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Throughout Australia’s history, successive governments have lamented the clustering of non-English-speaking migrants in ‘ethnic enclaves’ or ‘ghettos’. From the early Chinatowns of the 1800s till today, urban concentrations of ethnic groups have raised concerns and fears in local populations and authorities alike, despite decades of international research which suggests that ethnic residential clusters actually aid long-term assimilation and adjustment. Many of the ethnic residential clusters in contemporary Australia have been claimed to be a direct consequence of the migrant hostels and reception centres which operated between 1948 and the 1990s. This paper traces migrant settlement patterns in South Australia in rich detail, revealing the complexities of lived experiences that shape migrant settlement decisions. Against the background of public and scholarly debates over ‘ethnic enclaves’, and drawing on quantitative and qualitative historical research on the lived experiences of former hostel migrants, it analyses how migrant hostels and reception centres contributed to the settlement experiences of diverse migrants. We conclude that migrant hostels were just one among various factors that led to the growth and maintenance of ethnic residential clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2007, the Australian federal government introduced a ‘new’ graduate visa scheme, the 485 visa sub-class. This visa facilitates the transition from student to worker for overseas graduates from Australian higher education institutions, with the potential to significantly increase their numbers in the country. At the same time, local governments have introduced various policies designed to attract and retain human capital in rural areas to address the shortfall of highly skilled individuals. This paper redresses the current lack of research into the spatial dynamics of overseas human capital in Australia and their relation to the new visa scheme in combination with shifts in rural development policies. Drawing on survey data of graduates describing the ‘before’ (2005) and ‘after’ (2008) periods of the introduction of the 485 visa scheme, this paper shows that the propensity of overseas graduates to move between Australia's regions has increased substantially. In particular, there have been an increasing proportion of overseas graduates moving to major cities despite rural development policy efforts to attract human capital to rural areas. However, these policy efforts appear to have attracted overseas graduates with particular qualifications (education and health) to work in such locales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on policy texts and a series of interviews conducted with rural public housing officers in 2005, this paper extends understandings of rural governance by shifting the focus on experts from one of being statically understood as the arbiters of rural government-at-a-distance processes to viewing them as more complex actors in these governmental processes. In particular, as governmentalities change at the centre, rural experts need also to be understood as being vulnerable to becoming targets of governmental problematisations and reforms. The paper does this through analysing how policy discourses during the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries problematised the delivery of public housing services by housing officers in Australia and New South Wales (NSW). It then provides insight into how resulting reform processes impacted on rural housing officers from four areas in rural NSW. The paper shows that rural governance understandings can be usefully extended to include how governmental change is not only directed towards and affects rural citizenry but also rural experts who perform multiple roles including being administrators, targets, and opponents of rural reform processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part of a broader trend towards all-inclusive master planned developments, gated residential estates are an intensely private form of residential development with a degree of securitisation. Gated residential estates have been the topic of intense debate in urban planning and policy circles and the target of fierce criticism for potential exclusionary outcomes as fearful residents lock themselves away from the ills of wider urban society. Crime, a fear of crime and the need for security dominate discussions and understandings of gated residential developments in Australia without much empirical validation. This paper poses two key research questions: does fear of crime and need for increased security drive residents towards gated estates; and what are the lived experiences of security, gates and crime once residing within a gated estate? Based on in-depth research in Macquarie Links (one of Sydney's largest gated estates) this paper offers insights into the lived dimensions of gated estates. The paper explores the attractions and realities of security services and infrastructure, private control over the residential environment and the importance placed by the residents on the ability to protect the nature of their neighbourhood and to protect themselves from any 'unwanted' activities or groups. The discussion in this paper demonstrates that for the residents in the study, residing in a secure residential neighbourhood is less about the role and place of physical security and security services, and more to do with protection afforded by the private governance structure of the neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodological shifts in human geography, generally under the banner of the 'cultural turn', have seen an increased focus on methods such as interviews, discourse and textual deconstruction, and the recognition of notions such as reflexivity and intersubjectivity. Together these approaches argue that there is no logical natural order of things or notions of universality. These approaches argue that there is no such thing as objectivity in social research, but that research is informed by the experiences, aims and agency of those performing the research and that researchers should be written into the research environment. Drawing on these insights, the purpose of this paper is to explore a methodological approach centred on actor-network theory (ANT) and suggest how this approach could add value to research being undertaken in human geography. Within such an approach all research findings are created by the researcher through, first, the objectives and framing of a research project and, second, the methods used to create and follow the research network. Drawing on research into residential development and planning on the fringe of Sydney, Australia, this paper has three objectives: first, to position all research as partial and as the product of associations that stretch beyond the research field; second, to argue that all research is a process of translation; and, third, to explore the manner in which we as researchers construct ourselves in efforts to enter networks of research interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the ambiguous place of Canberra within the political geography of Australia, through exploring the place of the city among a particular category of political actors—lobbyists. Drawing on a series of interviews with lobbyists working for interest groups, government relations firms, or as freelancers, the city is presented as a central site of lobbying within the national polity through two key (and related) dimensions: the city as a site of localised political knowledge, or metis; and Canberra as a place of 'urban buzz' or situated communicative interaction. The paper concludes both with a discussion of how these concepts may help us to better understand the political behaviours of lobbyists, and how the observed spatial imaginations and practice of lobbyists in Canberra interacts with the theorisation of 'urban buzz'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underground urban development is rapidly expanding. Like all forms of 