Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Australian Government policy'
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1
McMaster, Don. "Detention, deterrence, discrimination : Australian refugee policy /." Title page, abstract and contents only, 1999. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phm167.pdf.
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Lilly, Kara. "Health in All Policies in Australian Local Government: A policy process perspective." Thesis, Curtin University, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/88825.
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This study explored the enabling and challenging factors within the policymaking environment in relation to Health in All Policies in Australian local government, through the theoretical lens of political science. The study adopted an explanatory, sequential mixed method design, across two phases. Nineteen interconnected factors were found to influence the policymaking environment. The application of political science frameworks allowed a meaningful discourse to devise recommendations for policy, practice and future research.
3
Di, Francesco Michael Francis, and not available. "Program Evaluation and Policy Management in Australian Central Agencies." The Australian National University. Public Policy Program, 1997. http://thesis.anu.edu.au./public/adt-ANU20010726.162328.
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Of the many components of reform to Australian government administration in the
1980s, the introduction of systematic program evaluation is perhaps one of the least
examined. This thesis seeks to assess the Federal Labor Government's evaluation
strategy as an instrument for enhancing what are here termed the policy management
capacities of central agencies. It proceeds in two steps. First, the thesis traces in detail
the development of program evaluation policy in Australian federal government from
the effectiveness reviews of the Coombs Report of 1976 to the current evaluation
strategy, and argues that, despite competing purposes for it, evaluation was intended
primarily to serve decision making in central government. This policy aim was
cemented by the economic crisis of the mid 1980s and framed around budgetary issues
by its steward, the Department of Finance. Second, in order to assess the impact of the
evaluation strategy, the thesis develops a framework for analysing program evaluation
as one instrument for strengthening the core policy management functions of central
agencies. In this context, policy management is essentially a coordination task. The
contribution of evaluation to two aspects of policy management-resource
coordination, and policy development and coordination-is examined. The findings
confirm that attempts to formalise evaluation processes have had a variable impact-
central budgetary processes remain dependent on relatively informal assessment
procedures, although recent attempts to enhance policy coordination through the
evaluation of policy advising processes have proved potentially to be more influential.
In conclusion, the thesis argues that the evaluation strategy represented a credible
attempt to better inform policy making in central government, but suffered for want of
clear policy design and firm execution that resulted in only a marginal impact on these
processes.
4
Manning, Elizabeth Sophie Mary. "Local content and related trade policy: Australian applications /." Title page, abstract and table of contents only, 2004. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phm2832.pdf.
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Fleming, Brian James. "The social gradient in health : trends in C20th ideas, Australian Health Policy 1970-1998, and a health equity policy evaluation of Australian aged care planning /." Title page, abstract and table of contents only, 2003. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phf5971.pdf.
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Furtado, Michael Leonard. "Funding Australian Catholic schools for the common good in new times : policy contexts, policy participants and theoretical perspectives /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2001. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe16295.pdf.
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McLean, Kathleen Ann 1952. "Culture, commerce and ambivalence : a study of Australian federal government intervention in book publishing." Monash University, National Centre for Australian Studies, 2002. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/7566.
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Ramsay, Janet Kay. "The Making of Domestic Violence Policy by the Australian Commonwealth Government and the Government of the State of New South Wales between 1970 and 1985: An Analytical Narrative of Feminist Policy Activism." University of Sydney. Discipline of Government and International Relations, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/724.
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This thesis is a study of the processes by which domestic violence, as framed by Australian feminists from the early 1970s, was inserted into the policy agenda of governments, and developed into a comprehensive body of policy. The thesis covers the period between 1970 and 1985. Acknowledging the federal nature of the Australian polity, it examines these processes that unfolded within both the Australian Commonwealth government and the government of New South Wales. The thesis provides a political history of domestic violence policy making in the identified period. It shows that policy responses to women escaping violent partners included both immediate measures (such as protection and justice strategies) and more long-term measures to attempt to secure the conditions for women�s financial, legal and personal autonomy. The elements found to have been most significant in shaping the development of such policies were the roles and identities of the participant players, including the driving role of the women suffering partner violence; the lack of contest in the early stages of policy achievement with established professionals in related fields; the uniquely �hybrid� role and positioning of refuge feminists; and the degree of integration and continuity which characterised the domestic violence policy process. The thesis also investigates the relationship between domestic violence policy making and the broader women�s policy enterprise. It demonstrates the care with which those involved avoided the dangers of sensationalism and tokenism while striving for an appropriate policy response. The thesis pays particular attention to the circumstances in which feminists in the early 1970s experienced their �discovery� of domestic violence. It demonstrates the significance of social and economic circumstances in shaping the political options of feminists in the thesis period and those preceding it, and the extent to which policy possibilities are shaped by representations of the nature and functions of policy itself. Finally, the thesis investigates the relationship between the strategic processes undertaken and the policy outcomes produced, finding that policies achieved in the thesis period complemented and in some ways transcended accepted policy practice in the relevant period.
9
Diemont-Ebes, Anja, and adiemont51@hotmail com. "From second board to angels : an analysis of government support for new ventures, 1984-1994." Swinburne University of Technology, 1996. http://adt.lib.swin.edu.au./public/adt-VSWT20060317.113350.
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During the past decade (1984-1994), Australia experienced its worst recession since the depression of the 30's, followed by a no-growth period and an unemployment rate hovering around nine per cent.
The awareness of Commonwealth and State Governments of the need for specific policies to stimulate new ventures and support small and medium enterprises (SME's), was increased by a range of reviews which resulted in a variety of initiatives.
However, two key national initiatives, licensed Management and Investment Companies (MIC's) and the Second Board Stock Market, which aimed at making access to funds easier for new ventures, failed to provide sustained financial support to new innovative firms.
Small businesses in Australia account for some 80 per cent of all businesses and 50 per cent of employment in the private sector. While many factors contribute to the successful establishment and growth of new businesses, a key factor is the availability of and access to affordable finance.
The major objective of this study was to identify key success/failure factors in new venture creation and to review in detail the rise and fall of the Second Board Stock Market (1984-1992) - arguably one of the most significant Government initiatives during the 80's to provide access to equity funds.
A survey of Melbourne companies listed on the Second Board was to provide valuable information on the success/failure of the Second Board Stock Market and to illuminate desirable Government initiatives meeting SME's survival needs.
