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This paper examines the personal and professional experiences of the five arts leaders who co-wrote the foundation document for Australia's first national curriculum in the Arts. Their personal and professional backgrounds, which were explored during in depth interviews, drove the complex collaborative process that informed the first iteration of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts. Though each couched their responses in the context of their background and arts discipline, they shared an awareness of the important role of the Arts in providing the analytical tools for children and young people to identify and subsequently challenge social injustice. The findings, which are presented as a group narrative using a Narrative Inquiry approach, reveal how the five arts leaders' individual lived experience, disciplinary experience and expertise, and commitment to collaborative leadership informed their approach. It was one driven by their shared belief that all Australian students, regardless of their background, are entitled to a quality arts education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant collaborations with research partners in China are seen in many Western countries. With increasing US-China geopolitical tensions, governments, research institutions, and individuals in established scientific systems are increasingly required to address a proliferating array of risks and challenges associated with collaboration with China. Academic researchers are only beginning to describe how countries are responding to the ongoing need for global scientific collaboration amidst intensifying geopolitical competition. Several studies have examined the securitization of scientific connections with China in the USA, while others have documented developments in nations such as Australia, the UK, and Sweden. However, there is limited comparative research on approaches to international science amid geopolitical tensions. This paper bridges the gap, illuminating the key dimensions of variation in country-level responses by comparing the cases of Sweden and Australia. The questions we ask are as follows: Who responds to the challenges? By what means? And to what ends are responses directed? Swedish government have been largely passive, but Swedish funding agencies have developed "responsible internationalisation" guidelines that aim to induce proactive reflection by institutions and individual researchers. Australia's approach, by contrast, has centred on legislation, the exercise of ministerial powers, along with sector-wide enactment of expanded due diligence protocols. The comparison highlights key differences in the actors, methods and goals of responses to the intensifying geopolitics of scientific collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal attendance requirements and national declarations establish a social contract between the State and its citizens for the provision of schooling. Any shortage of teachers compromises the ability of the State to meet its contractable obligations. The sovereignty of the social contract is complex as no single body has ultimate responsibility for housing the teaching workforce, but everyone has a stake in it. Empirically focused on the largest school system in the southern hemisphere, the New South Wales public education system (Australia), this paper demonstrates that 90.8% of teaching positions, over 50,000 full-time equivalent posts, are in Local Government Areas where the median rent and house sales price are severely unaffordable on a top-of-the-scale teacher salary. With the system requiring additional teachers to meet increasing enrolments, and housing costs outstripping salaries, many schools not traditionally considered difficult to staff are becoming, if not already, inaccessible for teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by the focus on standardised assessment and performance-driven accountability, a considerable body of literature has documented differences in students' academic achievement across school sectors, both internationally and in Australia. However, few studies have to date explored the potential mechanisms underlying such differences, particularly through the lens of school climate and student engagement. And despite extensive literature on school climate and student engagement, including their relationships with achievement, the differences in these patterns across school sectors remain under-studied. In this paper, we leverage nationally representative data from a large-scale longitudinal survey in Australia with linked administrative data on student achievement to reveal different patterns of school climate and student engagement across government, Catholic and independent sectors. Employing multivariable regression analyses, we identify unique school climate and student engagement facets that are associated with improved achievement in each of these sectors, offering important pointers for educational policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideas and practices associated with inclusive education have featured prominently in the policies and reforms of successive Australian federal governments since the 1990s, yet there are limited historical analyses of these developments. This paper analyses federal and national inclusive education policies in Australia spanning from 1992 to the present. Drawing upon the concept of 'political rationality', the paper examines how the modes of reason underpinning inclusive education policies have evolved over time. Three distinct phases of policy development are identified, which we suggest are characterised by three dominant rationalities: (1) standardisation, (2) the neo-social and (3) personalisation. We argue that examining these rationalities reveals fundamental shifts in ways of thinking about and reasoning inclusive education in policy. We conclude by considering the implications of the different rationalities and single out the potential tensions emerging between rationalities of standardisation and personalisation as an area for future investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gambling is commonly associated with social and economic disadvantage. In this paper we examine the impact of gambling on homeownership, using Australian panel data. We find that gambling is associated with a lower probability of homeownership. Specifically, our endogeneity corrected estimates show that an increase in problem gambling is associated with between 1.6 and 1.8 percentage point decrease in the probability of owning a home depending on the model. Our result show that financial stress and social capital are channels through which gambling influences the probability of homeownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the university student body becomes more diversified and students' lives less linear, student retention carries increased importance for universities, including the conversion of deferrers and the re-enrolment of leave-taking students. This paper is based on a broader research project which explored national patterns of deferral and leave of absence in Australia and the policies and strategies for re-engaging the students who defer or take leave. Through a mixed research design, the study explores the extent to which students are positioned at the centre of deferral and leave of absence policy, informed by relationship marketing concepts. This study suggests that many universities have moved towards greater consideration of student perspectives and individualised approaches to building a trustworthy and supportive relationship with deferral and leave-taking students, based on data analytics of individual students' information and circumstances. Despite such efforts, there remain both limitations and tensions within these approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the drivers of student dropout from higher education has been a policy concern for several decades. However, the contributing role of certain factors—including student mental health—remains poorly understood. Furthermore, existing studies linking student mental health and university dropout are limited in both methodology and scope—for example, they often rely on small and/or non-representative samples or subjective measures, and focus almost exclusively on main effects. This paper overcomes many of these shortcomings by leveraging unique linked administrative data on the full population of domestic students commencing undergraduate studies at Australian universities between 2012 and 2015 (n = 652,139). Using these data, we document that approximately 15% of students drop out of university within their first academic year. Critically, students receiving treatment for mental health problems are 4.3 (adjusted) to 8.3 (unadjusted) percentage points more likely to drop out of higher education. This association remains in the presence of an encompassing set of potential confounds, and is remarkably uniform across segments of the student population determined by individual, family, and programme characteristics. Altogether, our findings call for increased policy efforts to improve student mental health and to buffer against its deleterious effects on retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools are often the first point of contact for young refugees resettling in Australia and play a significant role in establishing meaningful connections to Australian society and a sense of belonging in Australia (Olliff in Settling in: How do refugee young people fair within Australia's settlement system? Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, Melbourne. http//:. Accessed 21 June 2010, ; Gifford et al. in: Good Starts for recently arrived youth with refugee backgrounds: Promoting wellbeing in the first three years of settlement in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne: La Trobe Refugee Research Centre. . Accessed 4 June 2011, ; Sidhu and Taylor in: Educational provision for refugee youth in Australia: Left to chance? Journal of Sociology, 43(3), 283-300, ). However, too little is known of how refugee youth encounter school in their new country. This article draws upon individual narratives of young former refugee's experiences of high schools. It explores the stories told by the young people of being identified as different and of negotiating ways of belonging in schools both academically and socially. It argues that it is how the school positions the newly arrived refugee students within mainstream school culture that opens up or restricts opportunities for inclusion in all aspects of school (in culture and pedagogy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Force majeure circumstances, such as those witnessed in the COVID-19 pandemic, have been used to justify new technologies of governance as policy-makers around the world began to realise the magnitude of the problem and its political implications. In Australia, the coronavirus crisis focussed attention on the vital role education plays in society and was used as an opportunity by policy-makers to reinforce an agenda that, over the past two decades, has tied education policy-making to the economy and 'national interest'. Indeed, Australia's growing federal involvement, with respect to schooling policy was continued in the pandemic as the Australian Prime Minister (PM) created a national cabinet to deal with the crisis, consisting of the PM and state and territory leaders. However, despite the ongoing ambition of a national policy agenda pursued by federal policy-makers, fault lines appeared. Informed by Foucauldian notions of discourse, governmentality and biopolitics, this paper explores how Australia's federal Coalition government endeavoured to manage the population at the outset of the pandemic and subjectified teachers as responsible in the service of the economy. While COVID-19 was a crisis in search of a narrative, federal policy-makers experienced pushback as state and territory leaders assumed control and teachers refused subject positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the Australian boab tree and its potential for research as living historical archaeology. Boab trees play an important role in the economy, culture, and cosmology of Indigenous people in northwest Australia and continue to hold a powerful presence in the Kimberley region today. Working with Nyikina and Mangala Traditional Owners we have undertaken to document examples of this iconic tree and its cultural and historical associations, particularly in the form of carvings and inscriptions embedded in the bark. Focusing on four individual trees located in the Kimberley region of northwest Australia, we propose that the modification of boab trees, as a practice undertaken by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, offers important insights into the everyday lives and historic events that shaped this cultural landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disadvantage in schooling is often constructed as a crisis in need of fixing. Global policy reforms tend to emphasise that solutions for disadvantage often lie beyond the capacity of the state, necessitating private/philanthropic intervention. This paper seeks to contribute to this line of analysis by investigating the rise of philanthropy in Australian public schooling. Our analysis focuses on the intermediary organisation, Schools Plus, which works to connect donors to disadvantaged public schools. Through qualitative content analysis and stakeholder interviews we demonstrate how philanthropy has come to be seen as a solution to the complex problem of disadvantage, or more specifically in this case, the perceived inadequacies of public education provision. The consequence of this, we suggest, is the changing of responsibility for addressing disadvantage from government to individual schools that have been able to establish an entrepreneurial culture to market their disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we compare reparation policies in Australia and Argentina. We analyse the difference between the reparations given by their respective governments to the Argentinian victims of the 'Dirty War' and to the 'Stolen Generations' in Australia. The aim of this paper is to compare the experience of victims in Argentina and Australia in relation to reparations to demonstrate that using only one type of reparations, either material or symbolic, is unsatisfactory for victims and does not repair the harm done. We also argue that the timing and the context in which reparations are offered can play a role in the victims' satisfaction with the governments' reparation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationship agreements are important for HIV prevention among gay and bisexual men (GBM) in relationships, with research earlier in the HIV epidemic often finding that agreements specified monogamy or condom use with casual partners. There is evidence that HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has shifted sexual practices among some men in relationships, such as allowing condomless sex with casual partners, but there has been little attention paid to relationship agreements among GBM who use PrEP. In this paper, we analyzed national, Australian, cross-sectional data from an online survey completed by non-HIV-positive GBM in 2021 (N = 1,185). Using logistic regression, we identified demographic characteristics, sexual practices and the types of relationship agreement that were associated with PrEP use among GBM in relationships. Using Pearson's chi-squared tests, we explored whether PrEP users in relationships reported similar sexual practices to PrEP users not in relationships. PrEP use among GBM in relationships was independently associated with older age, identifying as gay, being in a non-monogamous relationship, having a spoken (explicit) relationship agreement, having a primary HIV-negative partner taking PrEP or a primary partner living with HIV, reporting recent condomless casual sex, reporting an STI diagnosis in the past year, and knowing at least one other PrEP user. We found that PrEP users in relationships had similar sexual practices to PrEP users not in relationships. GBM in relationships who have casual sex and who meet PrEP suitability criteria may be good candidates for PrEP. Our findings suggest that explicit relationship agreements remain important for HIV prevention, and they support PrEP use among GBM in relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Factors affecting fertilizer decisions made by grain growers are changing in the context of changing climatic conditions and growing volatility in global fertilizer and grain markets. To ensure sustainable development of grain industries in light of this uncertainty, research, development, extension, and adoption activities