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This paper addresses embodied geographies of power assisted devices (powered wheelchairs and motorised scooters) for disabled people in Australia to augment understandings of mobile disability politics. Deleuze and Guattari's notion of 'lines' is used to reimagine spatial thinking about mobile disability politics. Disability in this paper is understood as an emplaced, emergent, relational and embodied process that arises in the interaction between ideas, materials and bodies. A focus on the shifting affective capacities of everyday journeys can deepen an understanding of mobile disability politics through attention to sensations. To illustrate the notion of lines we draw on three 'portraits' from a qualitative project on power assisted devices in Ballina Shire, New South Wales, Australia. Each portrait provides an illustration of how mobility experiences of power assisted devices may reinforce and/or challenge normative ideologies and identities, alongside deepening understandings of how ideas and materials come together to produce enabling and/or exclusionary arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact on Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities in Australia of government and community responses to the coronavirus pandemic of 2019 in the domains of education, employment, housing, social connectedness, and public health communication. Most of the examples are drawn from the state of New South Wales. In Australia, CALD refers to people from countries not classified as main English speaking. Most CALD communities reported in this article are from refugee backgrounds, are recently arrived migrants or do not use English in most of their communication. Inadequate, and in some instances, inappropriate or absent support, adversely impacts CALD communities. We used a multidisciplinary bricolage approach that draws on media, government, and community support publications and concluded that CALD communities experienced heightened pressures due to lower resource availability and poor communication. This led to disruption of support services, exposing gaps and vulnerability. The results reported here challenge Australian government, schools, community agencies, researchers to include proactively CALD community perspectives when planning and responding to such crises in future. Improving communication, pandemic response planning, addressing needs and ensuring participation are key considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent passage of the Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Act (2021) (Cth) opened up the potential for Australia to produce renewable energy at unprecedented scale. Six regions have been identified as potential locations for developing offshore wind projects, promising thousands of new local jobs to legacy industrial regions. This paper charts the regulatory framework for Australia's offshore wind industry and how it positions local economic benefits in the licencing of projects. It then draws on interviews with key stakeholders supported by media and policy analysis to examine the early development of offshore wind capability in one of the proposed regions, the Illawarra, in NSW. Here existing steelmaking capacity positions the region to play a key role in supply chains for local and potentially national projects, but considerable structural and geographical constraints in the labour market will need to be addressed. In light of overseas experience indicating that economic benefits often fall short of promises, greater attention by policy makers is required to ensure hosting communities can develop local skills in the industry and facilitate their relative supply chain capabilities. This paper also calls for careful evaluation of early projects to allow for adjustments to policy settings as the industry matures domestically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people form the primary target demographic of new 'buy now pay later' (BNPL) and digital credit services. Despite consistent data showing young people as a cohort are particularly vulnerable to unsustainable levels of indebtedness, little is known about how young people define and make sense of the experience of being in debt through consumer credit services. This paper explores how indebtedness is experienced and understood in relation to wellbeing through a qualitative study using interviews alongside arts-based participatory methods of bodymapping and sandboxing with 24 young people in the Hunter region of NSW, Australia. These methods enabled particular attention to the embodied and affective elements related to the experience of indebtedness to understand debt's significance for wellbeing for young people. The embodied and affective registers of indebtedness are integral for understanding the conditions informing how wellbeing is negotiated and felt in this context. This study considers the role of BNPL services in young people's economic lives as part of broader processes of financialisation, and the significance of extended and ubiquitous forms of credit for young people's wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents several of the major findings from an experimental evaluation of a new problem-oriented policing practice. First-time moderately serious juvenile offenders were randomly assigned either to formal adjudication or to a diversionary 'restorative policing' process called family group conferencing. Police-based conferencing employs trained police officers to facilitate a meeting attended by juvenile offenders, their victims, and their respective family and friends, to discuss the harm caused by the offender's actions and to develop an agreement to repair the harm. The impact of the program reported in this paper was measured through surveys of victims, offenders, offender's parents and police officers and by examining outcomes of conferences and formal adjudication. Results are related to five concerns raised about restorative policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using historical and contemporary resources, this paper provides a critical account of the contemporary governance of prostitution in New South Wales. A Foucauldian approach is used to analyse the ways in which prostitution has been problematized as a health issue and managed as a public health problem. The analysis differs from other critical studies of prostitution in that it examines specific techniques of power, the operations of which have not been confined to the workings of a repressive criminal justice system. It is shown that there currently co-exists two broad understandings of prostitution in New South Wales, Australia, which have informed current initiatives to manage prostitution. Prostitutes working in public spaces have been presented as sexual agents wilfully engaged in criminal conduct and the spread of contagion. They have been subject to intense official scrutiny and regulated through criminal sanctions. In contrast, prostitutes working in private spaces have been presented as victims of adverse circumstance, deserving of protection and compassion. They have been made subject to strategic interventions that have attempted to normalize prostitution and render the prostitute a hygienic subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The January 2011 flood event that impacted southeast Queensland is amongst