10
Minami, Masaki. "The role and policy of the South Australian Government in the development of economic ties with Asian nations /." Title page, table of contents and abstract only, 1997. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09ARM/09armm663.pdf.
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11
Sendziuk, Paul 1974. "Learning to trust : a history of Australian responses to AIDS." Monash University, School of Historical Studies, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/9264.
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Ramsay, Janet. "The making of domestic violence policy by the Australian Commonwealth Government and the Government of the State of New South Wales between 1970 and 1985 an analytical narrative of feminist policy activism /." Connect to full text, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/724.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2005.Title from title screen (viewed 21 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Discipline of Government and International Relations, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2005; thesis submitted 2004. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.
13
Briskman, Linda 1947. "Aboriginal activism and the stolen generations : the story of SNAICC." Monash University, National Centre for Australian Studies, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/9293.
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Stenhouse, Renae N. "Ecology and management of bushland in Australian cities." University of Western Australia. School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, 2005. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2005.0027.
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[Truncated abstract] Native vegetation (bushland) in urban areas remains in small, isolated patches embedded within a matrix of human-dominated land uses. Bushlands in urban areas have high biodiversity conservation and social values, and there has been a local-level movement towards protecting and managing urban bushlands in Australia. This thesis aims to test principles, theories and concepts relating to the ecology and management of bushland fragments in Australian cities ... A commonly used qualitative scale was compared with an ecologically based, quantitative technique developed in the research. The qualitative scale was found to be a reliable proxy for assessing vegetation condition, while also being more user-friendly for community groups and other bushland managers. The human-caused disturbances and weed cover in urban bushlands indicate a need for management intervention. Local government has an important role in local biodiversity management, yet there has been little research on this topic ... Positive partnerships developed where local governments have taken a ‘contract model’ approach to volunteer coordination, have a number of expectations of volunteer groups, and provide the groups with relatively high level of assistance. Also important is a local government that supports, respects, trusts and communicates with the community group, and recognises volunteers’ skills, knowledge and contributions. With increased resources allocated to local government bushland management and conservation, and coordination with community groups, the full potential of local bushland management would be realised.
15
Orchard, Lionel. "Whitlam and the cities : urban and regional policy and social democratic reform." Title page, table of contents and abstract only, 1987. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09pho641.pdf.
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McKenzie, Susan M., and n/a. "Canadian and Australian Feature Film Policy in Perspective: A Comparative Study from 1968 to 1998." Griffith University. School of Arts, Media and Culture, 2004. http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20040804.142852.
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This comparative study is an investigation into the changing concerns of feature film policy in Canada and Australia from 1968 to 1998. Its purpose is to determine how similar policy initiatives have produced divergent results in two economically, culturally and socially similar nations. The inquiry's aim is to establish what financial, political and geographic variables affect the application of feature film policy. While resemblances between these nations justify the contrasting of comparable feature film policy initiatives, differences in outcomes suggest that these nations are not entirely alike. Therefore, rather than following the leads of comparable national agencies, film policy makers in Canada and Australia need to concentrate on conditions specific to their own particular situation.
17
Sims, Ian Michael. "An examination of institutional factors in the implementation of public sector e-commerce : the Western Australian government electronic marketplace." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2010. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1832.
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This thesis presents a case study regarding the adoption and use of an eMarketplace in the public sector. It has been has been used to examine the factors which affected the implementation of a major information systems initiative within the Western Australian public sector, the Government Electronic Marketplace (GEM).
Procurement, Purchasing and Supply Management is a complex topic as it interlinks with most areas of business. In order to understand supply management’s impact and implications, a multi-disciplinary approach is essential. The thesis addresses this context by addressing theoretical aspects of Economics, Public Sector Management, Procurement, Management Information Systems and Accounting, developing a model which provides insight into the complex interaction which occurs between these disciplines.
A theoretical dual lens under which to examine institutional/organisational process is embedded within this multidisciplinary meta-theoretical model. The theoretical positioning of this thesis emphasises the complementarity of structuration theory (Giddens, 1979, 1984) and institutional theory. The former is concerned with the process of change in structures through time (Schultze & Orlikowski, 2004) whereas institutional theory examines the implications of the structures. While institutional theory provides insight in to the way institutions are at a particular point, incorporation of aspects of structuration theory provides greater insight for a study which addresses change over time.
The case study examines a number of units of analysis which have a primary role in this framework as either an “institutional constituent” (source of institutional structures) or “subject organisation”. Central agencies which influenced the system are considered primarily as “institutional constituents”, government departments that used the system and suppliers to government are considered as “subject organisations”.
Levels of conformity and non-conformity with information systems decisions are not easy to predict.This case demonstrates that initial acquiescence to a decision can give way to non-conformity when legitimating external forces are not present.
The resulting analysis (using the dual lens) provides insight into causation in addition to outcomes. The study makes a contribution to organisational research in several related areas. It is a study of the use of systems to deliver a public sector agenda that involves a government agency acting as a technology champion. It is also a study of conformity and nonconformity in an institutional environment and the reasons why and how institutional response changes over time. It also establishes an integrated model for the investigation of enacted technology over time which is particularly suited for public sector organisations.
18
Croker, Keith L., and n/a. "Factors affecting public policy processes : the experience of the industries assistance commission." University of Canberra. Administrative Studies, 1986. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20060630.174015.
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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.
19
Hallam, Adrienne Louise, and n/a. "Globalisation, Human Genomic Research and the Shaping of Health: An Australian Perspective." Griffith University. School of Science, 2003. http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20040812.114745.
