The Case of Dr. Mohammed Haneef: An 'Australian Terrorism' Drama with British Connections

This article examines the treatment of Dr Mohamed Haneef, an Indian doctor arrested under Australia‟s anti-terrorism legislation in July 2007 as Australian authorities including the Australian Federal Police, Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, (wrongfully) believed that he was linked to the terrorist attack at Glasgow airport in June 2007. The actions and responses of these two agencies, and the subsequent judicial inquiry are reviewed in the light of the media‟s role and press coverage as the case unfolded

Australia and the War Against Terrorism: Terrorism, National Security and Human Rights

This article considers whether in the 'war against terrorism' national security is eroded or strengthened by weakening or removing the human rights of the individuals who constitute the polity. It starts with the view that national security is, at its most fundamental, founded upon the security and liberty of the person from criminal and violent acts, including terrorist attacks. Such attacks, and the individuals and groups who perpetrate them, constitute a grave threat to the peace and security of nations the world over and thus endanger the security and liberty of the individuals who make up their populations. Governments are therefore compelled to use the machinery of the state to protect the nation and the individual from these attacks. However, the paper is based on another, equally important, assumption. This is that the defence of national security requires individuals to be protected from the arbitrary exercise of state power even in situations where the state claims to be acting to protect national security and individual security against grave threats such as terrorist acts. The Rule of Law not only protects individuals from such an exercise of state power by protecting their human rights, in so doing it also protects the peace and security of the nation from excessive and unchecked state power. But what happens when the Rule of Law is overturned by governments declaring that they are protecting national security from the terrorist threat? Who or what is then able to protect the individual and the nation from the state? The paper will take up these important questions by considering the implications of the anti-terrorism legislation that has been introduced in Australia since September 2001. It will also make an assessment of whether Australia's national security has been enhanced or damaged by this legislation. Finally, the paper will briefly consider whether in fighting the war against terrorism the Rudd Labor Government, elected to office in November 2007, is likely to depart in any significant measure from the approach of its predecessor, the conservative Coalition Government led by Prime Minister John Howard

The New Australian System of Corporate Governance: Board Governance and Company Performance in a Changing Corporate Governance Environment

This paper investigates the changing duties and responsibilities of boards and directors of Australian public companies. The corporate governance environment in Australia is currently going through a period of significant transformation raising the question of whether in this fluid and shifting environment company and board performance can still be assessed largely on the basis of profit, share price and dividends generated over the short term. These almost certainly will continue for some time to be the key metrics of company and board performance and it is hard to see how it could be otherwise. Nevertheless, a growing chorus of influential stakeholders is calling for the introduction of a more balanced and comprehensive suite of performance indicators that better reflect the realities of corporate governance early in the Twentyfirst Century. The paper examines how these stakeholders are reshaping corporate governance in Australia and also calling for a reconsideration of the way in which performance is assessed

Liberty, National Security and the Big Society

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(Re)form with Substance? Restructuring and governance in the Australian health system 2004/05

The Australian health system has been the subject of multiple reviews and reorganisations over the last twenty years or more. The year 2004–2005 was no different. This paper reviews the reforms, (re)structures and governance arrangements in place at both the national and state/territory levels in the last year. At the national level some progress has been made in 2004/05 through the Australian Health Ministers' Council and there is now a national health reform agenda, albeit not a comprehensive one, endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in June 2005. Quality and safety was an increasing focus in 2004–2005 at both the national and jurisdictional levels, as was the need for workforce reform. Although renewed policy attention was given to the need to better integrate and coordinate health care, there is little evidence of any real progress this last year. More progress was made on a national approach to workforce reform. At the jurisdictional level, the usual rounds of reviews and restructuring occurred in several jurisdictions and, in 2005, they are organisationally very different from each other. The structure and effectiveness of jurisdictional health authorities are now more important. All health authorities are being expected to drive an ambitious set of national and local reforms. At the same time, most have now blurred the boundary between policy and service delivery and are devoting significant resources to centrally 'crisis managing' their service systems. These same reasons led to decentralisation in previous restructuring cycles. While there were many changes in 2004–2005, and a new national report to COAG on health reform is expected at the end of 2005, based on current evidence there is little room for optimism about the prospects for real progress

