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Panic buying of toilet rolls in Australia began in early March 2020. This was related to the realisation that the novel coronavirus was spreading across the country. To the general population the impact of the virus was unknown. Gradually the federal government started closing the country's borders. The panic buying of toilet rolls was not unique to Australia. It happened across all societies that used toilet paper rather than water to clean after defecation and urination. However, research suggests that the panic buying was most extreme in Australia. This article argues that the panic buying was closely linked to everyday notions of Western civilisation. Pedestal toilets and toilet paper are key aspects of civilisation and the fear of the loss of toilet paper is connected to anxiety about social breakdown, the loss of civilisation. This is the fear manifested in the perceived threat posed by the virus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of The Australian in 1964 now appears prescient: it coincided with and contributed to the rise in national political consciousness inaugurated in the 1960s that has continued ever since. Integral to this process has been a far more powerful sense of the nation and a weakening in state consciousness. History suggests that the culture and the technology were ready for a national newspaper. This article examines several critical political events or themes, how The Australian saw them and the extent to which it shaped or failed to shape the nation's mood. This involves an assessment of how both the nation and the paper changed over half a century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses experiences of everyday racism as narrated by South Sudanese refugee-background informants living in Australia. The paper draws on accounts of verbal and physical attacks reported during a sociolinguistic interview about the refugee experience and adaptation to the Australian lifestyle. The study contributes to the exploration of features of refugee narratives, using the socio-interactional approach to narrative analysis. Selected stories about racism are explored using positioning theory, paying attention to the discursive strategies narrators use to position themselves in the interactional world of the interview setting as well as the story-world. Their narratives demonstrate that despite the harsh experiences of everyday racism, they position themselves as resilient and strong individuals. They do this by drawing on their refugee history and making references to harder times. However, the stories also reveal their mitigation strategies to soften the accounts and either downplay or deny racism. However, by sharing their stories and making explicit evaluative statements about social injustice, they mobilise their agency to make their story heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2020 at the height of Australia's first national COVID lockdown, NewsCorp Australia announced that more than 125 regional newspapers would either be closed or become available online-only. Queensland was hit hard with 22 regional and 20 community newspapers shifting to online formats, and 15 community newspapers closing. Yet within months of the NewsCorp changes, a significant number of new print newspapers were being announced to fill the 'news deserts'. Broadly welcomed by those in these local communities, the new publications suggest a reinvigoration of long-standing norms and tenets, many of which are specific to regional print news media, such as community-centred, locally-shaped news values and high reliance on 'micro-ads' (i.e. classifieds) and hyper-local business revenue. But given the dire prognostications about print business models, what are the aims and intentions of these start-ups (n = 22), and how do they translate their notions of community-centric news into business models they perceive as viable? Drawing on Hanitzsch and Vos framework for the discursive constructions of journalists' role in society, we find these newspaper start-ups both reassert and claim more vigorously the normative values associated with community journalism as 'social glue', while also developing 'lean start-up' business models that capitalise on the sense of a local newspaper's 'social good' functions through an affective rationale. We argue this represents a shift to a new 'hybrid' model, with strong elements of a traditional and still feisty monitorial news values fusing with a more 'morale-enhancing' and explicitly social cohesion-centric role conceptions. We call it a 'community cohesion model'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Rupert Murdoch announced in April 2004 that he intended to see his company, News Corporation, reincorporated in the United States, two competing representations of the 'media mogul' came to dominate the press's interpretation of this event. The first of these 'Murdoch representations' was the most common, and painted an image of a successful entrepreneur, a 'celebrity CEO'. Yet, the second 'Murdoch representation' painted a different image, a more detailed portrait, with critical attention paid to the modus operandi of the world's most notorious media proprietor. This article deconstructs these representations of Murdoch, a mythic fracturing of image resulting from the political economy of the Australian press. In essence, the article explores issues of media diversity, myth and ideology, and the propensity of the press for critical, impartial, journalism. The empirical data are drawn from an analysis of two of Australia's pre-eminent newspapers: The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a tribute to the late Steve Crook who shared with us the excitement of research on environmentalism. As we predicted, environmental activism in Australia remains socially circumscribed, but its scope, and the scope of environmental concerns, have been widening. Differentiation and proliferation of environmental issues combine with social diffusion and routinization. The pro- portion of people who see the environment as a salient issue continues to be relatively high, in spite of an increasing competition from new issue concerns, including security and illegal migration. The new `white' environmental issues enter the public arena reflecting widespread (though less urgent) concerns about genetic modification of food-crops and cloning of human tissue - all interpreted as `interference with nature'. The `white' environmental issues attract the concern of new social categories of `conscience environmentalists' who are more likely to be women, tend to be older, religious; and less attracted by green organizations. They are also less metropolitan in their location, and not as leftist and postmaterial in their value preferences as their `green' and `brown' predecessors. The formation of the `white' environmental issue cluster and constituency opens the way for new ideological reinterpretations of environmental outlook - and for new political alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses micro-data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to examine the relationship between gender role attitudes and the labour supply of men and women. Using the Wellington decomposition technique, the paper also considers how much of the change in the gender gap in labour force participation (LFP) between 2001/5 and 2015/19 may be explained by changes in the gender role attitudes of adult women and men. The results show a 6.5 percentage point convergence in the gender gap in LFP between the two periods. Nearly half the convergence arises from a change in the schooling attainment of men and women. Just over one-third is due to changes in gender role attitudes (faster adoption of egalitarian gender role attitudes by women). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore what aspects create experiential value for wine tourists. We synthesize the extant literature into four dimensions for wine tourism value creation, namely, product-related aspects; sensory and affective experiential aspects; cognitive, educational experiential aspects; and social-relational experiential value-creating aspects. So far, most studies merely discuss product-related aspects whilst insights on experiential value are less known. Using online review data from wine tourists in Australia, we develop a novel deep neural network-based framework using an innovative AI-based exploratory design. Results of the case study reveal that in addition to product-related aspects, sensory-and education-related experiential aspects are also highly important for value creation in wine tourism. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as ideas for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Posthumous conception, the ability to conceive a child after the death of one partner, is increasingly prevalent due to advances in Artificial Reproduction Technology (ART). This paper considers the complexities surrounding the practice in Australia, focusing primarily on the ethical and legal dimensions. It observes that state-based regulations in Australia create disparities in accessibility: some states prohibit the procedure without the deceased's written consent, while others permit it based on guidelines or lack explicit prohibitions. Addressing the juxtaposition of Will Theory and Interest Theory, it emphasises the ongoing debate on whether rights, particularly reproductive autonomy, outlive a person's demise. Finally, the paper highlights an evident inconsistency in Australian legislation and promotes a uniform approach across states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sub-Saharan African-born community in Australia is significantly underrepresented in health research, partly, due to challenges associated with collecting their primary data. Based on experience from a mixed-method study comprising 24 in-depth interviews and a survey of 253 participants in the community, this communication paper highlights a number of 'high-level' practical issues that might be encountered when collecting primary data from the community and provides suggestions for future studies. Included in this paper is a brief discussion of important lessons from the fieldwork that are critical for achieving successful data collection from the community. The lessons include difficulty of proving external validity for samples drawn from the community, difficulty of developing a reliable sampling frame, challenges in selecting appropriate support organisations, risk of low response to surveys and language barrier. The study concludes that understanding the ethnic diversities in this community and engaging appropriate support organisations are critical to achieving a successful data collection experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Compared with similar research mainly focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Australian mainstream media using discourse analysis, this paper explores the reasons for the narrative shift by conducting semi-structured interviews with leading and well-known Australian narrative producers. This paper takes two conditions as a given. Firstly, the BRI narratives in Australian mainstream media shifted in tone from mostly positive to highly critical. Secondly, the Australian mainstream media's increasingly negative attitudes towards the BRI are essentially not just about the BRI but the Chinese government. Based on my analysis and interviews, this paper makes contributions by filling in the gap of finding out reasons to explain this narrative shift. More concretely, this paper finds out that while mainstream media is influential in many areas of national policy making, mainstream media reporting on foreign affairs is less so. By comparison, the Australian government's BRI or China policy has a significant impact on Australian mainstream media reporting. This narrative shift has been driven by international politics and Australia's China policy, influenced by Australian audiences' preference of local news and their local position, and its democratic responsibilities. Meanwhile, the vagueness and constant changing characteristics of the BRI do not help the understanding of the BRI in Australian media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant educational disruption globally. When the pandemic forced schools to switch to emergency home-schooling, parental engagement in education became more critical. Some parents found home-schooling as an opportunity to form stronger relationships with their children. Others acquired an enhanced insight into their children's schoolwork. However, the emerging literature shows that, as not all parents were equally positioned to support their children's learning at home, emergency home-schooling has resulted in a significant learning loss. Guided by the concept of capital interaction, this article reports on a qualitative case study that investigated the experiences of 20 migrant parents in Victoria, Australia. A thematic analysis of the data reveals challenges associated with parental self-efficacy, financial hardship, language and technological barriers, time constraints, and disengagement and exhaustion. Remote learning may return in the future, and we must prepare for such disruption by improving equitable access to education delivered online and at home. To this end, the paper outlines some policy ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the logistic planning, the important focus of international student mobility programmes in social work is on the field supervision process and measuring its