Meeting the National Interest through Asia Literacy - An Overview of the Major Stages and Debates

This paper traces the evolution of ideas on the question of how Australians might become Asia-literate. It examines the main phases in those government and non-government reports on Asian languages and studies that called for a national strategy for Asia literacy. As well, it explores the major debates about the place of the study of Asia and its languages in Australian education. It contends that the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) commission and acceptance in 1994 of Asian Languages and Australia's Economic Future, known as the Rudd Report (Rudd 1994), was the culmination of more than three decades of debate and lobbying. Also, it argues that the Rudd Report's ambitious long term plan, aimed at producing an Asia-literate generation to boost Australia's international and regional economic performance, was unprecedented. First, an overview of the significance of the Rudd Report is established. Second, the main stages in those reports and documents that advocated the study of Asia and its languages are identified. Third, the core debates surrounding such phases are traversed in order to establish the contested nature of the context for the study of Asian languages and cultures in Australia, prior to the 1992 COAG brief which commissioned the Rudd Report

Co-operative Labour-Management Relations in Australia

Report Presented to International Evidence: Worker-Management Institutions and Economic Performance Conference, U.S. Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations.Report_Hartnett_Australia.pdf: 1377 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Older workers in Australia: A policy perspective

The paper seeks to offer an objective assessment of Australian attitudes towards ageing and age discrimination, through an examination of the literature, the laws, and the current perspectives on workforce ageing. First, the paper offers an overview of demographic ageing and its possible implications for organisations and the overall society, which is then followed by an examination of older workers' issues from legal, sociopolitical, and employment perspectives. The analysis highlights that ageing policy in Australia is increasingly influenced by an orientation towards economic rationalism, which does not adequately address the social construct of ageing and its implications for older workers.Ageing; Australia, diversity; older workers; social policy

Australia’s Pacific Step-Up Foreign Policy as a Response to the Increase of China’s Influence in the Pacific

Abstract The Pacific region has become highly geopolitical due to its economic, strategic, and military significance. Pacific Island countries face several challenges that they are striving to address because many Pacific Island nations have limited resources in terms of finances and skilled human resources, lack of access to technology, capacity building, and economic development, on the other side is prone to natural disasters such as cyclones, tsunamis, and earthquakes, also face challenges in providing adequate healthcare and education services, and are especially vulnerable to climate change whose impact may vary. The issue then becomes the reason for regional and global powers like Australia and China to exercise their capability and aim to fulfill their respective national interests to extent their influence in the region through their foreign policy. Influence pertains to a country’s ability to affect other nations' or international entities' decisions, actions, and behaviors. This research uses qualitative methods and foreign policy theory to address the issue further. In this research, Australia emphasizes its foreign policy to the Pacific using The Pacific Step-Up programme to pursue their interest as a long-standing partner and its neighborhood’s guardians and counter China’s growing presence and influence in the region. Keywords: Australia, China, Foreign Policy, Pacifi

APS200 project – the place of science in policy development in the public service

The report aims to achieve better government outcomes through facilitating the effective use of scientific input in policy development in the public service. The Australian Public Service (APS) is increasingly tasked with solving complex policy problems that require significant input from science in order to address them fully and appropriately. Policy making within the APS needs to be based on a rigorous, evidence‐based approach that routinely and systematically draws upon science as a key element. The Australian Government’s investment in science, research and innovation capacity supports a long‐term vision to address national challenges and open up new opportunities. This investment is also significant, with the Commonwealth providing $8.9 billion to support science, research and innovation in 2012‐13. There is an opportunity to harness this investment to address complex societal challenges, by ensuring that scientific research and advice is more effectively incorporated in the development of evidence‐based policy. There is an opportunity for policy makers to make better use of the science capacity provided by our science institutions, including publicly funded research agencies and other science agencies, universities, Cooperative Research Centres and Medical Research Institutes. There is also an opportunity to capitalise on the willingness of scientists to contribute their research results to the policy making process