'development', utilising the underneath of cities can present a range of possibilities and problems. Much underground urban development, however, has been conceptualised through a technical rather than a broader social lens. This is problematic, not least as these developments are usually financed with public money, while their governance is often realised through complicated and opaque public–private partnerships. In this context, the urban underground is often present as sub terra nullius: an epistemologically blank slate waiting to be exploited with the necessary technology and funding. In this paper, the author presents four analytical strata to help us to rethink how urban undergrounds are conceptualised and developed. Drawing on examples from Australia, she presents how we need to appreciate the more-than-human geographies of the underground (stratum 1); critically understand the dynamics of volumetric dispossession (stratum 2); question who owns the underground and how (stratum 3); and rethink how the underground is accessed (stratum 4). By engaging with these themes, we can explore ways to move subterranean urban development away from a technoscientific tunnelling decision-making process to one that engages with the social, political and economic implications of urban infrastructural projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban greening can enhance sustainability and liveability, through conserving biodiversity, mitigating urban heat and enhancing people's health and wellbeing. However, urban greening is complex, as it occurs in unique ecological settings, with social, cultural and economic factors shaping the forms it takes. This raises questions about the governance of urban greening, including what counts as 'good governance'. In this paper, we first outline principles of good governance drawn from the natural resource management context. We then present four urban greening initiatives from Melbourne Australia representing different scales, land tenures and organising structures. Following this, we analyse how governance of the four initiatives addresses good governance principles. Our analysis shows that there are diverse ways in which urban greening can be practiced and governed. The importance of more 'informal' initiatives should not be discounted relative to formalised initiatives, as a spectrum of approaches can be seen as strength. Further, in determining what constitutes good governance, the standards against which initiatives are assessed should be tailored to their specific circumstances, and consider impacts to the environment itself. These findings point to good urban greening governance being both situated and principled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of an unconventional extractive industry of coal seam gas (CSG) in New South Wales, Australia has caused a range of social tensions. Although the industry has generally received strong support from state-level governments across Australia, an eclectic social movement has arisen in opposition. Critical questions of justice have emerged in these debates about CSG, particularly about the 'winners' and 'losers' that would emerge should large-scale CSG extraction be introduced into New South Wales. However, the question of justice in relation to CSG extraction is not altogether so simple. Actors on all sides of CSG development have mobilised the language of justice in their claims about this energy source in sophisticated ways and at different scales. In this paper, we draw upon 'energy justice' scholarship to tease out different energy justice dimensions of the CSG debate in New South Wales. We show how there are significant issues that will likely intensify regarding the recognition of different forms of knowledge, the access citizens have to forms of decision-making, and the risks that span geographic and temporal scales. We argue that it is vital to appreciate the significant and interrelated injustices faced by those challenging the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, population growth in Australia's Northern Territory, as in other peripheral parts of high-income countries, has been driven by internal labour migration and migration from outside of Australia. These have been contributing to the high population turnover experienced in peripheral areas. Since 2010, the Northern Territory has experienced low (and even negative) population growth, and public policy is currently focused on migration as a lever to reverse this trend. However, the extent to which the characteristics of migrants influence the potential for longer-term population growth is poorly understood. This paper uses a new method to analyse the contributions of various types of migrants to both population turnover and retention. Two major sets of findings emerge: First, the significance of separating newer in-migrants from longer-term residents when analysing migration patterns; and secondly, the contribution of age, gender, Indigenous status, international origin, wages and industry of employment to the Northern Territory's population turnover. The research suggests that current forms of migration favour people who are likely to stay for only short periods, and have high wage demands. The main policy inference is that long-term population growth will likely not eventuate unless new forms of migration can be stimulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the financialisation of land and agribusiness has highlighted major shifts in agri-food systems globally. Yet these accounts tend to focus on the activities of financial actors, and few take seriously the role of farmers in negotiating investments in land and agribusiness. Farmers in the global North may be well placed to benefit from partnerships with financial investors, although little is known about the way that such partnerships are formed. Australian studies of farmer agency have been productive in examining farm family entrepreneurs and globally engaged farmers who work beyond the farm gate to organise supply chains. This paper adds to these studies by providing insights about a capitalising farm family entrepreneur, who successfully negotiated and entered into a direct equity partnership with a large foreign pension fund. Several observations are significant: the exceptional skill, time and expense required to negotiate these partnerships; the role of consultants and non-human actors in structuring them; and the spatially- and temporally divergent farm development practices that are enabled by a shift from debt to equity financing. These observations are indicative of a new adaptive strategy of family farmers to shifting financial landscapes and of emergent family, corporate, and financial farm hybridity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air travel has become central to Australian academic practice, with flying increasingly seen as crucial to the progression of successful academic careers. This paper seeks to understand why academic air travel has come to be perceived as so necessary, particularly given its significant environmental, social, and economic implications. Drawing on the mobilities paradigm and social practice theory, we seek to understand how air travel practices are a key part of contemporary academic careers. We conducted an online survey of 301 academics and 24 in depth semi-structured interviews to understand academic air travel in Australia, finding that it is seen as a means to connect and collaborate within and between academic communities, and to counteract the effects of 'remoteness'. This remoteness is experienced domestically and internationally, by Australian academics who feel they must travel to perceived centres of knowledge production to further their careers. Academics often frame their 'need' for connections as necessarily involving physical co-presence. Air travel offers career benefits for those who can take advantage of it, and corresponding drawbacks for those 'stuck on the ground'. We conclude by discussing the need for valuing localised forms of collaboration as markers of success, and developing