Search

In 2023, Australian voters defeated a constitutional amendment to establish a First Nations' Voice to Parliament. This representative body would have been empowered to make representations to parliament and executive government. It was proposed by First Nations people as the first stage in a Voice, Treaty, Truth process of political and constitutional reform. As the implications of this defeat are considered, it is instructive to examine what lessons New Zealand's politics and policies of Māori self‐determination may contribute to local deliberations, including on the principles that could inform treaties such as those under consideration in the state of Victoria. The ongoing point of contention in both countries has profound implications for how and why policy is made, for whom and by whom. The point of contest is over who, in practical political terms, “owns” the state and, therefore, its policymaking systems? Are First Nations people shareholders in state authority, or should they reside always on its periphery? If not, what are the terms of their inclusion? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both Australia and New Zealand, Indigenous peoples have called for alternative non-colonial political arrangements. In October 2023, Australians voted in a referendum against distinctive Indigenous participation in public policymaking, which had been proposed as a step toward a more inclusive political system. On the same day, New Zealand elected a new Parliament, leading to the formation of a government comprising three parties that had campaigned against what they saw as excessive Māori political influence. Comparing these developments and the histories of the two countries raises questions about liberal equality, democratic citizenship, and whether all or just some citizens should own the liberal democratic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Projected student enrolment growth places the Australian higher education system on the precipice of significant change, leading to philosophical debates about how the system should respond. One suggested policy change is that resources be redirected from non-research intensive regional universities to other providers. The Liberal Party is the senior partner in any future Coalition Government, and its education spokesperson has outlined a vision for Australian higher education which contemplates the closure of some regional universities and the diminution in status of others to teaching-only institutions. However, the Liberal Party's policy proposals are likely to be countered by political and economic considerations that make them unlikely to succeed. The confidence in regional universities' continuance as both teaching and research institutions expressed in this article is presented not as an apology for their public support, but as a pragmatic demonstration that there are sufficient market and political rationales to protect and justify their presence and form.

The scientific community has shown considerable interest in Industry 4.0 due to its capacity to revolutionise the manufacturing sector through digitalisation and data-driven decision-making. However, the actual implementation of Industry 4.0 within complex industrial settings presents obstacles that are typically beyond the scope of mainstream research articles. In this paper, a comprehensive case-study detailing our collaborative partnership with a leading medical device manufacturer is presented. The study traces its evolution from a state of limited digitalisation to the development of a digital intelligence platform that leverages data and machine learning models to enhance operations across a wide range of critical machines and assets. The main business objective was to enhance the energy efficiency of the manufacturing process, thereby improving its sustainability measures while also saving costs. The project encompasses energy modelling and analytics, Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD), renewable energy integration and advanced visualisation tools. Together, these components enable informed decision making in the context of energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of a number of government reports, there have been numerous systemic changes in Indigenous education in Australia revolving around the importance of partnerships with the community. A forum with our local Dubbo community established the importance of working together and developed a model which placed the child in an ecological perspective that particularly noted the role of Elders and the place of the child in the family. However, there was also the issue of curriculum and mathematics education to be addressed. It was recognised that a colonised curriculum reduces the vision of what might be the potential for Indigenous mathematics education. This paper reports on the sharing that developed between our local community and some researchers and teachers from Sweden, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. It has implications for recognising the impact of testing regimes, the teaching space, understanding the ways children learn, the curriculum, and teacher education. As a result of these discussions, a critical pedagogy that considers culture and place is presented as an ecocultural perspective on mathematics education. This perspective was seen as critical for the curriculum and learning experiences of Indigenous children.