Failure and Strategic Projects: Australias Asia-Pacific Vision

This paper uses Australia’s 1980s shift to a new accumulation strategy of ‘international competitiveness’ to examine the role of failure in shaping state strategic projects. The paper argues that the Australian strategy’s gradual shift from an interventionist to a market-led orientation played out in competing representations of failure. Whether particular policies were perceived as failures depended not only on their material effects, but also on the ways in which failure was defined and on the values underpinning those definitions. As representations of failure establish the boundaries between the incremental adaptations that stabilise an accumulation strategy and the more radical failures characteristic of crisis, they illuminate how processes of discursive selectivity ‘fix’ state projects’ temporal, scalar and spatial dimension

The biggest vested interest of all: how government lobbies to restrict individual rights and freedom

The Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan wrote in The Monthly in March 2012 that : Australia’s fair go is today under threat from a new source."To be blunt, the rising power of vested interests is undermining our equality and threatening our democracy."But not all vested interests are private corporations. This paper draws attention to two statutory agencies of the Commonwealth Government that have an explicit, legislatively - defined function to lobby and advocate for public policy change – the Australian National Preventive Health Agency and the Australian Human Rights Commission.These two agencies are effectively taxpayer funded lobbyists, embedded in the public policy process, enjoying privileged access to the institutions of government.The Australian National Preventative Health Agency (ANPHA) received $57,718,000 in the 2012 - 13 Federal Budget to “driv[e] the national capacity for change and innovation around preventive health policies and programs.”ANPHA publicly advocates and privately lobbies for a wide range of Nanny State restrictions on alcohol, tobacco, and unhealthy food.The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) received$23,133,000 in the 2012 - 13 Federal Budget . One oF its primary tasks is to “promote an understanding and acceptance ... of human rights in Australia ... undertake research and educational programs” and “develop laws, policies and programs” for parliament to enact. ( Unfortunately, the AHRC does not disclose how much it of it s budget it directs towards this task.)However the human rights that the AHRC chooses to promote and advocate are highly selective, favouring certain rights above others.As well as being policy lobbyists in their own right, AHRC and ANPHA are central to a pattern of relationships between the government and non - government sectors. Taxpayer money is being used to lobby for the allocation of more taxpayer money.One - third of the submissions to the Preventative Health Taskforce – which established the Australian National Preventive Health Agency – were from bodies which received large amounts of taxpayer funding

The children overboard event: Constructing the family and nation through representations of the other

This thesis presents a selection of representations of the Children Overboard event of October 7, 2001, sourced from the Australian government and print news media. Employing an interpretative and critical discourse approach, I explore how the event could be seen to define the physical and cultural boundaries of the Australian nation. In particular I explore how a threat to nation is articulated. From my analysis of the representations, I identify a rhetoric of the \u27Other\u27 set within the discursive spaces of family and nation. These discourses circulated within the Children Overboard event are pursued in this thesis in terms of agenda setting, post-colonial theory and political liberalism. Specifically, I suggest that the family, as space for moral education and as a symbol for \u27good\u27 citizenship, has political value in order to maintain national borders. This maintenance is articulated in terms of the discourse of exclusion and inclusion. The Children Overboard event demarcates national identities and spaces through the construction and representation of \u27good\u27 Australian citizens and \u27bad\u27 asylum seeker Others. This demarcation is seen to have a long history in Australia, where the nation has relied on a continual representation of the Other in order to define its \u27self. I argue that as a media event and political tool, the Children Overboard event was mobilised to promote a continuing threat to the nation in order to gain support for government policy and legitimise national security. This thesis aims to discover that in order to sanction these representations and policy actions, the event constructed an ideal of family and nation through the representation of an \u27asylum seeker\u27 Other

The Australian media and the \u27push to Asia\u27

In 1989 the Garnaut Report appeared arguing Australian trade would have to take on a new Asian focus. 1 The Hawke Government began to implement its recommendations in 1990-91. But it was not until the ascendancy of the Keating administration that in 1992 the Federal Government launched a major national initiative to integrate Australia more closely with the Australian-Pacific Region. Various federal politicians and departmental spokespersons argued with a great deal of urgency that Asia was a potential economic lifeline for Australia well into the 21st Century. Federal Minister Dawkins said the time had come for Australia to be enmeshed with the dynamism of the Asian-Pacific region . Prime Minister Keating addressing the region said Australia was a friend you can rely on . Foreign Minister Evans said we were not Asian but alongside Asia .