Paying for Environmental Protection in a Cross-national Perspective

The threat of global warming has attracted considerable attention from policy makers around the world. We analyse public support for environmental protection and the main drivers of support in Australia and cross-nationally using survey data from the International Social Survey and the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes. Support is measured as a series of trade-off questions based on willingness to pay extra taxes or prices, or accept cuts to one's standard of living to protect the environment. Willingness to pay more for environmental protection has decreased across a range of countries from 1993 to 2000 with the ‘routinisation’ of ‘the environment’ as a political issue. Risk perceptions regarding the dangers of global warming, having a tertiary education and holding post-materialist value orientations all increase the willingness to pay for environmental protection. In Australia, environmental support is still divided along partisan lines and global warming was as an important issue in the 2007 federal election.     

Shades of green: Public opinion on environmental issues in Australia

Data from the 1990 and 1993 Australian Electoral Studies are used to investigate whether public concern about the environment has declined in Australia over recent years. Questions of the ranking and structure of environmental concerns and of levels of support for environmental organisations are addressed. The data show that public concern about the environment remains high on an ‘agenda of long‐term issues’, that environmental concerns form two distinct clusters (termed ‘brown’ and ‘green') and that active support for environmental organisations correlates only with the green cluster. It is argued that these findings give no more than partial support to the ‘organisational’, ‘postmaterialist’ and ‘risk society’ perspectives on environmental issues.     

Environmental Standards and Industrial Restructuring: the Case of the Australian Paper Industry

Environmental standards imposed on the Australian paper industry have emerged in response to public concern over the logging of native forests and the ‘greening’ of consumer demand. Such standards play an integral part in the paper industry's restructuring. Neo-classical theorists hypothesised environmental standards as encouraging the relocation of polluting industries to countries with lax regulations. An alternative hypothesis is that environmental standards encourage in-situ restructuring that can positively affect a company's competitiveness. In considering this alternative hypothesis the implications for state and federal policy are briefly considered.     

Is Australia a middle power? A systemic impact approach

This article examines whether Australia is a middle power. It identifies the three most popular approaches to defining a middle power: by a country's position, behaviour and identity. The article tests each definition against Australia, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each. Highlighting an earlier systemic approach to defining states, an alternative ‘systemic impact’ definition for middle powers is proposed. This approach, it is argued, provides a more comprehensive manner for identifying whether a country like Australia is a middle power, along with the implications for international security.     

Going to war democratically: lessons for Australia from Canada and the UK

This article addresses the role of democracy in Australia’s foreign policy formation. It argues that public debate and deliberation on foreign policy is a normative good. When there is a lack of debate on a government decision, a democratic deficit occurs. Such a deficit is evident in the way Australia goes to war; however, the examples of Canada and the UK show that reforming parliamentary practice is possible. In the context of the ‘war on terror’, this article compares Australia, Canada, and the UK from 2001 to 2015 with regards to ‘war powers’. Drawing from debates recorded in Hansard, it finds that while Canada and the UK took steps to ‘parliamentarise’ their foreign policy formation, the war-powers prerogative of the Australian government remained absolute. It concludes that increasing the role of parliament may go a long way towards democratising the decision of when Australia goes to war. This has practical as well as normative benefits, since it may prevent governments from entering wars that are unsupported by the public. At minimum, it will compel governments to engage more thoroughly in public debate about their proposed policies, and justify their decisions to the nation.     

Consumption,Environmental Sustainability and Human Geography in Australia: a Missing Research Agenda?

‘Consumption’ is a central concept in the global environmental sustainability agenda. However, one important argument from Agenda 21 — that all social actors must now practise ‘sustainable consumption’— has been publicly and politically marginalised in high‐income countries such as Australia. Geographers potentially have a role in bringing consumption back onto the agenda by constructing a critical geography of consumption. Such research can help understand how the contextual use of natural resources is perceived and practised, and how consumption helps to shape contemporary social relations. This body of knowledge is vital for building sustainable development into everyday lives. Yet a focus on urban consumption perceptions and practices appears somewhat lacking in Australian geography. Ways forward can be drawn from international geography, such as in the United Kingdom where a substantial body of work has drawn a complex picture of contemporary consumption and environmental understanding. It has also challenged prevailing ‘ecological modernisation’ policy approaches, which ignore consumption's cultural facets. In sum, considering consumption in Australia can offer insights into cultural practices expressed through consumption; can challenge and add to European geographical literatures, and can also contribute to sustainability debates by offering alternatives to currently ineffective policy discourses.     