Purpose: Data-driven quality management systems, brought about by the implementation of digitisation and digital technologies, is an integral part of improving supply chain management performance. The purpose of this study is to determine a methodology to aid the implementation of digital technologies and digitisation of the supply chain to enable data-driven quality management and the reduction of waste from manufacturing processes. Design/methodology/approach: Methodologies from both the quality management and data science disciplines were implemented together to test their effectiveness in digitalising a manufacturing process to improve supply chain management performance. The hybrid digitisation approach to process improvement (HyDAPI) methodology was developed using findings from the industrial use case. Findings: Upon assessment of the existing methodologies, Six Sigma and CRISP-DM were found to be the most suitable process improvement and data mining methodologies, respectively. The case study revealed gaps in the implementation of both the Six Sigma and CRISP-DM methodologies in relation to digitisation of the manufacturing process. Practical implications: Valuable practical learnings borne out of the implementation of these methodologies were used to develop the HyDAPI methodology. This methodology offers a pragmatic step by step approach for industrial practitioners to digitally transform their traditional manufacturing processes to enable data-driven quality management and improved supply chain management performance. Originality/value: This study proposes the HyDAPI methodology that utilises key elements of the Six Sigma DMAIC and the CRISP-DM methodologies along with additions proposed by the author, to aid with the digitisation of manufacturing processes leading to data-driven quality management of operations within the supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Te Pati Māori (The Māori Party) proposes removing the British monarch as head of state so that Te Tiriti o Waitangi’s (the Māori text of the Treaty of Waitangi) (Te Tiriti) promise of fulfilling partnership may be realized. The ACT (Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) Party’s alternative argument is that partnership is among a body of treaty principles that give Māori people (Indigenous peoples of New Zealand) political advantage over others. These alternative perspectives transcend time because neither partnership nor equality as the ACT party presents it meets the possibilities of liberal democratic citizenship that may be read into Te Tiriti. Instead, equality is enhanced by interpreting Te Tiriti as constituting a commonwealth with hapū (sub-tribes) as existing political communities, and kāwanatanga (government) as a new one, with powers and responsibilities grounded in equal tikanga (cultural practices and proper conduct). The powers of government may then be shared, through participatory parity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greenhouse gas emissions reduction in the industrial sector focusses on energy-intensive industries (EIIs) since they comprise a significant proportion of industrial sector emissions. However, collective emissions from non-EII industries is substantial and organisations require guidance to reach carbon neutrality. This study addresses the research question 'What methodologies and modelling tools do industrial organisations use to plan and subsequently achieve carbon emissions neutrality?' There is a research gap between general, independent, emissions abatement measures and organisation-specific plans developed using in-house or commercial software and/or energy management consultants. This study proposes a detailed, open access, cross-sectoral and strategic methodology aimed at the organisational level. A Supplier-Input-Process-Output-Customer (SIPOC) methodology is used in an adapted Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control (DMAIC) framework to provide a high-level, visual pathway to carbon neutrality, clearly indicating the supplier, input, process, output, and customer for each carbon mitigation step. The Analyse step involves an energy audit, and heat and renewable energy studies to generate modelling tool input. The Improve step models the potential emissions abatement measures in priority order of efficiency, new technology, heat recovery, and renewables, with the budget or timeline as the dominant parameter. The model outputs are a carbon neutrality waterfall as the pathway, and a sensitivity graph to highlight influential modelling inputs. Future work includes modelling tool development, and validation with a case study of a medical device manufacturing facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disparity between public datasets and real industrial datasets is limiting the practical application of advanced data analysis. Therefore, industry is stuck in a reactive mode regarding their maintenance strategy and cannot transition to cost-effective and energy-efficient proactive maintenance approaches. In this paper, an integration-type adaptation of the CRISP-DM data mining process model is proposed to combine domain expertise with data science techniques to address the pervasive data issues in industrial datasets. The development of the Industrial Data Analysis Improvement Cycle (IDAIC) framework led to the novel repurposing of knowledge-based fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) techniques for data quality assessment. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the proposed framework facilitates a transition from reactive to proactive problem solving by firstly resolving known faults and data issues using domain expertise, and secondly exploring unknown or novel faults using data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implications and utility of the Treaty of Waitangi to the Maori people as it plays a significant role in supporting their legal and political claims is discussed. The Treaty is viewed in different perspectives, which explains the perceived racial divisions in modern New Zealand politics.

