High growth maritime industries: Recent successes and major opportunities for Western Australia

There are indications that the maritime industry in Western Australia is currently insufficiently serviced by the tertiary sector in terms of its educational needs. Thus, in May 1995 a Maritime Industry Taskforce was formed to investigate opportunities for further development of maritime industries in Western Australia and around the Indian Ocean Rim. Following months of discussion with government agencies, industry and tertiary education providers, it was considered opportune to conduct a seminar to bring these areas together to openly explore key issues in building upon successes already achieved. The seminar included speakers from each of the areas of government, industry and education in Western Australia as well as the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada, and the Australian Maritime College, Launceston, who identified some international and national maritime industry successes

Trans-adaption of successful cigarette smoking intervention to randomised school-based cannabis intervention trial

Despite the emergence of cannabis use as a public health issue of significance in the 21st Century, no school-based interventions specifically addressing cannabis use have been reported in the literature. The prevalence of adolescent cannabis use has risen during the 1990s while the age of onset has decreased. This three-year trial seeks to trans-adapt a successful school-based cigarette smoking program underpinned by harm minimisation (HM) theory (including abstinence messages), into a school-based cannabis intervention trial. This innovative intervention will be compared to the largely abstinence-based drug use prevention activities currently used in W A. The first and second years of the project have been successful in establishing and conducting this school-based cluster randomised control trial. In summary, under the direction of an experienced management team, the project has recruited 24 Perth metropolitan high schools - the required number to provide sufficient power to detect hypothesised differences between intervention and comparison students. Within these schools, active parental consent to participate in data collection for the project was obtained from over 3,300 students after the initial letter and two reminders to parents (69% consent rate). Baseline data were collected from nearly 3,100 students (93% of those eligible), 2953 students at post-test 1 and 2701 students at the end of the second year of intervention (Post-test 2). In addition, data were collected at each of these time points from English and Health Education teachers, and school principals

2005 survey report on the wellbeing of the professions: policing, nursing and teaching

This report assesses the wellbeing of the professions of policing, nursing and teaching in Western Australia. The findings are derived from surveys of how individuals think about their occupations, their colleagues and employers. The level of wellbeing affects the ease of attracting and retaining staff and the quality of delivered services. We present and discuss summary results of responses to questionnaires sent in 2005 to 5,180 police, 6,000 nurses and 9,000 teachers. Each of the professions is here regarded as a single group. The number of respondents is sufficient to allow many more detailed analyses to be performed and reported at a later date. A separate document will contain fuller details of the technical aspects of the research