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This article undertakes a cross-national comparison of the aerospace sectors in two 'liberal' countries, the UK and Australia, examining how several multinational firms engage with engineering skill institutions: regulation of entry to profession, entry-level and ongoing training. The paper empirically demonstrates and theoretically argues that the social partners and employment protection institutions can in certain contexts play an important role in professional skill development. Institutional legacy matters, shaping multinational responses and providing distinct resources for various actors including unions. Tension between existing skill institutions ('country' or 'sector' effects) and the capacity of multinationals (MNCs) to shape practices are addressed. Both country cases demonstrate how MNCs may be able to shape practices in such a way that they create 'MNC' effects, defined as a combination of large firm/subsidiary, and 'corporate' effects, that affect engineering skill development for other firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forecasts predict a growing shortage of skilled nursing staff in countries worldwide. Nurse migration is already a common strategy used to address nursing workforce needs. Germany, the UK, and Australia are reviewed here as examples of destination countries for nurse migrants. Agreements exist between countries to facilitate nurse migration; however, it is not evident how nurse migrants have contributed to data on which these arrangements are based. We examined existing primary research on nurse migration, including educational needs and initiatives to support policymakers', stakeholders', and health professions educators' decisions on measures for ethical and sustainable nurse migration. We conducted a rapid evidence assessment to review available empirical research data which involved, was developed with, or considered migrant nurses to address the research question: what are the findings of research that directly involves migrant nurses in producing primary research data? A total of 56 papers were included. Four main themes were identified in this research data: Research does not clearly define what is meant by the term migrant nurses; discrimination is often reported by migrant nurses; language and communication competencies are important; and structured integration programs are highly valued by migrant nurses and destination healthcare employers. Migrant nurses continue to experience discrimination and reduced career opportunities and therefore should be included in research about them to better inform policy. Structured integration programs can improve the experience of migrant nurses by providing language support (if necessary), a country-specific bridging program and help with organisational hurdles. Not only researching migrant nurses but making them active partners in research is of great importance for successful, ethical, and sustainable migration policies. A broader evidence base, especially with regard to the views and experiences of migrant nurses and their educational support needs, should be promoted to make future immigration policy more needs-based, sustainable and ethically acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an empirical overview of housing tenure transitions in Australia, the UK and the USA during a period of unprecedented economic instability in 2001–2017. Focusing on the neglected theme of episodic homeownership, we profile those who straddle the tenure divide by moving into and out of renting from time to time. Using panel data we model this 'churn' in three jurisdictions, showing that even the dislocation of a global financial crisis does not eclipse the independent impact of life events during rental spells. We find that whatever individuals bring from prior ownership, shocks occurring during a rental spell – unemployment, loss of a partner, additional dependent children – can be sufficient to prevent return. Churning is also health- and age-selective, adding 'drop-out' among the old to 'lock-out' for the young as a policy concern. Even those who successfully regain owner-occupation increase their credit and investment risks without necessarily improving their housing position. Overall 'churners' are a diverse constituency whose life chances are powerfully shaped by episodic ownership: what they share is time spent in an unacknowledged, under-instituted space between tenures where there is latent demand for innovative financial services and untapped potential for radical policy shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Litigants are now required to consider mediation and can be penalized under the Civil Procedure Rules if they unreasonably refuse to use an ADR procedure. As litigants are expected to participate in mediation, there are mounting concerns, particularly in common law countries that mandate attendance before accessing the courts, that parties are obstructing the process by engaging in 'bad faith'. Some common law countries have used the concept of 'good faith' negotiation to design rules or codes to regulate conduct in mediation. The English and Welsh jurisdiction identifies mediation as a type of negotiation, but has no developed concept of negotiating in 'good faith'. This paper first reviews the case law on good faith negotiation in England and Wales, before considering the concept of 'good faith' in mediation and assessing whether or how the conduct of parties in mediation could be controlled. The concept of good faith in mediation may not provide the answer because of definitional difficulties and a review of Australia, Hong Kong and the USA indicates that many rules or procedural codes are confined to a 'minimum level' of participation. Furthermore, court control of conduct is limited by the rules of without prejudice in negotiation and confidentiality rules