When analysing Indigenous public policy, crisis is best seen as the moral crisis of an enduring idea rather than the crisis of sporadic and unconnected instances of policy failure. In Australia and New Zealand, states use manufactured crises of Indigenous personal deficiencies to justify colonial authority. A justification which may be countered by positioning colonialism itself as the point of crisis. From this perspective, the crisis in Indigenous public policy is not resolved by the state becoming better at policy-making or more attentive to the egalitarian distribution of public resources. Instead, it is in the non-colonial possibilities of Indigenous self-determination that paths beyond crisis may lie. In practical terms, by ensuring spaces of independent Indigenous authority alongside spaces of distinctive culturally framed participation in the public life of the state. The potential for such arrangements in Australia is discussed with reference to a proposed First Nations' Voice to Parliament and possible treaties between First Nations and the state. For New Zealand, their potential is discussed with reference to te Tiriti o Waitangi's affirmation of independent Māori authority (rangatiratanga) and substantive state citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial hegemony distinguishes relationships between the Australian state and Indigenous nations. British government was violently established and there was no accommodation with the Indigenous populations to allow settlement to proceed, as occurred through treaties in Canada and New Zealand. Indigenous arguments for treaties in Australia are, however, well established. Notwithstanding some Commonwealth and state and territory governments considering such agreements over the past 40 years, none have been concluded, and more modest forms of recognition have been alternatively proposed. In 2015, following extensive Indigenous advocacy, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition appointed a Referendum Council to consult on an amendment to the Commonwealth Constitution to recognise Australia's first peoples. The recommendation of a Voice to Parliament and a Makarrata Commission to oversee truth telling and agreements to allow 'coming together after a struggle' suggested a transformative ambition beyond the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition's expectations. Makarrata does not stipulate treaties as an ideal form of agreement, but in raising the possibility, the Council added to the concept's political momentum. This article discusses the place of treaties in contemporary Australian discourse, including treaty negotiations that are in progress in Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory. It uses examples from New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi to discuss their possibilities and limits in Australia. From these examples, two overarching arguments are made. Firstly, that treaties are potentially transformative, not because they may settle historical grievances, but because their required mutual recognition of each party's enduring political standing means that they define ongoing, just terms of association. Secondly, the substantively different political arrangements that they presume mean that they are not merely instruments of egalitarian justice and are instead concerned with the distribution of political authority – Indigenous authority over their affairs and through a distinctive and culturally contextualised state citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Zealand state developed from a treaty between the British Crown and hapū (sub-tribes) in 1840. The te Reo (Māori language) text and the English version of the agreement are fundamentally different. Breaches of this treaty and tension over how the political relationship between Māori and the Crown should proceed are ongoing. In 2019, the Cabinet Office issued a Circular instructing bureaucratic advisers of the questions they should address when providing advice to ministers on the agreement's contemporary application. In this article, we use Critical Tiriti Analysis (CTA) – an analytical framework applied to public policies – to suggest additional and alternative questions to inform bureaucratic advice. The article defines CTA in detail and shows how using it in this way could protect Māori rights to tino rangatiratanga (a sovereignty and authority that is not subservient to others) and substantive engagement, as citizens, in the formation of public policy. This article's central argument is that the Circular reflects an important evolution in government policy thought. However, in showing how the Circular privileges the English version (the Treaty of Waitangi) over the Māori text (Te Tiriti o Waitangi), the article demonstrates how Māori political authority remains subservient to the Crown in ways that Te Tiriti did not intend. We show through the conceptual illustration of the care and protection of Māori children, despite the significant evolution in government thought that it represents, these rights are not fully protected by the Circular. This is significant because it was Te Tiriti, with its protection of extant Māori authority and sovereignty, that was signed by all but 39 of the more than 500 chiefs who agreed to the British Crown establishing government over their own people, but who did not agree to the colonial relationship which may be read into the English version. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon neutral operations are becoming important owing to tightening of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions restrictions and increasing social corporate responsibility. Circular economy and total site integration are current hot topics, requiring resource-efficient industrial processes; this can be achieved with waste heat transfer and process integration. This study comprises a systematic mapping of research into waste heat transfer across total sites, with the goal of providing a structured overview of the research area to identify and quantify existing research. Fiive research questions are used to determine the publication landscape; the distribution of research categories, themes, modelling methodologies (Pinch, mathematical optimisation, hybrid); and the quantifiable benefits of waste heat transfer in terms of utility reduction, based on case studies. This work is expected to benefit researchers in understanding the research patterns and directions of total site heat integration, and in identifying the research gaps. Future work includes using the identified popular graphical modelling method of Pinch analysis for process integration of a medical device manufacturing site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing industries are constantly identifying ways to automate machinery and processes to reduce waste and increase profits. Machines that were previously handled manually in non-standardized manners can now be automated. Converting non-digital records to digital formats is called digitization. Data that are analyzed or entered manually are subject to human error. Digitization can remove human error, when dealing with data, via automatic extraction and data conversion. This paper presents methodology to identify automation opportunities and eliminate manual processes via digitized data analyses. The method uses a hybrid combination of Lean Six Sigma (LSS), CRISP-DM framework, and "pre-automation" sequence, which address the gaps in each individual methodology and enable the identification and analysis of processes for optimization, in terms of automation. The results from the use case validates the novel methodology, reducing the implant manufacturing process cycle time by 3.76%, with a 4.48% increase in product output per day, as a result of identification and removal of manual steps based on capability studies. This work can guide manufacturing industries in automating manual production processes using data digitization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines liberal political theory's limits and possibilities in relation to indigenous self-determination. It shows that while the liberal tradition has provided theoretical rationale to the colonial project it is also equipped to rationalise a politics of substantive indigenous inclusion. The article introduces the recourses that exist within liberal theory for non-colonial interpretations of citizenship, democracy and sovereignty. It shows how these concepts may be interpreted to contribute to a liberal theory of indigeneity as a theory emphasising independent indigenous authority on the one hand and culturally contextualised and substantive participation in the politics of the state on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]