Recovering a Sicilian Family : Researching and Writing a Story of Anger, Shame and Family Breakdown in the Ingham-Halifax Area of North Queensland (1926–1945)

This PhD research project comprises a fact-informed historical novel and an exegesis. The novel tells the story of the emigration of a Sicilian family to the Herbert River district of North Queensland during the interwar period. It is loosely based on the life of my anti-Fascist grandfather who arrived in Queensland in 1926, his wife, who never left Italy, and his two children, who emigrated a decade later. This family was fractured from the beginning by geographical separation, but catastrophic events in their lives in both Sicily and Queensland only deepened the fracture. The research reveals how becoming a canecutter in Queensland and the hardships, politics and prejudice that accompanied that choice, particularly in the Ingham area where there was a concentration of southern Italians, led to further family breakdown, exacerbated by the weight of secrets and shame. It also addresses the hardships experienced by the women who remained in the home country. Italian immigration in Queensland is inextricably tied to the sugar industry and the canefields culture, which contributed enormously to the economic, social and cultural development of Queensland and its non-Indigenous settlement. Chain migration to the sugarlands saw the growth of concentrated communities of Italians as they found work with established, land-owning paesani or parenti. This led to a steady rise in land ownership by Italians in North Queensland, which in turn triggered deep resentment in the wider Anglo society of their economic success and perceived domination of the sugar industry, culminating in the injustice of internment of naturalised Italians during World War Two. The exegesis reflects on the creative practice-led narrative inquiry research method adopted for this project and reviews a previously overlooked subgenre of Australian literature and popular culture I identify as ‘canecutter narrative’. A second literature review of the archival primary sources on which the semi-fictional story is built provides a hermeneutic analysis of these sources in their historical and cultural context. The exegesis establishes how the novel belongs in and uniquely contributes to the canecutter narrative subgenre

Disrupting aviation: an exploratory study of the opportunities and risks of tablet computers in commercial flight operations

Commercial flight operational safety has dramatically improved in the last 30 years because of enhanced crew coordination, communication, leadership and team development. Technology insertion into cockpit operations, however, has been shown to create crew distractions, resulting in flight safety risks, limited use given policy limitations and difficulty in establishing standard operating procedures. With the recent introduction of tablet computers into the flight cockpit as a substitute for paper-based manuals and navigation charts, the risk of human error may be increased. Though portable electronics, known as electronic flight bags, have been present of the flight deck for a decade, introduction of tablet computers as their replacements offers unique challenges, given the ability to communicate and share information outside established aviation channels. This research explored the opportunities that this technology insertion offers to commercial aviation in areas such as knowledge sharing and operational performance improvement. The results indicate that the opportunities were not realized with the initial implementation because the pilots did not accept the technology due to inadequate training coupled with restrictive policies concerning use

Uncertainty and the Search for Truth at Trial: Defining Prosecutorial Objectivity in German Sexual Assault Cases

According to German legal scholar, Claus Roxin, German prosecutors are the most objective civil servants in the world. Roxin \u27s assessment of German prosecution practice reflects the conviction of many German legal scholars that prosecutors in Germany\u27s inquisitorial system function as second judges dedicated to finding the objective truth. In this Article I investigate how prosecutors translate the normative duty of objectivity enshrined in the German penal code into observable practices on the ground I examine prosecutorial decision-making in three sexual assault trials. Sexual assault cases pose unique challenges to prosecutors as well as to the definition of objectivity. Because the crime typically occurs in private, the search for truth often focuses on the testimonies of the victim and the suspect. In cases in which the physical evidence is inconclusive and the defendant claims that the victim consented, the focus of the fact finder\u27s inquiry is often directed at the victim \u27s credibility. Drawing on transcript and interview data, I propose three models of \u27faces of prosecutorial objectivity. Surprisingly, despite the fact that judges structure the presentation of evidence in German trials, prosecutors play a critical role in interpreting the facts presented at trial. In each of the cases examined in this Article, the face of objectivity is constructed through a relational process that unfolds between the presiding judge and the trial prosecutor. Although many legal scholars maintain that penal code sharply circumscribes prosecutorial discretion in major crime cases in Germany, my research demonstrates that a wide variation exists in the way that individual prosecutors interpret their duty to view the evidence objectively