in mediation, which limits court review unless there is substantial impropriety such as blackmail or duress. This paper proposes that the issue of the conduct of parties in mediation must be given serious consideration, particularly in view of judicial pressures in some quarters for courts to be given increased powers to direct litigants to mediate. Mandating mediation may lead to more incidences of bad faith or to party involvement without serious engagement. An argument is made to draw on the already developed principles of unreasonable behaviour in litigation in order to define the expectations of reasonable conduct in mediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditions and warranties, which are generally referred to as policy terms in insurance contracts, are crucial in the determination of the rights and obligations of the contracting parties. The article examines the enforcement of policy terms in insurance contracts at common law and the legislative measures that have been deployed in some common law countries, including Nigeria, the United Kingdom and Australia, to ensure fairness as well as to balance the inequality in the bargaining power of the contracting parties. In as much as the principle of freedom of contract will generally be honoured by the court, the paper argues that through legislative intervention in policy terms in these countries, the principle is being discountenanced with, in appropriate cases, in order to effectuate the just and reasonable expectation of the insured. It concludes by proffering suggestions to identified lacunae in the Nigerian Insurance law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International trade poses a serious and growing threat to biosecurity through the introduction of invasive pests and disease: these have adverse impacts on plant and animal health and public goods such as biodiversity, as well as food production capacity. While international governmental bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) recognise such threats, and permit governments to protect human, animal, and plant life or health, such measures must not be applied in a way that is restrictive to trade. This raises a fundamental (but little-examined) tension between effective biosecurity governance and the neoliberal priorities of international trade. In this paper we examine how such tensions play out in the different political and geographical contexts of Australia and the United Kingdom. A comparative approach enables close scrutiny of how trade liberalisation and biosecurity are coconstituted as compat-ible objectives as well as the tensions and contradictions involved in making these domains a single governable problem. The comparative analysis draws attention to the policy challenges facing Australia and the UK in governing national biosecurity in a neoliberal world. These challenges reveal a complex geopolitics in the ways in which biosecurity is practised, institutionalised, and debated in each country, with implications for which pests and diseases are defined as threats and, therefore, which commodities arc permitted to move across national borders. Despite efforts by the WTO to govern biosecurity as a technical matter of risk assessment and management, and to harmonise national practices, we contend that actual biosecurity practices continue to diverge between states depending on perceptions of risk and hazard, both to agricultural production and to rural environments as a whole, as well as unresolved tensions between internationalised neoliberalism and domestic concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection of perinatal data within Queensland, A ustralia, has traditionally been achieved via a paper form completed by midwives after each birth. Recently, with an increase in the use of e-health systems in healthcare, perinatal data collection has migrated to an online system. It is suggested that this move from paper to an ehealth platform has resulted in improvement to error rates, completion levels, timeliness of data transfer from healthcare institutions to the perinatal data collection and subsequent publication of data items. Worldwide, perinatal data are collected utilising a variety of methods, but essentially data are used for similar purposes: to monitor outcome patterns within obstetrics and midwifery. T his paper discusses current practice in relation to perinatal data collection worldwide and within Australia, with a specific focus on Queensland, highlights relevant issues for midwives, and points to the need for further research into the efficient use of an e-health platform for perinatal data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguing for the merits of an antipodean perspective that embraces the linked historical and current relations between Tasman, British and other worlds, this paper focuses on the majoritarian responses of those of English ancestry in Britain and within the British diaspora to wide ranging changes that potentially challenge their national supremacy in both contexts. After briefly assessing some of the approaches to exploring the identities of the 'English/British' separately in Australia and New Zealand, some suggestions are made about how majoritarian narratives are best reframed, conceptually and methodologically, both within the antipodes and the broader contexts within which they have always been placed. The adoption of an antipodean perspective is deemed necessary in order to understand how changes in majority status and shifts in national identity are mutually constituted within and across the above worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kyoto protocol was the first step taken by governments towards implementing the Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992). This seeks to prevent dangerous 'global' warming and its impacts; the assumption being that all or most of this