Welfare accounting and the environment: reassessing Brazilian economic growth, 1965-1993

Few countries in recent decades have experienced economic growth as rapid as that in Brazil. The period spanning the late 1960s and mid 1970s, during which GDP growth was especially strong, is often referred to as the ‘economic miracle’. Yet, the use of per capita GDP growth as a proxy for economic development (or social welfare improvement) can be questioned on both distributional and environmental grounds. Scholars such as Ahluwalia and Chenery have noted that per capita GDP growth places greater weight on the income of richer income groups, and have proposed distribution‐neutral and pro‐poor alternatives. More recently, studies by the World Resources Institute and others have questioned the environmental sustainability of GDP growth and have introduced an alternative national income accounting methodology that factors in estimated losses associated with natural resource depletion. To date, no studies have undertaken both types of revisions concurrently, creating a revised national welfare measure based on per capita GDP, but corrected for both distributional bias and resource depletion. Such a measure is derived in this article and applied to the Brazilian case. The results cast doubt on the proposition that rapid economic growth in Brazil has resulted in comparable welfare gains.     

Rural Transformation and Cultural Industries: Popular Music on the New South Wales Far North Coast

This article explores the emergence of popular music as a niche cultural industry, connected to economic and social transformations on the New South Wales Far North Coast (also known as the ‘Northern Rivers’ region). The various images of the New South Wales Far North Coast as a ‘lifestyle’ region, ‘alternative’ locale and coastal retreat have attracted a diverse mix of ex–urban professionals, unemployed persons, youth subcultures, backpacker tourists and retirees. Yet, despite population growth, the region continues to suffer unemployment rates among the highest in Australia. Against this backdrop, diverse popular music ‘scenes’ have emerged, constituting an industry with linkages to cultural production in Sydney, Melbourne and overseas. While the region’s unique cultural mix has been suggested as a key site of comparative advantage, future employment is likely to remain transient, insecure, and governed by industry–wide labour relations. This case study illustrates some of the complexities underpinning contemporary urban–regional change in Australia, and provides cautious assessment of the capacity of the cultural industries to reinvigorate rural economies.     

Aid for trade and ecologically sustainable development in Australia’s international aid program

In September 2015, Australia, along with 193 member states of the United Nations, signed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The facilitation of international trade and increasing foreign aid for developing countries were emphasised as crucial means for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. An important role was assigned to the international Aid for Trade initiative, which is about stimulating economic growth in developing countries through removing constraints to trade. Australia has been a strong supporter of the Aid for Trade initiative since it was launched at the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in 2005. Aid for trade has become a central plank of the ‘new development paradigm’ of Australia’s international aid program. This article analyses the conceptualisation and practice of aid for trade in Australia’s aid, with a focus on how it links to ecologically sustainable development. It argues that Australia’s aid for trade is reinforcing the neo-liberal development paradigm in which environmental dimensions are overall neglected and private sector development and free trade are prioritised. In order to achieve international and national development goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development, environmental sustainability needs to be fully integrated into the growing aid for trade portfolio of Australia’s international aid.     

Going ‘mainstream’: evaluating the instrumentalisation of multicultural arts

This paper considers how debates over the instrumentalisation of the arts have informed the cultural production of an Australian arts organisation – Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV). In an effort to make multicultural arts more ‘mainstream’, MAV has increasingly adopted market‐based rationales for its work – particularly the use of ‘audience development’ policy frameworks. It is easy to evaluate this marketisation of multicultural arts negatively as an acceptance of neoliberal policy agendas and as a weakening of its commitment to ‘cultural development’ goals. This paper suggests, however, via a critique of Ghassan Hage’s analysis of multiculturalism, that such accounts do not consider how economic rationales actually sit in practice with MAV’s other (cultural development) agendas. Such critiques, therefore, preclude an affirmative reading of the instrumentalisation of multicultural arts. An alternative analytical framework is proposed – one which can more readily account for multicultural arts as a set of practices informed by diverse agendas, and which acknowledges how such practices might both contest and converge with official government policies.     

The Neoliberal Seduction: Governing‐at‐a‐Distance,Community Development and the Battle over Financial Services Provision in Australia

This paper is concerned with understanding the reasons for the apparent success of neoliberalism: why the model of the ‘entrepreneurial, self‐reliant community’ has been adopted so widely and readily across Australia. It does this through an analysis of two events in the restructuring of financial services provision in regional Australia during the 1990s and 2000s: the John Laws/Australian Bankers’ Association ‘cash for comment’ affair, and the rise of ‘alternative’ financial service providers in the wake of the major trading banks’ financial service withdrawal programmes of the 1990s. This analysis is conducted using the conceptual toolkit of the governmentality literature. In this context, the paper explores the notion of translation — how authorities, agencies, etc., exert control over distant entities, whether these entities be branch staff or a far‐flung consumer market. In examining the often fragile character of ‘governing‐at‐a‐distance’ in modern forms of rule, it is argued that some recent advances in the ‘geography of power’ have much to offer in highlighting both the important roles played by space and scale in the execution of power in its various guises and the ways in which resistance to the more regressive features of neoliberal philosophy and policy may best focus.     