imaginative alternatives to academic flying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on local government management of the environment in Australia has been limited in that it has typically focused on the urban sphere. In contrast, this paper places rurality at the centre of its inquiry. It uses data from 15 case studies of rural local governments in Australia to identify the main factors that inhibit natural resource management by rural councils. These barriers mobilise around four key themes: capacity, commitment, co-ordination and community. While many of the issues raised in this study of non-urban shires have been described in previous research, the paper argues that the geographic location of the areas under investigation aggravates barriers to engaging sustainability initiatives. It is contended that rural local governments need to be resourced accordingly to ensure that natural resource management at the local government level in Australia is not compromised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the postcolonial context of Australia there has been a belated legal recognition of sui generis Indigenous rights and interests over much of the continent. However, the pervasive environmental discourse guiding resource management practices remains firmly based on ‘commonsense’ settler understandings of ‘nature’ as an external domain to be managed and/or preserved. In order to understand how this could be otherwise, this paper examines ideas about political landscape formation and the implications of the changing role of the nation-state and civil society in relation to the recognition of Indigenous political subjectivities. Taking the situation faced by Indigenous peoples in two settler societies as our vantage point, I argue here that we need to move away from assimilative environmental governance arrangements and politicise the concept of ‘nature’. This will open up spaces for the recognition and active participation of Indigenous polities in the realm of natural resource management. The paper concludes by contrasting the situation faced by Indigenous landowners in Australia's Kakadu National Park with the overtly political negotiations occurring in two northern regions of Canada. In the latter, in a process similar to what Tully calls ‘daily subconstitutional politics’, it is through the recognition of Indigenous polities in environmental governance issues that Indigenous peoples are starting to refashion their stake in the governing ideas and institutions of the broader regional, provincial and national polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its landmark report entitled Rates and Taxes: A Fair Share for Responsible Local Government, the Commonwealth House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration (2003) considered the plight of Australian local government given its very wide terms of reference involving local government's roles and responsibilities, current funding arrangements, municipal capacity, council expenditure, scope for rationalisation, and the findings of the Commonwealth Grants Commission Review (2001) of the Local Government (Financial Assistance) Act 1995. The authors of the ‘Hawker Report’ brought down 18 recommendations, two of which dealt directly with the thorny question of structural reform. This paper seeks to provide a critical assessment of those aspects of the Report that concern structural reform in Australian local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first significant government sponsored community-based forest management project in Australia was initiated in Central Victoria in 2002. This paper analyses the initial stage of the Wombat Community Forest Management Pilot Project. The paper develops a functional concept of `effective community' for structuring community engagement in these kinds of natural resource management projects. The effective community has characteristics in common with a community of interest, adopts a bioregional perspective, embodies the values of environmental stewardship and interacts in a fully informed way as a `discursive community' (Meppam 2000). The paper offers general advice for organising effective community engagement in such projects and 12 recommendations for governments developing similar initiatives elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I reflect on some key methodological tensions that emerged during my PhD research. The research critically analyses the political struggles of outworking women from Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian backgrounds in Sydney, Australia, for minimum wages and a monitoring of ethical networks in the clothing industry from 1997 to 2002. Rather than present `key findings' in this paper I instead reveal how I began to think more critically and in less absolute ways about reading the multiple voices of outworkers, NGO workers and my own voice as researcher, activist and English teacher. I drew insights from Bakhtin's dialogism for thinking about research as shaped by sets of conversations. In this paper I reflect on several `in-the-field' interactions: organising interviews, interviewing outworkers through an interpreter, storytelling in a rights-based English class setting, and how I and other participants represented outworking women in different forums. Dialogism required I take seriously the concept that knowledges are socially constructed in very particular contexts and this led to a rejection of my earlier notion of a singular authentic voice for outworking women or for me as researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population estimates are rarely constructed for ecological regions. The recent establishment of a Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) generates a need for such estimates. This paper obliges by presenting Indigenous and total population projections for the Australian desert to 2016. The desert is found to be a region of relatively low population growth in national terms, contrary to the experience of many other parts of non-metropolitan Australia where population decline is prevalent. Also noted is the markedly different growth observed for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous components of the desert population, with the former projected to increase much more rapidly over time. It is likely that virtually all of the increase in the desert population over the next 15 years will arise from natural increase among Indigenous peoples. As a consequence, the Indigenous share of the regional population is projected to rise from 20 per cent in 2001 to 24 per cent by 2016, with attendant consequences for social and economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a doctoral study which investigated why women are absent in positions of leadership within the Australian sugar industry's agri-political group CANE-GROWERS. Its purpose is to confront and unsettle the explanation that this is a result of 'the Italians' in the industry. The paper begins by highlighting the pervasiveness of this claim and the way in which it was so often presented during the research as a known and unproblematic truth. Following this, I draw on feminist post-structural theory to offer three challenges to the claim that it is because of 'the Italians' that men dominate decision-making positions in the sugar industry. These are: a singular Italian culture does not exist; constructions of being Italian are not fixed or absolute; and a range of possibilities exist for negotiating, resisting and transcending notions of what it means to be an Italian wife/woman/daughter. This discussion reveals the usefulness of feminist post-structural theory for avoiding monolithic and homogeneous constructions of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism is often seen as a panacea for the ills of declining rural communities. The paper argues that there is an element of blind optimism in this view although a shift of focus from production to consumption within advanced economies like Australia's will undoubtedly provide opportunities for the development of the leisure, recreation and tourism industries, both in metropolitan and rural areas. The paper suggests that an increased focus on lifestyle will come to characterise Australia. Some rural communities will be able to capitalise on this, both for temporary visitors and for in-migration, but many will not. The well-established concepts of threshold and range, when coupled with the idea of specialisation, will have a large influence on which places 'win' and which 'lose' in any lifestyle-led and leisure-oriented society. 