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Copyright of Australian Journal of Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Australia, macadamia orchards are attacked by four main insect pest groups. Management and control of three of these key pests currently relies on broad‐spectrum insecticides whose long‐term future is questionable. Of the 23 insecticides registered for use in macadamia in Australia, 19 face issues affecting their availability and 12 are presently not approved in the EU, the USA or Canada. These international markets may refuse produce that does not adhere to their own insecticide use standards, hence Australian produce may be excluded from market access. Many of the potential replacement integrated pest management methods of pest control are generally considered less effective by the industry and have not been adopted. There are 17 insect pest groups identified by the industry, any of which have potential to become major problems if broad‐spectrum insecticide options become unavailable. Thirteen pest groups need urgent attention as they are at risk of losing current effective control methods, and no replacement solutions have yet been developed. The lag period for research and development to identify new chemical and biological control solutions means there is now an urgent need for the macadamia industry to craft a strategy for sustainable pest management for each pest. Critically, this industry strategy needs to address the vulnerabilities identified in this paper, identify potential solutions for any cases of market failure and consider funding mechanisms to address these gaps. On economic and sustainability grounds, potential biological control options should be explored, especially in cases where insecticide control options are vulnerable. © 2024 The Authors. Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines economic impacts of coal mining across local government areas (LGAs) in Australia. Three main distinguishing features of this research are a) the analysis through the mining boom and bust cycle, b) a focus on small regional areas within one state in Australia and c) the use of socio‐economic indicators in addition to the standard income and employment indicators. An analysis of socio‐economic changes in the LGAs during the business cycle provides insights as to how coal mining affects sustainable development of regions in the long run. Focus on one state reduces endogeneity in statistical analyses. The use of various socio‐economic indicators helps understanding of the reported negative impacts of mining on local economies. The results show that the coal mining sector creates a spillover effect resulting in an increase in non‐mining employment. The income indicators suggest that the coal mining sector creates positive impacts as indicated by the decreased share of low‐income families in the area. However, some potential risks to housing are found since an increase in coal mining employment leads to increased financial stress due to increased rental costs for low‐income households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The release of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Change agreement highlighted the importance of global sustainability internationally. Here, we outline a vision and strategies for developing northern Australia that demonstrate how a focus on sustainable prosperity can both expand historical approaches and current government plans and integrate the biophysical realities with the social, political, and cultural characteristics of the region. We highlight examples of the significant horizontal and vertical integration opportunities that this expanded vision and related strategies provide for (a) land (carbon farming, targeted food production systems, and native title arrangements); (b) water (water resources management); (c) energy (renewable energy production, storage, and distribution); (d) workforce (culturally appropriate ecotourism, Indigenous ranger programs, and protected area management); (e) knowledge services (health care and innovative employment opportunities); and (f) governance (greater participatory governance). We found that realisation of even 10% of these emerging opportunities over the next 10 years alone could result in economic growth worth over AUD 15 billion and 15,000+ jobs for northern Australia as well as the further ecological and social benefits derived from a sustainable prosperity strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There is growing realisation among environmental and social studies researchers that people's decision‐making about water use conforms to their internal norms and beliefs, which are developed in social and cultural contexts. Little research, however, has addressed the possible impacts that ethnic and cultural diversity may have on domestic water use and management. This paper presents the results of a study conducted in Sydney, with specific reference to questionnaire findings. Among respondents from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, significant differences were observed in terms of perceptions, specific knowledge, attitudes, and self‐reported behaviours in relation to water use and conservation. The disparities identified were not masking socio‐demographic and economic characteristics but were the result of a series of constructs closely tied to ethnicity, including cultural value, environmental experience, language preference, and information access. As a factor explaining variation in the engagement of pro‐conservation behaviour, ethnic status was found to be more useful than some socio‐economic factors. The study highlights the importance of including ethnicity and cultural sensitivity issues in the decision‐making process of environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) encompass environmental, social, and economic dimensions which are linked to the characteristics of place and have a strong local dimension. They are interconnected at local scales in complex ways which makes progress toward them difficult to predict. To understand how these interconnections play out at the local scale, we used knowledge coproduction to undertake systems mapping for the purpose of sustainability assessment framed by the SDGs. We partnered with a local community in Australia as our coproduction case study, with a multistage engagement process to understand how they interpreted sustainability and their vision for a sustainable community. We found that codeveloping a map of the local system with participants can elicit far more societal interconnections between the SDGs than might be expected without knowledge coproduction, as the participants viewed the system through a social lens. Issues from the social dimension of sustainability, in particular, were intensely local in origin and effect which suggests that attempts to represent them at national or global scales are unlikely to succeed. We teased out the interconnections between societal and nonsocietal issues with local knowledge, which enhanced the ability to identify effective actions to tackle broader sustainability problems. Our results demonstrate that knowledge coproduction can improve understanding of what sustainability is at the local scale and how it can be achieved, enabling the