the most extensive and severe floods in terms of loss of life and property damage that the region has experienced, despite it being only the eighth highest flood on record at the Brisbane City Gauge. The spring of 2010 was the wettest on record for Queensland, New South Wales, and the Murray-Darling Basin (Bureau of Meteorology 2011a) at that time. The flood mitigation dams in the region, Somerset Dam and Wivenhoe Dam, had to be operated for flood mitigation purposes during October 2010, which was the first occasion since February 2001 that Wivenhoe Dam had been called into action due to the Millennium Drought. The wet October was followed by a very dry November which, in turn, was followed by the wettest December on record for Brisbane. Somerset Dam and Wivenhoe Dam were again pressed into action on three separate occasions during December 2010. The resultant releases ensured that only minor flooding resulted in the Lower Brisbane River during these events. However, on the 5th of January 2011, another rainfall event started to unfold across the catchments of the dams. By the 10th of January 2011, an upper-level low combined with a humid easterly flow to bring very heavy rainfall and flash flooding to southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales. The heaviest falls were in the areas north and west of Brisbane, with three-day totals exceeding 200 mm over most of the Brisbane River catchment. This rainfall event resulted in a flood of record in the Upper Brisbane River and Upper Lockyer Creek catchments that sadly resulted in a substantial loss of life in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, and which required record releases from Wivenhoe Dam. The resultant downstream flooding saw some 14,000 properties impacted, principally in the Lockyer Valley Regional Council, Somerset Regional Council, Brisbane City Council, and Ipswich City Council local government regions. Flood damage was estimated to be around $2.53 billion. This paper discusses the event as it unfolded and the subsequent judicial inquiries, engineering reviews, and legal proceedings that resulted from the consequences of the operation of Somerset Dam and Wivenhoe Dam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition required to remove coal from the global energy mix will have major implications across coal producing regions. There is limited work, however, that explores how this transition is being received by communities with multi-generational connections to the industry. This paper explores understandings and responses to transition in the Australian community of Singleton. Located 145 km north of Sydney in the Upper Hunter Valley, the local area has been a site of coal mining activity since the 1850s – helping foster a strong connection between industry and place. Using an emotional geographies framework, we uncover various local feelings associated with the prospect of a future without coal. While these emotional responses can stem from the anticipated material losses of mines and jobs, they have also been found to stem from the mutually imbricated threats posed by a 'hidden dimension of loss'. This dimension of loss positions mining as much more than an emotionless economic activity. Instead, it is uncovered as an activity – a tradition – that can define understandings of place. Whilst set in Australia, this study holds relevance for mining communities internationally faced with the disruption of existing ways of life, identities, and understandings of place as the energy transition unfolds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we look to compare the differential responses of metropolitan and regional rental markets in the first 12 months post-pandemic in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state. We employ descriptive statistics to analyse broad trends in both rental prices and transfers in and out of long-term rental supply through the short-term letting and property buyer markets. Moreover, we examine how these dynamics have played out at the local level using the contrasting case studies of Bondi in the eastern suburbs of Sydney and Byron Bay in the northern rivers of NSW. The results demonstrate that there have been distinctly separate responses to the pandemic across different geographical profiles, displaying cohort-level behaviours ranging from rental declines in inner-city areas to significant increases in high-price regional areas. Furthermore, a comparison of metro and regional markets highlights a strong and symmetrical association between short-term lettings activity and changes in long-term rental prices over the initial COVID-19 period. Finally, analysis of investor activity exhibits a highly reactive and geographically differentiated response to changes in rental yields. Ultimately, the findings of this study further the understanding of the contrasting responses at the local scale to the COVID-19 pandemic, the complex interplay between long- and short-term rental markets and help shed light on necessary future policy directions for NSW's, and Australia's, housing market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bowling clubs have been local institutions in Australia for over 150 years. Once a booming pastime, the popularity of lawn bowls has waned and subsequently so has the number of clubs. Sydney has lost nearly half the number of clubs from 1980, many of them in the past decade. Drawing on Ray Oldenburg's concept of the 'third place' as a vital and inclusive local social hub, this paper charts the evolving geography and governance of the bowling club in metropolitan Sydney from the nineteenth century. The focus of this paper is on closures and land use changes between 2005 and 2020 and projected trends. A crucial factor in securing more public-orientated redevelopment outcomes is land ownership. The findings highlight how closure and redevelopment mediated through the NSW planning system impacts the social capital of communities. Bowling clubs as third places constitute important informal social centres. While this legacy persists as they adapt to new societal trends, the decline in the number of traditional clubs suggest that without a wider appreciation of the distinctive character of the Australian 'bowlo', there is a risk of not only losing valued community infrastructure but a centrepiece of the Australian cultural landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While consent forms part of the Health, Wellbeing and Relationships strand of the New South Wales (NSW) Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) curriculum in Australia, it is not consistently or effectively delivered within schools. The recent e-campaign, Teach Us Consent in NSW, drew attention to the alarmingly high rates of sexual assault experienced by young women during their school years or shortly after. The campaign called for mandatory, inclusive and comprehensive consent education in schools. This paper presents research from a case study of an elite, same-sex, Catholic boys' school in NSW, Australia, examining the types of knowledge and attitudes young men and their PDHPE teachers had about sexual consent and the types of consent pedagogies mobilised. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with the five male PDHPE teachers, and a focus group was conducted with five Year 11 male students (aged 16–17). The findings highlight that while participants recognised the importance of sexual consent in intimate relationships, consent pedagogies were grounded in individualising discourses of risk, responsibility and care, which rearticulated hegemonic gender norms. Findings from this study contribute to discussions of how schools approach consent education, and the limitations presented by outsourcing relationships and sex education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how government approaches to education were contested by Aboriginal communities in the late 1930s, through organised political actions designed in part to ensure access to the same standard of education and schooling available to non-Aboriginal people. It explores some of the ways that Aboriginal campaigns for education were enacted, focusing on the Cummeragunja Aboriginal reserve in New South Wales, when, in 1939, hundreds of residents walked off to protest to the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Board over the repressive conditions, the reserve manager, and the teacher and curriculum of the Cummeragunja school. The strike aimed to generate several changes at Cummeragunja, including the appointment of a new teacher, and the delivery of curriculum that was at the same standard as that delivered in other government schools in NSW. These demands were not unique to the Cummeragunja community as, throughout south-eastern Australia, Aboriginal communities were fighting for access to education alongside campaigns for land and greater civil rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how Chinese developers responded to the changing patterns of investment in residential real estate in Sydney since 2010. The analysis also outlines the key lessons for cities around the world with high levels of Chinese foreign buyers and developers, which may experience a similar foreign real estate investment decline as a result of changing dynamics in domestic real estate markets, changes in China, and/or wider changes in the global economy or other key global events. Unlike Chinese individual foreign real estate investors who largely exited the real estate market after 2017, Chinese property developers remained committed to the domestic market in Australia. As such, this analysis is framed by a period of individual foreign capital withdrawal and is focused on foreign developers rather than individual foreign real estate investors. The paper argues that focusing on the actions of foreign developers in a domestic real estate market is important because the organisational structure and business practices of foreign developers can be vastly different to those of domestic developers. The analysis shows that since 2017 Chinese developers responded in two ways to the changing residential real estate market in Sydney: (1) they revised their sales strategies to target different customer groups; and/or (2) they changed their building practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the process of urban transformation from convict to free settlement, through an analysis of the early convict landscape at Parramatta (1789–1841), the second British settlement in New South Wales. We draw together archaeological and historical sources to consider the patterns of change which occurred both at individual 'convict hut' sites, as well as within the broader landscape. This paper examines the ways in which landscape, architecture and space were used initially to create and support a society based upon unfree labour, and how the process of emancipation, where convicts transitioned into free settlers, found a material expression at Parramatta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational programs that bring the young and old together are known to facilitate social connections. However, benefits of intergenerational programs cannot be achieved by simply bringing the two generations together. We need to understand the factors which enhance intergenerational engagement. This paper specifically explores barriers and enablers for improving engagement of older people in an intergenerational program conducted within four research sites in South East Queensland and New South Wales, Australia. Video ethnography was used to examine the intergenerational environment and observe patterns of engagement between older people and children. Findings reveal the type of activity, group structure and length of activity to increase engagement of older people in an intergenerational program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forecasting risk measures in order to minimize and prevent a worse risk is an important and challenging task in quantitative risk management. Methodology and assessment of forecast accuracy are still developed to give a better risk measure forecast. In this paper, we provide a simple procedure to forecast expected-based risk measures of Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). These risk measures may be determined by not only quantile but also expectile. By extending the Historical Simulation (HS) method and adopting the Monte Carlo (MC) principle, we build alternative algorithms without disregarding the (estimated) probability and/or distribution function(s) of the loss distribution. Based on the illustration for return data from New South Wales (NSW) Australian and Iranian electricity markets, it is found that our proposed method gives the expected-based risk measure forecast with better accuracy, instead of using the conventional HS method. The accuracy is getting higher when we consider the model able to capture the features of heavy-tailedness and conditional heteroscedasticity in the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this autoethnography I present three narratives exploring how I understood and experienced my identity as a gay beginning teacher working in a rural Australian secondary school, where my sexuality was generally not accepted. Reading these narratives through a phenomenological lens highlights how my subjectivity as a gay man was entangled in my embodied identity as a teacher and how students' homophobic attacks attempted to disempower this identity. I explore how colleagues' responses to these incidents advocated for a disembodied understanding of practice which positioned my sexuality as the issue and attempted to straighten me as a teacher. As a result, this paper argues that being an effective ally to queer beginning teachers starts with respecting and valuing our embodied subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of performative culture in education and intensifying forms of test-based accountability have subjected teachers to a ubiquitous 'field of judgment' through which they are held to account. Within this context, professional development is consistently deployed as a key solution to stagnant or declining student outcomes. In this paper, we examine how accountability might be reimagined through one approach to professional development known as Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR). We draw on Foucault's notion of panopticism and Ball's influential writings on performativity to analyse interviews with 21 educators from 14 schools in New South Wales, Australia, conducted during a 2014–2015 randomised controlled trial. Participants highlighted the pervasiveness of testing and test results in shaping their experience of teaching in a system of perpetual surveillance where numbers bite deep into