'Place marketing' will become increasingly important for towns competing against each other for the 'leisure and lifestyle dollar'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period 1996-2001 has witnessed a refocusing of population growth on Sydney and Melbourne as both cities have developed significant concentrations of so-called 'new economy' jobs and taken on, to greater or lesser extents, the characteristics of global cities. The consequence of these trends, for Sydney most particularly, is population growth. This paper establishes this demographic reality by describing recent demographic trends in Sydney and possible future scenarios for Sydney's population, given differing levels of fertility, internal migration and international migration. A related future trend is also traced—that the number of households in Sydney will grow more rapidly than the population due to changes in household structure. This raises the issue of how and where these households will be accommodated, given the relative land shortage in the Sydney Statistical Division and given that there is no doubt that planners in New South Wales will be attempting to maintain and enhance Sydney's status as a global city. In sum, the paper argues that Sydney planners should be preparing for growth of around one million people in the next 20 years and a further one million in the following 30 years. To maintain that potential future residents of Sydney can be redirected to other parts of New South Wales is a vain hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critique of politically dominant Eurocentric notions of culture and nature in Australia. In particular, it interrogates Eurocentric concepts of animals, wildlife and management, and seeks to unsettle these concepts by considering some of the diverse ways in which indigenous people in Australia know country, animals and wilderness. Using the metaphor of Eurocentric ontology in a hall of mirrors, the paper argues that Eurocentric claims of universalism for naturalised discourses that assume the adequacy of a nature–culture binary form a very fragile circular argument. Self-justifying the imposition and assertion of Eurocentric concepts and practices is a mechanistic reflection of the particular terms of reference set by Eurocentric knowledges and a denial of multiple ways of knowing. The dangers this presents are illustrated by examining how concepts and practices underlying wildlife management have self-justified (continuing) colonising processes in Australia. Finally, the paper attempts to open up spaces that address these dangers. Situated engagement is introduced as an approach which could shatter the hall of mirrors—by clearly embodying and emplacing all thought and action, universalised boundaries can be recognised and breached and new possibilities imagined and realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to a growing number of commentators, the agricultural sectors and rural areas of advanced Western nations are experiencing a transition from productivism to post-productivism. In Britain and Western Europe, where this putative transition is most evident, the salient features of the shift include: the gradual removal of farm-level subsidies and related stimulatory policies; the introduction of a range of agri-environmental programs aimed at reducing agricultural commodity surpluses and halting farm-related environmental degradation; and the development of a more socially and culturally heterogeneous rural population as counter-urbanisation has brought a new stratum of residents into rural areas. This paper explores this notion in the Australian context. In analysing a wide range of data and policy documents, the paper argues that while there is some evidence of a productivist regime operating in Australia from 1945 to the early 1980s, and some more recent incipient trends consistent with a transition to a post-productivist countryside, there is much stronger evidence that the Australian farm sector and rural landscapes are being shaped by the complex interactions between the 'productivist' ideals held by farmers and key policy makers alike, and the growing environmental regulation of farming. It is concluded that while the concept of 'post-productivism' is superficially appealing, it has little practical or conceptual application to Australian conditions. Indeed, the paper argues that 'post-productivism' is fundamentally misconceived, largely owing to its inherent binary narrative form and logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1988, responding to international legislation that requires sustainable fishery management, the Australian Fishery Management Authority (AFMA) implemented an individual transferable quota (ITQ) management system to address the environmental crisis in the South East Fishery. Defining sustainability in its broadest context to include social as well as economic and ecological dimensions, this paper firstly describes the environmental crisis and the South East Fishery's ITQ management system. Secondly, Christy's (1973) paper is employed as a catalyst to compare the theoretical socio-economic outcomes with the actual operation of ITQs. The brief South East Fishery experience suggests that the logic behind ITQs is correct. Production has become reorganised. Operators are not only fewer, but also embrace professionalism, quality, efficiency, and the operation of the free market within the industry. However, because of the local idiosyncrasies of this multi-species fishery, the legislation over territorial waters, and the absence of alternative employment, fishers have adopted non-quota fishing techniques and entered seas under New South Wales jurisdiction. Without a social re-adjustment policy or buy-out scheme, the AFMA's objective of ecologically sustainable development cannot be attained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in the ‘West’ has invoked wide debate on the impacts of Islamophobia on Australian Muslim citizens. Noble and Poynting (‘White Lines: The Intercultural Politics of Everyday Movement in Social Spaces’,Journal of Intercultural Studies31 (2010): 489–505) speculated that racism impacts young Muslims’ sense of belonging in and acrosspublic spheres.Despite Australian Muslim testimonials of racial experiences occurring in the public space, the impact of racism on how ethnic and/or religious minorities, such as Muslims, translate this sentiment into mental maps of exclusion has not hitherto been empirically examined. This paper reports on the findings of an online survey conducted in July 2014 with young Australian Muslims living in Sydney. Young Muslims suggest that there is a geographical distribution of Islamophobic spaces across Sydney, focused in the regions of Sutherland, Sydney’s North Side/Eastern Suburbs, and the Upper North Shore. In comparing young Muslims’ ‘mental maps’ of Islamophobia and existing evidence of Sydney’s ‘geographies of racial attitudes’ illustrated by Forrest and Dunn in 2007 (‘Constructing Racism in Sydney, Australia’s Largest EthniCity’,Urban Studies44 (2007): 699–721), the need for culturally specific, empirical examinations of (in)tolerance across Australian cities is emphasised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In an increasingly urbanised and ageing world the spatial distribution of an older population is a matter of growing scholarly and policy interest. Much of the research on this topic has tended to draw on one of two key measures: structural ageing, or the ratio of older cohorts to the rest of the population, or numeric ageing, which simply