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.     

The spaces of UK students’ unions: extending the critical geographies of the university campus

This article seeks to further our knowledge of the university campus by focusing on one particular aspect of most UK campuses: the students’ union. UK students’ unions have rarely been the subject of scholarly attention, despite them now occupying an important place within the higher education landscape. Nevertheless, in this paper we draw on a UK-wide study of students’ unions to explore, firstly, the role played by the buildings of the students’ union and, secondly, the ways in which aspects of the university’s campus influence union activity. We pay particular attention to the expansion of the university campus, in many institutions, from a single site to multiple sites, both within the UK and overseas. We contend that a focus on the materiality of the students’ union and the level of union activity (or inactivity) across various campus spaces can illustrate the values, ideologies and power relations that dominate contemporary British higher education.     

Lake Pedder's Loss and Failed Restoration: Ecological Politics Meets Liberal Democracy in Tasmania

The flooding of Lake Pedder in South West Tasmania for hydro-electricity in the early 1970s is recognised as one of the world's great ecological tragedies. The hope for its restoration, long held by some, has been given impetus by the activities of Pedder 2000, a nation-wide restoration lobby group founded in 1994. The legitimacy, feasibility and desirability of Pedder's restoration has been acknowledged, if not endorsed, by a recent federal inquiry. Restoration proponents see Pedder's recovery not only as a means of making amends for past follies, but as a new millennium project that offers hope to future generations. This paper reviews Pedder's inundation and the efforts towards its recovery, and finds little support for restoration in the absence of compelling economic and political benefit. This is cause to reflect, it is argued, upon the difficulties that ecological politics has encountered within Tasmania that saw Lake Pedder dammed in the first place.     

Capitalizing on Women's Social Capital? Women‐Targeted Microfinance in Bolivia

Both social capital and microfinance are central to mainstream development interventions, and both are predicated on the need to recognize the importance of social factors in development. Microfinance institutions mobilize social capital in the form of a group guarantee, and aim to support the development of sustainable financial institutions and income generation. Women are targeted in part because of the effectiveness of their social capital as collateral. However, although social capital is assumed to support development and income generation, the precise dynamics involved in this are rarely explored. This article examines the construction of social capital and its relationship to income generation, based on a long‐term ethnographic study of village life in rural Bolivia and the microfinance institution operating there. The author examines the complexity and gendered contradictions implied in the way that social capital is generally viewed to support economic development. It is suggested that the way microfinance institutions use social capital to support sustainable financial institutions and income generation does not always reflect the way that women's networks support access to resources and ultimately, economic development.     

Rewriting the history of Chinese families in nineteenth-century Australia

The nineteenth-century Chinese population in Australia was made up mostly of men, drawing many commentators to the conclusion these men faced an absence of family life, resulting in prostitution, gambling, opium use and other so-called vices. Recent research has, however, expanded and complicated our knowledge of Chinese families in New South Wales and Victoria, particularly concerning the extent to which Chinese men and white Australian women formed intimate relationships. This article traces the origins of the misconceptions about Chinese families in nineteenth-century Australia, and considers how new directions in scholarship over the past decade are providing methods for enlarging our knowledge. It argues that instead of being oddities or exceptions, Chinese-European families were integral to the story of Australia's early Chinese communities.