associated with growers' fertilizer decisions need to be focused on factors to which they are most sensitive. The aim of this paper is to understand the factors that have the greatest influence on grain producer's fertilizer strategies, how these factors have changed over recent years, and what is the relative importance of agronomic, socioeconomic, and logistical factors affecting these strategies. A telephone survey of 425 grain-growing businesses in Western Australia was conducted, and survey results were analyzed statistically. We show for the first time that grain growers' fertilizer decisions are most sensitive to agronomic factors (especially the amount and distribution of rainfall). Logistic factors (such as difficulties fertilizing increasing areas in short periods of time) are growing in influence as farm size, cropping areas, and the number of fertilizer applications within seasons increase. Fertilizer decisions have become less sensitive to socioeconomic factors over the last 10 to 15 years. To ensure sustainable development of grain production, research through to adoption activities should focus on agronomic issues (such as seasonal forecasting) and logistic issues (such as improving planning, organizational, and technical capacity for developing and implementing fertilizer strategies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a review of the key Australian legislation passed between 2009 and 2019 targeting outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs). It identifies the key similarities and differences across the reforms and provides examples of the legislation being used to disrupt serious and organised crime activity by OMCGs. It also presents some of the barriers to effective enforcement of the legislation. There is limited information about the use and effectiveness of the legislation. The paper considers some of the objections raised in respect of these measures and suggests future directions for responding to OMCG-related crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia and the UK, contracts with minors in sports and entertainment are not uncommon. Generally, such contracts are voidable at the option of the minor. However, when contracts fall within the category of beneficial service, as is the case with most professional sports or entertainment contracts, they will be enforceable against the minor. Indian courts do not prescribe to this view holding contracts with minors, void ab initio and unenforceable against contractual parties, with few exceptions. The policy rationale is embedded in protecting minors from their own rash decisions and preventing unscrupulous parties from taking advantage of a minor's nascent mental capacity. By analysing divergent approaches on the validity of minors' contracts in three common law jurisdictions—Australia, India and the UK—the authors highlight inadequacies in legal pronouncements by Indian courts. In India, the legal non-existence and unenforceability of service contracts with minors renders it futile for them or their representatives from negotiating favourable contractual terms beyond welfare measures provided by law as these are unlikely to be upheld. This paper argues that India's narrow approach fails to acknowledge practical realities of minors' participation in the increasingly commercialised sports and entertainment industry. In light of more practical approaches in other common law jurisdictions, the authors set out policy recommendations and suggest reforms to the legal position on minors' capacity to contract in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes a near real-time analysis of the income distribution effects of the Covid-19 crisis in Australia to understand the ongoing changes in the income distribution as well as the impact of policy responses. By semi-parametrically combining incomplete observed data from three different sources–the monthly Longitudinal Labour Force Survey, the Survey of Income and Housing and administrative payroll data–we estimate the impact of Covid-19 on the Australian income distribution and decompose its impact into the income shock effect and the policy effect between February and June 2020, covering the immediate periods before and after the initial Covid-19 outbreak. Our results suggest that, despite growth in unemployment, the Gini coefficient of equivalised household disposable income dropped by more than 0.02 points between February and June 2020. This reduction is due to the additional wage subsidies and welfare supports offered as part of the policy response, offsetting the increase in income inequality from the income shock effect. The results shows the effectiveness of temporary policy measures both in maintaining living standards and avoiding increases in income inequality. However, the heavy reliance on the support measures shown in the modelling raises the possibility that the changes in the income distribution may be reversed, or even that inequality and living standards could substantially worsen once the measures are withdrawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) is well established in Australian hospitals. Electronic medical record (EMR) implementation has lagged in Australia, with two Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Stage 6 hospitals and one Stage 7 hospital as of September 2020. Specific barriers faced by AMS teams with paper-based prescribing and medical records include real-time identification of antimicrobials orders; the ability to prospectively monitor antimicrobial use; and the integration of fundamental point of prescribing AMS principles into routine clinical practice. There are few local guidelines to assist Australian hospitals and AMS teams beyond "out of the box" EMR functionality. EMR implementation has enormous potential to positively impact AMS teams through more efficient workflows and the ability to expand the reach and coverage of AMS activities. There are inevitable limitations associated with EMR implementation that must be considered. In this paper, four Australian hospitals share their experience with EMR roll out, AMS customisation and how they have overcome specific barriers in local AMS practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores attitudes toward dating people with disability amongst young people in Australia and Hong Kong. Data relating to disability were extracted from an e-survey that investigated young people's (n = 2208) experiences of and attitudes toward dating. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics while open ended responses were subjected to interpretive content analysis. When asked about preferred characteristics for potential dates, young people identified factors that were unlikely to be negatively influenced by disability, such as loyalty, honesty, dedication, humour, and kindness. Yet when asked whether disability would influence their dating choices, most said that it would and expressed an unwillingness to date people with disability. Young adults in Hong Kong expressed less openness to dating people with disability than those in Australia. Physical disability and mental health issues were seen as less of a barrier to dating than intellectual or developmental disability. Despite recent gains in public attitudes toward people with disability, improvements are needed in terms of young people in the general population viewing people with disability as suitable partners and thus, allowing them to enjoy equal rights to relationships and sexuality. Culture is an important determinant, indicating a potential for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores strategies that support Aboriginal parents' mastery of evidence-based early learning strategies, and their impact on young Aboriginal children's learning outcomes. The three-year study followed 32 parent-child dyads attending Families as First Teachers (FaFT) playgroups in two remote Northern Territory communities in 2015–2017. Trained FaFT staff provided parents with coaching in the use of Conversational Reading—an evidence-based shared reading strategy in first language—at FaFT. The study examined patterns of parent mastery across the three-year study period, the relationship between levels of parent-child participation at FaFT (program dosage) and parent mastery, and the impact of parent mastery of Conversational Reading on young Aboriginal children's language and learning outcomes. By including measures of