Convict ancestry: a neglected aspect of Australian identity

Abstract Claiming descent from convicts who were sent to Australia during the early period of British settlement is more than just about blood ties, it is also an aspect of national identity for many Australians. Analyses of nationally representative survey data show that younger, left‐leaning, working class Australians are most likely to identify as convict descendants, while older, high income, educated, city dwellers are least likely to identify. Our findings also suggest that the ‘hated stain’ of convict ancestry is senescent, and will diminish with intergenerational replacement. Yet claims to convict descent remain divided along status lines. Interest in convicts and claims of convict heritage may comprise an element of ‘popular taste’, but as a consequence of this popularity, ‘convict chic’ is rejected by educated elites. Embraced by ‘middle Australia’, but shunned by cosmopolitan elites, convict ancestry is a neglected aspect of Australian identity. Whether claims of convict ancestry are ‘real’ or ‘imaginary’, the power of foundation myths to provide shared memories is evident in the salience of convict connections in Australia.     

Innovations to reduce residential energy use and carbon emissions: an integrated approach

Research in energy sustainability is gaining renewed priority because of the growing importance of climate‐change issues and the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by many countries. Increased energy efficiency and substitution of less carbon‐intensive fuels are proposed as the principal means to reduce greenhouse‐gas (GHG) emissions and associated climate change. The residential sector is an important area for improvement, as it accounts for 22 percent of global energy consumption. This paper illustrates the integration of four dimensions of energy issues within a single community study in Waterloo Region, Canada. First, it overcomes the limitations of single‐discipline approaches to energy studies by recognizing the importance of social context in measuring the potential to reduce energy consumption. The ‘sociotechnical’ potential to reduce residential consumption by 25 percent is lower in our analysis than traditional measures of the technical potential, but is considered more achievable. Second, the paper examines how community‐based implementation can enhance the effectiveness of a national energy efficiency program (EnerGuide for Houses, or EGH). Controlled marketing experiments demonstrated higher response rates for materials highlighting local partners. Third, the paper outlines how the local capacity developed by diverse stakeholders (city councils, regional government, federal government agencies, local utilities, local businesses, environmental nongovernmental organizations and the local university) was an important means of overcoming many of the barriers to taking action. Fourth, the paper details the examination of issues of energy efficiency and fuel substitution through a survey of residents’ attitudes and comparison to behaviour. For example, stated ‘willingness to pay’ was compared to the actual sign‐up rate for the first introduction of ‘green’ electricity in the Ontario residential market. The integration of these four dimensions in a single study offers a framework that can be reviewed and adapted to meet the needs of other projects.     

Beyond Kyoto? Media Representation of an Environmental Issue

Human‐induced climatic change, and particularly the enhanced greenhouse effect, became significant environmental issues in the 1990s. They were given prominent coverage in the Australian media at the time of the Third Conference of the Parties to the Climate Convention (COP3) in Kyoto in 1997, when Australia obtained permission for an 8 per cent increase in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. Meanwhile, other major emitters of greenhouse gases were accepting targets of significantly reduced emissions. Given the controversy associated with this, it might have been expected that the Australian media's coverage of COP4 in Buenos Aires, only 11 months later, would have been extensive. This was not the case. Analysis of seven Australian newspapers shows that, with the exception of an alternative weekly newspaper, the coverage of COP4 was an example of ‘embodiment’ (the uncritical acceptance of certain assumptions and practices) and ‘distanciation’ (the separation of cause and effect in regard to an issue).     

Recently Observed Polarising Tendencies and Australian Cities

Recent research and writing about social and spatial polarisation in Australian cities is reviewed in a five-part study. The first part outlines the international context in which Australian urban restructuring and polarisation is occurring. The second considers the consequences of structural adjustment in Australia in terms of changes to the distribution of national income and social costs. There is an apparent incongruity of sharper spatial disparities developing during a decade (1982—94) when the living standards of the poor were maintained at 1982 levels by the social security system under federal Labor governments.Part three surveys several recent that explicitly set out to measure shifts in urban spatial inequality, and thereby help to clarify aspects of the debate about social and spatial polarisation under Australian conditions. Part four sets out to show how both the construction of this debate, and the response of governments to urban restructuring in Australia, are implicitly grounded in three competing theoretical frameworks: ‘post-marxist’ political economy; neoliberalism; discourses of identity and difference. Finally, practical and ethical issues are raised that stem from the triumph of neoliberal ideology over alternative visions of the ‘companionable state’.     

