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Enrolment in university enabling programs has expanded dramatically in the last decade as universities strive to increase enrolments, particularly of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Offering enabling study by distance education has been part of this expansion with the benefit of providing access to a wider enrolment base. The purpose of this study was to compare enabling program completions and articulations to undergraduate study as well as student academic performance between those students who undertook enabling by internal mode and those who opted for distance education. Archival data from the host university student records system was extracted covering the time period from 2001 to 2011. Statistical analysis found significant differences existed in both course completion and articulation for students enrolled in online learning versus face-to-face teaching. Analysis also revealed academic achievement in the enabling programs, as measured by Grade point Average (GPA), to be higher among internal students compared to distance students.

Determining social values for protecting coastal assets, including coastal parks, beaches and foreshores, is important because of potential losses with climate change impacts. In a case study application in Victoria, Australia, the travel cost method was applied to value the use of camping parks by visitors, and the choice modelling technique was applied to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) of visitors and residents to avoid future losses in foreshore campground access and beach width, through protection and adaptation efforts. While both visitors and residents had similar values for park and campsite, and beach protection, residents valued beach protection as more important whereas visitors placed greater importance in protecting parks and campsites. Visitor values were higher for sites and beaches closer to metropolitan Melbourne. These results provide government agencies and coastal managers with better information about protection values for low lying coastal assets and will enable more informed decisions to be made about investing in coastal protection and the management of specific resources in the face of sea level rise and climate threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Ageing in place is one of the greatest desires of elderly people. Assistive digital technologies could potentially delay the institutionalization of the elderly people and allow them ageing in place. This study develops a population-wide cost estimating framework for adopting digital technologies that can improve the quality of life of elderly people through examining an Australian region. Methods: We developed a five-stage cost estimation framework, which involved progressive forecasting of elderly population and direct cost estimation methods. The forecasting and cost estimation models have been set for a 10-year period because the prediction accuracy from cross-sectional data is better in the short to medium term compared to the long-term. For cost estimation, we categorised the ageing population on the basis of the number of chronic diseases that they have contracted. Costs of assistive technologies were collected from open sources. The model has been tested in the Fitzroy and Central West, a regional area of Queensland in Australia. A stakeholder panel discussion in a workshop format was used to validate the appropriateness of the proposed framework and the study findings. Results: This study identified eight common chronic diseases with different comorbidity patterns in Australia. We also identified the required assistive technologies to assist patients with chronic diseases. This study estimated that annual per capita cost for technological intervention could range from AUD 4,169 to AUD 7,551 on the basis of different price margins of the technologies. Conclusion: The approach of categorising the aged cohorts on the basis of the number of chronic diseases helps estimate population-wide costs compared to using single technology intervention costs for a particular chronic disease cohort. The cost estimation framework and the method developed in this study can assist the government to estimate costs for ageing-in-place programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 15 years Australia has been trialling conservation tenders and other market based instrument approaches to generate environmental outcomes, particularly on private lands. The best known of these is the BushTender auction for vegetation protection in Victoria, begun in the early 2000s. Subsequently, nearly 100 other tenders for biodiversity protection have been run in Australia with substantial variations in application and methodology generated by a mix of both intended design and case study differences. The number of separate conservation tenders that have been performed, and the variations in environmental targets, state jurisdictions, case study circumstances, design and implementation, provides a rich data base of projects for analysis – unique at the international level. The review section of the paper covers three broad areas. The first aim is to provide an overview of the various tenders and their history and design in different settings. The second is to review their application, particularly in relation to auction design, metric design and contract design aspects, while the third is to identify the extent to which tenders provided more cost-effective outcomes than alternatives such a fixed rate grants. An additional goal is to explain why, after so many trials, conservation tenders are not more widely used in Australia. Key conclusions are that the multiple trials show that tenders are robust, relatively simple to apply and deliver more cost-effective allocations of public funding than other grant mechanisms. The reasons for their limited use can be related more to political and bureaucratic forces and inertia rather than to economic and design limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Report cards are an increasingly popular method for summarising and communicating relative environmental performance and ecosystem health, including in aquatic environments. They are usually underpinned by an Ecosystem Health Index (EHI) that combines various individual indicators to produce an overall ecosystem health “score”. As a result of public water quality concerns, an integrated means of monitoring and reporting on aquatic ecosystem health was needed for the Fitzroy Basin in central Queensland, Australia. The Fitzroy Partnership for River Health was formed to address this need, and developed an EHI and report card for the Basin using existing monitoring data collected from various third parties including regulated companies operations and government. At 142,000 