outcome. Without a social work council in India for setting uniform standards in field education, this paper proposes a framework for field supervision to support inbound mobility students in India. The study predominantly explores the qualitative experiences of field supervisors from India, Israel, and Australia on fieldwork supervision. The themes evolved from the study are focused on the supervision process, strategies followed, challenges faced, and outcome measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the audience reception of sensationalist newspapers in interwar Australia through a case study of Sydney weekly Beckett's Budget. During a libel trial brought against Beekett's in 1928, readers came to its defence and their testimony reveals overlaps between reading and political allegiances: reading Beckett's equated with voting Labor While histories of sensationalist media in Australia have rightly emphasised illicit sexuality and public outcry, connections between sensationalism and working-class political movements remain on the margins of academic interest. Responding to the question 'Do you read Beckett's?' readers' evidence at the trial constitutes an audience response and invites debate over the ways gender and class could inform political engagement in the 1920s. Viewing Beckett's Budget outside of 'brown paper' and beyond the sensationalist genre reveals a shift in Australian political culture as party strategists embraced a broader electorate, using Beckett's Budget to tap into the culture and concerns of interwar society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article undertakes a cross-national comparison of the aerospace sectors in two 'liberal' countries, the UK and Australia, examining how several multinational firms engage with engineering skill institutions: regulation of entry to profession, entry-level and ongoing training. The paper empirically demonstrates and theoretically argues that the social partners and employment protection institutions can in certain contexts play an important role in professional skill development. Institutional legacy matters, shaping multinational responses and providing distinct resources for various actors including unions. Tension between existing skill institutions ('country' or 'sector' effects) and the capacity of multinationals (MNCs) to shape practices are addressed. Both country cases demonstrate how MNCs may be able to shape practices in such a way that they create 'MNC' effects, defined as a combination of large firm/subsidiary, and 'corporate' effects, that affect engineering skill development for other firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the under-explored demand-side of active labour market programmes that aim to transition people without jobs into employment. The paper's contribution centres on understanding the benefits that government-funded employment services can offer to employers and how they can work with employment service providers to leverage these. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with employers in Australia, our findings extend pre-existing concepts of employer engagement by illustrating the human resource, corporate social responsibility, and financial benefits to employers of engaging with employment services and how firm size affects their engagement. The findings offer improvements to policymaking and practice to facilitate the effectiveness of employment services in Australia and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s, successive Australian governments began to pursue a program of microeconomic restructuring, taking their lead from the developing 'free market' reform projects underway in the United States and the United Kingdom. One of the prominent features of the emerging liberalisation agenda was the commercialisation and privatisation of government-owned companies and assets. In keeping with this trend, over the following decades, a series of changes have been introduced to Australia's container ports aimed at improving their productivity and efficiency. Drawing on a series of interviews and analysis of governmental and non-governmental reports, the purpose of this study is to examine how port policy has unfolded 'on the ground' in Australia. The paper considers some of the 'common sense' economic maxims expounded for reform in relation to actual outcomes for industry stakeholders, concluding that principles and practice have diverged significantly and that many of the assumed benefits have failed to materialise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe and exemplify a theoretical perspective for the analysis of music as symbolic action in critical studies of discourse. We use deployments of music by legislatures in Australia, the UK, and the USA as exemplar cases to develop foundations for a critical, non-semiotic perspective that sees music work as gestalt complexes of physical and cultural forces that move people towards or away from specific actions and attitudes. In presenting our perspective we critique some semiotic assertions about music that are commonplaces in discourse studies and elsewhere. Our cases draw on news reports and scholarly discourse about the use of music as a means of torture in warfare and as a means of purifying urban public spaces by keeping youth and homeless people out of them at night. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic scholarship analyses how citizenship law reforms such as longer residency requirements and tougher language tests reinforce culturally exclusionary national narratives. Citizenship ceremonies however, have largely escaped scholarly attention. Drawing on Australia as a case study, this article addresses that gap. After examining how Australian citizenship is performed at ceremonies, this article argues that although the government states that citizenship ceremonies should welcome new citizens, deep suspicions about the cultural diversity of migrants are also conveyed. This paper contributes to an understanding of how citizenship ceremonies reinforce culturally exclusionary national narratives, even where the legal criteria for acquiring citizenship status is non-discriminatory. This paper also illustrates how citizenship ceremonies are important sites for the construction and communication of legal identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published 50 years ago, Henry Mayer's The Press in Australia - still the most comprehensive analysis of Australia's daily papers and their critics - remains a landmark in the study of the Australian press. This article lays out the book's main arguments, recalls the way it was received, and offers an assessment of its impact on teaching in the universities, on academic research and on the newspaper industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from