practice. By contrast, participation in QTR afforded teachers rare spaces of freedom within the structure of performativity to collaboratively focus on pedagogy. We argue meaningful professional development can alter the field of judgment and enable teachers to reclaim accountability on their own terms, while maintaining a clear focus on student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak in Australia led to a period of economic crisis. In response, Commonwealth and State Governments targeted the construction sector for concentrated economic stimulation. Planning systems, and their reform, were identified as levers to stimulate economic activity. This paper explores early COVID-19-initiated planning system reforms in New South Wales and Western Australia. It explores key reforms in each state and provides a comparative analysis of reform objectives, the influence of key stakeholders, reform innovations and possibilities for future reform. COVID-19-induced reforms emerge as both the continuation of the long-term reform agenda and reactionary interventions to immediate economic challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic and family violence (DFV) increased in complexity during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating further opportunities to help women escape DFV. Governments responded by injecting ad-hoc funding into temporary housing options and homelessness services. This paper provides an integrated discussion between the COVID-driven responses (policy analysis) and the experiences of DFV service providers in NSW, Australia (empirical data), which showed that existing policies are often limited in scope and out of touch with the DFV survivors' long-term housing and support needs. A more holistic approach with DFV targeted housing responses and policies is needed to more effectively help women leaving DFV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key tenets of the global education reform movement, professional standards for teachers have reshaped different aspects of teachers' work and learning in many contexts internationally over the past two decades. This paper explores the consequences of neoliberalism for teacher professional learning in contemporary times. The policies and processes built up around teacher professional development and learning as a consequence of contemporary regimes of standards and their dominant conceptualisation of teacher professionalism, constitute particular cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that frame the practice of teacher professional learning. These in turn give rise to some possibilities of practice while limiting others, effectively creating the space within which what counts as 'authentic professional learning' can be enacted. A case study of the interplay between professional standards and professional learning in the jurisdiction of New South Wales, Australia, is presented, via an analysis of publicly available texts generated by the NSW Education Standards Authority explicitly related to teacher professional learning and development. The paper argues that the practice architectures of professional learning in an age of standards work to support instrumental forms of professional learning while constraining the possibility of more authentic or generative forms of professional learning and consequently, teacher professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All teachers in Australia must now achieve and maintain certification through mandatory accreditation processes that include specified professional learning hours. While key policies that outline teacher professional learning in Australia and New South Wales make no specific reference to a role for universities, this discussion paper proposes that the new teacher accreditation landscape provides opportunities for universities to work collaboratively with education systems to co-design and deliver contextually relevant teacher professional learning, support teachers-as-researchers and support schools to become learning communities. This collaboration would advance the policy agenda inherent in the accreditation processes by developing the intended culture of professional learning among teachers, education systems and universities that goes beyond mandated professional learning hours. We review the Australian policy context from a systems-thinking perspective and argue that university Schools and Faculties of Education (called SOE throughout this paper) work across multiple levels in education systems and are thus uniquely positioned to co-design and deliver relevant and contextually significant learning opportunities that foster teacher professional learning and school improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing evidence on the positive outcomes of engaging students and community partners in medical education, especially in achieving social accountability. However, less is known about the steps through which these engagements are established. This paper outlines twelve tips on establishing a robust and enduring partnership with students and community partners in medical education, using examples from the Western Sydney University School of Medicine. While context is paramount in any engagement program, these tips are formulated to be transferable to medical education settings in different countries, education systems, and the broader context of health professional education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human existence is complemented by environmental sounds as by-products of people's activities as well as intentionally generated sounds that allow human society to function, including transport and traffic sounds and notification sounds. The resulting soundscapes surround and permeate people's daily existence. Technological, as well as behavioural change causes some of these sounds to become extinct at the local or universal level. While expressions of human communication through spoken words (language) and song are deemed to be heritage and thus formally collected and documented, there is a general lack of consideration of the heritage potential of anthropogenic environmental sounds. Focussing on examples from the state of NSW (Australia), this paper discusses sound loss in the urban heritage environment and advances two variations of a conceptual framework to assist heritage practitioners in decision-making to assess heritage potential in order to safeguard some of these sounds for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being the most tangibly impacted by the first-order effects of a warming climate, much of Australia's agricultural regions have remained relatively conservative in their views on climate change and the need for adaptation. This paper aims to understand how the experience of an extreme climate event like the 2017–2020 drought might shift opinions and values on these issues within agricultural communities. Through in-depth interviews with 20 graziers across Northwest NSW during the worst days of the drought, we found that various psychological lock-ins, historical memories of resilience, and local cultural values appeared to be undermining the perception of their vulnerability, while enhancing perceptions of their ability to endure. Such discursive constructions appear to explain why a jarring climatic event like the 2017–2020 drought was failing to produce a noticeable shift in their views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about the papers discussed at the 2006 Pesa Conference held in Sydney, New South Wales is presented. The papers include one which addresses the possibility of teaching by example and one which endorses the UNESCO mandate to pursuit world peace through education. Another paper discusses issues with the growing misuse of the term "positivism."

