, reflected the social unionist ideology and internal democratic practices of those unions, and the influence of the ESD Working Group process, whilst LER conflict over greenhouse reflected the adverse political economy of the coal industry, but also the relevant unions' less developed capacity for independent research and membership education compared to the AMWU. The LER in all three cases can be satisfactorily explained, and important insights derived, through application of the Siegmann-Norton model. Conclusions drawn include suggestions for further research and proposals for steps to be taken by labour and environmental actors to improve cooperation.

In August 2000, Justice O�Loughlin of the Federal Court of Australia handed down the decision in Cubillo v Commonwealth in which Lorna Cubillo and Peter Gunner took action against the Commonwealth Government, arguing that it was vicariously liable for their removal from their families and communities as children and subsequent detentions in the Northern Territory during the 1940s and 1950s. The case is the landmark decision in relation to legal action taken by members of the Stolen Generations. Using the decision in Cubillo as a key site of contestation, my thesis provides a critique of legal positivism as the dominant jurisprudential discourse operating within the Anglo-Australian legal system. I argue that the function of legal positivism as the principal paradigm and source of authority for the decision serves to ensure that the debate concerning reconciliation in Australia operates rhetorically to maintain whiteness at the centre of political and discursive power. Specifically concerned with the performative function of legal discourse, the thesis is an interrogation of the interface of law and language, of rhetoric, and the semiotics of legal discourse. The dominant theory of evidence law is a rationalist and empiricist epistemology in which oral testimony and documentary evidence are regarded as mediating the relationship between proof and truth. I argue that by attributing primacy to principles of rationality, objectivity and narrative coherence, and by privileging that which is visually represented, the decision serves an ideological purpose which diminishes the significance of race in the construction of knowledge. Legal positivism identifies the knowing subject and the object of knowledge as discrete entities. However, I argue that in Cubillo, Justice O�Loughlin inscribes himself into the text of the judgment and in doing so, reveals the way in which textual and corporeal specificities undermine the pretence of objective judgment and therefore the source of judicial authority.

In 1974 the Australian Government decided that from 1975 all education on its Territory of Christmas Island, Indian Ocean, would be integrated into a single service. It further decided that all schools would be staffed by Australian teachers from its recent1y established Commonwealth Teaching Service and would implement a curriculum closely reflecting those on the Australian mainland. These were decisive shifts from the previous system of separating the 'Asian' education system from the 'European' (Australian) system. This thesis sets out to find the reasons for these decisions and the expectations, or objectives, of those who made them. The changes to education had many Impacts on the Christmas Island community - both intended or unintended. These impacts are used to assist in evaluations of the policy objectives. The thesis uses the methodology of public policy analysis to examine the links between the government's education policy and its other broader policies regarding the Island. It thus examines operational decisions in the context of strategic considerations. The mid 1970s saw rapid changes in many Australian Government policies. Its new Christmas Island policies were responses to a range of complex, interrelated problems which emerged in the early 1970s - only 15 years after it assumed sovereignty. At the centre of these policy responses was Resettlement. The government's education decisions are examined in the light of the objectives and implications of its Resettlement policy as well as other inputs to the policy problem.

