Recreational Fishing in Australia: Review and Policy Issues

Recreational fishing, otherwise known as angling, is both a significant resource use and a leisure activity in Australia. It has not received much scientific or policy attention, having been perceived as unimportant relative to commercial fishing and characterised by poor social, biological and economic data. Attention is increasing, however, as the ecological, economic and social significance of the activity is realised. The article briefly reviews recreational fishing and discusses the reasons why the activity has traditionally been ignored by policy-makers and researchers. Current policy issues are identified, and a generalised framework suggested for policy and research.     

Inventing Australia: a Critique of Recent Cultural Policy Rhetoric

This paper provides a critical analysis of the cultural and arts policies released by the Keating Labor government of the early 1990s and the current Howard Coalition government. While official definitions of Australian national identity promoted multiculturalism, analysis of Creative Nation, Labor's 1994 cultural policy, and recent statements from the Coalition, exposes the partiality of recent constructions. Both Labor and the Coalition's constructions of identity were based on an economism that was linked to traditional, masculine myths of egalitarianism and ‘mateship’. Such constructions show that neither party has embraced multiculturalism to the degree suggested by policy rhetoric.     

Tourism and Foreign Investment in Australia: Trends,Prospects and Policy Implications

Processes of internationalisation and structural economic change have had profound impacts on the pattern of regional economic activity in Australia. The 1980s was a decade of rapid growth in foreign investment, reoriented to the property and services sector, including tourism. It was also a boom time for international tourism, which emerged as the nation's leading export industry. In addition to the national gateway city of Sydney, the rapidly growing coastal cities of Gold Coast and Cairns in Queensland emerged as major international tourism destinations underpinned by significant levels of foreign investment, particularly from Japan. The 1980s boom years for tourism and foreign investment are revised and raises policy implications raised for the longer-term development of tourism and the role of foreign investment.     

Confabulations: a conceptual history

Confabulations are inaccurate or false narratives purporting to convey information about world or self. It is the received view that they are uttered by subjects intent on "covering up" for a putative memory deficit. The epidemiology of confabulations is unknown. Speculated causes include amnesia, embarrassment, "frontal lobe" damage, a subtype of "personality", a dream-like event, and a disturbance of the self. Historical analysis shows that "confabulation" was constructed at the turn of the century as part of a network of concepts (e.g. delusion, fixed idea, etc.) meant to capture narratives with dubious content. This paper deals with the history of the construction of the word and concept of confabulation and with earlier recognitions of the behaviours that serve as their referent and puts forward a model based on historical data. Two phenomena are included under "confabulation": "untrue" utterances by subjects with memory impairment and "fantastic" utterances marshalled with conviction by subjects suffering from psychoses and no memory deficit. Under different disguises, the "covering up" or "gap filling" hypothesis is still going strong. Although superficially plausible, it poses problems in regards to the issue of "awareness of purpose": if full awareness is presumed then the semantics of the concept of "purpose" is severely stretched and confabulations cannot be differentiated from delusions.     

Tense Layering and Synthetic Policy Paradigms: The Politics of Health Insurance in Australia

This paper analyses the substantial financial subsidy, alongside other regulatory changes, introduced to support private health insurance in Australia at the end of the 1990s. The concept of policy layering is developed and refined theoretically in terms of changes in policy paradigms in order to chart a lengthy period of tense layering in Australian health-care politics between private and public health insurance and the bipartisan convergence on a universalism plus choice policy paradigm during the 1990s. This is the key dynamic underlying the Coalition's support of private health insurance after 1996 rather than a neo-liberal ambition to dismantle the health-care state and return to a predominately privately financed health-care system with a residual, public safety net.     

Policy options for full employment: Which way forward for Australia

This paper seeks to review the long‐term policy choices Australia faces if full employment is to be restored. Using cross‐national data for the period 1972–88, it identifies the variety of routes taken to mass unemployment and full employment It then discusses the diverse policy strategies underlying routes to full employment and examines the possibility and desirability of their adoption in Australia.     

Policy change and network termination: The role of farm groups in agricultural policy making in Australia

As the National Farmers' Federation (NFF) celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2004, it is timely to reflect on the role of farm groups in agricultural policy making in Australia and revisit the policy changes of the 1970s which provided a major impetus for the NFF's formation. Agricultural policy is often presented as the classic case of policy developed by tight policy communities characterised by stability, shared ideology and limited membership. There has been much debate in the literature about the value of the concept of policy communities in explaining policy development processes and policy change. This article suggests that the combination of ideological and institutional change, particularly in the presence of looser policy networks, can disrupt policy making and lead to network termination resulting in policy change.     