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This thesis examines one of the premier "big science" projects of the contemporary era - the globalised genetic mapping and sequencing initiative known as the Human Genome Project (HGP), and how Australia has responded to it. The study focuses on the relationship between the HGP, the biomedical model of health, and globalisation. It seeks to examine the ways in which the HGP shapes ways of thinking about health; the influence globalisation has on this process; and the implications of this for smaller nations such as Australia. Adopting a critical perspective grounded in political economy, the study provides a largely structuralist analysis of the emergent health context of the HGP. This perspective, which embraces an insightful nexus drawn from the literature on biomedicine, globalisation and the HGP, offers much utility by which to explore the basis of biomedical dominance, in particular, whether it is biomedicine's links to the capitalist infrastructure, or its inherent efficacy and efficiency, that sustains the biomedical paradigm over "other" or non-biomedical health approaches. Additionally, the perspective allows for an assessment of whether there should be some broadening of the way health is conceptualised and delivered to better account for social, economic, and environmental factors that affect living standards and health outcomes, and also the capacity of globalisation to promote such change. These issues are at the core of the study and provide the theoretical frame to examine the processes by which Australian policy makers have given an increasing level of support to human genomic research over the past decade and also the implications of those discrete policy choices. Overall, the study found that globalisation is renewing and extending the dominance of the biomedical model, which will further marginalise other models of health while potentially consuming greater resources for fewer real health outcomes. While the emerging genomic revolution in health care may lead to some wondrous innovations in the coming decades, it is also highly likely to exacerbate the problems of escalating costs and diminishing returns that characterise health care systems in industrialised countries, and to lead to greater health inequities both within and between societies. The Australian Government has chosen to underwrite human genomic research and development. However, Australia's response to the HGP has involved both convergences and variations from the experiences of more powerful industrial nations. The most significant divergence has been in industry and science policy, where until the mid-1990s, the Australian Government displayed no significant interest in providing dedicated research funding, facilities, or enabling agencies to the emerging field. Driven by the threat of economic marginalisation and cultural irrelevance, however, a transformation occurred. Beginning with the Major National Research Facilities Program of the Department of Industry, Science and Technology, and then the landmark Health and Medical Research Strategic Review, support for human genomic research grew strongly. Comprehensive policy settings have recently been established to promote the innovation, commercialisation, promotion and uptake of the products of medical biotechnology and genomics. As such, local advocates of a broader model of health will be forced to compete on the political and economic stage with yet another powerful new area of biomedicine, and thus struggle to secure resources for perhaps more viable and sustainable approaches to health care in the 21st century.
20
Enzinger, Sharn Emma 1973. "The economic impact of greenhouse policy upon the Australian electricity industry : an applied general equilibrium analysis." Monash University, Centre of Policy Studies, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8383.
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Binnie, Anna-Eugenia. "From atomic energy to nuclear science : a history of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission." [Sydney] : Macquarie University Physics Department, 2003. http://www.ansto.gov.au/libsite/Fulltext/Binnie_atomic-energy.pdf.
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Keys, Wendy, and n/a. "Grown-Ups In a Grown-Up Business: Children's Television Industry Development Australia." Griffith University. School of Arts, Media and Culture, 2005. http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20060928.135325.
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This dissertation profiles the children's television industry in Australia; examines the relationship between government cultural policy objectives and television industry production practices; and explores the complexities of regulating and producing cultural content for child audiences. The research conducted between 1997 and 2002 confirms that children's television is a highly competitive business dependent on government regulatory mechanisms and support for its existence. For example, the Australian Broadcasting Authority's retaining of mandatory program standards for children's programs to date, is evidence of the government's continued recognition of the conflict between broadcasters' commercial imperatives and the public-interest. As a consequence, the industry is on the one hand insistent on the government continuing to play a role in ensuring and sustaining CTV - however, on the other hand, CTV producers resent the restrictions on creativity and innovation they believe result from the use of regulatory instruments such as the Children's Television Standards (CTS). In fact, as this dissertation details, the ABA's intended policy outcomes are inevitably coupled with unintended outcomes and little new or innovative policy development has occurred. The dissertation begins with an investigation into the social, cultural and ideological construction of childhood within an historical and institutional context. I do this in order to explore how children have been defined, constructed and managed as a cultural group and television audience. From this investigation, I then map the development of children television policy and provide examples of how 'the child' is a consistent and controversial site of tension within policy debate. I then introduce and analyse a selection of established, establishing and aspiring CTV production companies and producers. Drawing on interviews conducted, production companies profiled and policy documents analysed, I conclude by identit~'ing ten key issues that have impacted, and continue to impact, on the production of children's television programming in Australia. In addressing issues of industry development, the question this dissertation confronts is not whether to continue to regulate or not, but rather, how best to regulate. That is, it explores the complexities of supporting, sustaining and developing the CTV industry in ways which also allows innovative and creative programming. This exploration is done within the context of a broadcasting industry currently in transition from analogue to digital. As communications and broadcasting technologies converge, instruments of regulation - such as quotas designed around the characteristics of analogue systems of broadcasting - are being compromised. The ways in which children use television, and the ways in which the CTV producers create content, are being transformed. The ten key issues identified in this dissertation, I propose, are crucial to industry development and policy debate about the future of children's television in Australia. In integrating the study of policy with the study of production, I have given prominence to the opinions and experiences of those working in the industry. In doing so, this dissertation contributes to the growing body of work in Australia which incorporates industry with cultural analysis, and which includes the voices of the content providers.
23
Notley, Tanya M. "The role of online networks in supporting young people's digital inclusion and the implications for Australian government policies." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2008. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/19097/2/Tanya_Notley_Citation.pdf.
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This study examines young people’s internet access and use in nine locations in Queensland, Australia. The primary aim of the research is to assess if internet use supports young people’s social inclusion: that is, if internet use supports young people to participate in society in ways they have most reason to value.
The research findings demonstrate that the digital divide in Queensland – the gap between citizens with and without access to ICTs – continues to inhibit young people’s ability to participate online. This divide is embedded within historic, economic, social and cultural inequalities. To address this, this study proposes that a digital inclusion framework, founded on the concept of social inclusion, offers the Australian federal and state governments an opportunity to extend digital divide policies so that they connect with and complement broader social policy goals.
The research outcomes also illustrate that creative uses of online networks provide a powerful means through which young people can participate in a networked society. While young people’s access to a range of ICTs impacts on their ability to use online networks, gradations of use, social networks and informal learning contexts frequently act as mediators to support effective internet use. This study contends that by understanding the social benefits of young people’s online network use and the role that mediators play in different environments, we can move towards a policy framework that supports equitable opportunities for young people’s digital inclusion.
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Notley, Tanya M. "The role of online networks in supporting young people's digital inclusion and the implications for Australian government policies." Queensland University of Technology, 2008. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/19097/.
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This study examines young people’s internet access and use in nine locations in Queensland, Australia. The primary aim of the research is to assess if internet use supports young people’s social inclusion: that is, if internet use supports young people to participate in society in ways they have most reason to value.
