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The agriculture, forestry, and fishing (AgFF) industry sector has had the highest rate of work-related deaths over the past several years. Tractors are the single largest source of occupational fatalities in this industry sector, and tractor rollovers are the largest category of tractor fatalities. The risk of death due to tractor rollovers has been found to be reduced considerably when rollover protective structures (ROPS) are used in conjunction with seatbelts. Increasing the number of tractors with ROPS and seatbelts is one way in which tractor rollover fatalities can be mitigated. The NIOSH cost-effective rollover protective structure (CROPS) project was designed as a demonstration project to determine if CROPS, a type of ROPS, could be retrofitted in the field and were acceptable to farmers. To this end, the CROPS project was successful, with 50 tractors being retrofitted with CROPS in the field. All study participants were asked to complete a pretest, test, and posttest regarding the CROPS retrofit demonstration and their knowledge and attitudes toward ROPS. CROPS demonstrators were the participants who retrofitted their tractors with CROPS. Demonstrators were asked to recruit three to five other participants, known as observers, to watch the demonstration. The rationale was to generate interest in ROPS/CROPS among other farmers and community leaders. Overall, 16% of the participants had youth operating tractors on their farms. Participants reported that 44 youth operated tractors on their farms, more than 25% of these young tractor operators were 4 to 10 years old, and half of the youth operating tractors on participant farms were 13 years old or younger. Only one participant group (demonstrators) included individuals who had all of their tractors protected with ROPS/CROPS for young tractor operators (28%), but they accounted for only one farm each among the New York and Virginia demonstrators. The survey question on ROPS importance did not show an overall increase after respondents participated in the CROPS demonstration project. However, one Virginia observer asked to become a Virginia demonstrator and installed a CROPS on his tractor. Additionally, the questions on attitude toward ROPS showed a general increase in mean scores, with the some of the lowest response categories on the follow-up survey not being selected by respondents, indicating a potentially positive impact on participants' safety attitudes toward ROPS. For the safety attitude questions, the majority remained the same. This study indicates there is still much work to be done to reduce the number of deaths in production agriculture due to tractor rollovers. CROPS could be a valuable addition to the efforts of retrofitting ROPS on tractors in order to reduce the number of deaths due to tractor rollovers.

The effect of playing a violent video game on forgiveness was investigated. A transgression context was created in an experimental setting and video game violence was manipulated in two levels (violence or no violence). Subsequent measures of empathy, hostility, and forgiveness were made. No evidence was found of an effect of video game violence on forgiveness or hostility. Empathy was not affected by video game violence. No evidence of a correlation between empathy and forgiveness, or hostility and forgiveness was found. The findings are incongruent with forgiveness theory that posits that empathy predicts forgiveness, and inconclusive as to whether violent video game playing causes a decrease in forgiveness or an increase in hostility. Suggestions for future research are discussed. v

This article explores the institutional requirements of accountability for an anticorruption agency in a parliamentary democracy. It suggests that approaching public accountability as ‘the satisfaction of legitimate expectations about the use of discretion’ is useful in understanding or designing an accountability regime for such a powerful agency requiring independence from the executive. The approach facilitates identification of a variety of stakeholders and a range of institutional means by which their legitimate expectations may be satisfied. Despite the recognition, in consequence, of multiple agents and channels of accountability, parliament must remain central to the accountability regime and can achieve this through an appropriately designed oversight committee. Examination of a selected Australian agency, the Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission, provides support for these propositions. Particular controversies involving this agency are used to demonstrate the requirements of a par...

Why has Australia not followed Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom in adopting a formal bill of rights at the national level? We argue that the Australian Constitution has made the difference. The Constitution has underpinned a comparatively strong parliamentary check on the executive, weakening the rationale for a bill of rights and impeding legislative initiatives towards this end; thwarted the drive for a constitutional bill of rights; and helped delegitimize statutory approaches to a bill of rights in general and the “dialogue model” in particular. The article ultimately questions the notion that a common approach to rights protection can apply across Westminster democracies.