parent-child participation and parent mastery of key program strategies at three time points, the study also provides a picture of the fidelity of program implementation across the study period. The findings indicate that parents' mastery of strategies (and thus the fidelity of program implementation) increased over time in line with the program dosage parents received. Higher levels of parent-child participation at FaFT and parent mastery of strategies at the end of the program were positively associated with children's language and learning outcomes. This study demonstrates that the provision of coaching at playgroup is an effective way to build parent capacity in the implementation of evidence-based early learning strategies, and that supporting parent mastery of teaching strategies has the potential to improve the learning outcomes of young children in remote Aboriginal communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia is one of the few countries where Apis mellifera are not infested by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. In Australia a program called the 'Sugar Shake Team' has been implemented to detect an incursion of V. destructor, should it occur. The aim of this paper was to provide an estimate of the probability that V. destructor would be detected by the Sugar Shake Team program if an incursion had actually occurred (surveillance system sensitivity) using a scenario tree modelling approach. A secondary aim was to provide commentary on how surveillance for V. destructor incursions into Australia might be made more effective. Our analyses show that if one apiary in the study area was infested with V. destructor, there was only a 0.47% probability that infestation would be detected by the current program. We conclude that in its current form the Sugar Shake Team program does not provide protection to multi-billion-dollar beekeeping, pollination and agricultural industries in Australia. Surveillance for V. destructor can be made more effective by increasing the coverage and frequency of testing, deployment of additional sentinel hives and the use of sticky boards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era where higher education institutions appear increasingly committed to what Sara Ahmed calls 'speech acts' whereby declared goodwill, through stated commitments to diversity, equity, and increasing Indigenous student enrolment and completion have been made; it is undeniable that Indigenous academics are in high demand. With fewer than 430 Indigenous academics currently employed here on the continent now commonly referred to as 'Australia', and 69% of that cohort identifying as female, what does it look like to experience this demand as an Indigenous academic woman? Drawing on data collected from a Nation-wide study in 2019 of 17 one-on-one, face-to-face interviews with Indigenous academic women, using Indigenous research methodologies and poetic transcription, this paper explores the experiences and relational aspects of Indigenous academic women's roles in Australian higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Cancer patients in Australia's Northern Territory (NT) face unique challenges to accessing cancer-related community and allied health services (referred here as 'health services'). This is in part due to the NT's unique geographic, socioeconomic and demographic profile. This paper describes the use of health services by cancer patients in the NT.Methods: Adult cancer patients attending appointments at a cancer centre in Darwin, NT and who were diagnosed within the past five years were invited to participate in face-to-face interviews about their use of allied and community health services. A descriptive analysis of health services utilization was conducted.Results: Of the 76 participants interviewed, 63% identified as non-Indigenous, 53% female and 45% lived in very remote areas. Mean age at interview was 58.7 years (SD 13.2). Overall, 82% of participants utilized at least one health service since their cancer diagnosis. All Indigenous participants used at least one service, while 28% of non-Indigenous participants did not use any health service. The services most frequently used by participants were community services (42%) and information sources (40%).Conclusion: The findings from this study suggest there is variation in the type of community and allied health services used by NT cancer patients across clinical and demographic groups (including Indigenous status). Further qualitative enquiry is needed to better understand this variation, which may reflect differences in service preference, accessibility, health literacy of patients or patient engagement. Such knowledge may inform service delivery improvements to better support cancer patients through their cancer care pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the rainfall in southern Australia is associated with cyclones, cold fronts, and thunderstorms, and cases when these weather systems co-occur are particularly likely to cause extreme rainfall. Rainfall declines in some parts of southern Australia during the cool half of the year in recent decades have previously been attributed to decreases in the rainfall from fronts and/or cyclones, while thunderstorm-related rainfall has been observed to increase, particularly in the warm half of the year. However, the co-occurrence of these systems, particularly the co-occurrence of cyclones or fronts with thunderstorms, can be very important for rainfall in some areas, particularly heavy rainfall, and changes in the frequency of these combined weather systems have not been previously assessed. In this paper we show that the majority of the observed cool season rainfall decline between 1979–1996 and 1997–2015 in southeast Australia is associated with a decrease in the frequency of fronts and cyclones that produce rainfall, while there has simultaneously been an increase in the frequency of cold fronts and thunderstorms that do not produce rainfall in some regions. Thunderstorm rainfall has increased in much of southern Australia, particularly during the warm half of the year, including an increase in rainfall where a thunderstorm environment occurs at the same time as a cyclone or front. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological deposits build up inside standing buildings both under and between floors and these have the potential to provide considerable information about human behavior in the past. Under and between floor spaces provide a unique depositional environment that allow the survival of rare and fragile organic materials that typically do not survive in other archaeological contexts, including paper, cardboard, fabric and other fibres, seeds, leather, and human hair and skin cells. However, they require a clear understanding of depositional processes to allow their interpretation. Experimental archaeology was conducted to understand the process of artifact deposition and the interpretation of underfloor deposits in twelve standing buildings in Western Australia. Floors were built and a range of artifacts swept across them to determine how artifacts travelled across floorboards or fell through gaps between boards. Size, shape, and angularity of artifacts were key determinants of the likelihood of deposition. Sweeping activity makes it more likely that material will be deposited around the margins of rooms, and particularly, to either side of doorways. Underfloor deposits excavated from two specific Western Australian buildings, Ellensbrook Homestead, and the York Residency Museum, are interpreted based on the results of these experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our world suffers. Some people suffer more than others. Since the first part of 2020, ours is justly described as a time of uncertainty, threat, and upheaval. In this article, we offer reflections threaded narratively, told from the specificity of our societal contexts in Iran, Canada, and Australia. What might we learn in the present and anticipated future from people living chronically within conditions of uncertainty and immobility and also those experiencing uncertainty and immobility for the first time? We argue that reflexive comparative analysis bridging social and visual analysis, anchored in embodied conditions of such people, offers a way to learn from responses to COVID-19 while also being an exercise in ethical research practice. This reflection builds on and