The research findings demonstrate that the digital divide in Queensland – the gap between citizens with and without access to ICTs – continues to inhibit young people’s ability to participate online. This divide is embedded within historic, economic, social and cultural inequalities. To address this, this study proposes that a digital inclusion framework, founded on the concept of social inclusion, offers the Australian federal and state governments an opportunity to extend digital divide policies so that they connect with and complement broader social policy goals.
The research outcomes also illustrate that creative uses of online networks provide a powerful means through which young people can participate in a networked society. While young people’s access to a range of ICTs impacts on their ability to use online networks, gradations of use, social networks and informal learning contexts frequently act as mediators to support effective internet use. This study contends that by understanding the social benefits of young people’s online network use and the role that mediators play in different environments, we can move towards a policy framework that supports equitable opportunities for young people’s digital inclusion.
25
Foster, Ian D., and n/a. "The establishment of the Christmas Island Area School: a public policy analysis." University of Canberra. Education, 1990. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20050711.124419.
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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.
26
Stephens, Ursula, and n/a. "Bridging the service divide: new approaches to servicing the regions 1996-2001." University of Canberra. Business & Government, 2005. http://erl.canberra.edu.au./public/adt-AUC20051128.093333.
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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.
27
Sesay, Diana Margaret. "A socially just rationale for an Australian curriculum? : a critical thematic policy analysis of political speeches in education (2007-2010)." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2013. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/62675/1/__qut.edu.au_Documents_StaffHome_StaffGroupH%24_halla_Desktop_Diana%20Sesay%20Thesis.pdf.
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In late 2007, newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd placed education reform on centre stage as a key policy in the Labor Party's agenda for social reform in Australia. A major policy strategy within this 'Education Revolution' was the development of a national curriculum, the Australian Curriculum Within this political context, this study is an investigation into how social justice and equity have been used in political speeches to justify the need for, and the nature of, Australia's first official national curriculum. The aim is to provide understandings into what is said or not said; who is included or excluded, represented or misrepresented; for what purpose; and for whose benefit. The study investigates political speeches made by Education Ministers between 2008 and 201 0; that is, from the inception of the Australian Curriculum to the release of the Phase 1 F - 10 draft curriculum documents in English, mathematics, science and history.
Curriculum development is defined here as an ongoing process of complex conversations. To contextualise the process of curriculum development within Australia, the thesis commences with an initial review of curriculum development in this nation over the past three decades. It then frames this review within contemporary curriculum theory; in particular it calls upon the work of William Pinar and the key notions of currere and reconceptualised curriculum. This contextualisation work is then used as a foundation to examine how social justice and equity have been represented in political speeches delivered by the respective Education Ministers Julia Gillard and Peter Garrett at key junctures of Australian Curriculum document releases.
A critical thematic policy analysis is the approach used to examine selected official speech transcripts released by the ministerial media centre through the DEEWR website.
This approach provides a way to enable insights and understandings of representations of social justice and equity issues in the policy agenda. Broader social implications are also discussed. The project develops an analytic framework that enables an investigation into the framing of social justice and equity issues such as inclusion, equality, quality education, sharing of resources and access to learning opportunities in political speeches aligned with the development of the Australian Curriculum Through this analysis, the study adopts a focus on constructions of educationally disadvantaged students and how the solutions of 'fixing' teachers and providing the 'right' curriculum are presented as resolutions to the perceived problem. In this way, it aims to work towards offering insights into political justifications for a national curriculum in Australia from a social justice perspective.
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Flynn, John Michael. "Locally significant content on regional television : a case study of North Queensland commercial television before and after aggregation." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2008. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16697/1/John_Michael_Flynn_Thesis.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is an exploration of the fate which has befallen the regional commercial television industry in North Queensland in the wake of the aggregation policy introduced by the Federal Labor Government in 1990. More specifically, it examines the effectiveness of policy outcomes which stem from the Australian Broadcasting Authority's 2001 inquiry into the adequacy of regional and rural commercial television news and information services.
The research is primarily concerned with the quality of local content provided by regional commercial broadcasters in response to the implementation of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's points system for broadcast of matters of local significance. The policy outcomes are balanced against an historical context, which traces the regional commercial television industry in North Queensland back to its very beginning.
Regulatory reform has resulted in a basic level of news content being maintained. However the significance of elements of this news content to local viewers is minimal.
The reduction in local information content, despite being identified in the earliest stages of the ABA investigation, has not been adequately addressed by the reform process.
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Flynn, John Michael. "Locally significant content on regional television : a case study of North Queensland commercial television before and after aggregation." Queensland University of Technology, 2008. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16697/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is an exploration of the fate which has befallen the regional commercial television industry in North Queensland in the wake of the aggregation policy introduced by the Federal Labor Government in 1990. More specifically, it examines the effectiveness of policy outcomes which stem from the Australian Broadcasting Authority's 2001 inquiry into the adequacy of regional and rural commercial television news and information services. The research is primarily concerned with the quality of local content provided by regional commercial broadcasters in response to the implementation of the Australian Communications and Media Authority's points system for broadcast of matters of local significance. The policy outcomes are balanced against an historical context, which traces the regional commercial television industry in North Queensland back to its very beginning. Regulatory reform has resulted in a basic level of news content being maintained. However the significance of elements of this news content to local viewers is minimal. The reduction in local information content, despite being identified in the earliest stages of the ABA investigation, has not been adequately addressed by the reform process.
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Parkin, Glenda. "Confusion, clarity, cohesion, disintegration: a study of curriculum decision-making in citizenship education." Thesis, Curtin University, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/2305.