We examined field distributions of the scavenging snail Amphissa columbiana and looked for evidence of fish predation. In the laboratory, we tested for predation by 6 crab and 10 sea star species and measured the ability of A. columbiana to chemically detect and respond to the sea star Leptasterias hexaclis. A. columbiana occurred from the low intertidal zone to depths of at least 92 m. We found no evidence of fish predation, but 4 crab species readily fed on A. columbiana. Only 3 of 10 sea star species fed on A. columbiana and predation rates were low. The inability of many sea stars to prey on A. columbiana was related to an unusual defense in which the snail inserted its proboscis deep into one of the sea star's ambulacral grooves and bit the radial nerve. The injury, which generally repelled the attacking sea star, immobilized the affected arm, rendering it useless for several days. The biting defense appears to be effective against several sea star species and may reduce predation on A. colu...

The NIOSH cost-effective roll-over protective structure (CROPS) demonstration project sought to determine whether three prototype roll-over protective structures (ROPS) designed to be retrofitted on Ford 8N, Ford 3000, Ford 4000, and Massey Ferguson 135 tractors could be installed in the field and whether they would be acceptable by the intended end users (farmers). There were a total of 50 CROPS. demonstrators (25 in New York and 25 in Virginia), with 45 observers attending the New York CROPS demonstrations and 36 observers attending the Virginia CROPS demonstrations, for a total of 70 participants in New York and 61 in Virginia. The oldest retrofitted tractors were 77 to 62 years old, while the newest retrofitted tractors were 40 to 37 years old. The most frequently retrofitted tractor in the CROPS demonstration project was a Ford 3000 series tractor (n = 19; 38%), followed by Ford 4000 (n = 11; 22%), Massey Ferguson 135 (n = 11; 22%), and Ford 8N (n = 9; 18%). A major issue of CROPS retrofitting was the rear wheel fenders. The effort involved in disassembling the fenders (removing the old bolts was often faster by cutting them with a torch), modifying the fender mounting brackets, and then reinstalling the fenders with the CROPS generally required the most time. In addition, various other semi-permanent equipment attachments, such as front-end loaders, required additional time and effort to fit with the CROPS. Demonstrators were asked to rank the reasons why they had not retrofitted their tractors with ROPS until they had enrolled in the CROPS demonstration program. ROPS "cost too much" was ranked as the primary reason for participants in both states (80% for New York and 88% for Virginia). The second highest ranked reasons were "ROPS wasn't available" for Virginia (80%) and "hassle to find ROPS" for New York (69%). The third highest ranked reasons were "not enough time to find ROPS" for New York (67%) and "hassle to find ROPS" for Virginia (79%). All demonstrators and observers indicated that they were glad to have participated in the CROPS project.

The status and potential of Australian State upper houses have been enhanced, to a greater or lesser degree from State to State, by electoral system change over the past half century. The purpose of this article is to determine the extent to which those changes have been accompanied by efforts on the part of the upper houses to improve performance of their core functions of review of legislation and scrutiny of government. The focus is the parliamentary procedures that facilitate performance of these functions. As well as surveying innovation in, and use of, relevant parliamentary procedures in the five upper houses, the article explains differential outcomes in innovation and effectiveness across the States in terms of the consequences of choice of electoral system and size of upper house membership.

Long overlooked in Nabokov's oeuvre, the 1933 short story "The Admiralty Spire" is a marvel of literary engineering, a triumph, as well as a trumping, of Formalist poetics. Navigating by the theoretical polestars of suzhet and fabula, this article explores the story's rhetorical surface and plumbs its dramatic depths. Within the confines of the epistolary mode, "Spire"'s writer/narrator adopts an unusually animated, and in many ways manipulative, method of narration, systematically juxtaposing competing discursive layers: a scheme that resonates with additional stylistic devices in the text and subtly contributes to the story's affective power. The substance of the narrator's tale—the peculiar chronicle of a romance that expired just as the Revolution sparked— is equally provocative in its thematic articulation. Through the complexities of its character portraits, the nuances of its narrative details, and the cumulative weight of its allusions, the text suggests that the narrator's lost love is a figment of his inflamed imagination: a crisis of authorial reliability that, like the story's intricate design, evokes comparisons with the most prominent works in the Nabokovian pantheon. Far from being discrete concerns, rhetorical mode and narrative matter converge within the story, collapsing the Formalist dichotomy en route to a more expansive transcendence.

