Policy Fiascos,Blame Management and AWB Limited: The Howard Government's Escape from the Iraq Wheat Scandal

In 1999, the Australian government privatised the statutory Australian Wheat Board and created AWB Limited, transferring the Board's assets and its export monopoly to a grower-controlled company. In 2000, allegations surfaced that AWB Limited had made payments to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime in order to secure lucrative wheat exports worth $500 million per annum. Such actions violated the terms of the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Programme and became one of the biggest corporate scandals in Australian history. It also placed considerable pressure on senior ministers in John Howard's coalition government who were vulnerable on a number of issues, including the existence of numerous warning signs and the extent of ministerial awareness. The purpose of this article is to outline and examine the federal government's role in managing the ensuing blame game. It utilises literature on policy fiascos and blame management to create a conceptual framework that is then applied to the unfolding dynamics of the AWB Limited case. It examines issues such as the roles played by the Cole Inquiry and the political language of ministers in steering blame away from ministers and towards AWB Limited and the UN.     

Remote crisis management: Australia's 2006 rescue of citizens trapped in Lebanon

On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah's kidnapping of two young Israeli soldiers was the catalyst for a sudden escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanon was host to more citizens and permanent residents from Australia than any other country in the world. This article examines the monumental challenge faced by the Australian authorities in rescuing and repatriating its citizens who were caught up in the conflict. It does so through the conceptual lens of ‘remote crisis management’ i.e. episodes where one country's traditional crisis management challenges of rapid threats, uncertainty and the need for swift decision making are compounded by ‘political remoteness’. In other words, it lacks both political sovereignty and local infrastructure capacity for crisis resolution in a faraway county. The article focuses particularly on the remote crisis management challenges of making sense of the crisis, communication with a range of interests, and the logistical challenges of arranging and installing rescue and evacuation procedures. It also addresses the significance of Australia's prior evacuation experiences, as well as the capacity it had built in local and international networks. The article draws on a range of primary and secondary sources, including interviews with public servants and community representatives.     

The role of recruitment agencies in imagining and producing the ‘good’ migrant

This paper focuses on representations of labour migrants and interrogates how such imaginaries shape migrant recruitment and employment regimes. The recruitment and employment of labour migrants inevitably involves a range of knowledge practices that affect who is recruited, from where and for what purposes. In particular, this paper seeks to advance understandings of how images of ‘bodily goodness’ are represented graphically and how perceptions of migrant workers influence the recruitment of workers to the UK from Latvia. The research described in this paper is based on interviews with recruitment agencies, employers and policy makers carried out in Latvia in 2011. The analysis results in a schema of the ‘filtering’ processes that are enacted to ‘produce’ the ‘ideal’ migrant worker. An important original contribution of this paper is that it details how recruitment agencies, in not only engaging in the spatially selective recruitment of labour from certain places but also drawing socially constructed boundaries around migrant bodies, play a key part in shaping migration geographies both in sending and destination countries.     

Teaching “notre littérature”: The Place of la littérature québécoise in the Curriculum in Quebec

Recent calls for a greater emphasis on the teaching of Quebec literature from primary school to cégep once more link the teaching of Quebec literature with the survival of a language and a culture. The current debate echoes those which have taken place over the last 100 years, both under the denominational system of education and since the Révolution tranquille. Different pedagogical and ideological factors have influenced not only whether Francophone Canadian literature has been taught, but also what has been taught and how it has been taught. Anxieties about the status, history and definition of “notre littérature” have recurred throughout the century, as have concerns about the relationship between the literature of Quebec and the literature of metropolitan France. This article will discuss the teaching of literature in Quebec since 1900 to conclude with a consideration of the teaching of Francophone Canadian literature in Quebec today.     

Ghostly Voices: some Observations on Song‐Creation,Ceremony and Being in NW Australia

Wangga songs are given to songmen by ghosts in dreams. By singing these songs in ceremony songmen at Belyuen gain power over the ghosts of the recently dead and thereby conduct them away from human society. This paper argues that it is the replication not only of the melodies, rhythms and words of the ghost‐given songs, but also the voice of the song‐giving ghost itself that gives the singer his power. While the accumulation of spiritual power through the replication of the actions of the world‐creating ancestors has been widely discussed in the literature, dreamt song has been less closely examined. It is suggested that dreamt songs such as wangga play a role in facilitating adaptation to new patterns of residency and are thus a significant element in contemporary Aboriginal life.     

2. Comparative state politics

Brian Galligan (ed.), Australian State Politics, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1986, pp. 283. $16.95 (paper)

Brian Head (ed.), The Politics of Development in Australia, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1986, pp. 274. $15.95 (paper)