Regional Tourism Organisations in New Zealand from 1980 to 2005: Process of Transition and Change

This thesis is a historical case study tracing the establishment and evolution of Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) in New Zealand. It describes their role, structure and functions and the political processes that have influenced how they have operated and changed from 1980 to 2005. RTOs are examined in the context of government policies, local and national politics and tourism private and public sector relationships. RTOs were central to many of the key recommendations of the New Zealand Tourism Strategy 2010 (NZTS 2010) released in 2001. The NZTS 2010 attempted to address a range of tourism policy gaps created by a policy vacuum in the 1990s whereby the public and private tourism sectors focused mainly on international marketing. This strategy shaped government policy during this decade. The research findings show that although public and private sector institutional arrangements impacting on RTOs have changed, there remains, as in the past, no uniformity in their role, structure, functions and their future financial and political viability remains insecure. The NZTS 2010 raised destination management and its alignment with destination marketing as a major policy issue that needed to be addressed in the decade leading up to 2010 with RTOs having a pivotal role. A generic regional destination management model is presented. Structures and processes incorporated into this model include: a national destination management tourism policy; support for tourism by local government at the national level; a well defined destination management team; community collaboration; and tourism being integrated into the wider planning processes of local government. The model identified requisite building blocks to support regional destination management such as: the provision of staff and financial resources for regional tourism; the building of a high tourism profile in the community; the availability of statistics and research data at the regional level; local government planners acknowledging the impacts of tourism; and the existence of a legal mandate for tourism at the regional and/or local government level. When applying this model to the New Zealand context, it was found that a number of the structures and processes required for effective regional destination management were lacking, such as regional statistics and research data, staffing and financial resources for both RTOs and local government, the ability of council planners to understand and integrate tourism into the wider planning processes and a legislative mandate for tourism. The thesis concluded that a vacuum remains in the alignment of destination marketing and management. The historical and political processes of RTO change were also examined in the context of chaos and complexity theory. Chaos and complexity theory provided a complementary and different means to view change. This thesis also presented the opportunity to reflect upon the research process which led to the adoption of a multi-paradigmatic and bricoleur research methodology. Further reflexivity and reflection towards the end of the research process articulated ontological and epistemological philosophical investigations that underlay the multi-paradigmatic approach. A model is presented emphasising that a multi-paradigmatic research approach rests on ultimate reality (metaphysics) which informs the ontology. The model then highlights that ontology precedes and directs epistemology and that both inform the multi-paradigmatic research framework

Carbon Pricing in New York ISO Markets: Federal and State Issues

New York’s Clean Energy Standard (“CES”), adopted in August 2016, aims to steer the state’s electricity sector away from carbon-intensive generation sources. It supports low-carbon alternatives by requiring retail electricity suppliers to purchase credits, the proceeds from which are paid to renewable and nuclear generators. Recognizing that this will affect the operation of wholesale electricity markets, New York’s electric transmission grid operator (the “New York Independent System Operator” or “NYISO”) has commenced a review to assess possible means of incorporating the cost of carbon emissions into market prices. This Article explores two approaches to carbon pricing in NYISO markets: the first would involve NYISO adopting a carbon price of its own initiative with a view to improving the operation of wholesale electricity markets (“Approach 1”), while the second would involve adoption of a carbon price designed to reflect and harmonize state-level policies aimed at reducing electricity sector emissions (“Approach 2”). Under either approach, NYISO would adopt a per megawatt hour carbon price and use it to establish a fee for each generating unit, consistent with its emissions profile. This fee would be added to the prices generators bid into the wholesale electricity market and those adjusted prices used by NYISO to determine the dispatch order. The result would likely be a re-ordering of dispatch, with high-emitting generators dispatched (and paid) less frequently, and cleaner alternatives more frequently. Our proposal, while conceptually simple, is likely to be difficult to implement

Run-time monitoring approach for the shark kernel

Typically common embedded systems are designed with high resource constraints. Static designs are often chosen to address very specific use cases. On contrast, a dynamic design must be used if the system must supply a real-time service where the input may contain factors of indeterminism. Thus, adding new functionality on these systems is often accomplished by higher development time, tests and costs, since new functionality push the system complexity and dynamics to a higher level. Usually, these systems have to adapt themselves to evolving requirements and changing service requests. In this perspective, run-time monitoring of the system behaviour becomes an important requirement, allowing to dynamically capturing the actual scheduling progress and resource utilization. For this to succeed, operating systems need to expose their internal behaviour and state, making it available to the external applications, usually using a run-time monitoring mechanism. However, such mechanism can impose a burden in the system itself if not wisely used. In this paper we explore this problem and propose a framework, which is intended to provide this run-time mechanism whilst achieving code separation, run-time efficiency and flexibility for the final developer

VET Leadership for the Future: contexts, characteristics and capabilities

This study examines leadership in Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) sector. VET leaders make a vital and growing contribution to learners, industry and society, yet research on their work is limited. This has direct implications for ensuring leadership is most effective, and for framing evidence-based capacity development. To assist the sector, and in particular the people who find themselves running large and complex training organisations, this study paints a picture of what VET leaders do, and of how they can do it best

Rips, currents and snags: Investigating the delivery of educational goals for young Australians in the region of Gippsland, Victoria. ​