an investigation of nature-based practices, from the perspectives of 10 academics/educators from six nations. Participants engaged in a focus group exploring the prevalence and inclusion of nature in social work practice and education. While the study focused on individual members' experiences and perspectives, the findings highlight important context-specific factors for including nature within social work to reconnect humans with nature for health, well-being, healing, and justice. An Integrative Environmental Model for social work is proposed to assist future practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Osteoporosis remains unrecognised and untreated in patients with fragility fractures, which leads to higher mortality rate, increasing social and economic burden related to subsequent fractures. However, the presence of a coordinated and centralised care pathway for fragility fractures is lacking. The purpose of this paper is to explore the perspectives of health professionals regarding the current management for distal radius fragility fractures, how the care pathway can be optimised for patients with distal radius fragility fractures, and where occupational therapists can contribute. Methods: This paper uses a phenomenological qualitative methodology with selective and purposeful sampling, consisting of health professionals from an Australian Health Service (N = 20). Online surveys (N = 18) and semi-structured interviews (N = 16) were conducted. Content analysis was applied, followed by thematic analysis to identify emerging themes. Results: Eighteen health professionals participated in the presurvey of which 16 were interviewed. The identified themes presented the gaps in the knowledge and awareness of fragility fractures and osteoporosis, as well as a lack of coordination in the system, especially the referral process. Discussion: These findings are consistent with previous studies which also highlight the importance of communication, coordination, collaboration, cooperation, responsibility, and a population approach in achieving integrated care. This study contributes to the global call for a centralised and coordinated care pathway for fragility fractures. The study explores personal experiences of health professionals who expressed interest in fragility fractures management. Exploring patients' perspectives on their journey of fragility fractures management provides opportunity for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female genital fashioning practices, a term encompassing a range of temporary and permanent options for cosmetic genital alteration, are becoming an increasingly prominent part of contemporary beauty regimes. Drawing on a series of 11 small focus groups and 10 interviews with 34 Australian women aged 18–30, this paper explores the ways that cisgender young women negotiate a combination of social pressures, pleasures and influences in their decisions to engage with genital fashioning. These pressures are described by women to emanate from broad social norms, sexual partners, family members, and peer groups. The women in this study demonstrate a nuanced and critical awareness of the cultural context which they inhabit but deploy postfeminist narratives of self-care and enjoyment to make sense of genital fashioning practices. The paper contributes to scholarship on postfeminism by demonstrating the ways that women creatively use the discursive tools available to enable critical reflection on notions of choice. At the same time, the findings in this study constitute an empirical contribution to critiques of postfeminism to reveal the limitations of postfeminist reasoning which ultimately works to curtail or impede the identification of structural problems and constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how women think about men's bodies as objects of desire. It reports on one part of a larger qualitative study on men's bodywork practices in contemporary Australia. Drawing on material from three focus groups with 24 Australian women of varying ages, sexual orientations and backgrounds, the paper considers how women experience, understand and reflect on their desire for men and men's bodies. It also explores themes such as the connection women draw between what a man's body looks like and what it can do, how attraction is experienced, the meaning making women engage in as they think about men and men's bodies, and the broader politics of sexuality and objectification that inform their perceptions and ideas. These experiences are set against ideas in post-feminist thinking on women's sexual desire and debates on their sexual empowerment. The paper argues that these women are grappling with tensions between their personal experiences of sexual objectification and a feminist ethics relating to their active and reflexive projects of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction provides an overview of the collection of papers in this special issue on genealogies of indefinite detention. This collection of papers builds on the work of Professor Penny Pether (1957 - 2013), in particular her book proposal, '"Perverts," "terrorists," and business as usual: Comparative Indefinite Detentions before and after 9/11'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Elite communities' are the areas where the wealthy, and even 'superrich', live, socialize and raise their children as future economic and financial elites; they are the places where a few lead socially and economically privileged lives. Earlier studies have concentrated on the inner dynamics of these settings, focusing on the way residents are constructed and socialized as elites through their social, communicative and aesthetic abilities that are perceived as exemplary in contemporary neoliberal society. In this paper, we broaden the perspective, by exploring how these areas contribute to polarization, that is, how they generate distinctions based on money, morals and manners that are peculiar to neoliberalism's idealization of 'entrepreneurship', 'self-management', 'leadership' and the pursuit of an 'active lifestyle'. Our data come from two major ethnographic studies: one conducted between 2010 and 2015 of Sweden's wealthiest community, Djursholm, that is populated by the country's business and financial elites; the other conducted between 2016 and 2019 of three of Australia's most prestigious and economically privileged suburbs, Toorak (Melbourne), Mosman (Sydney) and Cottesloe (Perth). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low wage growth is a challenge common to many OECD countries including countries with very different institutional systems. This paper utilises and extends Rochefort and Cobb's (1993) 'problem definition' framework to analyse how employer and union representatives in Australia and Denmark explain the causes of low wage growth. Drawing on elite interviews, which allow us to assess the nuance of actors' perceptions, we find disagreement among Australian actors about the role of the collective bargaining system in contributing to low wage growth. Despite disagreement over the extent of the low wage growth problem in Denmark, both unions and employers expressed confidence in the ability of the bargaining system to resolve it. We argue that the greater degree of consensus in Denmark compared with Australia reflects differences in national institutional systems and knowledge regimes, which have influenced the ways actors in these countries perceive low wage growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research aims to investigate whether multi/inter-disciplinary research activities are related to research impact and publication counts of scholars. Since researchers with very high levels of multi/inter-disciplinarity might be able to target complex problems, we would expect them to receive more credits than their colleagues with a stronger disciplinary orientation. We analysed Web of Science (WoS) indexed publications of all associate and full professors from a random sample of Australian universities in physics, chemistry and biology (1980–2014). Australian Fields of Research (FoR) codes assigned to journals were used to calculate the diversification of authors' publications. The number of citations in the first 3 years, number of 10% most frequently cited papers, and citation impact percentile were used for impact assessment. A few indicators were used to measure the diversity including 'extent of diversification (ED)' (number of distinct FoR codes divided by the number of publications) and 'diversification ratio (DR)' (ratio of the publications falling outside the dominant code to the total number of publications). A total of 47.76% of biologists' publications, 35.23% of physicists' publications and 20.36% of chemists' publications were published in journals assigned to fields other than the Australian associate and full professors' fields. Publications from biologists had the largest values of diversification. Women (compared with men) and associate professors (compared with full professors) in chemistry, biology and overall were more probably to publish diversely. ED was negatively correlated with output and citation impact. DR also had a negative but weak correlation with the number of publications and 10% most frequently cited paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the employment experiences of immigrants of African background in the Australian labor market. Drawing on the findings from a qualitative study conducted in South East Queensland, the paper identifies several barriers and challenges faced by Africans to meaningful employment and labor market success. The paper indicates the need to develop targeted policies to eliminate employment discrimination, reduce barriers to meaningful employment for good settlement and successful integration of African immigrants to Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia has one of the most urbanised and diverse populations in the world, but there is little research that explores fleeting friendships between marginalised/racialised ethnic minority and indigenous populations. In contrast to metropolitan cities in white settler societies that have been the focus of much research, this paper focuses on the small, tropical city of Darwin in Northern Australia. This is a city that is at the centre of public debates on indigenous wellbeing, migrant integration and asylum seeker policies, with social welfare programmes that provide little opportunities for hopeful encounters among indigenous peoples and ethnic minority newcomers in surface spaces. I argue, however, that ‘grass root’ forms of creativity in an ‘underground’ car park bring their affective worlds together through a shared passion for art. The paper draws on gentle methodologies including participatory visual methods to privilege non-Western ways of inhabiting place. Through a ‘quiet politics’ and affective engagement with spacetimes both proximate and distant, the paper shows that it is possible to invoke different futures and crystallise experimental publics in the diverse city. The paper responds to a call to push the boundaries of urban research on social difference through geographies of friendship that are yet to engage with multisensory bodies, emotion, affect and art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Families of choice is an important framework used to think about non-heterosexual people's attachments. This means the family of origin has received limited attention when theorising their relationships. This group has often been considered in relation to coming out, which centralises the importance of sexuality for understanding kinship ties. This paper extends the limited, but growing scholarship on non-heterosexual people, and their families of origin. It does this by drawing on a larger project on the lives of gay men of South Asian descent, in Australia. Results demonstrate that attachment through blood, shared history, emotions, and obligations, firmly embed gay South Asian men in their families of origin, even when there is disapproval of their sexuality. More broadly, the study resists framing the respondents and findings in culturally essentialist terms, premised on an 'East' versus 'West' binary. It argues that by resisting such orientalism we can see similarities pertaining to families of origin across different contexts, and in doing so, produce queer scholarship able to speak across divides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian children from regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas exhibit lower educational outcomes than their peers in metropolitan areas. The mechanisms driving the comparatively poorer educational outcomes of children in RRR areas, however, are not well understood. This paper proposes and tests two sets of factors that may be responsible for these disparities: population socio-demographic composition and school climate. Using rich survey and linked administrative data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 9,248 observations), we estimate the relative contribution of these sets of factors to RRR children's disadvantage in NAPLAN numeracy test scores. Our results indicate that both socio-demographic and school climate factors account for part of the educational disparities between children in RRR and metropolitan areas. These findings suggest that hybrid policy approaches that tackle both the social determinants of educational success and use schools as an intervention site are required to close the achievement gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: From 2018, the Schools