warming is caused by human action and is therefore susceptible to mitigation. Only governments in developed countries have so far committed themselves to emission reduction targets and thus to potentially major interventions in their economies and societies. At Kyoto, in December 1997, developed countries negotiated national commitments. Their net reductions of six greenhouse gases measured from a 1990 baseline, are to be achieved between 2008 and 2012. However, Australia may increase its net greenhouse gas emissions by 8%, while the UK agreed to a cut by 12.5%, considerably above the EU average cut of 8%. Examples of 'common but differentiated'responsibility have major economic implications, especially for trade. The mandatory British reduction target - if the Kyoto Protocol comes into force - is considerably below a promised 20% reduction, a target to which the UK government remains committed. This paper asks whythe EU/UK and Australia adopted such different positions. It does soby analysing internal factors and forces that have shaped domestic policies. It is argued that while similar motivations produced different outcomes, the Australian government also received less biased and broader advice from its experts. The Australian case, as well as thatof the EU/UK, thus presents a most interesting contrast to Swedish climate policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary accounts of the first generation of white men born in Australia seemed to describe them as physically superior to their British counterparts. Social and economic historians provide evidence that they were indeed taller and explain the phenomenon in terms of diet and living standards. This article suggests that contemporary observations also reflected the eighteenth-century British concerns that “civilized” life in Britain threatened the essential nature of men. Popular medical literature highlighted the problems, emigration was promoted as the solution, and men’s personal writings reveal that they understood and acted on these messages. The physical superiority of Australia’s firstborn white men was not unexpected. But the short-lived optimism around these “new” men highlights ongoing tensions between men and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the responses of Australian-based News Ltd. to negative perceptions arising from the telephone-hacking scandal involving British newspaper "News of the World." It presents some small insights into the executive culture of News Ltd. drawn from the testimony of executives John Hartigan, Rupert Murdoch and Peter Blunden. It suggests that News must transform its executive culture to be more reflective and consistent in its leadership practices to restore public trust.

Prompted by the occasion of Gordon Brown's parliamentary apology to British child migrants in February 2010, Kristen Rundle reflects upon the experience of her grandfather who was sent to Australia as a child migrant in 1934. Integrating research from family records, government documents and her own background as a legal scholar, she explores the social and political architectures that facilitated the child migration scheme during her grandfather's time, and which constituted distinctive conditions of vulnerability from which some families of child migrants are yet to recover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, liberal welfare regimes have begun to treat lone parents as workers rather than as carers. This has happened in conjunction with an ongoing ‘moral panic’ about the need to develop policies to invest in children, and to protect them from adult worlds. The purpose of this article is to analyse contradictions within and between these strands of policy in two liberal welfare states — Australia and the UK. The article argues that recent welfare-to-work policies in both countries bring into sharp relief the contradictions inherent in assumptions that welfare states make about the agency of lone parents as workers and carers, and of children as incompetent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Having attracted intense academic interest, the trafficking of women for the purposes of prostitution constitutes a contemporary battle-ground for competing agendas on issues as diverse as globalization, migration, labour relations and the regulation of sexuality. This article deconstructs the policy discussions that have determined the parameters of this engagement. In particular, it examines competing perspectives on the appropriate remit of the offence and the significance of consent within it. In a context in which the UN Optional Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish the Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children retains a marked element of ambiguity in these regards, this article goes on to examine two examples of the way in which such questions have been resolved at the domestic level. Drawing upon fieldwork interviews conducted with officials and interest groups in the UK and Australia, this article highlights the extent to which each country has developed a markedly different anti-trafficking response. It is submitted that the roots of this divergence lie in their respective regulatory and ideological approaches to the sex industry. Regardless of such definitional diversity, however, it is submitted that both jurisdictions share substantial common ground in their experiences of implementing these different regimes. On the basis of this finding, this article challenges the way in which polarized campaign groups have dominated anti-trafficking analysis. Thus, the central claim of this article is not that such policy-level engagements are unimportant (clearly they are) but that their seeming intractability should not distract us from what might be done at a concrete level to bring about a more effective anti-trafficking response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]