This paper engages with an innovative approach to school consolidation in regional New South Wales, Australia. Adopting a 'one school, two sites' model, it is argued that this innovative approach to school consolidation requires new theoretical resources to understand 'the school'. Theoretically informed by Eacott's relational approach and drawing on publicly available data (e.g. MySchool) and focus groups with school leaders, this paper argues that: (i) complicity with the idea and materiality of 'the school' makes it difficult to thinking differently about schooling; (ii) the image of the school is at once constitutive of, and emergent from, community identity; and (iii) to articulate an alternative requires a shift away from an entity-based (substantialist) perspective. Working with the three key concepts of the relational approach – organizing activity, auctor, and spatio-temporal conditions – this paper proposes an alternate way of thinking about school consolidation and the intellectual resources to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese international students represent a significant social, economic and cultural force in Australian society. Research has demonstrated that Chinese students enrich Australia not only through their economic contribution, but through soft diplomacy and cultural links. Despite this, and the recent rapid growth in the number of Chinese international students to the country, only a small number of studies have focused specifically on understanding the health and employment experiences of Chinese students in Australia. This paper examines interview data from an ethnographic study involving ten Chinese international students pursuing higher education in New South Wales, Australia. Topics concerning work rights and exploitation, migration, and cultural differences are touched upon within their health and employment experiences. This paper provides insights for those working with Chinese international students in the areas of health education and promotion, diversity and inclusion, employment and mobility studies. The results contribute to broader insights into the inward/outward mobility of higher education students and Australia's National Strategy for International Education 2025. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the 2007 Australian Library History forum held at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, New South Wales. He states that the event was participated by several speakers who shared their scholarly activities and research papers on public library. The forum also explores the history of the Australian library.

Post-indenture has largely been neglected in historical examinations of Chinese indentured labour in colonial contexts. We know little about what happened to workers after their contracts expired. Through the life of one Chinese man, Chi, and his small farming community in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Illawarra, New South Wales, Australia, I consider this issue. Drawing chiefly on church and other records usually used for research into local and family history, sources in which Chi's voice is often audible, this paper highlights a continuity between indenture and post-indenture. Indeed, Chi's 'freedom' after indenture was qualified. This indicates, I argue, that further attention to post-indenture could enable us to better understand indenture itself, as a system that may have endured well beyond the expiration of the labour contract. Concentrating on the individual and small community, I also contend, holds value in this respect, as a way of further exploring the continuity between the two states, and as a means of incrementally forming a fuller picture of post-indenture in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The treatment of vulnerable defendants by criminal justice systems or correctional systems varies within and between countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine three legal jurisdictions – New South Wales in Australia; Norway; England and Wales – to understand the extent of variation in practice within the court systems for defendants with intellectual disabilities (ID) and/or autism spectrum conditions (ASC). Two of the jurisdictions had a process for screening in place, either in police custody or at court, but this was not universally implemented across each jurisdiction. All three jurisdictions had a process for supporting vulnerable defendants through the legal system. Across the three jurisdictions, there was variation in disposal options from a mandatory care setting to hospital treatment to a custodial sentence for serious offences. This variation requires further international exploration to ensure the rights of defendants with ID or ASC are understood and safeguarded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While international research has demonstrated that ability grouping is inequitable, Australian research has often overlooked equity concerns, predominantly focusing on studying the benefits of grouping for students perceived to have high ability, especially in mathematics. This paper investigates the effect that mathematics ability grouping has on senior secondary mathematics participation for low and middle grouped students in New South Wales, Australia. We drew on interviews about mathematics participation with 85 students and 22 mathematics teachers from 11 government high schools. Our thematic analysis of these data identified that secondary school grouping practices often serve to entrench student interest and/or performance from primary school. This has consequences for many students, with a differentiated curriculum in Years 9 and 10 precluding low and middle grouped students from participating in high-level mathematics when they reach senior secondary school. These findings raise serious equity questions about the current push in Australia for universities to re-introduce high-level mathematics as a prerequisite to entering certain degrees. We argue that stakeholders need greater awareness of the consequences of ability grouping and that those seeking to lift post-compulsory mathematics participation should be targeting primary and early secondary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the longstanding erasure of women from representations of resistance within the academy, increasing attention is being paid to myriad ways in which women are performing and enacting resistance. This is particularly evident in burgeoning research exploring women's resistance to natural resource extraction. However, within this literature, a prevailing reliance on gender as an explanatory analytic runs the risk of overlooking a much wider, messier and diverse resistance terrain. This paper argues that in continuing to rely primarily on gender to frame and analyse women's resistance to resource extraction, gender can inadvertently become installed as a form of strong theory, which obscures the many ways in which women's resistance to natural resource