square kilometres, the Fitzroy Basin is the largest catchment draining to the World Heritage Listed Great Barrier Reef. The Fitzroy Basin provides an example of how to deliver an effective aquatic ecosystem health reporting system in a large and complex river basin. We describe the methodology used to develop an adaptive EHI for the Fitzroy Basin that addresses variability, complexity and scale issues associated with reporting across large areas. As well, we report how to manage the design and reporting stages given limitations in data collection and scientific understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial efforts are being made by industry and government in Australia to reduce adverse impacts of pastoral operations on water quality draining to the Great Barrier Reef. A key target is to achieve rapid adoption of better management practices by landholders, but current theoretical frameworks provide limited guidance about priorities for improving adoption. In this study information from direct surveys with landholders in the two largest catchments draining into the Great Barrier Reef has been collected and analysed. Study outcomes have important implications for policy settings, because they confirm that substantial variations in adoption drivers exist across landholders, enterprises and practices. The results confirm that the three broad barriers to adoption of information gaps, financial incentives and risk perceptions are relevant. This implies that different policy mechanisms, including extension and incentive programs, remain important, although financial incentives were only identified as important to meet capital and transformational costs rather than recurrent costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As emissions from the global road freight transport sector continue to rise, an understanding of how emissions are produced, estimated and measured is increasingly important. This article identifies the key influences on greenhouse emissions from heavy-duty diesel trucking, and evaluates the reporting options currently available under the Australian National Greenhouse Emissions Reporting Scheme. The latter is done through a case study of emissions modelling, used to illustrate the trade-offs in different reporting options. The article concludes that routine reporting based on method 2 should deliver more accurate reportable emissions, as well opportunities to better understand emissions profiles and strategies for reducing emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing seafood supply chains is important at both individual business and industry levels to ensure profitability, efficiency, and consumer satisfaction. Such assessments are typically aimed at understanding the structure of the supply network and at optimizing processes within the chain. Yet, identifying broader supply chain challenges (e.g., access to inputs, market access barriers) and opportunities (e.g., increasing demand) at an industry level is also important to inform industry development strategies. The aim of this case study is to identify challenges and opportunities within the four oyster species' supply chains in Australia (Sydney rock oyster - Saccostrea glomerata , the Pacific oyster - Crassostrea gigas (also referred to as Magallana gigas), Angasi oyster - Ostrea angasi, Black lip oyster - Saccostrea echinate/Striostrea (Parastriostrea) mytiloides) and to offer options on how to address these. Data was collected through supply chain stakeholder interviews during October 2019 and August 2020. Findings suggest that challenges vary depending on the production scale of the industries as low-volume producing oyster industries grapple with production related challenges, while challenges of large-volume producing oyster industries also center around value creation. Opportunities are predominantly seen in addressing the identified challenges. [Display omitted] • Supply chain challenges and opportunities vary based on industry production scale. • Larger industries are challenged by value creation within the supply chain. • Smaller industries struggle with production and supply consistency. • Opportunities are mostly seen in addressing identified challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special events play an important part in tourism and recreation choices in Australia, and many receive funding from various levels of government. However, the economic case for funding special events often focuses on estimates of expenditure, employment and indirect impacts rather than estimates of economic benefit or consumer surplus. The study discusses the application of the travel cost method for estimating consumer surplus associated with a special event. The event studied is the annual four-day 'Gemfest' in the sapphire fields of Central Queensland. Surveys were conducted in 1998 and 2002, and the derivations of the appropriate models, welfare calculations and comparisons over time are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processing/wholesale supply chain model has been historically adopted by farmers of Australia's Sydney rock oyster (SRO) (Saccostrea glomerata) industry to transfer their product to consumers. The model has been criticized for restricting farmer's price bargaining power and for offering limited added value to the product. Recent anecdotal reports suggest that there has been a change in how oysters are supplied by farmers to the market. This case study aimed to map the supply chain of SROs at an industry level, to identify and to describe the existing supply and value chain models within the broader supply network structure, and to investigate factors that determine how farmers choose supply chain models. A literature review, a web-content search, and semi-structured interviews with supply chain stakeholders were undertaken to achieve these aims. Results suggest that the processing/wholesale model still plays a dominant role within the broader supply network. However, other models of supply chain coordination that generate higher returns have emerged in response to farmer's dissatisfaction with the processor/wholesaler model. Findings suggest that oyster farmers choose specific distribution models based on the net financial value they generate and other considerations such as farmers' skills, interest in maximizing profits, knowledge about consumer demand, time/effort to develop network links and existing trust-based relationships. • Processors/wholesalers continue to be the dominant players in the distribution of oysters. • There is an increasing shift to higher value generating distribution models. • Change is occurring due to farmers' dissatisfaction with the processing/wholesale model. • Perceptions of net-benefit determines farmers' choice of distribution model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]