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Australia is one of the top ten consumers of electrical and electronic (EE) products in the world; yet legislation for the management of WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) is in its infancy and has received minimal review. This paper sets to assess the effectiveness of Australian legislation, policies and associated instruments, with a focus on the sub-national level of implementation. A mixed methodology was adopted to this end, including: literature review, case study, semi-structured interviews and a comparative analysis of WEEE management practices in Australia versus Japan and Switzerland; the latter to identify causative factors of international leading practice that could advance current policy in Australia. The findings indicate that Australia’s management of WEEE is not effective. The rate and types of WEEE generated in Australia far exceed the measures prescribed in legislation to address or even curb the problem. The five key issues were identified around stakeholder roles and responsibilities; scope of WEEE categories legislated for recovery and recycling; public engagement and accessibility to services; recycling and material recovery targets; and the auditing and compliance of material flows within the system. Our findings suggest that Australia has the capacity to address the five key priority areas within the current legal framework and achieve effective WEEE management in line with leading practice examples from Japan and Switzerland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The conservation of biodiversity is an important issue world wide and in Australia the maintenance of native biodiversity on farms makes an important contribution to overall conservation objectives. This paper seeks to explain Australian farmers'' rationale for maintaining biodiversity on their farms for personal as opposed to business reasons by developing a decision-systems theory from in-depth interviews. This difference has implications for policy development. The decision-systems theory is divided into two main sections. The first section contains five parts. (1) A hierarchy of motivation stories, (2) the concept of suitability and availability of opportunities, (3) a hierarchy of three decision-systems, (4) the concept of personal career paths, (5) the concept of Lenses. The second section contains one part, a policy classification system called ‘boxes of influence’ that suggests how policy developers can use the information in the first section to develop new biodiversity conservation policy. The paper suggests that decision-systems theory could be used to shed new light on current trends in agriculture and become an important investigative tool for policy development concerning the conservation of biodiversity on farms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]