counts the number of older people without reference to the rest of the population. This paper argues that, on their own, these measures have limitations, and that considerable value lies in assessing the interplay between numeric and structural ageing measures. The population ageing matrix, a theoretical framework that classifies the demographic dynamics of population ageing across metropolitan areas, is presented and examined through the case study of Perth, Western Australia. The value of the matrix to reveal patterns and trends missed by analyses of single measures is investigated and areas that are experiencing changes in the composition and size of the ageing demographic are identified. The paper also reflects on the implications of these findings for policy and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper unravels a variety of perspectives about the concept of social mix, drawing on a case study of the implementation of a redevelopment project in Melbourne. The first part provides a theoretical overview of two internationally predominant academic debates around policy interpretations of this concept, namely social mix as a means for promotion of social inclusion; and as a state-led form of gentrification. These two arguments are usually presented as one, with social inclusion and reductions of concentrations of disadvantage one side of the ‘social mix policy’ coin, and state-led gentrification the other. This paper contributes to the national and international literature on public housing estate regeneration and social mix policies through exploring the question of whether these two ideas about social mix were shared by different stakeholders as the ‘messy’ process of redevelopment unfurled. Interviews were conducted with public tenants, homeowners and homebuyers, private renters and local service providers at the Carlton Housing Estate to explore the diverse perspectives of various stakeholder groups as estate design and implementation shifted. The study identified that as a result of the global financial crisis and the developers exerting pressure on government there was a gradual move away from perceiving social mix as a policy tool for encouraging social inclusion at Carlton, between public housing tenants and private residents, towards a different form of social mix and inclusion. Contrary to intentions, the revised form of social mix at Carlton was perceived as a means to harness market capital and attract higher income residents to the inner city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the Murrumbidgee catchment of the Murray-Darling Basin, wetlands, rivers and other waterscapes are important features of Country for Aboriginal peoples. The Murrumbidgee River is the most heavily regulated river system in the Murray-Darling Basin. Discussion around the use of Murrumbidgee water is framed as a conflict between sustaining rural communities and using water to support ecological values, yet the voices of Aboriginal custodians are relatively unheard in this discussion. Using culturally important wetland plants as a starting point, this paper explores the understanding and perception of some Aboriginal people in relation to their Country and water. The grief of participants as they experience the degradation of their Country was palpable. The strong message that Country should be considered in its entirety—including ecological, social and cultural aspects—contrasts with current ownership and other institutional arrangements. Improving opportunities for communities and water managers to share knowledge and information, an openness to use Aboriginal wisdom, and careful ongoing management of environmental and cultural water have the potential to achieve positive cultural and ecological outcomes in the Murrumbidgee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, migration from Mainland China (MC) to Australia has become increasingly significant. In contrast to previous migrant waves, post-2000 MC-born migrants in Australia are more likely to be highly skilled and/or financially independent, and often migrate under skilled, business and investment visa programs. Though scholarship has explored various facets of MC-born migrants' settlement in Australian cities, the spatial dynamics of settlement, and change over time associated with these shifts in socio-economic profile, have remained unexplored. This paper draws on three census periods, and employs a local indicator of spatial autocorrelation together with a geographically weighted regression. We conclude that the settlement patterns of MC-born migrants in Australia do not follow the 'straight-line' assumptions of spatial assimilation theory, nor are they tied explicitly to socio-economic factors in the majority of capital cities. Instead, the settlement patterns of MC-born migrants vary by city: Sydney and Melbourne display the most spatially segmented settlement patterns; while Adelaide and Perth exhibit increasing levels of concentration as the number of MC-born migrants grows. Results indicate that while MC-born migrants are somewhat likely to cluster at the early stage of group formation, within-group spatial patterns are articulated by social attributes as the group grows in size and significance in a metropolitan context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a vibrant literature on urban informality has emerged in urban geography. A key claim of this literature is that informality is not only present in cities in the Global South, and that the concept can be usefully applied to understand important dimensions of urbanisation in cities in the Global North. In this paper, we apply insights from that literature to an examination of informality in Australian cities, as a means of deepening our understanding of changes currently underway in urban governance and politics. Drawing on that literature and our own research into informal practices in Australian cities, we examine the forces that help to produce informality, the diverse forms and agents of informality, the forms of authority that they enact, and their relationship to formal economies, regulations and politics. We use examples of informal housing, informal labour, do-it-yourself music venues, graffiti and its regulation, food foraging, and queer community building in Sydney to illustrate our arguments. We conclude by reflecting on the lessons learnt across these diverse cases for our understanding of urban governance and politics in Australia, and offer an agenda for further research on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement, Australia committed to reduce emissions significantly by 2030. In a country highly urbanised and dependent on fossil fuels as its primary energy source, one key avenue for meeting these commitments is energy transition in the built environment. Australia has emerged as a leader in the design and construction of high-performance buildings in the premium commercial office sector. In this paper, we address a significant gap in understanding the diverse mechanisms through which building energy transition is being constituted in this sector, focusing on Sydney and Melbourne. In the absence of substantive publicly available data, we draw on mixed methods comprising a database developed around high-performing CBD office buildings and qualitative interviews with a range of sectoral stakeholders. We characterise the building stock in each city, and document five trends constituting energy transitions. We demonstrate that building energy transitions are not only shaped purposefully by dominant governance regimes but also by opportunistic responses to specific material and commercial conditions and legacies in each city. Thus the urban built environment affords significant opportunity for energy transitions, but pathways towards such transitions are necessarily multiple and ultimately shaped by material as well as institutional geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and development programs for improved productivity and profitability in horticulture have focused largely on understanding biophysical factors and