Full textAbstract:
In the last decade, the Commonwealth Government has relied increasingly on policy-induced consortia to implement its education policy initiatives. The study focused on education policy pertaining to citizenship education, and specifically on the recommendations of the Civics Expert Group's 1994 report Whereas the people...Civics and Citizenship Education. The then Commonwealth Government called for policy-induced consortia to submit applications as a means to implement the report's recommendations. As a result, the Western Australian Consortium for Citizenship Education was formed. The Consortiums submission for a grant to assist teachers to prepare curriculum materials for citizenship education was successful. The study examined the decisions made by the Consortium members in relation to the curriculum materials project.The study was informed by an examination of literature pertaining to citizenship and citizenship education, the implementation of public policy, and group and curriculum decision-making. The review of the literature concerning the constructs of 'citizen' highlighted the contested nature of citizenship. In turn, this is reflected in the debates about the nature of citizenship education. As well, the literature review revealed many models of policy implementation and group curriculum decision-making do not adequately reflect the complexities and realities of group decision-making processes. The models often ignore the socio-political dynamics of the group, particularly in a policy-induced consortium, which exists for a specific and limited purpose, where members owe allegiance to their institutions rather than the consortium and where the consortium is accountable to a government department for the management of the project.A case study approach using qualitative methods was used. These methods and approaches are most likely to capture and interpret the humanness of group decision-making. Moreover, they take into account the importance of the values each member of the Consortium brought to the group and recognise that each member constructed his/her meaning as a result of social interaction with other Consortium members.The case study focused on a detailed examination of the work of the Western Australian Consortium for Citizenship Education and especially on the sub-group of the Project Management Committee over eighteen months. The notion of 'critical decisions' was used to analyse the Consortium's decision-making. Each critical decision had significant consequences for the ongoing work of the Consortium. The nature of the Consortium's decision-making highlighted the overwhelming importance of social dynamics over curriculum decision-making.The intentions of the study were to build towards a more complete understanding of the socio-political nature of group curriculum decision-making; to contribute to theorising about the humanness of group curriculum decision-making; and to provide an informed perspective about the significance of the Commonwealth Government's intervention in education through the mechanism of policy-induced consortia.The thesis makes a contribution to the socio-political dimension of group curriculum decision-making in federations. It illustrates that curriculum policy delivery is a socio-political process focussing on interpersonal relationships rather than a rational or deliberative process based on educational outcomes.
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Robinson, Geoffrey 1963. "How Labor governed : social structures and the formation of public policy during the New South Wales Lang government of November 1930 to May 1932." Monash University, Dept. of History, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/9164.
Full text
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Parkin, Glenda. "Confusion, clarity, cohesion, disintegration : a study of curriculum decision-making in citizenship education /." Curtin University of Technology, Faculty of Education, 2002. http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=12507.
Full textAbstract:
In the last decade, the Commonwealth Government has relied increasingly on policy-induced consortia to implement its education policy initiatives. The study focused on education policy pertaining to citizenship education, and specifically on the recommendations of the Civics Expert Group's 1994 report Whereas the people...Civics and Citizenship Education. The then Commonwealth Government called for policy-induced consortia to submit applications as a means to implement the report's recommendations. As a result, the Western Australian Consortium for Citizenship Education was formed. The Consortiums submission for a grant to assist teachers to prepare curriculum materials for citizenship education was successful. The study examined the decisions made by the Consortium members in relation to the curriculum materials project.The study was informed by an examination of literature pertaining to citizenship and citizenship education, the implementation of public policy, and group and curriculum decision-making. The review of the literature concerning the constructs of 'citizen' highlighted the contested nature of citizenship. In turn, this is reflected in the debates about the nature of citizenship education. As well, the literature review revealed many models of policy implementation and group curriculum decision-making do not adequately reflect the complexities and realities of group decision-making processes. The models often ignore the socio-political dynamics of the group, particularly in a policy-induced consortium, which exists for a specific and limited purpose, where members owe allegiance to their institutions rather than the consortium and where the consortium is accountable to a government department for the management of the project.A case study approach using qualitative methods was used. These methods and approaches are most likely to capture and interpret ++the humanness of group decision-making. Moreover, they take into account the importance of the values each member of the Consortium brought to the group and recognise that each member constructed his/her meaning as a result of social interaction with other Consortium members.The case study focused on a detailed examination of the work of the Western Australian Consortium for Citizenship Education and especially on the sub-group of the Project Management Committee over eighteen months. The notion of 'critical decisions' was used to analyse the Consortium's decision-making. Each critical decision had significant consequences for the ongoing work of the Consortium. The nature of the Consortium's decision-making highlighted the overwhelming importance of social dynamics over curriculum decision-making.The intentions of the study were to build towards a more complete understanding of the socio-political nature of group curriculum decision-making; to contribute to theorising about the humanness of group curriculum decision-making; and to provide an informed perspective about the significance of the Commonwealth Government's intervention in education through the mechanism of policy-induced consortia.The thesis makes a contribution to the socio-political dimension of group curriculum decision-making in federations. It illustrates that curriculum policy delivery is a socio-political process focussing on interpersonal relationships rather than a rational or deliberative process based on educational outcomes.
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Norton, Paul C. R., and n/a. "Accord, Discord, Discourse and Dialogue in the Search for Sustainable Development: Labour-Environmentalist Cooperation and Conflict in Australian Debates on Ecologically Sustainable Development and Economic Restructuring in the Period of the Federal Labor Government, 1983-96." Griffith University. Australian School of Environmental Studies, 2004. http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20040924.093047.
Full textAbstract:
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.
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Macoun, Alissa. "Aboriginality and the Northern Territory intervention." Thesis, University of Queensland, 2012. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/65357/1/Macoun_phd_finalthesis.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the construction of Aboriginality in recent public policy reasoning through identifying representations deployed by architects and supporters of the Commonwealth’s 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response (the intervention).
Debate about the Northern Territory intervention was explicitly situated in relation to a range of ideas about appropriate Government policy towards Indigenous people, and particularly about the nature, role, status, value and future of Aboriginality and of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. This project involves analysis of constructions of Aboriginality deployed in texts created and circulated to explain and justify the policy program. The aim of the project is to identify the ideas about Aboriginality deployed by the intervention’s architects and supporters, and to examine the effects and implications of these discourses for political relationships between Indigenous people and settlers in Australia.
This thesis will argue that advocates of the Northern Territory intervention construct Aboriginality in a range of important ways that reassert and reinforce the legitimacy of the settler colonial order and the project of Australian nationhood, and operate to limit Aboriginal claims.
Specifically, it is argued that in linking Aboriginality to the abuse of Aboriginal children, the intervention’s advocates and supporters establish a political debate about the nature and future of Aboriginality within a discursive terrain in which the authority and perspectives of Indigenous people are problematised. Aboriginality is constructed in this process as both temporally and spatially separated from settler society, and in need of coercive integration into mainstream economic and political arrangements.
Aboriginality is depicted by settler advocates of intervention as an anachronism, with Aboriginal people and cultures understood as primitive and/or savage precursors to settlers who are represented as modern and civilised. As such, the communities seen as the authentic home or location of Aboriginality represent a threat to Aboriginal children as well as to settlers. These constructions function to obscure the violence of the settler order, provide justification or moral rehabilitation for the colonising project, and reassert the sovereignty of the settler state. The resolution offered by the intervention’s advocates is a performance or enactment of settler sovereignty, representing a claim over and through both the territory of Aboriginal people and the discursive terrain of nationhood.