extraction is multiple, contingent, more-than-gendered, and more-than-human. Rather than relying on singular categories of social difference (such as gender) to explain women's resistance, this paper turns to weak theory to move away from explaining why women resist, to instead exploring the many diverse ways that they resist. Drawing on two stories of women's resistance to natural resource extraction in New South Wales, Australia, this paper uses weak theory to attend to the diverse more-than-gendered and more-than-human ways in which women resist, and argues that such multiplicity is erased when women's resistance to resource extraction continues to be approached primarily through singular analytical framings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current imperative to renew public housing buildings and estates in NSW and other Australian states challenges the usual view of public housing as a secure tenure. An historical examination of representations about security in public housing shows, however, that this association lacks a deep legal basis. The paper then examines the extent to which the different types of current renewal activities may be legally contested in the name of security. Concluding that current laws close off contestation of renewal decisions and termination proceedings, the paper calls for legal and policy reforms to renew the security of public housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a cosmopolitical approach to multi-species inquiry in environmental education and its associated research. Drawing on Isabelle Stengers' concepts of "etho-ecology" and an "ecology of practices", the paper explores ethical and political questions of what it means to think-with nonhuman animals as sentient creatures who participate (often unwillingly) in environmental science studies. The author argues that ecology as a scientific practice cannot be disentangled from a process of becoming-ecological in the field, including the affective concerns and ethico-esthetic values produced through encounters amongst people, nonhuman animals, technologies, and their associated milieus. This conceptual work is extended through etho-ecological accounts of a three-day field excursion with environmental science students and their lecturers in the intertidal zones of Bundjalung National Park in NSW, Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individualized funding of disability support services has implications for people's choices about when to share their home. This paper examines how people with disabilities made choices about who to live with and the factors influencing these choices. This paper discusses data from interviews with 30 people with mostly intellectual disabilities using individualized support services, 21 interviews with family members, four interviews with service managers, and a focus group with five support workers. The data come from a large evaluation of individualized housing support programs in New South Wales, Australia. Only some people had the opportunity to choose whether to share and with whom. Their choices were constrained by the range of housing options and their limited experience of them, even when they had support to make choices about shared housing or living alone. In some cases, the choices reflected a conceptualization of people with disabilities as different to other citizens in their rights and expectations about their social arrangements. The results have implications for information sharing, housing stock, and the need to challenge the positioning of people with disabilities relative to other people regarding choices about where and with whom to live. Many people preferred not to live alone, so as to improve their economic and social circumstances, and their choice and control. The choices about shared housing that many people and their supporters made were constrained by their limited experience of housing options or their familiarity with the range of choices made by other people with disabilities. Being able to draw on the material, social, and information resources of family made a big difference to their housing choices. It raises questions for policy implementation about whether individualized support may lock some people into shared housing arrangements by failing to include housing costs in the individual package. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many papers have been written on the process of coming out by individuals with predominantly same-sex sexual orientation but few of these papers have explored the concept of how people negotiate the idea of coming out in prison. We conducted in-depth interviews with 13 prisoners and one ex-prisoner in New South Wales, Australia, who self-identified as gay, homosexual or bisexual men. Data was collected and analysed using an inductive or grounded theory framework since very little was known on the sexual behaviours and identities of Australian prisoners prior to the study and elsewhere. We examined and discussed the lived experiences of prisoners whose disclosure stories were seen to fall under four thematic categories: 'coming out', 'forced out', 'going back in' and 'staying out of the closet' on entering prison. Respondents were required continuously and contextually to manage their sexual identities and disclosure to different audiences while incarcerated. Findings suggest that the prison environment and its attendant heteronormative values and hyper-masculine culture, apply significant pressure on gay and bisexual men on how to manage their sexual identities and disclose their sexuality in prison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First Croatian immigrants came to Australia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and today, they are a significant part of Australian multicultural society. Due to specific information needs, Croats of NSW began publishing newspapers in the Croatian language in the 1920s. The paper presents communication of Croatian immigrants in NSW through serial publications, on the examples of newspapers before WWII, between WWII and 1990 and after 1990. After 1990, in addition to newspapers, communication on social networking sites is analysed. Selected newspapers and presence on social networking sites show publication and editorial models, types of publishers, languages of publication and interactions with readers. The availability of publications in libraries is analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a problematic dynamic in the protection of natural World Heritage properties for sites that also possess significant cultural assets, but that fall short of the World Heritage designation 'outstanding universal value' standard for cultural significance. The destruction of cultural heritage places in natural settings is a global concern and we use an Australian case study to illustrate the argument that cultural assets located within natural properties should be given an allied protection status. We argue that protection problems arise, represented by a nature/culture binary trope, despite significant progress in using more holistic approaches, as exemplified by cultural landscapes. To demonstrate our argument, we consider controversy surrounding a development proposal within the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (GBMWHA), located in the state of New South Wales, Australia. We find that a development proposal