Not My Taxes! Explaining Tax Resistance and its Implications for Australia's Welfare State

In discussing Australia's need to increase taxes to pay for future social security, Michael Keating worries that voters see taxes as a ‘burden’ and that ‘the link between taxation and citizenship has been broken’. This paper deals with the problem of tax resistance (preferring lower taxes even when tax cuts risk public services) for Australia's welfare state. First, I describe how two Australian fiscal institutions—a residual welfare system and visible income taxes—promote tax resistance among voters. Second, I draw on these insights to develop several explanations for tax resistance: voter self-interest, voter hostility to minorities, voter disengagement (low trust and lack of interest in politics), and individualistic attitudes. The main conclusion is that tax resistance in Australia is institutionalised, making it easier to mobilise interests around low taxes, and harder to advocate for alternatives. Results of multivariate analysis using AES 2004 data indicate that an ‘anti-tax coalition’ can build on three diverse publics; one of higher and middle-income earners attuned to self-interest, another hostile to welfare beneficiaries, and another ‘tuned out’ of politics and willing to support any call for tax cuts. Inevitably, the debate about the welfare state is shadowed by a debate about voter willingness to pay taxes that finance it.     

Leveraging diplomatic power and influence on the UN Security Council: the case of Australia

ABSTRACT

There is scepticism about whether a state like Australia can secure its interests and exercise influence on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). A case study of Australia’s experience as a UNSC member in 2013–2014 shows that it directly influenced UNSC decision-making in a number of ways: first, in the response to the MH17 incident; second, pushing forward UNSC practice through the first-ever resolutions on both ‘small arms and light weapons’ and police in peacekeeping; and third, as chair of three sanctions committees, influencing the decision-making environment towards greater transparency. While Australia did not achieve all its objectives, it made its views well-known. A second case study demonstrates that Australia’s opportunities to influence UNSC decision-making are not limited to stints of membership. Australia was able to achieve many of its foreign policy objectives in East Timor in 1999 through strategically engaging with key UNSC players through an informal diplomatic grouping: the Core Group on East Timor. Both case studies show that Australia’s diplomatic engagement with the UNSC is desirable, necessary and strategic, whether or not it is a current or prospective member.     

‘Working out’ for two: performances of ‘fitness’ and femininity in Australian prenatal aerobics classes

In this article, I consider the distinctly classed places/spaces in which affluent Australian pregnant women physically maintain their bodies through aerobics. The case study described is drawn from data obtained between 2006 and 2008 in a longitudinal study examining feelings about body image and ‘fatness’ in a sample of pregnant women in Melbourne, Australia. The ways in which pregnant bodies are disciplined within gym spaces are discussed through a case study of a prenatal fitness centre, FitForTwo, and drawing on narrative data of pregnant informants. FitForTwo is described as a primary site for the performance of ‘fit’ pregnancy and underscored by bodies that can be shaped, trained, moulded and modified. This case study is analysed against a backdrop of a growing Australian moral panics about ‘fighting’ maternal obesity. It adds to a body of feminist geographical and qualitative studies of pregnancy, bringing both a more sustained, longitudinal analysis than previously offered, and an Australian context that offers rich comparative material.     

Access relative to need for community conservation funding in Australia

ABSTRACT

In a climate of scarce resources for heritage preservation, there is a need to develop principles and methodology for assessing and responding to inequity within the conservation sector. This paper focuses on spatial, or geographic, barriers as one factor determining the accessibility of conservation services. While the case study focuses on the conservation and management of collections of cultural material in Australia, the methodology is globally relevant for advancing the equitable distribution of heritage and conservation resources according to need. Using a statistical analysis of the spatial distribution of 1323 local heritage conservation projects that have been funded by the National Library of Australia’s Community Heritage Grants Program from 1994 to 2017, this study provides a measure of the spatial equality of conservation in Australia. Spatial distribution analysis indicates that the majority of projects funded are located in major cities, with fewer projects funded in regional, remote and very remote areas. An ‘access relative to need’ approach is proposed to counter the current centralisation of the conservation industry. Of particular relevance for international readers is the potential for this methodology to frame studies of the impacts on heritage resulting from climate change and extreme weather events.     

A Speculative Model of Population Influences on Australian Ecology,Economy and Society

A lack of empirical data and sufficient conceptual frameworks precluded the 1994 national population inquiry from proposing demographic targets for the future ‘carrying capacity’ of Australia. A speculative model is proposed here of population impacts in the ecological, economic, social and relational domains. The model is ‘run’ under scenarios of growing and stable population so that key interactions can be explored and thereby advance debate about broader population policy in Australia.