production and harvest technologies. By contrast, relatively few studies focus upon the existing status of a rural community in terms of demographics, rationales and motivations underlying current farm management practices. Understanding such factors is increasingly important as pressures from climate change, globalised market forces, land-use competition and ageing workforces intersect on farms and for farmers. This paper explores experiences among macadamia growers in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, with the aim to better understand and improve the targeting of development programs to meet grower needs and aspirations, for improved industry resilience. Results suggest that growers are a diverse, ageing demographic who came into the industry with a variety of skill sets. Noting a lack of previous farming experience for many growers, we highlight the need to consider information transfer and succession planning, along with aspirations to consolidate properties and skills. New engagement approaches are recommended, with tailored extension to different grower groups. To aid with this process, a classification tree was developed for the purposes of separating growers into groups with different support needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National boundaries and border cities have been transformed globally. This is partly due to neoliberal globalisation, the continuous formation of a ‘borderless world’ and partly to the global ‘war on terror’. Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory (NT), is on the northern coast of Australia, bordering its overseas Asian neighbours. Far away from the main Australian population centres in the south, the city grows slowly, relying mainly on Australian government investments, infrastructure, and the incorporation of defence programs in the north. The rise of Asia, as well as Australia's increasing economic reliance on Asia, has created new opportunities for Darwin's growth. The development of Asian economies has resulted in growing global investment in resource extraction in NT. Asia, though, has been seen as a key threat in the modern history of Australia. This national sensitivity is underpinned by the global ‘war on terror’ in which Australia is deeply involved. Australia has tight border control regimes and a growing military presence on the northern border area. This paper examines how these co-existing but contradictory dynamics have reshaped the urban development of Darwin City. The consequential social and spatial patterns are identified and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, social scientists have turned increasing scholarly focus to the ‘post-colonial city’, as it relates to the lived experiences and socio-cultural worlds of urban-dwelling Indigenous peoples. In Australia, this literature is concerned primarily with issues of identity, power and representation in big cities. More conventional geographic analyses regarding socio-spatial, economic and demographic aspects of urban Indigenous experience have been mostly absent from this discourse. In this paper, we begin to address this gap within the literature by identifying notable socio-spatial, economic, and demographic features of urban Indigenous experience in regional Australian cities. We draw on census and administrative data to empirically examine Indigenous residency, presence, and uneven housing market access in regional urban centres. The analysis builds a national comparative picture regarding population change, tenure type, crowding and housing affordability in these localities. At the same time, it ‘drills down’ to explore some of the drivers and implications of change against these indicators in one case study locality: Geraldton Western Australian. This case study analysis, based on recent fieldwork, grounds the broad identified trends in a localised narrative, illuminating some of general and specific socio-economic and socio-spatial dynamics that shape urban life for Indigenous peoples in regional Australia and the implications of these dynamics for broader questions of co-existence between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern about rapid population growth in Australia's large cities and slower growth in many non-metropolitan areas has stimulated a range of government policies attempting to lift non-metropolitan growth rates. However, there is relatively little research on which to base these policies. It would be helpful to understand more about the consequences of current demographic trends continuing and the effects of alternative migration patterns. This paper presents sub-national population projections for Australia over the horizon 2011–2041, basing the projections on more socially meaningful Remoteness Areas instead of common statistical geographies. Three sets of projections were generated: aCurrent Directionscenario in which recent demographic trends are maintained, aRegional Immigrationscenario in which more immigrants settle in regional and remote areas, and aMetro Exodusscenario in which there is increased internal migration from metropolitan to non-metropolitan areas. The future of Australia's population geography is shown to be one of spatially varying growth and population ageing, and continued metropolitanisation. In regional areas rapid population ageing will lower natural increase rates and thus reduce overall growth, resulting in a falling share of the national population. Policy measures attempting to increase the share of growth in regional areas will struggle against natural demographic forces operating in the opposite direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outstanding natural and cultural values of Cape York have been acknowledged for decades, but those decades have been characterised by deep conflict. Non-government organisation intervention in local politics has seen a forceful push for nominating some or all of the Cape York Peninsula as a World Heritage Site. We illuminate the authorised heritage discourse at work in heritage-making, and highlight contested issues of ownership, governance, authenticity, and value. These themes contribute to the possibility of marginalising the voices of local people who wish to contribute to heritage-making in Cape York. Politics infuses all aspects of heritage-making in Cape York, and the specific experiences on Cape York reflect larger political processes occurring in World Heritage discourse. The paper draws on interviews undertaken in May and June 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social housing in Australia is at a significant juncture. High levels of housing stress, increasing levels of socio-spatial polarisation and reduced government funding are posing complex policy challenges. Social mix policies are one response to these challenges, arising from the problematisation of social housing estates as socially excluded. This problematisation is examined through case studies of two Sydney social housing renewal projects: Telopea and Riverwood North. Drawing on interviews with government, private-sector and not-for-profit housing practitioners, the paper identifies two distinct discourses of social exclusion within this problematisation—culture of poverty discourse and equity discourse—that shape the implementation of social mix. These discourses reveal that implementing social mix is more complex than simply managing the cohabitation of residents in different tenures. Rather, the practice of social mix is embedded within discourses about the nature and causes of social exclusion. These discourses, in their turn, inform the multiple and sometimes conflicting aspirations pursued through social mix policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the publication of Fagan and Webber’s Global Restructuring in 1994, Australia has experienced one of the most significant commodities-led economic booms in its history. Increasing global demand for iron ore, natural gas, coal and a host of other resources from the early 2000s contributed to a period of sustained economic growth, low unemployment and rising per capita