to raise a storage dam wall triggers significant problems for protecting both natural and cultural heritage features across the GBMWHA landscape and, in this context, we recommend a reconsideration of the rigid natural/cultural heritage binary of World Heritage classifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Community Outcomes Measurement (ACCOM) uses a standardized set of instruments to measures functional, health, and social care-related quality of life (SCRQoL) among older people receiving services at home. One of its key components is the use of modified ASCOT SCT4 survey developed by The University of Kent PSSRU. This paper presents the preliminary findings of a pilot testing of ACCOM with CALD clients in South West Sydney using face to face interviews conducted by bilingual workers as a novel approach to administering the tool. The paper will argue that some of the domains in ASCOT SCT4 survey pose unique challenges for culturally diverse groups that highlight the ethnocentric nature of some of the questions. It also discusses some of the strategies the service provider used to address these concerns and be able to utilize the tool in a culturally effective manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home and contents insurance is integral to household and community resilience against disasters. Yet many households are underinsured. While causes for underinsurance have been widely researched, changes to Australian building regulations in the last decade has established a new source of insurance miscalculations. Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings can inflate rebuilding costs by 20% or more, yet BAL ratings remain obfuscated to homeowners and are notoriously confusing to navigate. After the October 2013 bushfires in New South Wales, the Blue Mountains Local Recovery Steering Group found that 'information on the BAL process, the guidelines, the expected costs, the consulting experts and a property's bushfire-prone status is literally all over the place'. This paper aims to provide clarity on the subject, tracing the precise socio-technical means through which disaster risk is perceived and assessed. The paper conceptualises insurance and risk ratings as calculative devices that provide both a technical solution to reduce financial losses and a philosophical tool for risk rationalisation. It then builds on interviews conducted with residents in the Blue Mountains affected by the 2013 bushfires, to ascertain how such calculative devices practically affect communities at risk. The paper concludes by outlining potential solutions to a confusing and costly problem in Australia, highlighting critical public awareness issues surround BAL ratings, which have profound insurance and wellbeing implications for people rebuilding and recovering from bushfire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Take-home naloxone (THN) is provided to non-medically trained people to reverse potential opioid overdoses. There is an increasing range of effective intramuscular (IM) and intranasal (IN) naloxone devices and this paper explores the types preferred by people who use opioids, using consumer behaviour literature to interpret the findings. Data derive from two unconnected qualitative studies involving audio-recorded semi-structured interviews. Study 1 was conducted in the United States (n = 21 users of non-medical/illicit opioids). Study 2 was conducted in Australia (n = 42 users of non-medical/illicit or prescribed opioids). Most participants preferred IN naloxone. Preferences were based on the ease, speed, safety and comfort of each device and underpinned by accounts of overdose revivals as being very rushed and frightening situations. Preferences related to complex interactions between the naloxone device ('product'); the knowledge, skills, experience and attitudes of the lay responder ('consumer'), and when, where and how naloxone was to be used ('usage situation'). THN programs should offer choice of device when possible and nasal naloxone if resources permit. Asking people which devices they prefer and why and treating them as valued consumers of naloxone products can generate insights that improve future naloxone technology and increase THN uptake and usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about relational becomings and opposing forces that may occur when white skin becomes tanned over the course of everyday life. In the Australian context of beach leisure culture and rising melanoma rates, the article draws on the only three participants with diverse ancestry from a larger qualitative research project conducted with 40 young men and women in Greater Sydney, New South Wales. I argue that Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage thinking, specifically three related concepts of a lifeline have much to offer feminist geographers: molar lines (segmented lines), rupture lines (lines of flight) and molecular lines (crack lines). Here, I illustrate the potential of assemblage thinking to analyse the reciprocal relations between tanning, skin, gender, race and place. I illustrate how tanning sensations are comprised of contradictory forces. I argue that while participants do not escape the molar lines of gender and a Black-White racial dichotomy, there are molecular lines that temporarily disrupt these gendered and racialised regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for papers for the 16th Annual International Congress on Women's Health Issues to be held on November 15-18, 2006 in Sydney, New South Wales. Reasons to participate in the event; Contact information.

The brumby (or feral horse) is an icon of colonial settler Australian culture in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. 2018 saw the introduction of the Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Bill 2018 (NSW), known as the Brumbies Bill, which cast heritage protections over brumbies in Kosciuszko National Park (KNP). The Brumbies Bill prioritised feral horses over the protection of Alpine Australia, an area which contains a unique ecosystem only present on 0.3% of the Australian landmass. The Bill was highly controversial and directly undermined decades of research into feral horse damage by overturning the pre-existing KNP Horse Management Plan. In this paper we explain the change of policy, an undertaking especially important in the context of debates about the need for more biodiversity protection. We apply a critical legal geography lens, focused on the need to understand how law/s shape places, draw on ideas from ecological justice and introduce the principle of non-regression to this controversial policy reversal. We are especially interested in exposing the processes behind such environmental policy reversals and in unpacking competing perspectives regarding policy formation. We suggest abrupt policy changes are not prudent for a precautionary approach to environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pet ownership provides a unique relationship that is beneficial to many aspects of the pet owner's life, including mental health and companionship. Mental health and social isolation are negatively impacted by homelessness, increasing the importance of the owner-pet bond during this time. However, this relationship is complicated by the need for pet owners to urgently find accommodation for themselves while still caring for their pets. This