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Lapham, Angela. "From Papua to Western Australia : Middleton's implementation of Social Assimilation Policy, 1948-1962." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2007. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/270.
Full textAbstract:
In 1948, after twenty years in the Papuan administration, Stanley Middleton became the Western Australian Commissioner of Native Affairs. State and Federal governments at that time had a policy of social assimilation towards Aboriginal people, who were expected to live in the same manner as other Australians, accepting the same responsibilties, observing the same customs and influenced by the same beliefs, hopes and loyalties. European civilization was seen as the pinnacle of development. Thus both giving Aboriginal people the opportunity to reach this pinnacle and believing they were equally capable of reaching this pinnacle was viewed as a progessive and humanitarian act. Aboriginal cultural beliefs and loyalties were not considered important, if they were recognized at all, because they were seen as primitive or as having being abandoned in favour of a Western lifestyle.
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Luker, Trish, and LukerT@law anu edu au. "THE RHETORIC OF RECONCILIATION: EVIDENCE AND JUDICIAL SUBJECTIVITY IN CUBILLO v COMMONWEALTH." La Trobe University. School of Law, 2006. http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au./thesis/public/adt-LTU20080305.105209.
Full textAbstract:
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.
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Cloney, Mark. "Australia's economic integration with Asia: Government policy 1983-1996." Thesis, Cloney, Mark (1998) Australia's economic integration with Asia: Government policy 1983-1996. Masters by Research thesis, Murdoch University, 1998. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/51197/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis identifies and evaluates the policies of the Hawke/Keating Governments that were intended to accelerate Australia's economic integration with Asia (1983-96). A series of influential reports were produced during this period indicating Australia's increasing economic linkages with Asia were guided by an orthodox neo-classical economics view which emphasises the positive effects of market competition and cautions against government 'intervention'. Moreover, these reports were informed by understandings of how the emerging economies of Asia achieved rapid economic growth and offer domestic policy prescriptions derived from such understandings. The Garnaut Report (1989), the most influential of these. concluded that Labor policy-makers would best serve their cause by removing high levels of tariff protection and adopting policies to 'liberalise' the Australian economy.
Labor policy between 1983-96, which reflected this thinking, included the deregulation of the Australian financial system, the privatisation agenda, tariff reduction and aii emphasis on multilateral trade negotiations. This, according to Garnaut and others. was the only policy approach to ensure a more internationally competitive, outward-looking economy best able to capture the markets of Asia in an era of increased globalisation/internationalisation. Central to Garnaut's argument is that once protection is removed from the domestic economy, exports would increase as local firms, subject to greater international competition, are forced to compete in the global market. Liberalisation of the Australian economy is offered by Garnaut et al. as the cure to Australia's perennial balance of payments (BoPs) problems.
An important political point is that such policy prescriptions appeal to various audiences, not all of which are principally interested in Australia's economic relations with Asia.
The thesis critically evaluates this dominant view at three levels, firstly by demonstrating that the assumption of Garnaut et al. of a causal link between domestic policies of 'liberalisation' and increased exports, and therefore an improved BoP, remains highly problematic. Second, it challenges the prevailing 'liberal' conception of Asian development. and the portrayal of the state in that process. Third, arid this is the greater emphasis of the study, it points to the various structural and political factors complicating Australian policymakers' attempts to increase economic links with Asia that are down-played or not even recognised because of the theoretical limitations underlying the neo-classical policy approach.
For example, Chapter 5 presents a case study of Australia's agri-food sector that demonstrates that Australia's high value-added food industry, and its exports to the Asia- Pacific region, are being shaped by factors such as regional tariff and non-tariff barriers. increasing competition from intra-Asian food trade, and by constraints imposed on the structure of the Australian industry by the production and investment decisions of powerful transnational food companies (TFCs), to mention a few. These factors also have a significant impact on Australia's BoPs performance, particularly through their impact on the current account deficit (CAD), and are not easily accounted for by neo-classical free-trade theory argued by Gamaut et al.
As the current Asian financial crisis highlights, Australia's economic integration with Asia, and its economic performance in general, continues to be shaped by political and structural issues far more complex than the simple polar view of tariffs versus free trade led industrialisation that was the cornerstone of economic policy for much of the Hawke/Keating era.
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Henry, Adam. "Manufacturing Australian foreign policy 1950 - 1966." Phd thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/150822.
Full textAbstract:
The transition from the liberal foreign policy approach of the Chifley Labor Government to the more strident anti-communism of the conservative Menzies Government after 1949 is a significant event in 20th Century Australian history. During the period 1950-1966 the Menzies Government faced a range of challenges such as relations with the USA, responses to the USSR and China and the question of Indonesia and decolonisation in post-war Southeast Asia. In response the Menzies Government developed new foreign policies, encouraged a particular style of diplomacy and helped to establish a new Cold War attitude towards Australian international affairs. In the 1950s, the Cold War, the United Nations (UN) and the establishment of new overseas diplomatic missions (particularly in Asia) placed growing administrative and bureaucratic demands on the machinery of Australian diplomacy. From the mid 1950s the Department of External Affairs (DEA) was restructured in order to meet such demands. This process allowed the Department to establish what were considered to be the defining characteristics and attitudes of a new professional Australian diplomacy. The selection and training of new diplomatic recruits is one such area in which this occurred. This period saw growing interest from politicians, diplomats and academics for developing new types of foreign policy analysis about communism in South East Asia, or the Cold War in general. While some networks between politics, bureaucracy and academia linked to foreign policy analysis had existed in the 1930s and 1940s, from the 1950s new and more powerful relationships were being established. Various academics, many from the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AlIA) and the Australian National University (ANU) forged close and ongoing contacts with the DEA. The relationships between small groups of key individuals and institutions ultimately wielded significant influence on issues such as the Cold War and Australian foreign policy debates. By the 1960s this small foreign policy network had built a vital relationship with the Ford Foundation of New York. This relationship certainly helped to define dominant attitudes towards Australian foreign policy debates. The ANU, AIIA, DEA and Ford Foundation network established a style of foreign policy analysis that was openly (or at least cautiously) sympathetic to the policies of Canberra and Washington often accepting the official justifications at face value.