transformative change required to achieve the SDGs. Plain Language Summary: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a United Nations agenda to guide nations to achieve sustainability. To help nations reach the goals, we also need action from cities, businesses, and communities. The SDGs interact in complicated ways, and sustainability assessment is used to understand the best ways to achieve them without too many negative side‐effects. We worked with a regional community in Australia to learn what sustainability means to them and what they believe they need to reach a sustainable future. We discovered that by working collaboratively with the people in the community to understand how their town works—looking at it from social, economic, and environmental perspectives—we learned much more about the important social factors in their community than if we had not worked with them. This is a positive outcome because these factors are often missed or left out in sustainability assessment. The assessment is more representative of how the community functions as a result. Overall we have a clearer understanding of the causes of problems in the local context, which means we can test different actions to fix those problems and help the town become more sustainable. Key Points: Knowledge coproduction used to map systems for sustainability assessment at the local scaleLocal‐scale coproduced systems mapping resulted in a stronger focus on societal elements than generally observed at larger scalesReflection identified strengths and weaknesses of the process and facilitated understanding of the coproduction types and modes involved [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Policy‐makers are frequently required to consider and manage conflicting public values. An example of this in the environmental domain is biodiversity offset policy, which governments worldwide have adopted as a mechanism to balance environmental protection with socio‐economic development. However, little work has examined administrative practices underpinning biodiversity offset policy implementation, and how the adoption of coping strategies to manage value conflicts may influence resulting policy outcomes. This study fills this research gap using a case study of Australia's federal biodiversity offset policy under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. Using data from 13 interviews of federal policy administrators, I show that the introduction of a new policy in 2012 enabled a shift from the use of precedent to a technical approach for setting offset requirements under the EPBC Act. Yet, multiple sources of policy ambiguity remain, and administrators have adopted post‐approval condition‐setting, or 'backloading'—a form of cycling, facilitated by structural separation—to defer detailed assessments of offset requirements until after biodiversity losses are approved. Backloading thus undermines the effectiveness of environmental policy and will persist as coping strategy unless policy ambiguity is reduced via legislative amendments and adequate resourcing of biodiversity conservation. Points for practitioners: Biodiversity offset policy requires administrators to manage conflicting environmental and socioeconomic values.Technical decision tools reduce reliance on case‐by‐case decision‐making, but multiple ambiguities persist.Backloading (post‐approval condition‐setting) defers values conflict, but reduces transparency, accountability, and policy effectiveness.Policy ambiguity must be reduced at the political level to facilitate effective biodiversity conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly‐restrictive temporary labour migration schemes are commonplace throughout the Indo‐Pacific region and continue to expand amid sustained policy enthusiasm for 'migration‐development'. Yet, the developmental benefits of guestworker schemes are routinely evaluated according to narrow economic criteria, with little consideration given to transnational family separation and the displacement of socially reproductive labour that sustains everyday life. 'Migration', 'development' and 'care' are deeply interlinked political economic processes, yet they have been theorised in partial isolation. We challenge this analytical disconnect, situating the developmental implications of guestworker migration in relation to the total social organisation of labour, and argue for a more holistic 'migration‐care‐development' nexus that foregrounds unsustainable disruptions to care economies. We ground our framework in the context of Australia's Pacific Labour Scheme to illustrate the developmental consequences for Pasifika households and communities, highlighting the need for 'decent care' policies to address care deficits in support of sustainable and gender‐equitable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Australia increasingly faces devastating weather events and natural disasters associated with climate change, strong political engagement by governments is necessary to implement effective policies that address the health impacts of climate change. Keywords: Climate change; Politics; Public health; Public policy EN Climate change Politics Public health Public policy 196 202 7 03/21/23 20230315 NES 230315 Urgent and sustained political engagement is needed to address the health impacts of climate change Recent extreme weather events and natural disasters in Australia, such as the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires and catastrophic floods throughout 2021-2022, have resulted in considerable negative impacts for community and individual health and wellbeing. However, whereas countries around the world are taking action to mitigate climate change, Australia lags, ranking 59/64 in the Climate Change Performance Index.[1] Australia's political engagement on health and climate change is particularly poor. The previous conservative Liberal-National Coalition governments (2013-2022) downplayed the health impacts of climate change, and avoided the use of climate change terminology when discussing the health, social and economic impacts of extreme weather events. [Extracted from the article]

There is a robust stream of research studying the external and internal drivers of cleaner production practices, yet little of this research has combined an examination of the natural environment and the demography of human agents. Building on natural resource dependence theory (NRDT), this study establishes that wine firms are highly dependent on nature (temperature, rainfall) and face uncertainties surrounding access to eco‐system services, which act as a driver of cleaner production practices. Further, because women leaders are more likely than their male counterparts to demonstrate sensitivity towards and respect for the natural environment and sustainable development, a hypothesis is put forth that gender‐diverse leadership shapes (moderates) the main effects relationships. By studying a sample of 1886 wine firms operating in Australia over the years 2004–2018, these relationships are tested and the hypotheses confirmed. The results are discussed, with implications for theory, empirical research, practice and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past literature documenting the relationship between board diversity and