extends from our scholarly collaborations that have been ongoing since 2015. Our title recognizes this specific virus as stealthy. Importantly, our choice of words identifies resident Iranians—whose experiences were the original impetuses for this paper, and whose lives provide its empirical basis (98 is Iran's country code)—as equally steely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the largest and most comprehensive Australian research to date that explores the campus climate for sexuality and gender diverse (SGD) people at one university. Using a mixed-method approach that incorporated an online survey open to all students and staff (n = 2395), face-to-face in-depth interviews with key stakeholders (n = 16) and an online document analysis, the study explored participants' perceptions and attitudes to sexuality and gender diversity on campus, experiences of in/exclusion, (un)safe places, visibility in public online documents, and the campus-based services available to support SGD individuals. The findings point to the ongoing exclusion experienced by SGD people across the university. We show how exclusion serves to silence individuals across multiple levels and how this, in turn, limits the visibility of, and redress for, exclusion, impacting on health and well-being. This tension, we posit, can only be addressed safely and holistically through proactive and strategic endeavours on the part of the institution; without which, exclusion will continue to prevail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional climate models (RCMs) are used to dynamically downscale global climate models (GCMs) to provide high-resolution projections of future climate change to better inform policy and decision making at the regional scale. However, biases from GCMs are transferred to RCMs and this can limit the usefulness of the regional climate projections. This paper investigates the influence of bias correcting 4 GCMs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3, for regional climate simulations over the CORDEX-Australasia domain using Weather Research and Forecasting. The GCM outputs are bias corrected against ERA-Interim reanalysis as a surrogate truth. Results show that over decadal time scales bias correction removes large systematic precipitation and temperature biases. However, bias correction also introduced biases where there were none, introduced biases of the opposite sign, or enhanced existing biases in other regions in some instances. The dynamical mechanisms driving the changes in the biases are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent reforms in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Australia have called for primary pre-service teachers to graduate with a specialisation in a priority learning area. This represents a significant change to the way that primary teachers are prepared. In this paper, we use Carol Bacchi's What's the Problem Represented to be? approach (WPR) to analyse the discourses present in four policy documents that have led to the introduction of primary specialisations in Australian education. The policy analysis reveals that the introduction of primary specialisations does not have a strong evidence base. Moreover, slippage in definitions causes confusion about what the role entails, with certain people marginalised by this policy direction. Recommendations are given for how teachers and teacher educators can work effectively within this new policy context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately predicting river flows over daily timescales is considered as an important task for sustainable management of freshwater ecosystems, agricultural applications, and water resources management. In this research paper, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, namely the cascade correlation neural networks (CCNN) and the random forest (RF) models, were employed in daily river stage and river flow prediction for two river systems (i.e., Dulhunty River and Herbert River) in Australia. To develop the CCNN and RF models, a significant 3-day antecedent river stage and river flow time series were used. 80% of the whole data were used for model training and the remaining 20% for model testing. A total of ten different model structures with different input combinations were used to evaluate the optimal model in the training phase, and the results were analyzed using statistical metrics including the root mean square error (RMSE), Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient (NS), Willmott's index of agreement (WI), and Legate and McCabe's index (ELM) in the testing phase. The inter-comparison of CCNN and RF models for both river systems showed that the CCNN model was able to generate a more accurate prediction of the river stage and river flow compared to the RF model. Due to hydro-geographic differences leading to a different underlying historical data characteristics, the optimal CCNN's performance for the Dulhunty River was found to be most accurate, in terms of ELM = 0.779, WI = 0.964, and ENS = 0.862 versus 0.775, 0.968, and 0.885 for the Herbert River. Following the performance accuracies, the authors ascertained that the CCNN model can be taken as a preferred data intelligent tool for river stage and river flow prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of commercialisation in Australian public schools, reporting on findings from an open-ended survey question from an exploratory study that sought to investigate teacher and school leader perceptions and experiences of commercialisation. Commercialisation, for the purposes of this paper, is understood as the creation, marketing and sale of education goods and services to schools by for-profit providers and often includes (but is not limited to) the provision of curriculum content, assessment services, data infrastructures, digital learning, remedial instruction, professional development and school administration support. Our account highlights that commercialisation is prevalent in the day-to-day practice of Australian public schools. The perceptions of teachers and leaders suggest that commercialisation is complex, with both affordances and challenges. Respondents acknowledged that aspects of commercialisation are necessary for successfully running schools and classrooms in the 21st century, but also noted that there is a fine line beyond which these seemingly innocuous services become perilous. Concerns focused on how particular services are leading to the deprofessionalisation of teachers as they have less autonomy over what to teach and how to teach it. Moreover, teachers and school leaders reported being perturbed by the idea that commercial providers and services might work to replace teachers in the future. Drawing on these data we argue that growing commercialisation in Australian public schools clearly requires an ethical debate that schools, education professionals, policy makers and interested publics are yet to have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally policymakers have paid little attention to the consumption of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) in Australia. Yet, in recent times PIEDs have come to occupy an increasing amount of discursive space and, indeed, regulatory action. This newfound interest may be attributed to several broader developments, not least the perception of the involvement of organized crime in distributing PIEDs to the professional sports world and other sectors of this illicit market. This paper seeks to explore the empirical reality of the claim that the production and supply of PIEDs in Australia is the prerogative of organized crime groups. A retrospective content analysis of Australian PIED provider cases was conducted between 2010 and 2016. To widen our search, both media articles describing court cases, obtained from the Factiva database, and public online court records, using the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) database, were searched. Search terms included "steroid*", "doping" and "testosterone" in combination with the terms "traffic*", "production", "supply*" and "import*". In total, 477 PIED provider cases were identified yet most cases were duplicates, irrelevant or lacked sufficient detail, resulting in a final dataset of 144 cases. A coding schedule was developed based on existing PIED supply literature. Our data shows that most PIED provider cases took place in Queensland (41.7%), followed by New South Wales (25%) and Victoria (13.2%). Regarding the type of providers, the largest group consisted of people active in the gym industry (22%), followed by the healthcare sector (17%), the 'other' category (12%) and the security sphere (8%). Of the 144 steroid-provider cases, only 12% of the cases indicated the potential involvement of organized crime groups, with half of those being linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs. In contrast to the claims of authorities, our data suggests that organized crime groups currently play a proportionally small role in the illicit production and supply of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs in Australia. Indeed, various actors are involved of which only a small fraction are part of or involved with organized crime groups. Many suppliers are particularly active in the gym industry and healthcare sector. The relative presence of such suppliers has important policy implications, not least with regard to the role of criminal law in addressing the provision of PIEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon accountability and legitimacy theories to explore for what social enterprises are accountable, how they communicate accountability, and to what extent they publicly communicate accountability. Case study methodology was employed, examining four work-integrated social enterprises in Australia. Data collection involved interviews with managers of each social enterprise, and a review of various secondary data including social enterprise websites and internal and external reports. Findings reveal a temporal dimension of accountability, as social enterprises acknowledged their dual social and financial accountability, but prioritised financial over social performance. Communication of social performance was limited, with publicly available reports partial and selective in nature. Communication of financial performance was even more limited, reporting typically directed to internal stakeholders. Implications include the need for social enterprises to communicate social and financial performance more broadly, in order to advance their legitimacy from moral (based on intentions) to consequential (based on achievements). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This literature review presents a critical appraisal of the dominant approaches toward the sexuality and relationships of people with acquired brain injury. In particular, we sought to identify and review existing programs focusing on sexuality and relationships which use an educational and/or peer–peer approach. A systematic and comprehensive search of the EBSCOHOST database was conducted within an unlimited time-frame to yield the highest number of relevant results possible, along with hand-searching of key journals and databases. Reports, papers and webpages, documents commonly referred to as 'grey literature' that are not published in peer-reviewed journals, were also hand searched as a part of this review. The database search yielded 862 results, 14 of which were found to be relevant to our research interests. All of the sexuality education programs identified in this review were experienced positively by participants, families, caregivers, and professionals working with people with acquired brain injury. No peer–peer sexuality and relationships programs were identified. However, we found strong support for the use of peer–peer approaches in other programs for people with acquired brain injury. This literature review provides strong support for the development peer–peer sexuality and relationships programs for people with acquired brain injury. However, any future programs would have to overcome the limitations of existing sexuality and relationships programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding groundwater use, both current and historical, is important for understanding the hydrogeology of groundwater systems, and for water planning. The Queensland portion of Australia's Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is managed under the Water Plan (Great Artesian Basin and Other Regional Aquifers) 2017. Methods were developed to estimate current and historical abstractions from the different hydrostratigraphic units of the basin. In the first stage, source aquifers were assigned to ~96,000 bores within the Queensland GAB footprint. Of these, 31,503 bores were assigned directly to the GAB, with other bores sourcing groundwater from units above or below the GAB. In the second stage, current groundwater use for all bores and historic groundwater-use trends were estimated, covering the 115-year period between 1900 and 2015. These estimates took account of periods of inactivity at the bore, the aquifer condition (sub-artesian, artesian), and the nature of discharge (controlled or uncontrolled). The process used publicly available datasets. This paper presents an overview of the methodology and how the estimates were used to support water planning. The current groundwater use from the GAB in Queensland was estimated to be 322 GL/year, which is lower than previous estimates, partly because of improved estimation techniques, the bore capping and piping programs that have been in progress since 1989, and the naturally reducing discharge rates from uncontrolled artesian bores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newly acquired high-quality data are being used to reinterpret the Surat Basin flow systems of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia. This paper revisits and updates previous interpretations of flow in the Hutton Sandstone with detailed analysis of the Dawson River area in the northern Surat Basin. Combining analysis of high-resolution permeability measurements with hydraulic head and hydrochemistry data supports the contention that there is significant flow towards the northeast, counter to the canonical regional flow conceptualisation of the GAB. The analysis in this work better identifies the likely discharge to be in the area that the Dawson River intersects the Hutton Sandstone. Heterogeneity in physical and hydrochemical properties suggests that local flowpaths are more complex than previously thought and, at least in this part of the Hutton aquifer, very little recharge contributes to flow deeper in the basin. These results provide a firm basis on which to refine and develop numerical hydrodynamic models of the basin, at least for the Hutton aquifer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Late Jurassic Springbok Sandstone in the Surat Basin, Australia, is highly heterogeneous in terms of lithology and hydrogeological properties. This heterogeneity is poorly defined in well logs, due, in part, to clay phases that do not exhibit a prominent gamma ray signature. The resulting uncertainties in the hydrogeological properties are propagated to uncertainties in the groundwater models of the Springbok Sandstone. Further, only a small amount of porosity and permeability data are publicly available and the discussion of petrophysical models for the Springbok Sandstone in the peer-reviewed literature has been limited. At the same time, accurately predicting the potential groundwater impact due to coal seam gas production from the underlying Walloon Subgroup is of significant societal and economic importance. This paper presents new porosity and permeability data from more than 50 core samples from the Springbok Sandstone alongside a review of existing data. Based on this dataset and wireline data from five study wells, a new petrophysical model for the formation is proposed. The results show that (1) the Springbok Sandstone is highly variable in terms of hydrogeological parameters, (2) this variability can be captured with a petrophysical model that draws on a full log suite (i.e. triple-combo) and (3) electrofacies classifications based on gamma-ray and bulk-density log cut-offs do not reflect this variability. This improved understanding of the Springbok Sandstone will contribute to best practice management of the water and hydrocarbon resources in the Great Artesian Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater resources in Queensland (Australia) have been depleting in many aquifers for the last 100 years and natural recharge processes are not replenishing these resources at the rate of extraction. At the same time, the need to address carbon emissions to reach global climate-change targets is becoming increasingly