Internationalising Geography in Higher Education: Towards a conceptual framework

Key issues relating to the internationalisation of geography in higher education are explored. Drawing on past experience, critical questions are posed regarding the goals, ownership, management and operation of a proposed international network for teaching and learning in geography in higher education. It is argued that those developing the network must learn from the lessons of the past, both to avoid repeating avoidable mistakes and to ensure that the network successfully achieves its intended aims.     

High court review 2005: The manifestation of separation of powers in Australia

In 2005 questions were raised in public debate regarding the scope, meaning and manifestation of the constitutional separation of powers and the role of the High Court in interpreting these. In particular, the issue of the efficacy of checks and balances within the system of government against potential abuses of executive powers was raised, due to the dominance of the legislature by the executive for the first time in 24 years. This Review argues that while the High Court staunchly defended its independence and the role of the judiciary in a division of powers, it demonstrated a simultaneous reluctance to curb executive powers. This has implications for the manifestation of separation of powers in the Australian context, both in terms of its philosophical foundations and in so far as it signals a trend away from the likely realisation of public expectations of its role as expressed in appeals made to it.     

Development and application of methods used to source prehistoric Southwestern maize: a review

Archaeological cobs free of mineral contaminants should be used to source the soils in which they were grown. Mineral contaminants often contain much higher concentrations of metals than vegetal materials and can alter a cob’s apparent metal and heavy-isotope content. Cleaning a cob via immersion in an acid solution for more than a few minutes will result in the incongruent and sometimes complete leaching of metals, including strontium (Sr), from the cob. When using ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr to determine the location of potential agriculture fields, it is best to either integrate several depth-integrated soil samples or to integrate several vegetation samples from individual fields. Biologically labile Sr in semi-arid Southwestern soils largely originates from eolian source or sources and usually is not derived from underlying bedrock. Existing Sr-isotope data indicate that archaeological cobs from Aztec Ruins came from either the Mesa Verde-McElmo Dome or Totah areas, that Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl cobs, from Chaco Canyon that predate A.D. 1130, probably came from the Rio Chaco corridor, and that cobs from Chaco Canyon, that postdate A.D. 1130, probably came from either the Totah or Zuni areas.     

Heritage Sailing in Australia: a preliminary schema

Distinguishing between replica and restored sailing vessels in terms of their emphasis on heritage and sailing and between the intellectual and kinaesthetic appreciation of heritage produces a simple classificatory schema. Using this schema enables one to distinguish stationary exhibits, ?museum? vessels, sail training vessels and commercial vessels. The schema suggests several research areas for further enquiry.     

Small is not Necessarily Beautiful: An Evaluation of Policy Support for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Australia

One of the key strategies of the current Commonwealth government in Australia is to promote a dynamic entrepreneurial culture by improving the business environment for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper evaluates the contribution of SMEs to innovation and employment in Australia and reviews the international evidence on the value of SMEs. It concludes that a very small percentage of SMEs are responsible for most of the employment generation and innovation in the small-firm sector. The policy implication is that general deregulatory measures designed to support SMEs as a generic class are likely to create an environment within which low-quality, low-wage employment is generated in SMEs with little future. Instead, the sectoral composition of industrial activity and the social structures and relationships within which firms are embedded require greater policy attention.     

Thermoluminescent dating in its application to archaeology: A review

This paper sets out to describe the fundamentals of thermoluminescent (TL) dating and to explain the principles of operation of the different methods at present in use. The various complicating factors associated with TL dating are discussed, together with the measures which can be taken to recognize and as far as possible to correct them. Those materials from archaeological contexts which are suitable for dating by the TL technique are described and the criteria for the selection of suitable samples, and the methods of obtaining the desired ancilliary information relating to the environment of the site, are discussed.     

Policy Theory, Policy Theory Everywhere: Ravings of a Deranged Policy Scholar

The field of policy theory abounds with numerous theories, with each theory having a set of practitioners that are working independently of the others. Resolving conflicts among policy theories as a result is difficult. This essay has a more modest goal of posing some questions and suggesting some avenues for future research. Key points include defining the purpose of policy theory, incorporating management into our theories, making strategic choices about areas of study, addressing the parsimony-comprehensiveness tradeoff, and providing a more nuanced role for institutions.