organizational sustainability performance resulted in inconclusive findings. The study draws on the resource dependency theory to investigate how board gender diversity and age diversity influence the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of organizations. The qualitative data were collected through in‐depth interviews of 19 board directors from 14 organizations operating in Australia. Data were analyzed following the six‐phase process of thematic analysis. The findings indicate that board gender and age diversity enhance CSR investment and approach decisions, and, in turn, they improve the CSR performance of organizations. The effectiveness of these relationships depends on the number of women directors, organizational culture, industry regulations, and organizational life‐cycle stage. This study provides insights into the "black box" of boardroom dynamics. The findings suggest that efforts need to be made at the organizational and policy levels to increase board gender and age diversity for a sustainable performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unprecedented numbers of Indigenous peoples in Canada and Australia are working in the mining industry. This study explores the proposition that Indigenous mining employment is a form of local development for these peoples. We establish links between the literatures on Indigenous work in the mining industry with development theory. For employment to be considered a form of local development we maintain that it must be understood through the framework of self‐determination, as this applies within a colonial context. A range of potentially enabling requirements is identified, including effective regional governance, career progression, gender equity and equality, and free prior and informed consent. We argue that, where such conditions are not in place, Indigenous peoples in settler states, such as Australia and Canada, risk swapping one kind of dependency for another: the welfare state for the mining economy. It is important that future research test the legitimacy of these conditions, while exploring alternative value propositions when mining companies seek to negotiate access to Indigenous peoples land and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, sustainable development goal 2 (SDG2) specifically seeks to 'End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture'. However, there is no clear prescription for how this goal should be achieved which allows various donors adopting diverse strategies to all claim they are contributing to SDG2. This article examines whether policies of five donors on food security and agriculture in the Pacific Islands region are likely to help to achieve SDG2. Fundamentally, the current and future wellbeing of many Pacific Island peoples, many of whom live on small, geographically dispersed islands with limited market access, is strongly tied to their abilities to produce food for themselves. This is somewhat overlooked by bilateral donors from Australia and New Zealand who invest relatively small amounts in the agriculture sector of Pacific countries and show little interest in supporting people's food security through local sourcing and production for subsistence. From an SDG2 perspective of ending hunger for all people, it is positive to see that, by contrast, two multilaterals have shown commitment to a more balanced and holistic approach to food production in the Pacific Islands region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The study sought to draw new perspectives on how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is shaped and created within the resource sector. The study focused on examining the role of external stakeholders in influencing the CSR strategies implemented by Australian resource companies. Data were gathered by semi‐structured interviews with key stakeholders involved with 25 resource companies located in South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. Consistent with sociological theories of CSR, stakeholders such as business and community leaders, non‐government organizations (NGOs), and government employees were able to influence CSR by empowering communities to participate in CSR, bridging cultural divides between companies and communities, and linking companies to key society standards. This was facilitated by the expression of personal ethical values and knowledge sets by stakeholders and where relevant those of their organization. A range of stakeholders were active agents of change, bringing in new ideology, skills, and expertise, and, at times, challenging existing corporate practice. This process was underlined by relationship building and trust. Stakeholders effectively introduced higher ethical values to concepts of public accountability, environmental sustainability, and social justice in line with personal and organizational ethics. The study also identified factors which promoted stakeholder influence and gave stakeholders power within CSR. This included a range of institutional‐level factors such as regulatory and legal frameworks, company policy, and cultures, but also interpersonal skills and abilities of the individuals involved. The study highlights the strategic benefits of stakeholder involvement in CSR within the Australian resource sector and discusses implications for the broader resource industry. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is continuing debate about the consequences of climate change and an increasing emphasis placed on the disclosure of social and environmental indicators by organisations. Universities have been traditionally known as places where intellectual inquiry and advances in knowledge are paramount. Therefore, there is an expectation that universities would place much emphasis on sustainability reporting to fulfil the needs of a range of stakeholders. The objective of this study is to investigate the nature and extent of sustainability disclosures reported by Australian universities in stand-alone sustainability reports. The findings suggest significant differences in the nature and extent of sustainability disclosures. This study has implications for policy-makers and university administrators and is a call to senior university leaders to take up the challenge and contribute to the global conversation with regard to sustainability reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accusations of mendicancy raise the question of government dependency in Australia. This article develops an Age and Economic Activity measure of dependency which incorporates age-based and behavioural approaches reflecting the various components of dependency: welfare recipients, government employees and youth. Government dependency varies by state and territory and is influenced differently by each component. Analysis accounting for varying age structures fails to explain the differences. Projections of future government dependency to 2050 find increases for all jurisdictions under three scenarios. Policy development to mitigate the fiscal challenges of an ageing population should address the components which influence government dependency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Australia attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for improving health and well-being of Australia.