Tristram Shandy and the Limits of Copyright Law; Or, is a Blank Page an Idea?

Australian copyright law does not give copyright protection to ideas. However, depending on the analysis used, certain types of creative outputs can be treated as ideas, rather than the protectable expressions that are given the status of a copyright work. Denial of the status of work will affect the economic right of the creator, and they will also be denied moral rights. This paper explores copyright law's adoption of a Lockean conception of ideas through the 18th century literary property debates, but shows that in the 18th century, the concept of ideas had not hardened into the forms used now. Instead, the law accepted and acknowledged that 'books' or 'compositions' (in their conceptual sense as well as their physical sense) and compositions were literary property. Through the agency of Lawrence Sterne's digressive comic masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, a nine-volume novel published at the height of the 18th century literary property debates, the notion of Lockean ideas, textual sparcity and the concept of the creative process is juxtaposed against the oppositional categories of idea and expression now used in copyright law. It is suggested that the adoption of a concept like 'book' or 'composition' to frame textually or visually sparse creative outputs, could provide a legal recognition for creative outputs now refused copyright protection

Anzac Day 2015

This resource is produced by the Parliamentary Library to assist Members and Senators with their representational and ceremonial duties on Anzac Day. Introduction On 25 April, the anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli in 1915, Australians and New Zealanders honour those of our men and women who have served and died in wars, peacekeeping and other defence operations. It is now 100 years since the landing, and 99 years since Anzac Day was observed for the first time in 1916. The date of 25 April was etched into the national consciousness with the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli. The Anzacs forged a tradition of service and sacrifice that has continued to this day. We remember that more than 1.5 million Australians have served their country in wartime, and more than 100,000 have lost their lives. Anzac Day is Australia’s national day of commemoration to remember those of our own who have fallen. Later in the year on 11 November—Remembrance Day—we pause for a second time, sharing with other countries the tradition of observing the anniversary of the Great War’s armistice to remember the dead of all wars

Scots in Australia: the gaze from Auld Scotia

No abstract available

What is Education for? Situating History, Cultural Understandings and Studies of Society and Environment against Neo-Conservative Critiques of Curriculum Reform

This paper explores some of debates about the nature and purpose of education in the social sciences in the Australian curriculum. It examines recent attempts in studies of society and environment and history curriculum to prepare students for global citizenship and responds to neo-conservative critiques that our "politically correct" curricula does not impart the "truth" about our "European" heritage. This paper argues that while the neo-conservative discourse makes claim to traditional views of knowledge and rationality, its discursive field does not address the broader questions of what sort of education our students require for the twenty-first century

A critical theory and postmodernist approach to the teaching of accounting theory

[Abstract]: This paper outlines my teaching philosophy for the Accounting Theory subject. A Critical Theory and Postmodernist approach is recommended, which makes full use of non-accounting 'tangential material' (Boyce, 2004) and material from popular culture (Kell, 2004; Nilan, 2004). The paper discusses some classroom interactive activities, as well as interview results from interviews conducted with eleven international students and one Australian student at Charles Sturt University. The teaching approach proposed in this paper is to conduct classroom interactive activities which study theories and research results from a range of disciplines in order to illustrate key points that apply equally as much to accounting theories and the accounting research process, e.g. the Positive/Normative dichotomy. Classroom interactive activities are discussed in class using the 'dialogical approach' to education recommended by Freire (1996), Kaidonis (2004), Boyce (2004), and Thomson and Bebbington (2004). Once students gain experience in studying material from outside accounting, the interview results suggest that they are then better motivated (Wynder, 2006) and better equipped to study and evaluate accounting theories

Argument Maps Improve Critical Thinking

Computer-based argument mapping greatly enhances student critical thinking, more than tripling absolute gains made by other methods. I describe the method and my experience as an outsider. Argument mapping often showed precisely how students were erring (for example: confusing helping premises for separate reasons), making it much easier for them to fix their errors

'Catastrophic Failure' Theories and Disaster Journalism: Evaluating Media Explanations of the Black Saturday Bushfires

In recent decades, academic researchers of natural disasters and emergency management have developed a canonical literature on 'catastrophe failure' theories such as disaster responses from from US emergency management services (Drabek, 2010; Quarantelli, 1998) and the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant (Perrow, 1999). This article examines six influential theories from this field in an attempt to explore why Victoria's disaster and emergency management response systems failed during Australia's Black Saturday bushfires. How well, if at all, are these theories understood by journalists, disaster and emergency management planners, and policy-makers? On examining the Country Fire Authority's response to the fires, as well as the media's reportage of them, we use the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires as a theory-testing case study of failures in emergency management, preparation and planning. We conclude that journalists can learn important lessons from academics' specialist knowledge about disaster and emergency management responses

Anzac Day

On 25 April, the anniversary of t he landing at Gallipoli in 1915, Australians and New Zealanders honour those of our men and women who have served and died in wars, peacekeeping and other operations. It is now 98 years since the landing, and 97 years since Anzac Day was observed for the first time in 1916.The date of 25 April was etched into the national consciousness with the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli. The Anzacs forged a tradition of service and sacrifice that has continued to this day. We remember that more than 1.5 million Australians have served their country in wartime, and more than 100 000 have lost their lives.Anzac Day is Australia\u27s national day of commemoration to remember those of our own who have fallen. Later in the year, on Remembrance Day, 11 November, we pause for a second time, sharing with other countries the tradition of observing a silence on the anniversary of the Great War\u27s armistice to remember the dead of all wars.This kit has been produced to assist Members and Senators with their representational and ceremonial duties on Anzac Day. It can be accessed by members of the public, but for copyright reasons many linked items are available to Members of Parliament only

Punishing welfare : genealogies of child abuse

Official statistics on child protection in Australia suggest that child abuse is at crisis levels, providing a context for the most recent legislative and regulatory changes in child protection in Victoria; these promote community-managed services, voluntary care agreements, informal legal processes and fast-tracking of child intervention. This article sets out the rudiments of a genealogical account of the category of child abuse, placing the present events in the context of historical shifts in how the problem of child abuse is conceived and acted upon. It draws attention to new forms of power in relation to the policing of children and families, and their corresponding modes of subjectification that seek to fabricate individual responsibility for the underlying social arrangements surrounding children and families