Monash University (Gippsland campus) is situated in Churchill, Latrobe Valley, located in central Gippsland, eastern Victoria. A large percentage of the Gippsland region comprises of a socio-economically disadvantaged population (Figure 1). In Semester One, 2011 as part of the Bachelor of Primary Education course at Monash, it was decided that a pathway be created to achieve these national ideals and goals through the implementation of swimming and water safety education in Primary schools. Swimming and water safety education represents the specific curriculum to be implemented in rural schools, it is representative of any aspect of the curriculum to be delivered. This paper comprises a narrative memoir by the author of his involvement in the pathway and subsequently the paper sheds light on the barriers, benefits and strategies for implementing such policies in practice

The Emergence of Commercial Scale Offshore Wind: Progress Made and Challenges Ahead

This Article examines the offshore wind development process from leasing and permitting to electric power supply and interconnection. Willing developers may divide the process into three discrete, but not necessarily sequential, endeavors. First, the developer must secure a viable purchaser or market for the output. “Offshore wind energy” is a more complex commercial product than one might envision—it includes the actual electric energy produced, the electric generating capacity that is available to serve load, and both the environmental and clean energy attributes of wind energy. The environmental and clean energy attributes may have an economic and regulatory value separate from, or in addition to, the value of the electric energy itself. These separate complexities give rise to several questions: What are the available markets for actual offshore wind energy? How does a developer find a buyer (off-taker) for the offshore wind electric output? How are the markets for the actual energy and the environmental attributes, normally embodied in a “renewable energy certificate” (REC), combined or otherwise related? How much control can individual states exercise over the decisions of an individual utility or other purchasers of offshore wind energy and RECs (or each of them separately)? If the average cost to the developer of electric energy generation from offshore wind per kilowatt-hour (kWh) is substantially higher than the average cost of energy in the onshore markets, what features of state regulation or policy facilitate the sale? Second, the developer must secure, or acquire by sale or assignment, appropriate offshore sites for development of the physical resource. Most available offshore wind resources are located in the OCS and will be under federal control for leasing. Developers must secure OCS leases either through successful bids in the initial offering or through a later acquisition or assignment from winning bidders. Offshore wind development requires large areas within which to erect the number of turbines needed, as well as a gathering system of cables and substations, to collect and deliver the output of all the turbines via transmission lines to interconnections with the existing mainland grid. The developer also must obtain rights-of-way to lay cable for its gathering and transmission facilities—on the OCS and across state submerged lands and coastal areas. In the alternative, a new offshore wind transmission system may be built by a third party to connect with multiple wind farms and deliver energy to an onshore point of interconnection. These leasing and project configuration scenarios present many questions. If the offshore wind developer and the transmission facility developer are separate entities, how much coordination is required? What is the appropriate scope of environmental impact studies needed in connection with the OCS leasing process? What are the mechanics for acquiring the necessary property rights and leases between winning bidders and other interested developers? Third, the offshore wind developer, alone or with a third-party transmission developer, must be concerned about the interconnection of the offshore cable to the onshore transmission grid. Most onshore transmission and distribution grids were planned, constructed and operated on the assumption that electricity consumers on the coast are the end of the delivery line. While transmission grids are somewhat more robust at these isolated coastal locations—particularly when large nuclear and fossil generation exists at water’s edge—these more robust coastal grid systems are limited and may be neither geographically nor electrically proximate to offshore wind generation locations. With advances in turbine technology and the overall economics of offshore wind farm development most proposed commercial-scale projects are likely to have generation capacity in the hundreds of megawatts (MWs). Typically, interconnection of offshore wind and related transmission delivery facilities require not only reconfiguration and enlargement of the receiving onshore transmission grid to accept the input of such electric capacity at water’s edge, but also delivery to load centers that may be located a substantial distance inland. Owners of the onshore grid may not be the same as the utility purchaser or other off-taker of the offshore electric energy. The complexities of onshore interconnection raise vexing questions, such as: (i) how to reconfigure and enlarge the grid to interconnect with offshore generation, accept the energy output, and deliver to load centers; and (ii) who should bear the costs of that reconfiguration and enlargement. This Article is intended to provide a helpful roadmap or guidance for major issues in three principal areas—securing a viable purchaser, siting the offshore development farm, and onshore interconnection of the offshore cable. To date, most offshore wind development efforts in the United States occur off the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coast. This Article highlights the emerging federal-state dynamic in the development of offshore wind generation and illuminates several key uncertainties developers face today

Regulatory Linearity, Commerce Clause Brinksmanship, and Retrenchment in Electric Utility Deregulation

The point of this Article is that if an agency has reached this point in the lifetime of its reinvention efforts by being linear, then the experiment should end. In the case of restructuring, that is not the case, but two aspects of the situation make it exquisitely difficult to see this: an agency that is trying the same ideas repeatedly (FERC) and a complex set of variables that has hampered restructuring activity. Through this fog, the final point to be made is that if moving beyond the current stasis requires change, this should be contemplated. This industry is famously resistant to change, but if change is going to happen at all, it cannot take place the way it is doing so now. It is irresponsible to throw up our hands and refuse to deal with the situation. Electricity is America\u27s most important commodity. The network of interconnected electric power facilities is national in scope, and the present problems with it cry out for a national solution. As others have noted in this dedicated issue, untangling its current problems may require too much change to expect in the short term, given how we are stumbling through to solutions. We may be in a second-best environment for the foreseeable future, but leaving the status of the system for making and distributing electricity in its current piecemeal status does no one any good