recognised. Plentiful deep fresh groundwater is available but is difficult, and typically uneconomical, to access due to the high costs of borehole drilling and completion. The emerging concept of 'enhanced water recovery' (EWR) hypothesises that carbon dioxide (CO2) injection into the deep aquifers will increase pressure, making groundwater more easily available at shallower depths across a broad region while simultaneously contributing to a reduction in CO2 emissions. One example where this has been proposed is in the Great Artesian Basin's Surat Basin in Queensland. The findings from a series of focus groups held with different stakeholders, including agricultural producers, rural residents, and urban residents, demonstrate how different groups perceived the risks and benefits of injecting CO2 as part of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) process to raise borehole water levels. The paper discusses the trade-offs that the different stakeholder groups found more acceptable. The significance of this research is that it will be the first to publish public responses to an emerging technology that has the potential to provide multiple benefits in terms of climate-change mitigation and groundwater use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater management in the Great Artesian Basin (Australia) is challenging due to the large areas and heterogeneity of sequences involved. This challenge has often been addressed with up-scaled conceptual models; however, where there is significant heterogeneity or local competing groundwater uses, more detail is required. When good understanding of heterogeneity within sequences is not available, the upscaled approach can lead to a disparity between model predictions based on homogenisation inherent in upscaling and the observed behaviour of heterogeneous systems, leading to bias in results. This requires improved conceptual resolution of these heterogeneous systems. Geological data are often insufficient to achieve the required resolution. This paper reports on the use of hydrochemical data from existing bores in the Walloon subgroup of the Surat Basin, using compositional data analysis techniques to refine the unit description. The approach moves beyond simple hydrochemical characterisations of water type via conventional hydrochemical interpretations to use a combination of centred- and isometric-log ratios to describe discrete end members. The results show that, despite similar water types, the upper Juandah and lower Taroom coal seams of Walloon subgroup are distinguished by an inverse relationship between ions Cl−, Ca2+, Mg2+, Sr2+, Li− and H+ and ions HCO3−, F− and B3+, and by an isometric log ratio that describes the balance between the activities of Cl, H+ and HCO3. These relationships suggest that higher-resolution conceptual models based on flow paths mapped from hydrochemical data can form the basis for refined groundwater models that address both heterogeneity and regional model domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia underlies semi-arid and arid regions across 1.7 million km2 or one-fifth of Australia. The basin's groundwater resources were discovered around 1880 and their development allowed pastoral activities, homestead and town water supplies, and petroleum and mining ventures to exist. The GAB is a multi-layered confined aquifer system, with aquifers in Jurassic and Cretaceous continental sandstones and intervening confining beds of siltstone and mudstone of the constituent Eromanga, Surat and Carpentaria sedimentary basins. The basin is up to 3,000 m thick and forms a large synclinal structure, uplifted and exposed along its eastern margin and tilted southwest. Recharge to the exposed aquifers occurs in the eastern margin, an area of relative high rainfall. The western margin in Australia's arid centre receives minor recharge. Regional groundwater flow is towards the southern, south-western, western and northern margins. Flowing artesian springs discharge in the southwest margin and have produced carbonate mounds. Although lateral groundwater movement dominates, vertical upwards leakage is considered important. Potentiometric surfaces of the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous aquifers are still above ground level throughout most of the basin, though pressure drawdowns of up to 100 m have been recorded in recent decades in highly developed areas, and consequently some artesian water boreholes and springs have ceased flowing. Government borehole rehabilitation programs have led to groundwater pressure recovery in some areas. This paper outlines the history of GAB exploration, scientific investigations (hydrogeology, hydrochemistry, isotope hydrology, groundwater modelling) and management, summarising the recent knowledge on the GAB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having children compels parents to examine their vaccine beliefs, particularly if they are vaccine-hesitant or refuse all vaccines. Presently, little is known about the specific ways in which having children influences the vaccine beliefs of parents. This research examined how having children changed the attitudes of Australian vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-refusing parents towards childhood vaccination. We asked 904 Australian parents who believed that having children changed their attitudes to vaccination to describe these changes. Parents' responses were inductively, iteratively coded and thematically analysed. Themes were compared between parents who believed all vaccines should be refused, parents with varying degrees of vaccine hesitancy, and parents who were fully vaccine-accepting. Low numbers of responses from fully vaccine-accepting parents meant that this paper focused on mostly vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-refusing vaccine parents. Five themes were identified. Having children prompted all parents to learn about vaccine choices. Hesitant and refusing parents' interpreted vaccine choices through a lens of distrust of pharmaceutical companies and regulatory bodies overseeing vaccine safety. The distrust fuelled parents' fears about vaccination risks, such as side effects. Parents became concerned about the scheduled timing of vaccinations, particularly of the Hepatitis B vaccine. Parents among the three groups that believed some or all vaccines should be refused reported that a vaccine permanently injured their child. This research contributes to understanding how having children affects the vaccine attitudes among vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-refusing parents. Greater support for parents with negative vaccination experiences may prevent hesitant attitudes. The vaccination schedule needs to be communicated to parents better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-management through local collective action appeals as a way of effectively responding to critical groundwater management issues, including groundwater quality degradation and pumping that lowers water tables. Co-management may also build sufficient trust for stakeholders to agree to investigate, and potentially implement, new opportunities for the use and management of groundwater resources. This paper examines the potential of collective action to underpin co-management and lead to improved groundwater management. The case study is the Angas Bremer (AB) irrigation district in South Australia, which provides a rare example of community-lead groundwater management since the late 1970s. The key questions were: (1) Was the AB an example of collective action, and did that spark successful co-management? and, (2) What were the key outcomes of collective action throughout the years? Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. By working together, and with government departments, AB irrigators successfully recovered an aquifer that was at risk of depletion and salinization. Drawing on this evidence, it is suggested that co-management through local collective action may be a useful option for those setting out to improve the social acceptability of new groundwater initiatives in farming landscapes, including managed aquifer recharge (MAR) and conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticyclones are one of the main synoptic features of the global midlatitudes, where they are associated with dry, settled conditions. Previous studies have identified southern Australia as a region where significant long-term changes have occurred in recent decades, including a decline in cool season rainfall and an increase in the frequency of anticyclones. This paper uses several reanalyses to assess the climatology, variability, trends and impacts of anticyclones in southern Australia and several subregions. A robust increase in the frequency of anticyclones in southern Australia is demonstrated between 1960–1979 and 1997–2014, particularly in southeast Australia and the Tasman Sea during the cool months of the year. At least 30% of the recent cool season rainfall decline in southeast Australia can be associated with an increased frequency of anticyclones in this region. However, there are no clear trends in anticyclone frequency near southwestern Western Australia, where long-term rainfall declines are due to changes in other weather systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overcoming barriers to large-scale urban redevelopment on brownfield land is an essential step in the global drive toward achieving the UN's sustainable development goals. Arguably the most significant barrier is site contamination. Decision support tools (DSTs) are potentially effective ways to assess contaminated sites and evaluate different remediation/management strategies as appropriate to local conditions. Whilst there has been extensive development of DSTs for single contaminated sites, only a limited number are available for assessing contamination at the 'precinct' (district) scale. This paper presents a framework and simple DST for the assessment of contaminated groundwater, using Australia's largest urban redevelopment project, Fishermans Bend in Melbourne, as a case study. The value of the inclusion of precinct-wide data into individual site-scale investigations is demonstrated via the DST. Common contaminant sources identified across Fishermans Bend include fill contaminated with heavy metals, legacy landfill leachate containing heavy metals and per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and naturally occurring ammonia and methane in organic-rich sediments. By comparison, point sources of heavy metals and PFAS appear related to industrial sources. By using the DST, environmental practitioners and auditors can more effectively separate background conditions from point sources, characterise the ambient conditions of the aquifer and their relationships to natural and anthropogenic processes, and use contaminant data to inform remedial options assessment. Where these increasingly complex and varied environmental datasets can be collected, stored and managed within one central database, cross- or inter-disciplinary collaborations may drive improvements in solving environmental problems which typically arise during the redevelopment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses two key strategies detailing how "relationship-focused" and "trauma-informed" intervention practices, which form the basis of an Australian therapeutic program called Treatment and Care for Kids (TrACK), made a difference in the lives of highly traumatised children. The TrACK program fosters highly traumatised children who, due to the complexity of their trauma needs, cannot be placed in traditional generalist foster care. Case files of 48 children were reviewed. Children were either current or former clients over a period of 18 years since the program was initiated. In analysing the data, we noticed that children who were once highly dysregulated in the domains of foster care placement, education, arousal regulation and peer relationships were now enjoying an enhanced level of stability in their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists, Indigenous peoples, and local communities are increasingly seeking to combine their expertise to support sustainable management of social-ecological systems for diverse values, from local to global scales. In this paper we present an Indigenous-led approach to enable multiple evidence-based research, monitoring, and evaluation of the health of 'Saltwater Country.' This highlights the need to ensure knowledge can be shared, used, and co-developed to care for coastal and marine social-ecological systems within and across the Kimberley region of north-western Australia in an ethical and equitable manner. Structured yet fluid knowledge networks need to be negotiated and supported to enable Indigenous communities to implement this approach, which also requires coordinated institutional support and resourcing to produce useable knowledge that is easily translated into programs of action. We here present a process for regional-scale collaboration between Indigenous and local knowledge systems, western science, and other knowledge systems for the purpose of collaborative natural and cultural resource management and sustainable Indigenous futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barriers and facilitators affecting the social activities of people with congenital physical and communication disabilities are well documented. However, little is known of their experiences of developing sexual and intimate relationships. This study conducted a systematic review of the literature to address this gap in knowledge. Ten online databases were searched for relevant papers between 1990 and 2014. In addition, hand searches of Augmentative and Alternative Communication Journal and the Sexuality and Disability Journal were conducted. Fifteen papers were identified and appraised. The thematic coding approach identified six principal themes. However, the content analysis revealed that the majority of the literature focused on the social needs of people with physical and communication disabilities. Despite evidence that people with disabilities are sexually active, there is little focus on the experiences of people with disabilities developing intimacy and expressing sexuality. The few references to sexuality in the relevant literature focused on protection from abuse, though some researchers called for improved counseling on sexuality and relationships, and improved access to sexual health services. Further research is required to focus on practical and theoretical outcomes to enhance social relationships and sexuality, and offer lovers who use AAC real advice in their search for intimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative study of formal and informal social networks and their effects on subjective well-being in Australia, Britain, and China. Formal social networks are measured by group affiliations, and informal social networks are measured by personal connections with kin, friends, and acquaintances. An analysis of the national representative sample surveys from the three countries shows that the formal networks are of notable importance in increasing people’s subjective well-being in Britain and urban China, but the informal networks have much greater impacts in all three countries, particularly in rural China. We propose a cultural-structural interaction framework to explain the observed differences in the network influence on subjective well-being in the three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalent knowledge economy discourse has direct implications for higher education policies and practices. It is expected that the higher education sector supports national economic competitiveness mainly through promoting scientific research, supporting technological transfer and innovation, and producing 'knowledge workers' such as higher degree by research graduates. However in the context of changing work requirements and fast paced technological progress, the 'skills gap' between the labour market needs and the actual attributes of graduates has emerged as a tangible concern. This paper explores the issue of research graduate employability in Australia. Drawing on critical frame analysis, the paper particularly problematises the way research graduate employability has been framed in relevant policy texts, and shows what issues are excluded from the policy agenda and why. By way of demonstrating exclusions from the current debate on doctoral graduates' skills and employability, we briefly report on new data on the level of industry-engagement of research students at one large Australian university to argue that assumptions about the need to 'fix' the skills deficit of graduates have excluded from view high levels of industry engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]