incomes. While popular and political discourses have tended to focus on the national benefits of the boom, in reality the processes at play were complex, spatially uneven and highly contested. In this paper, we offer a multi-scalar interpretation of how the global commodities boom has reshaped Australia’s space economy. It reflects on the experience of the Pilbara region of Western Australia, arguing that the boom contributed to fundamental shifts in the nature of territorial development, socio-spatial relations, and economic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation has impacted both the balance of economic power between cities as well as the distribution of economic activities within them. Studies focusing on the impacts of globalisation often investigate one or the other, but rarely tie the two together. In Australian cities, central business districts (CBDs) and inner suburbs since the 1980s have become revalorised as strategic sites for multinational firm activities, complementing an already robust agglomeration of commodities-oriented firms, domestic manufacturing, and state-led industries. This paper compares the spatial organisation of Australian firm activity across Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. It first focuses on how the firms of each of these cities extend overseas through global branch office operations, and then shifts to the distribution of firms within each capital city region. Data are drawn from a complete set of 2196 listed Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) firms with operations in more than 100 countries. We find that while the mix of industries differs significantly between cities, the overall industrial patterns observed are relatively consistent from one city to the next. Australian cities are economically fairly centralised and services-oriented industries in particular are most prominent within CBDs. Sydney’s firms are found to be the most globalised, although all cities have significant numbers of global firms. However, we find that locational requirements are significantly varied from one industry to the next and between firm headquarters and branches. This has implications for planning cities to meet firm requirements in an economy that is digital and globally connected, and for national-level policy that distributes core economic competencies amongst Australian cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have seen substantial growth across many developed-world countries of right-wing populist political parties whose policies oppose immigration and multiculturalism as threats to the majority way of life there. These are exemplified in Australia by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, which was successful at elections there at the turn of the twenty-first century and again in 2016. Part of this party’s rhetoric focuses on the geography of immigrant groups in Australia’s cities, with claims that their members live in ghettos. Is that factually correct? Using data from the 2011 Australian census this paper analyses the distribution of Asians and Muslims (the two groups picked out by One Nation and its leader) at four spatial scales within the country’s 11 largest urban areas. It finds no evidence at all of intensive residential segregation of Muslims, and although there are concentrations of Asians—notably in Sydney and Melbourne—most residents claiming Asian ancestry live in neighbourhoods and suburbs where they form a minority (in many cases a small minority) only of the local population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian farmers navigate their contemporary circumstances through the use of different business and legal arrangements that are shaped by the commercial realities of farming and the aspirations of farm-owning households. In posing the question ‘Family or Enterprise?’, this paper examines the extent to which various household and farm business indicators are associated with different forms of farm ownership, namely sole proprietorships, partnerships, trusts and companies. Results from a postal survey of farm enterprises in Victoria, Australia suggest that both household and enterprise factors contribute to the business structure used, although the strongest determinants appear to be those factors that are less well understood in the rural geographical and sociological literature: household composition, farmer age and farm size. Greater scrutiny of the business instruments deployed by farmers to manage family and enterprise pressures should inform expectations of the fate of family farming in advanced financialised economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population–environment debates in Australia are at an impasse. While the ability of this continent to sustain more migrants has attracted persistent scrutiny, nuanced explorations of diverse migrant cultures and their engagements with Australian landscapes have scarcely begun. Yet as we face the challenges of a climate changing world we would undoubtedly benefit from the most varied knowledges we can muster. This paper brings together three arenas of environmental debate circulating in Australia—the immigration/carrying capacity debate, comparisons between Indigenous and Anglo-European modes of environmental interaction, and research on household sustainability dilemmas—to demonstrate the exclusionary tendencies of each. We then attempt to reorient them in productive ways, by attending to the complexity of environmental sustainability in a context of immense ethnic diversity. Attentiveness to ethnic diversity offers three important insights: (1) Anglo-European Australian understandings of nature and environmentalism are culturally specific, but other perspectives are possible; (2) tensions can arise when ethnic differences in environmental attitude or practice come into contact; and (3) cultural environmental research offers scope to identify ethnically diverse vernacular sustainability practices that should be supported. Each of these threads requires attention in a context where population–environment debates often overlook cultural complexity, and readily spiral into strident anti-immigration sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative Places of Detention (APODs) are a new way of detaining asylum seekers in Australia. The establishment of APODs creates a new formal structure of belonging in Australia which challenges everyday practices of belonging and senses of belonging at the local and national scale. This paper examines practices of belonging which emerged following the establishment of the Inverbrackie APOD in Woodside, South Australia. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, informed by the insights of theories of performativity, this research explores the competing stories of two broadly defined groups (opponents and supporters of Inverbrackie) engaged in a dialogue about asylum seekers, refugees, immigration detention and belonging. While opposition to the APOD was vocal and frequent in the lead-up to the establishment of the detention centre, once the Inverbrackie APOD became operational opponents’ voices began to fade. On the other hand, supporters continued to say things—and more importantly continued to do things—to nurture belonging for asylum seekers in Inverbrackie, Woodside, and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As the social, ecological and economic benefits of green buildings become more established, firms, especially professional service firms, are responding by adopting sustainable office space (SOS). Accelerating this uptake demands a nuanced appreciation of firms’ understandings of and motivations for adopting SOS. Through a qualitative study of professional service firms in Sydney, this paper brings together a decentred understanding of the contemporary firm drawn from the ‘new economic geographies’ approach and theories of corporate social responsibility to trace and interpret the diverse and overlapping motivations shaping the uptake of SOS amongst these firms. The firm is shown to be a site of plurality and agency, governed