Thesis (LLM)--Macquarie University. Division of Law.
Bibliography: leaves 192-208.
Introduction -- The perceived problems and the new reforms -- The framework for children's matters in Australia -- Families and functions - regulating the Australian family -- Reorganising the gender hierarchy -- Men's movements, misconceptions and misidentifying the real issues -- Problems with "shared parenting": an ideal or a (rebuttable) presumption? -- Mediation not litigation -- Conclusion -- Bibliography.
In this thesis, I critically appraise the latest reforms of the Australian family law system and assess the underlying philosophy of these measures. I specifically analyse the introduction of shared parenting and mandatory family dispute resolution. My starting point is that legislative changes alone cannot be used as a means of social change. Legal models cannot function correctly if they reflect an ideal rather than social reality, and in light of the current reforms, the Australian family law system risks such a fate. The system, which presumes that parents share parental responsibility upon separation (and therefore during the intact family), does not represent social truth. It appears to make an assumption that shared parenting is the societal practice, but I believe the law is really being used to impose such an ideal. If the reforms are to be successful, I argue that substantial social and economic structural change is required, in order to break down the dichotomy between men's and women's roles, which continue to define the male role as economic and public and the female responsibility as care-giving and private. This is particularly important if the Government is genuine about its aim to make parenting gender neutral in practice and not just in theory.
The thesis demonstrates that the reform measures are a response to the perceived rather than real problems identified in the family law system, and that they are largely issues raised under the influence of fathers' rights groups. The response of the Government to remedy the system is therefore flawed as it is based on misconceived notions about the family law system. It incorrectly identifies judicial discretion as a fundamental cause of the problems and tries to replace it with a more rules-based approach to determining children's matters. I suggest that the real problems can be found in the continuance of deeply entrenched customs and gendered role constructions, and the remedies lie in their overhaul. The social culture that makes the mother the primary caregiver and allocates to the father diminished parental responsibility from the time the child is born needs to be transformed. A suitable legal response to the current impasse would be to begin by educating the public about the way the system works and provide counselling to families on how to structure their united life well before they reach the breakdown point. Assisting families while they are still functional, as opposed to when they are dysfunctional, would arguably make a large difference in how the family law system is understood. Moreover, it would be able to facilitate ongoing communication for separating couples and, most importantly, thereby uphold the best interests of the child.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
208 leaves

[Truncated abstract] The objectives of this study are threefold: Firstly, to consider the relevance (to subnational state development) and adaptability (to globalisation) of federalism from a Western Australian perspective. Secondly, to consider the way in which various State Governments in Western Australia have implemented economic development policies to benefit from the global political economy. Finally, it proposes alternative mechanisms for guiding long-term economic development policy decision-making in Western Australia. This final objective is addressed in light of the findings of the first two. It is recognised that incremental changes are possible in full knowledge of the embedded nature of the policy-making process in Western Australia . . . In the case of Western Australia, subnational autonomy does not herald the end of the nationstate so much as a new stage in globalisation. In terms of how the Western Australian State Government attracts capital and labour investment, its history as an independent colony and its physical isolation from the other colonies have created the initial conditions that frame the policy-making process, which includes a set of drivers influencing the decisions that are made by State agents. Overall, the State Government continues to reinforce the State’s role as a peripheral resource supplier to the national and global political economy. Within this context, however, alternative strategies can be proposed that may contribute to the long-term sustainable development of the State’s economy.