Up North (SUN) programme worked with three remote Australian schools to enhance their capability and resilience to support the wellbeing and mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff. This paper explores the implementation of SUN during the first two years of COVID-19 (2020–2021). Method: Using grounded theory methods, school staff, other service providers and SUN facilitators were interviewed, with transcripts and programme documents coded and interrelationships between codes identified. An implementation model was developed. Results: The SUN approach was place-based, locally informed and relational, fostering school resilience through staff reflection on and response to emerging contextual challenges. Challenges were the: community lockdowns and school closures; (un)availability of other services; community uncertainty and anxiety; school staff capability and wellbeing; and risk of educational slippage. SUN strategies were: enhancing teachers' capabilities and resources, facilitating public health discussions, and advocating at regional level. Outcomes were: enhanced capability of school staff; greater school-community engagement; student belonging and engagement; a voice for advocacy; and continuity of SUN's momentum. Conclusions: The resilience approach (rather than specific strategies) was critical for building schools' capabilities for promoting students and staff wellbeing and provides an exemplar for remote schools globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate activists and environmental communicators stress that addressing the climate crisis requires both global and local advocacy for transformational change-making. While journalists in small, rural communities are known to actively advocate on issues for the common good, there has been little investigation of local media advocacy on climate change in rural Australia: a region at the forefront of global heating. This paper analyses the accounts of local journalists of their media coverage of the School Strikes 4 Climate in rural and regional Australia, as an empirical entry point for a conceptual discussion of local media advocacy in reporting climate change. We find that normative ideas about journalism coupled with polarised community views on climate change hindered these journalists from taking an advocacy stance. We explore and critique the tacit 'quiet advocacy' practices used by these journalists reporting on climate in rural and regional Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'It is difficult to talk to my children about sex' – this anxiety has long been established in sex education literature, along with the beneficial role of improved parent–child communication for sexual health and relationship outcomes. However, the insights gained from this literature have been under-researched in migrant families, and has resulted in the 'whitening' of parent guides that provide 'tips' for parents. This article asks critical questions about the politics of race and representation that structure these documents. In the main, these questions rest on concerns about who these guides speak to. On the surface, the documents speak to everyone, through an inclusive terminology and phraseology that references 'all parents' and 'our worries'. However, this paper asks: What does it do, and what is produced, to speak about parents in the general? How does the production of an assumed 'singular/universal' parent serve to 'other' the experiences a racially diverse parents, and render a broader range of experiences invisible? To explore this question, this article undertakes a critical discourse analysis of parent guides in Australia. It interrogates the normative frameworks that scaffold and structure the guides, and in the main argues that despite gestures toward inclusion, a very particular kind of parent lies at the heart of the documents. In addition, the article moves from deconstruction to think through what parent sex education guides might look like it they were better designed to account for difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stand-alone strangulation offence was introduced in Queensland, Australia in 2016. One of the elements of the Queensland strangulation offence is that the victim did not consent to the strangulation. This paper reviews the harms and dangers associated with strangulation before overviewing the debates about the use of strangulation during sex. Drawing on focus group discussions conducted with domestic violence support workers and men's behaviour change workers, we discuss four overlapping themes identified in the discussions. These were perceptions that: strangulation during sex is normalised; consent is not informed; it happens in the context of coercive control; and the requirement of consent opens a loophole in the strangulation offence. Considering the issues raised, and the clear risks and harms, we suggest that consideration should be given to whether it is ever possible to consent to strangulation and we consider possible reforms such as following the two-tiered approaches to consent used in the England and Wales law and elsewhere in Australia. We also conclude that law reforms such as these are partial solutions and there is significant need for more community education about the risks and harms of strangulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on and progresses Australian and international debates about the urban–rural digital divide. In commentary style, I draw on my own experience of living in rural Australia and six years of scholarship devoted to understanding digital inclusion in geographically remote communities. The paper is anchored theoretically in global scholarly debates around rural digital inclusion, but also deeply contextualised in the current state of digital infrastructure and capability investment and the lived experiences of people in rural Australia. In tacking stock of the geographical digital divide, I combine findings and vignettes from my published research with the insights of other authors and data from the Australian Digital Inclusion Index. I make observations about the evolution of geographical digital inclusion in Australia focused on three themes: incremental digital development; the complexity and cost of getting connected; and compounding factors of disadvantage. These insights culminate in articulation of an emerging digital divide within rural cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A concept of visibility frames much scholarship and public writing on LGBTQ+ representation in film and television, and underpins diversity reporting and inclusivity measurement. Although visibility is often depicted as a social good, there is a growing critical interest in asking if there are different kinds of visibility, and how these might be differentially