by multiple logics. Whilst motivations informed by economic logic remain persuasive and pervasive, the adoption of SOS is simultaneously informed by a wider palette of logics, including environmental and social logics. The paper argues that a decentred conceptualisation of the firm brings the multiplicity of firms’ orientations towards SOS into view and, in so doing, has the potential to inform a politics of intervention for steering firms towards more socially and environmentally sustainable behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A consistent finding in the literature on Indigenous peoples is the importance of the sustainability of land, language and culture. All three are related, with the maintenance of one helping to protect the others. This paper uses a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey of the Indigenous Australian population to look at the factors associated with individual measures of sustainability. Geography matters for those in remote areas who are much more likely to have participated in hunting, fishing and gathering than those in non-remote areas and somewhat more likely to be learning an Indigenous language. However, those in remote areas are somewhat less likely to have participated in Indigenous cultural production. Participation in the mainstream economy is not necessarily a barrier to these aspects of wellbeing as those with high levels of formal education were more likely to speak, understand or be learning an Indigenous language. While important in their own right, such aspects of sustainability also have the potential to directly contribute to narrower measures of social and emotional wellbeing. A positive relationship was found between the sustainability of Indigenous land, language and culture and an Indigenous person's subjective emotional wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over two centuries people from Makassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi came to northern Australia with the onset of the northeast monsoon winds. They came in search of trepang that, with the help of Indigenous Australians, they collected and traded on to China. Their impact on the Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land was considerable. Along with sharing language, technology and culture, they built relationships, many ongoing, that are celebrated in Yolngu art, song and stories. These stories of contact are well known to many archaeologists and anthropologists but for many Australians the only place where they come into contact with these stories is in a museum display. In this paper I examine the ways in which these stories are disseminated by two national museums, the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. As important ‘lieux de mémoire’ or ‘sites of memory’, they tell of Macassan visits to northern Australia as part of Australian history. In both cases not only are the stories situated in the past but both Macassan and Indigenous Australian voices are largely absent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International governmental bodies, such as the World Trade Organisation, are an increasingly prominent feature of global agri-food governance. They are instrumental not only in the dismantling of trade barriers but also in the promotion of a range of rules and standards. These rules are aimed broadly at harmonising national policies and practices so that differences are reduced and free trade is enhanced. Harmonisation is a crucial aspect of modern practices of governing, yet it has so far been given little critical attention in the agri-food and broader social science literature. Focusing on two contested policy fields with important consequences for Australian rural areas-quarantine regulations and the approval of genetically modified crops for commercial release-this paper examines how global forms of governing relating to risk assessment are constituted, rendered workable, debated and reconfigured at a national level as part of an 'assemblage' of trade liberalisation practices. We argue that the practice of harmonisation at a national scale is a complex process in which sovereignty is increasingly dispersed as national risk assessment processes are contested by corporations, trading partners and domestic political actors. The adoption of international rules may reinforce state sovereignty by legitimising desired policy changes, but it may also undermine domestic social, economic and environmental agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, the New England Strategic Alliance of Councils (NESAC) was formed in a successful effort by its member municipalities to avoid forced amalgamation by the NSW government in its (then) program of compulsory council consolidation. The Armidale-Dumaresq, Guyra, Uralla and Walcha Councils, as well as the New England Weeds County Council, formed a 'strategic alliance' under the auspices of NESAC. Over the past 5 years this alliance of councils has developed a model of shared service provision. However, in early 2009, the Walcha Shire Council dramatically announced that it would leave NESAC. This momentous decision raises several interesting questions and may have broader lessons for shared service provision in Australian local government. This paper thus seeks to augment the existing embryonic literature on shared services in Australian local government by analysing the withdrawal of the Walcha Shire Council from NESAC through interviews with the general managers and mayors of the participating organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of socio-economic well-being in resource-dependent communities has been one of ongoing interest for geographers, rural sociologists and economists. While much research focuses on the impacts of industry downturn and closure on well-being, this paper is focused on the implications of large-scale resource development and rapid growth in boomtowns. In contrast to a long tradition of research in other parts of the developed world, relatively few studies explicitly examine the relationship between resource reliance and socio-economic well-being in Australia's resource-dependent regions. Within the context of a nationwide resources boom, this paper presents an analysis of resource dependence and socio-economic well-being in the remote mining towns of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Port Hedland and Karratha-Dampier in Western Australia. The paper looks into the anatomy of the resources boom in terms of local demographic and economic change, and examines a range of socio-economic indicators, such as income, cost of living, housing affordability, welfare receipts and unemployment. The paper then contemplates the implications of rapid growth in Western Australia's resource boomtowns and the associated challenges for regional governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ABS 2006 Post-Enumeration Survey was extended to include a sample of localities from the whole of Australia, thereby providing an estimate of census net undercount reflective of the enumeration in remote Indigenous settlements for the first time. The results revealed substantial undercounting of the Indigenous population in certain jurisdictions. At the same time, census counts in many locations were substantially higher than demographic factors could account for. The analytical and policy issues that arise from this revolve around a simple question: what credence can we give to observed spatial patterns of Indigenous population change? This paper seeks to provide an answer by establishing the spatial relationship between population change and net migration at the small area level. This reveals the detailed geography of census undercount and 'overcount' with the former common in remote areas and the latter most evident in regional towns and cities. The findings raise important policy issues about the proper interpretation of Indigenous population change data and the nature of estimates used to determine fiscal resourcing for Indigenous policies and programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]