It is known that many Liberal–National voters are environmentally conscious. However, the lack of importance of environmentalism in influencing voter behaviour in Australia, compared with socio-economic ideologies and issues, means that few Liberal–National identifiers are likely to find appeal in the parties which place most emphasis on protecting the natural environment, as these parties are generally Left-leaning with regard to socio-economic policy. Given the balance of influences on the vote, Liberal–National vulnerability on environmental issues would seem to be most exploitable by a Right-of-Centre environmental party. This article examines the case of the ‘liberals for forests’, a rare example of just such a party, which had some success in Western Australian State elections in 2001. The paper supports the notion that environmental issues, including those such as logging often linked with Left partisan ship, have the potential to influence vote choice, in a positive sense, on the Right as well as ...

Australia is unique among parliamentary federations in having strongly bicameral parliaments at regional as well as national levels. The purpose of this article is to analyse the evolution of the State-level second chambers, the Legislative Councils, over the past half-century. The main changes have concerned the electoral systems of the Councils, enhancing the latter's democratic legitimacy and recasting the mechanisms for producing differently composed chambers. Democratisation of the Councils, together with the other changes discussed, has brought about a subtle transformation of their role. Their design no longer casts them as conservative checks on the 'people's houses', but makes them key elements within a more fully developed system of 'consensus democracy'. The article concludes by discussing three types of second chamber now existing in the Australian States.

An intriguing feature of electoral systems is that apparently insignificant modifications of their constituent rules can have important consequences. One such potentially important change, following the increase in the size of the Senate in 1984, was the shift from five to six places for each state to be filled at each half Senate election. Attention has been drawn, most notably by Sharman \[1986. 'The Senate, Small Parties and the Balance of Power.' Politics 21(2): 20-3], to the capacity of this change to reduce the representation of small parties, with adverse consequences for the role of the Senate in national government. A decline in Labor's share of the vote and growth in support for minor parties are identified as the primary reasons why the predicted outcomes have not eventuated. The paper speculates about the possible future relevance of Sharman's argument.

In parliamentary systems of government, size of parliament (in absolute terms and, especially, relative to the parliamentary executive) is an important, but often underemphasised, aspect of constitutional design. An analysis is provided of change in the size of national and sub-national parliaments and ministries in one parliamentary democracy, Australia, during the twentieth century. The ratio of executive to non-executive members of parliament has grown dramatically in all Australian parliaments, due to differences in incentives to increase the sizes of parliament and the executive. It is argued that this process has contributed to the weakening of parliaments and limited the potential for parliamentary reform. A proposal for institutional redesign is brieflly discussed.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the term WA Inc (or WA Incorporated) became a by-word in the West Australian community for the failings, especially in their commercial activities, of the West Australian Labor governments of that period. Despite popular and academic interest in the notion of ‘WA Inc’, it is arguable that the conceptual linkage between ‘business’ and government, once central to popular interpretations of the term, remains under-analysed. This article has two main purposes: to illuminate usage of ‘WA Inc’ by identifying several basic referents of the term and relating these to popular criticisms of the West Australian government in the 1980s and to determine the importance of those criticisms, thereby contributing to the larger debate about capacity of government to emulate private sector business.

Understandings of administrative accountability in the “Westminster” democracies remain too closely linked to the institutional arrangements through which accountability has traditionally been exacted in these countries. This has prevented a full appreciation of the nature and extent of changes which have been under way for some time. The article argues that a refined concept of accountability and five subordinate “conceptions” of accountability, corresponding to distinctive sets of institutional arrangements, are needed to comprehend the relevant changes. The identification of multiple options for administrative accountability, in turn, raises questions about how the different accountability systems are to be chosen and combined to maximize accountability without impairing administrative effectiveness.