valued. This paper reports insights gained from interviews with Australian stakeholders involved in the production of screen entertainment with LGBTQ+ content. The study found that stakeholders are motivated by to create texts that make LGBTQ+ stories and characters visible. The range of approaches to visibility was, however, nuanced and diverse: some understood any LGBTQ+ representation as valuable, while others discussed visibility in contexts of character depth, anti-stereotyping, and visibility tempered by concepts of human dignity. Although visibility is perceived diversely, it remains a significant lens by which creative artists involved in LGBTQ+ texts understand their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Hospital in the Home models are rapidly expanding in response to increasing bed pressures. This study examined patient and multidisciplinary health professional perceptions of a new geriatric evaluation and management and rehabilitation hospital in the home service in Australia. The service was unique, as adults of all ages with a variety of rehabilitation or geriatric evaluation and management needs were within scope. Methods: A qualitative descriptive approach was used with a consumer co-researcher and a consumer advisor being integral to decision-making. Patient feedback was collected via a paper-based patient satisfaction survey between August 2020 and February 2022. Additionally, interviews with current and past staff were conducted from July to November 2021. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted for qualitative data and descriptive statistics used for quantitative data. Results: Patient surveys were analysed (n = 199, 42.2% response rate) with 60.8% of participants aged 75 years or over and 26.6% speaking a language other than English. High satisfaction was expressed. Feelings of comfort, familiarity, convenience, and reassurance were voiced. A person-centred approach enhanced involvement in care. Challenges included carer burden and clear communication. Sixteen staff (33% response rate) were interviewed. In general, staff said the service was inclusive and responsive, and the home environment beneficial, particularly for patients from culturally diverse backgrounds. A strong hospital partnership and comprehensive multidisciplinary approach were vital. Challenges included fragmentation due to part-time roles and combining with a pre-existing acute hospital in the home service. Conclusions: This qualitative exploration of staff and patients' perceptions of a geriatrician-led, multidisciplinary geriatric evaluation and management and rehabilitation hospital in the home service demonstrated that it was person-centred and optimised patients' control and ownership of care. The inclusive service parameters ensured responsiveness to diverse needs whilst allowing earlier return home from hospital, both of which are vital for quality patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic low back pain is characterised by multiple and overlapping biological, psychological, social and broader dimensions, affecting individuals' lives. Multidisciplinary pain services have been considered optimal settings to account for the multidimensionality of chronic low back pain but have largely focused on cognitive and behavioural aspects of individuals' pain. Social dimensions are usually underexplored, considered outside or beyond healthcare professionals' scope of practice. Employing Actor Network Theorist Mol's concept multiplicity, our aim in this paper is to explore how a pain service's practices bring to the fore the social dimensions of individuals living with low back pain. Drawing on 32 ethnographic observations and four group exchanges with the service's clinicians, findings suggest that practices produced multiple enactments of an individual with low back pain. Although individuals' social context was present and manifested during consultations at the pain service (first enactment: 'the person'), it was often disconnected from care and overlooked in 'treatment/management' (second enactment: 'the patient'). In contrast, certain practices at the pain service not only provided acknowledgement of, but actions towards enhancing, individuals' social contexts by adapting rules and habits, providing assistance outside the service and shifting power relations during consultations (third enactment: 'the patient-person'). We therefore argue that different practices enact different versions of an individual with low back pain in pain services, and that engagement with individuals' social contexts can be part of a service's agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) have a long history, but a surge of interest since the global financial crisis suggests a connection to growing inequality and insecurity. The pandemic intensified interest through the global explosion in the use of cash transfers. This special issue arose from pre-pandemic debates among Australian sociologists connecting global interest around UBI to emerging patterns of inequality and insecurity stemming from Australia's precarious labour market and expensive housing market. Those discussions broadened to reflect on Australia's colonial history and patriarchal economy, and the potential to recognise more diverse contributions and values. Evolving through the Covid crisis, the issue now incorporates the remarkable alternatives that were, briefly, made possible. The articles reflect both scepticism and optimism towards UBI, but all reveal how basic income can provide a useful lens for Australian sociology – a simple tool responding to an increasingly complex society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African Australian diasporic literature has drawn attention to the anti-Black racism Black African young people endure in everyday Australia. By drawing on a multi-method approach consisting of social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews, this paper explores the use of social media by Black African young people (n=15) to visibilise their experiences of racism. We situate the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, as a significant ‘turning point’ when the social media practises of our participants radically transformed. Our findings indicate that prior to the murder of George Floyd, participants evoked careful boundaries around the type of racial content they posted for fear of the punishments or backlash that could occur if they disrupted the white racial comfort of their friends and followers. After the murder of Floyd, participants used the resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement to visibilise their own experiences of anti-Black racism and racial violence in Australia, sharing content on social media that marked whiteness, demanded safety and challenged white silence