paper explores two firsthand narratives of the relationship between a person and their pets during a period of homelessness and subsequent search for accommodation. Both narratives highlight important aspects of the emotional bond between owner and pet: the concept of choosing pet over place; improved mental health and changed behaviours; and stressors or negative emotions of parental concern, separation anxiety and grief. These narratives emphasise the importance of supporting, expanding and creating new pet-friendly crisis and permanent accommodation options for pet owners experiencing homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactional justice is concerned with how far victims feel (i) respected by justice officials ('interpersonal justice') and (ii) informed about the progress of their case and the justice process overall ('informational justice') [Laxminarayan, M., Henrichs, J., and Pemberton, A. (2012). Procedural and interactional justice: a comparative study of victims in the Netherlands and New South Wales. European journal of criminology, 9 (3), 260–275; Laxminarayan, M. (2013). Interactional justice, coping and the legal system: needs of vulnerable victims. International review of victimology, 19 (2), 145–158]. This paper explores the experience of interactional justice for victims of 'honour'-based violence and abuse (HBVA) who report to the police in England and Wales. HBVA refers to abuse perpetrated with reference to ideas of 'shame' and 'honour'. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 36 victims of HBVA across England. This paper documents their experience and extends the framework of interactional justice proposed by Laxminarayan et al. (2012). First, we identify intersectionality, in particular, the positions of gender, ethnicity and immigration status within the victim–officer encounter, as central to interpreting the interpersonal experiences of HBVA victims with police. Second, we find that how information is used and delivered can be as important as the content and timeliness of communication. Twenty of our sample of 36 participants were happy with the initial police response, but only 9 were happy with their reporting experience overall. We argue that focusing on HBVA victims' interaction with justice actors could enable us to understand and improve HBVA victims' experience of, and satisfaction with, the justice system overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the transition experiences of students with intellectual disability, as they move from primary to secondary school in New South Wales, Australia. Employing a multiple case study approach, the authors investigated the transition from the perspective of the students experiencing it. During the study, ten students with mild to moderate intellectual disability participated in interviews and were observed in the school environment before and after they transitioned from primary school to secondary school. Results indicate that students with intellectual disability generally have a positive transition experience. Nevertheless, students commonly encounter a number of major challenges, including issues around managing school work and homework, and bullying. The study found several factors contribute to a successful transition. These include the provision of assistance to help students become familiar with and manage their physical environment, building positive relationships with teachers, and having extra support from special needs staff. The study suggests there are some simple and practical steps that schools can take to enhance outcomes for successful transition experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on the detailed lithostratigraphic facies characterisation of the paleo-environments of the uppermost Silurian through Lower Devonian Winduck Interval strata from the Bancannia South 1, Pondie Range 1 and Booligal Creek 1 and 2 wells, across the central Darling Basin of western New South Wales. Based on data from both wireline logs and drill cores and cuttings, an interpretation of paleo-environments and evolution of the depositional facies is presented. Our approach involves two key interpretations. The first outcome was the delineation of the Winduck Interval section (maximum observed thickness of approximately 1475 m) and formal subdivision into lower and upper Winduck Intervals, based on well data from the central Bancannia Trough, southern Pondie Range Sub-basin and northwestern flank of the Blantyre Sub-basin. The second outcome is based on the internal lithostratigraphy of the Winduck Interval represented by 11 sedimentary lithofacies organised into three lithofacies associations (LFAs). LFA-X1 is interpreted as distributary-channel sandstone complex deposits, LFA-X2 is interpreted as distributary mouth bar with small-scale braided delta plain complex deposits and LFA-X3 is interpreted as tidal channel sands with proximal delta front complex deposits. Subsurface lithostratigraphic facies analysis relationships and depositional environments of the Winduck Interval section have implications for evaluating the hydrocarbon potential and may assist future exploration efforts in the central Darling Basin, especially the Bancannia Trough and Pondie Range Sub-basin. A detailed lithostratigraphic facies characterisation of the paleo-environments of the uppermost Silurian–Lower Devonian Winduck Interval strata in the central Darling Basin is presented. Evaluation and interpretation of the Winduck Interval section in study area was subdivided into two informal stratigraphic units, a lower Winduck Interval and an upper Winduck Interval. Eleven distinct sedimentary lithofacies codes (LFs), which have been recognised in the internal lithostratigraphy of the Winduck Interval from the Bancannia South 1, Pondie Range 1 and Booligal Creek 1 and 2 wells, have been grouped into three lithofacies associations (LFAs). Lithostratigraphic facies analysis relationships and depositional environments of the Winduck Interval section has implications for evaluating the hydrocarbon potential and may assist future exploration in the Bancannia Trough and Pondie Range Sub-basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper places a well-known controversy about the jurisdiction of nineteenth-century magistrates in its imperial context. In particular it shows how and why conversations about convict management and the jurisdiction of magistrates in New South Wales were interwoven with contemporary conversations about the law and government of slavery. In 1833 in the aftermath of the Castle Forbes Revolt, convicts, administrators and magistrates in New South Wales borrowed the language of disorder and good governance from debates about the amelioration of slavery because those languages made sense of an experience that was both deeply local and shared. Convicts were not slaves; but masters, magistrates, convicts and slaves all experienced substantial shifts in the relations among empire, colonial states and local institutions of governance that redefined their privileges and obligations in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The contest between magistrate-masters and convicts in the aftermath of the Castle Forbes Revolt thus demonstrates the importance of exploring the legal transformation of empire through interconnected histories of everyday order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]