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Martin, John F. "Reorienting a nation : consultants and Australian public policy." Phd thesis, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/144377.
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McMaster, Don. "Detention, deterrence, discrimination : Australian refugee policy / Don McMaster." Thesis, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/19457.
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Bibliography: leaves 385-420.vi, 420 leaves ; 30 cm.
Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.
An exploration of the Australian refugee detention policy, which argues that the resort to detention is discriminatory and founded in the fear of Australia's "significant other" - the Asian.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Politics, 1999
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Palmer, David Social Sciences & International Studies Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences UNSW. "The values shaping Australian asylum policy: a historical and ethical inquiry." 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/40777.
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This thesis maps the values that have guided the asylum policy decisions of Australia's political leaders over the past half-century, drawing on archival records and interviews with former immigration ministers and senior public servants. For comparative purposes, it also maps the values shaping the views of asylum among leaders of a supra-national organization (the European Commission) and of a major non-government organization (the Jesuit Refugee Service). The findings support the view that a culture of control permeates Australian asylum policy decisions, and that the quest for control stems from perceptions of national interest as articulated in immigration and foreign policy. However, beneath this it shows the primary values shaping policy to be nation building and good governance in the case of the Australian leaders, and (European) community building in the case of European Commission leaders. Building on a 'caring for us, caring for them' conundrum found running through the values of all three groups of leaders, and seeking a secular equivalent to the faith-inspired relational approach of the Jesuit Refugee Service leaders, the thesis explores the contribution an ethics of care might make to asylum policy design, delivery and evaluation. It argues that such an approach, in which care is conceived as a value, process and practice rather than a sentiment or theory, is well suited to the area, especially when refined to provide for the work of empathy and imagination. It concludes by considering the potential implications for Australian asylum policy if an ethics of care were adopted. The primary goals of the thesis are a better understanding of the issues involved in asylum policy, and the articulation of an ethical approach potentially as engaging of policy insiders as of policy spectators.
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Di, Francesco Michael Francis. "Program Evaluation and Policy Management in Australian Central Agencies." Phd thesis, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/45741.
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Of the many components of reform to Australian government administration in the 1980s, the introduction of systematic program evaluation is perhaps one of the least examined. This thesis seeks to assess the Federal Labor Government's evaluation strategy as an instrument for enhancing what are here termed the policy management capacities of central agencies. It proceeds in two steps. First, the thesis traces in detail the development of program evaluation policy in Australian federal government from the effectiveness reviews of the Coombs Report of 1976 to the current evaluation strategy, and argues that, despite competing purposes for it, evaluation was intended primarily to serve decision making in central government. This policy aim was cemented by the economic crisis of the mid 1980s and framed around budgetary issues by its steward, the Department of Finance. Second, in order to assess the impact of the evaluation strategy, the thesis develops a framework for analysing program evaluation as one instrument for strengthening the core policy management functions of central agencies. In this context, policy management is essentially a coordination task. The contribution of evaluation to two aspects of policy management-resource coordination, and policy development and coordination-is examined. The findings confirm that attempts to formalise evaluation processes have had a variable impact- central budgetary processes remain dependent on relatively informal assessment procedures, although recent attempts to enhance policy coordination through the evaluation of policy advising processes have proved potentially to be more influential. In conclusion, the thesis argues that the evaluation strategy represented a credible attempt to better inform policy making in central government, but suffered for want of clear policy design and firm execution that resulted in only a marginal impact on these processes.
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Bullock, Veronica. "Weaving a Wicked Discourse: the (mis)framing of Australian Government heritage and sustainability policy." Phd thesis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/198686.
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In the 1970s and 1980s Australian national heritage and sustainability policy activity was leading edge but this changed by 1992. The seven interlocking crises of sustainability - biodiversity loss, climate change, global security, pollution and wastes, population, poverty and development and resource use - came to be dominated by the environmental science priorities of biodiversity loss and then climate change in Australian Government policy agendas. Why have some crises of sustainability dominated others and can heritage contribute to balancing out this imbalance in sustainability policymaking in Australia?
This research analyses the representation of heritage and sustainability in three Australian Government policy texts from the perspective of 'authorised discourse'. These are State of the Environment reports (1985-2011), the 'Sustainability Framework' (2012) and the Australian Heritage Strategy (2015). A customised critical discourse analysis technique probes the roles of environmental, economic and policy sciences in Commonwealth conservation-development policymaking to reveal hidden assumptions and practices. In combination with historical survey (1901-2015), interdisciplinary literature review and semi-structured interviews with policymakers and influencers, the work identifies a hierarchy of authorised discourses designed to perpetuate the societal discourse of Ecological Modernisation i.e. optimism about the capacity of technology and economics to use ecology for economic growth and behavioural change in human beings. It exposes methodology-led development in the rapidly expanded sciences as framing all allied discourses and policymaking, including in heritage and sustainability, and evidences the bipartisan closing down of heritage. Elitist behaviour becomes apparent through the operation of an 'econo-enviro discourse coalition', which applies measurable and controllable closed-system approaches to maximally complex, human, open-system problems. This approach marginalises the 'messy' social, including inter-generational, local, political and personal knowledges and identities, and colonises cultural concepts like stewardship, landscape and the wicked problem. This thesis explores the framing of policy, identifies its misframing, and demonstrates the flaws in discourse that have made the resulting policy documents unequal to the tasks of addressing heritage and sustainability.
I argue that the metaphor of stewardship is transferred from governance and environmental science to heritage and sustainability in order to preserve existing relations of power and that the metaphor of curatorship both better reflects the policy process and points a way forward for addressing pressing issues. I suggest that a values-based approach to sustainability policymaking, as in heritage, would enable us to better conduct society-wide conversations to define what we mean by heritage, sustainability and 'the social'. I conclude that such an ontological (rather than epistemological-methodological) approach, positioned through a broadly defined theory of complexity and critical realist philosophy, can facilitate the genuine interdisciplinary and local collaboration now required to equitably address the ecology, economy and society pillars of sustainability - because critical realism values but also questions the assumptions and practices of science.
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Nolles, Karel Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications Faculty of Engineering UNSW. "Using markets to implement energy and environmental policy. Considerations of the regulatory challenges and lessons learned from the Australian experience and laboratory investigation using experimental economics." 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/40778.