and performative allyship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing, employment and economic conditions in many nations have changed greatly over the past decades. This paper explores the ways in which changing housing markets, economic conditions and government policies have affected vulnerable individuals and households, using Australia as a case study. The paper finds a substantial number and proportion of low income Australians have been affected by housing and employment that is insecure with profound implications for vulnerability. Importantly, the paper suggests that in Australia the economic gains achieved as a consequence of mining-related growth in the early 2000s were translated as greater employment security for some on low incomes, but not all. Enhanced access to employment in this period was differentiated by gender, with women largely missing out on the growth in jobs. For the population as a whole, employment gains were offset by increased housing insecurity as accommodation costs rose. The paper finds low income lone parents were especially vulnerable because they were unable to benefit from a buoyant labour market over the decade 2000–2010. They were also adversely affected by national policy changes intended to encourage engagement with paid work. The outcomes identified for Australia are likely to have been mirrored in other nations, especially those that have embraced, or been forced to adopt, more restrictive welfare and income support regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at movements over time in regional employment–population ratios, an important and much neglected determinant of regional performance. We utilise data on gross flows into and out of employment and focus on information contained in the transition rates. The paper applies an unobserved components econometric model to a panel of Australian data to identify and explain the evolution of regional employment–population ratios over time. The approach identifies a common (i.e. nationwide) factor while allowing for region-specific effects, including region-specific impacts of the common factor. The contribution of the common factor to changes in regional employment–population ratios ranges between 38% and 80%. Conversely, regional elements explain between 20% and 62% of changes. The findings highlight the importance of adopting explicit regional employment policies as a complement to national policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the impact of The Australian on Canberra from its first issue on 15 July 1964 to the move to Sydney on 18 March 1967. It covers the acquisition of the Territorial; the change of ownership of Federal Capital Press to the Fairfax organisation; the battle with the Canberra Times for dominance in the local market; the impact of the influx of journalists on a previously static news scene; their impact on Press Gallery reporting; and the impact of more penetrating reporting on the public service. These themes are developed against the background of a city enjoying a burst of development. The article draws on the author's experience as a journalist with the ABC in the Press Gallery in Canberra in the 1960s, as a contributor to The Australian, as a writer/editor for Maxwell Newton, as a citizen and as honorary secretary for the Canberra Day Celebrations 1964. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A distinction is often made between the “choice” of not having children and the claim that having children is “natural”. What disappears in this distinction is the fact that having children is most often a choice. This choice, however, is rendered invisible through the naturalisation of parenthood as a normatively expected aspect of adulthood. Whilst this argument is not new, the topic of how heterosexual couples come to decide to have children has received relatively little attention within the academic literature. This paper reports on findings from the first stage of a longitudinal interview study focused on Australian middle-class heterosexual couples planning for a first child. A thematic analysis of interviews conducted with 10 couples found that a paired contrast was often made between what were constructed as “childless others”, and a “natural” or “innate” desire to have children. The naturalisation of a desire to have children, however, was problematised when participants spoke about expectations from family members that participants should have children. The paper concludes by considering how the relationship between parenthood and adulthood may be a specifically class-based narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial concentration of recently arrived immigrants in gateway cities and suburbs is usually seen as undesirable by urban academics and policy makers. This paper presents a counter-argument that the concentration of disadvantaged new immigrants in the form of humanitarian refugees and their families can, and does, result in positive outcomes for those groups. In part, our argument is based on making a distinction between people-based disadvantage and place-based disadvantage. The paper examines the changing nature of place-based ‘advantage’ for immigrants in Australian gateway cities through a focus on two metropolitan locations, Auburn (Sydney) and Springvale (Melbourne), known as popular destination suburbs for recent immigrants. While these two cases validate the benefits of such gateway suburbs, they also demonstrate that the capacity of recent migrants to emulate concentrated settlement patterns is now significantly undermined by changes in the labour market and affordability problems in the housing market. The paper concludes with a discussion on the possible future of gateway suburbs and the implications of this shift for the wellbeing of particular groups of disadvantaged residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of the increasing migration of black Africans to Australia, this paper seeks to raise conversations about the meta-discourses of Otherness in the Australian society. The paper aims to provide insights into black Africans' experience of othering and being othered in Australia. The paper draws from a broader study which examined the lived experiences of Africans in South East Queensland and highlights that the presentation of white as norm in Australia, one of or the institutional and social contexts that create conditions reinforcing othering practices, is perpetuated, especially, when the racial order in society is not acknowledged and challenged. The paper proposes that the condition of Africans in Australia may not just be explained by their immigration status or their lack of skills but linked to how they are positioned and constructed in Australia as visible 'Others.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]