The thesis argues that the relations between culture and government are best viewed through an analysis of the programmatic and institutional contexts for the use of culture as an interface in the relations between citizenship and government. Discussion takes place through an analysis of the history of art programmes which, in seeking to target a 'general' population, have attempted to equip this population with various particular capacities. We aim to provide a history of rationalities of art administration. This will provide us with an approach through which we might understand some of the seemingly irreconcilable policy discourses which characterise contemporary discussion of government arts funding. Research for this thesis aims to make a contribution to historical research on arts institutions in Australia and provide a base from which to think about the role of government in culture in contemporary Australia. In order to reflect on the relations between government and culture the thesis discusses the key rationales for the conjunction of art, citizenship and government in post-World War Two (WWII) Australia to the present day. Thus, the thesis aims to contribute an overview of the discursive origins of the main contemporary rationales framing arts subvention in post-WWII Australia. The relations involved in the government of culture in late eighteenth-century France, nineteenth-century Britain, America in the 1930s and Britain during WWII are examined by way of arguing that the discursive influences on government cultural policy in Australia have been diverse. It is suggested in relation to present day Australian cultural policy that more effective terms of engagement with policy imperatives might be found in a history of the funding of culture which emphasises the plurality of relations between governmental programmes and the self-shaping activities of citizens. During this century there has been a shift in the political rationality which organises government in modern Western liberal democracies. The historical case studies which form section two of the thesis enable us to argue that, since WWII, cultural programmes have been increasingly deployed on the basis of a governmental rationality that can be described as advanced or neo-liberal. This is both in relation to the forms these programmes have taken and in relation to the character of the forms of conduct such programmes have sought to shape in the populations they act upon. Mechanisms characteristic of such neo-liberal forms of government are those associated with the welfare state and include cultural programmes. Analysis of governmental programmes using such conceptual tools allows us to interpret problems of modern social democratic government less in terms of oppositions between structure and agency and more in terms of the strategies and techniques of government which shape the activities of citizens. Thus, the thesis will approach the field of cultural management not as a field of monolithic decision making but as a domain in which there are a multiplicity of power effects, knowledges, and tactics, which react to, or are based upon, the management of the population through culture. The thesis consists of two sections. Section one serves primarily to establish a set of historical and theoretical co-ordinates on which the more detailed historical work of the thesis in section two will be based. We conclude by emphasising the necessity for the continuation of a mix of policy frameworks in the construction of the relations between art, government and citizenship which will encompass a focus on diverse and sometimes competing policy goals.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2002.
Title from title screen (viewed 15 April 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Discipline of Government and International Relations, School of Economics and Politics, Faculty of Economics and Business. Degree awarded 2002; thesis submitted 2001. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

This thesis examines the history of Commonwealth Government higher education policy in Australia between 1958 and 1997 and its impact on the development of two groups of academic librarians: the Association of Librarians in Colleges in Advanced Education (ALCAE) and the Committee of Australian University Librarians (CAUL). Although university librarians had met occasionally since the late 1920s, it was only in 1965 that a more formal organisation, known as CAUL, was established to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information. ALCAE was set up in 1969 and played an important role helping develop a special concept of library service peculiar to the newly formed College of Advanced Education (CAE) sector. As well as examining the impact of Commonwealth Government higher education policy on ALCAE and CAUL, the thesis also explores the influence of other factors on these two groups, including the range of personalities that comprised them, and their relationship with their parent institutions and with other professional groups and organisations. The study focuses on how higher education policy and these other external and internal factors shaped the functions, aspirations, and internal dynamics of these two groups and how this resulted in each group evolving differently. The author argues that, because of the greater attention given to the special educational role of libraries in the CAE curriculum, the group of college librarians had the opportunity to participate in, and have some influence on, Commonwealth Government statutory bodies responsible for the coordination of policy and the distribution of funding for the CAE sector. The link between ALCAE and formal policy-making processes resulted in a more dynamic group than CAUL, with the university librarians being discouraged by their Vice-Chancellors from having contact with university funding bodies because of the desire of the universities to maintain a greater level of control over their affairs and resist interference from government. The circumstances of each group underwent a reversal over time as ALCAE's effectiveness began to diminish as a result of changes to the CAE sector and as member interest was transferred to other groups and organisations. Conversely, CAUL gradually became a more active group during the 1980s and early 1990s as a result of changes to higher education, the efforts of some university librarians, and changes in membership. This study is based principally on primary source material, with the story of ALCAE and CAUL being told through the use of a combination of original documentation (including minutes of meetings and correspondence) and interviews with members of each group and other key figures.

