Land Tenures as Policy Instruments: Transitions on Cape York Peninsula

Over the last four decades, Australia's most remote marginal lands have provided an expansive space towards realisation of emergent national goals, involving recognition of Aboriginal land rights together with protection of ‘wilderness’ and semi‐natural ecosystems. This has been achieved by the revival of land tenures as instruments for the delivery of public policy, requiring innovative federal and state legislation, often driven by judicial determinations. More so than any other bioregion, Cape York Peninsula has experienced radical shifts in landownership, land titles, and property rights, reflecting its pivotal role as an arena in which emerging national goals are contested. The most immediately visible evidence of these changes is depicted in the tenure maps for 1970, 1990, and 2010. However, these maps provide an incomplete account of tenure changes, including new titles such as non‐transferable communal freehold and common‐law recognition of traditional native title, requiring belated responses by state and federal governments. The three benchmark maps provide a starting point for an examination of the currently resurrected role of land titles and land rights as policy instruments. The time‐specific attributes of each tenure category are discussed and linked to the policies underpinning each tenure and to the communities, political constituencies, resources, enterprises, and national values engaged with each tenure. Land titles and land rights are pivotal in political contests about regional futures, with the peninsula acting as a crucible in shaping wider national directions.     

Vulnerability to Bushfire Risk at Melbourne's Urban Fringe: The Failure of Regulatory Land Use Planning

The 7 February 2009 bushfires in the peri‐urban region to the north of metropolitan Melbourne heralded what many have called an entirely new epoch in terms of weather‐related disasters in Australia. A total of 173 people and 2000 properties were destroyed and, as with the 1939 fires in Victoria, a Royal Commission was subsequently instituted to inquire into the causes and responses to the fire. The Royal Commission has heard much evidence about alleged failings of fire response, communication and administration. It also considered land use planning issues and the associated regulatory framework. Using the Shire of Murrindindi as a case study, this paper argues that the location of population growth, and associated regulatory failure, are contributory, yet under‐researched, factors associated with life and property losses. The adoption of more robust planning tools which incorporate climate change considerations, we argue, is essential to anticipate and minimise the impacts of disastrous natural events such as bushfires. In the latter part of the paper, attention is drawn to a recent Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal decision which is groundbreaking in its use of the precautionary principle to prevent dwelling construction in an ‘inappropriate’ location as well as to some major inconsistencies between planning for flood and bushfire threats.     

Medieval Britain and Ireland in 2017

This section of the journal comprises two core sets of reports linked to work in 2017: finds and analyses relating to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and site-specific discoveries and reports in medieval Britain and Ireland (MB&I), with a selection of highlighted projects. For the PAS report, reviews on coin and non-coin finds and on specific research angles are presented. For MB&I, the Society is most grateful to all contributors (of field units, museums, universities, developers, specialist groups and individuals) who have provided reports on finds, excavations, field-surveys and building analyses for 2017. For MB&I, see below for the format and content of the Fieldwork Highlights section and for contact details of the compilers. Annual Specialist Groups Reports appear in the Society’s Newsletter.     

NOTE ON THE INCLUSION OF SITE CLASSIFICATION INFORMATION IN EQUATIONS TO ESTIMATE STRONG GROUND MOTIONS

Two main regression methods have been proposed for using site category information within ground motion prediction equations, these are: (a) joint estimation of the site category coefficients and the magnitude and distance coefficients; or (b) estimation of site category coefficients by using the residuals from the equation derived without considering soil conditions. Method (a) requires each record be assigned a site category whereas for method (b), because it relies on residuals, site information can be missing for some records. This short note finds that if the mean of the transformed distances within each site category is the same then the two methods give the same site coefficients. If, however, these means are significantly different then method (b) can yield incorrect site coefficients.     

'Christ's Kingdom in Scotland': Scottish Presbyterianism, Social Reform, and the Edwardian Crisis

This article examines the response of Scottish Presbyterianreformers to the socioeconomic and political dimensions of the‘Edwardian Crisis’. For such individuals the circumstancesof the early twentieth century, despite the undoubted difficultiesthey posed, offered the opportunity to bring about a modernversion of the ‘godly commonwealth’, with the principalmeans of realizing this being Christianized social reform. Thearticle focuses on how the ‘social problem’ wasanalysed; the challenge of socialism; the solutions offered;and the ultimate fate of the ‘social gospel’ ¹I am grateful to the British Academy for a Research and TravelExpenses Grant which enabled me to visit Scottish archives andlibraries; and to my colleagues David Nash and Paul O'Flinnand this journal's editors and anonymous referees for theirconstructive comments on earlier drafts. The quote is from JohnW. Gulland MP, Christ's Kingdom in Scotland or the Social Missionof the United Free Church (Edinburgh, 1906).