(1999). Book Review: John Warhurst (ed.), Keeping the Bastards Honest: The Australian Democrats’ First Twenty Years (New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 1997), pp. xv, 306, $A29.95. Political Science: Vol. 50, Local Government in New Zealand, pp. 324-326.

FOR much of the past decade, Western Australian politics has been dominated by a series of scandals, collectively known as WA Inc, over the conduct of government generally and the government's relations with business in particular (see O'Brien, 1991). Growing political pressure eventually resulted in the creation in January 1991 of the Royal Commission into Commercial Activities of Government and Other Matters, headed by three senior members of Western Australia's legal establishment. Commonly re ferred to as the WA Inc Royal Commission, this inquiry ran for some 20 months, took evidence from 541 witnesses, provided work for 130 legal representatives, and cost nearly $30.5 million. The Royal Commission's terms of reference fell into two parts. The first part required it to investigate whether there had been corruption, illegal conduct or improper conduct in a list of 15 matters spanning more than a decade and mainly involving decisions by ministers and state government instrumentalities affecting particular business inter ests. The most celebrated matter to be investigated was a sequence of increasingly desperate attempts to keep afloat Mr Laurie ConnelPs merchant bank Rothwells. The work on this part of the inquiry was completed with the presentation in October 1992 of a six volume re port, entitled Part I, plus a secret appendix containing the Commis sion's recommendations as to the legal proceedings which should follow from its findings. Few instances of illegal or corrupt conduct were discovered by the Royal Commission, but Part I of the Report detailed a number of findings of serious impropriety. The Commission ers concluded that ministers had often elevated personal or party ad vantage over their obligation to act in the public interest. The second part of the terms of refer ence encouraged the Royal Commission to reflect on the lessons of the first part of its inquiry and to report whether any 'changes in the law of the State, or in ad ministrative or decision making proce dures, are necessary or desirable in the

Rather than considering the possible ramifications of each clause of Document No. 1, 1984 separately, this comment will focus on aspects of the document which are consistent with Chinese development strategy in the 1980s and those which acknowledge the principal vulnerabilities of the strategy as they pertain to agriculture. Much of the document is concerned with: (1) consolidating the gains achieved since the late 1970s in transforming rural organization via the production responsibility system and the attendant liberalization of rural markets; (2) extending the current areas of profitability in terms of increased production and the sale of farm goods that have become available through this transformation and especially in terms of reaping the rewards from specialization, hitherto untapped; and (3) more effectively setting the stage for future growth by attempting to generate confidence as to the durability of these organizational, and other critical policy changes. China's current remarkable rate of growth, so quickly attributed both in the west and in the Chinese media, to the success of the responsibility system has, in fact, a number of interlinking sources, the relative impact of which is difficult, and to some extent misleading, to quantify separately.' One source has to do with improvements in the efficiency of resource allocation within localities. Growth from this source is due to price adjustments (especially in the case of foodgrains and cotton) and also to the removal of various restrictions limiting the modus operendi of the farmers, that is, how, what and where to produce. While liberalization in this area is far from complete, it has moved well beyond the circumstances of the mid 1970s, and Document No. 1 emphasizes the Central Committee's intention to move even further along these lines. Another source of current growth is the improvement of resource allocation efficiency among localities and among regions of the country. While this effort is facilitated by the responsibility system and its attendant liberalizing measures (particularly the more recent ones easing interlocality trade restrictions), improvements to date may be primarily due to more suitable national and provincial plans for regional production specialization, and to the guarantee that inputs and necessary traded

The essential ingredients of land-augmenting technical change, required by most developing countries in Asia, have been delineated by Professor Ishikawa and traced during earlier periods for India, Japan, Taiwan and Mainland China. Among all the indicators associated with progress in agricultural development, only three are indispensable to rapid and prolonged growth in yields at the initial stage: improved water control; abundant supplies of fertilizers; and high-yielding seed varieties responsive to these inputs. While the introduction of one or more of these three normally provides some growth in average yields, there are much greater returns when all three are applied appropriately. These are the fundamental ingredients of the “green revolution,” which has provided rapid growth in cereal yields throughout most of Asia and elsewhere in the developing world.