This thesis is concerned with Australian sport policy, specifically sport development in Australia. Therefore, its theoretical origins lie within the discourse of public policy. While public policy studies are abundant, sport policy research and in particular sport development studies are limited. Hence there is a shortage in the literature on sport development research. Sport nevertheless established itself as a legitimate policy area in Australia in the mid-1970s. Since then, the Federal Government's involvement with sport policy has expanded and nowadays sport in Australia is very much impacted by Federal Government support. However, increased interest and importance placed on sport have not induced corresponding attention from sport policy studies. This study is a first effort to portray the sport development processes as it occurs in the Australian context. In particular, this thesis examines the impact of the Federal Government involvement with sport policy on the sport development processes at a national level. In doing so, this study explores the roles of the key sport development players and the ways sport policies shape sport development processes. Additionally, the study explores the available sport development pathways and the relationships between sport policy players, policies and sport development processes. There have been previous efforts to depict the processes involved with sport development by means of a pyramid that incorporates mass participants at its base and the elite athletes at its peak. This framework provides a very simplistic representation of sport development and does not explicate the embedded processes (Eady, 1993, Shilbury & Deane, 2001). The aforementioned inadequacy of the existing framework to explain sport development led to grounded theory research. Grounded theory is a qualitative research approach formulated by Glaser and Strauss (1967) as a means of generating theory, when existing theoretical frameworks are inadequate to explain a phenomenon, which is embedded in systematically gathered and analysed data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Bryman, 1988). Strauss and Corbin (1994) argued that if the research question concerns a process, the method of choice for addressing the question is grounded theory. This method led to the constant comparison and coding of data from the Annual Reports of 35 National Sporting Organisations in Australia. These documents covered the years from 1999-2002 (inclusive) and are linked to a Federal Government funding cycle. Grounded theory research is viewed as 'the foundation for subsequent deductive studies that test out the resulting theory or interventions based on it' (Oshansky, 1996, p. 394). Hence, the model this thesis offers is subject to further empirical testing and future research. The results of the study provide a theoretical framework to understand the Sport Development Processes in Australia. The Sport Development Processes framework illustrates that at the hub of successful sport development there are three major and interrelated requirements: a) Stakeholders, b) Practices and c) Pathways. Sport Development Stakeholders (i.e. governments, sporting organisations and significant others) provide the unity and teamwork necessary for the Sport Development Practices that in turn provide the required Sport Development Pathways. These pathways as the result of sport stakeholder involvement and policy implementation allow Sport Development Processes to occur. According to the Sport Development Processes framework there are three interrelated processes (i.e. Attraction, Retention/Transition, and Nurturing) which involve attracting, retaining and developing the most skilled athletes, building participation and using sport performance to positively influence community involvement with sport. For each process to be successful, a different combination of stakeholder involvement and practices (hence resulting pathways) is necessary. This model provides a unique contribution to the field of sport policy, as it is the first theoretical attempt to fill the void regarding sport development processes. In the process, sport development officers, policy makers and sporting organisations at all levels around Australia are provided with a comprehensive model that assists and advances understanding of sport development processes.

Traditionally, the High Court of Australia has regarded the States of Australia as being "separate countries" for conflict of law purposes and has applied, in a rather formalistic manner, the English common law rules of private international law to resolve intrafederation conflict of laws problems. This paper argues that this approach to intrafederation conflict of laws is inappropriate. Instead, this paper argues that the High Court should follow the approach of the Supreme Court of Canada as exemplified by its decision in Morguard Investments Ltd v De Savoye. That is, the High Court should forsake its formalistic reasoning and instead approach intrafederation conflict of laws rules in a purposive way i.e. identify the purposes of the conflict of laws rules and ensure that the rules operate in a manner that meets these purposes. The purposes and operation of the intrafederation conflict of laws rules can only be understood in the context of the Australian federal environment. Aspects of this environment, such as a unified national legal system and a constitutional "full faith and credit" requirement, point to the conclusion that Australia is "one country and one nation." The States of Australia should be regarded as partners in federation and the conflict of laws rules that mediate the relationship between the laws of the different States should reflect this overall unity. Applying this purposive, contextual approach to the three major questions of the conflict of laws, this paper suggests the following features of an Australian intrafederation conflict of laws: 1. Unified substantive jurisdiction and broad judicial jurisdiction for Australian courts with effective transfer mechanisms to ensure litigation is heard in the most appropriate court; 2. The elimination, to the extent possible, of the "homeward trend" in choice of law rules so that uniform legal consequences will attach throughout Australia to any particular set of facts; and 3. The effective, unqualified enforcement of sister-State judgments throughout Australia.