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Government is constantly attempting to balance the competing interests within society, and is itself active in a variety of different roles. The conflict between these roles becomes particularly clear when an attempt is made to implement a "regulatory market" - that is a market that exists only because of government action- such as an electricity or environmental market - to implement some policy objective, since it is the nature of markets to candidly reveal weaknesses that in a non-market management framework may have remained hidden for some time. This thesis examines the difficulty that government has in setting market rules that implement an efficient market design for such markets. After examining the history and development of the Australian Electricity Industry market reform process, we examine more closely some of the electricity related environmental markets developed specifically to drive a policy outcome in Australia -- in particular the Australian Mandatory Renewable Energy Target Market (MRET) and the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme. By comparing these environmental markets with established financial markets, and using the techniques of experimental economics, we show that these environmental markets have significant inefficiencies in their design. We argue that these come about because lessons from the financial markets have not be learned by those implementing environmental markets, that stakeholders are lobbying for market design characteristics that are not in fact in their own best interests, and that governments struggle to manage the divergent pressure upon them. For example, in MRET we show experimentally that one of the market design characteristics most fought for by generators (the ability to create renewable energy certificates from qualifying energy without declaring the certificates to the market until a later time of the creator's choosing) in fact leads to market volatility, and ultimately inefficiently low prices. We also examine the impact on the overall MRET market of simple rule changes upon market performance. Key conclusions of this thesis are that it is more difficult than has been appreciated to successfully use a market to implement public policy and that important lessons have not yet been learned from the existing financial markets.
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Fleming, Brian James. "The social gradient in health : trends in C20th ideas, Australian Health Policy 1970-1998, and a health equity policy evaluation of Australian aged care planning / Brian James Fleming." Thesis, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/22062.
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Pickett, John. "Australian multicultural theory and policy changes : from the 'Galbally report' to 'A new agenda for multicultural Australia'." Thesis, 2003. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/32978/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores issues surrounding multicultural theory and policy. It also
includes a discussion on immigration policy and the attempts made by the current Federal
Government to shift public attention away from multiculturalism to discussions
surrounding border control.
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Sapinski, Tania Helen. "Language use and language attitudes in a rural South Australian community / presented by Tania H. Sapinski." Thesis, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/108270.
Full textAbstract:
Argues the importance of considering non-linguistic factors in understanding the community situation, the most important of these non-linguistic factors being the role of peoples attitudes. Outlines the situation in the target community. Discusses language attitude research and compares attitudes to language varieties around the world. Illustrates Australian Governmental attitudes through their past and present policies in dealing with Indigenous Australians.Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of European Studies, 1999?
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Robinson, Marcus Laurence. "Economists and politicians : the influence of economic ideas upon labor politicians and governments, 1931-1949." Phd thesis, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/109804.
Full textAbstract:
Throughout the period 1931-1949, the Australian Labor Party tended to be
preoccupied with the role of money as a cause of, and cure for, economic
instability. The party was very much influenced by a long tradition of economic
thought which saw the business cycle as an essentially monetary phenomenon. In
part, this tradition affected the A.L.P. through the influence of 'quack' writers in
the 'monetary radical' tradition, who combined a monetary view of the business
cycle with a fear of financial manipulation and a commitment to the abolition of
interest. At least as significant as this unorthodox. influence was, however, the
impact upon Labor thinking of the monetary views of the main school of
expansionist economics of the 1920s. Labor's preoccupation with money was due
in no small measure to the way in which much of the 'mainstream' economic
debate focussed upon money in the 1920s and into the 1930s.
Labor economic thinking was not suddenly transformed as a result of a
'Keynesian revolution' following the publication of the General Theory in 1936.
The party had absorbed much of the 'Keynesian' policy message - in particular,
about the centrality of counter-cyclical public works - well before 1936.
Nevertheless, because of its long attachment to purely monetary theories of
capitalist economic instability, Labor did not readily absorb the 'Keynesian' view
of the way in which the economic mechanism operates. The party was, for
example, inclined to view public works not so much as an instrument of 'fiscal'
policy, as a conduit for monetary expansion. Even in the 1940s, the A.L.P.
remained deeply imbued with the traditional view that monetary mechanisms
played an all-important role in the economy. In government, Labor's ideological
zeal was directed towards banking reform. By contrast, Labor politicians were
not greatly interested in the issues (concerning the role of planning in normal
peacetime economic management, and the form and social content of a full
employment program) which were dividing economists and public servants at the
time.
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Manning, Elizabeth Sophie Mary. "Local content and related trade policy: Australian applications / by Elizabeth S.M. Manning." Thesis, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/22073.
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Paterson, Wendy Anne. "Desire for social justice: equal pay, the International Labour Organisation, and Australian government policy, 1919-1975." Thesis, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1312837.
Full textAbstract:
Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Australia is one of the forty-two founding members of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), established in 1919. The objective of the ILP is to develop and raise international labour standards in order to promote social justice and secure world peace, with the ultimate goal of making those standards part of the law and practice of member countries. Yet, eighty-one countries had ratified the 1951 Equal Remuneration Convention before the Australian government's formal agreement in 1974. Within days of being elected in 1972, the Whitlam Labour government asserted its desire to pursue a new direction in foreign affairs and its intention to ratify a number of significant ILO Conventions addressing human rights. The Federal Parliamentary Labour Party also declared its commitment to overruling State involvement in the decision making process if this would assist in the reconstruction of Australia's image overseas. Until now, feminist approaches to the determinants and processes of foreign policy have been paid limited attention,. International relations theorists have either assumed that women's experiences are marginal to the study of "high politics", national security and diplomacy, or that both men and women are similarity affected by foreign policy decision. This study traces the development of successive Australian governments' relationships with the ILO from 1919 to 1975 in order to assess the interconnections between domestic and foreign policy decision-making with regard to the issue of equal pay for women. A particular focus is on the role of external influences, such as ILO standards, on major forces or groups within Australia. The defence of "domestic jurisdiction" has an extensive history. As such, equal pay for women was long in coming. This thesis challenges a commonly held view: - that successive Australia governments were unable to ratify many ILO Conventions, particularly those that supported equal remuneration for men and women, simply because of the constraints of the federal constitution. It demonstrates that the elimination of discrimination between men and women was both a foreign and domestic policy issue, actively ignored, suppressed or confronted through strategies designed to effectively counter demands for social justice.