Small-scale Intensity Mapping: Extended Halos as a Probe of the Ionizing Escape Fraction and Faint Galaxy Populations during Reionization

We present a new method to quantify the value of the escape fraction of ionizing photons, and the existence of ultra-faint galaxies clustered around brighter objects during the epoch of cosmic reionization, using the diffuse Ly$\alpha$, continuum and H$\alpha$ emission observed around galaxies at $z\sim6$. We model the surface brightness profiles of the diffuse halos considering the fluorescent emission powered by ionizing photons escaping from the central galaxies, and the nebular emission from satellite star-forming sources, by extending the formalisms developed in Mas-Ribas & Dijkstra (2016) and Mas-Ribas et al. (2017). The comparison between our predicted profiles and Ly$\alpha$ observations at $z=5.7$ and $z=6.6$ favors a low ionizing escape fraction, $f_{\rm esc}^{\rm ion}\sim5\%$, for galaxies in the range $-19\gtrsim M_{\rm UV} \gtrsim -21.5$. However, uncertainties and possible systematics in the observations do not allow for firm conclusions. We predict H$\alpha$ and rest-frame visible continuum observations with JWST, and show that JWST will be able to detect extended (a few tens of kpc) fluorescent H$\alpha$ emission powered by ionizing photons escaping from a bright, $L\gtrsim 5L^*$, galaxy. Such observations can differentiate fluorescent emission from nebular emission by satellite sources. We discuss how observations and stacking of several objects may provide unique constraints on the escape fraction for faint galaxies and/or the abundance of ultra-faint radiation sources.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, re-submitted after referee report to Ap

Knowing what you need to know about needs assessment

This paper reviews the scientific literature on needs assessment of individuals living in the community. Providing an overview of the field with a focus on capturing useful information for planning health interventions in the community, this paper will highlight: The current policy context that underpins the importance of needs assessment in health care; Key papers and basic theoretical concepts that can guide a coherent approach to community care needs assessment, including Bradshaw, 1972 and Stevens & Gabbay, 1991; The development of semi-structured interviews in mental health as a focus for designing new tools - with the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CAN) being the most well known; How to deal with the organisational issues involved with the assessment of unmet need in the community; The current evidence base for developing a national approach to needs assessment; And a brief look at the latest self-reported needs assessment instruments

Public interest litigation: making the case in Australia

Litigation is widely and appropriately recognised as an important component of the public interest advocacy \u27toolkit\u27. Yet, little attention has been paid in Australian research and scholarship to an important question: under what circumstances is public interest litigation (PIL) an effective way to bring about progressive social change? Informed by a review of the international literature on PIL, the authors of this article argue for the importance of drawing on Australia\u27s rich history with PIL to develop a solid empirical evidence base which can inform future decision about the strategic employment of PIL in campaigns to address the concerns and needs of disadvantaged and marginalised sections of Australian society

Connecting the Milky Way potential profile to the orbital timescales and spatial structure of the Sagittarius Stream

Recent maps of the halo using RR Lyrae from Pan-STARRS1 have clearly depicted the spatial structure of the Sagittarius stream. These maps show the leading and trailing stream apocenters differ in galactocentric radius by a factor of two, and also resolve substructure in the stream at these apocenters. Here we present dynamical models that reproduce these features of the stream in simple Galactic potentials. We find that debris at the apocenters must be dynamically young, in the sense of being stripped off in the last two pericentric passages, while the Sagittarius dwarf is currently experiencing a third passage. The ratio of apocenters is sensitive to both dynamical friction and the outer slope of the Galactic rotation curve. These dependences can be understood with simple regularities connecting the apocentric radii, circular velocities, and orbital period of the progenitor. The effect of dynamical friction on the stream can be constrained using substructure within the leading apocenter. Our ensembles of models are not intended as statistically proper fits to the stream. Nevertheless, out of the range of models we consider, we consistently find the mass within 100 kpc to be $\sim 7 \times 10^{11} \, M_{\odot}$, with a nearly flat rotation curve between 50 and 100 kpc. This points to a more extended Galactic halo than assumed in some current models. As in previous work, we find prolate or triaxial halos ease agreement with the track of the leading stream. We display the behavior of our models in various observational spaces and characterize the substructure expected within the stream. In particular, the young trailing stream visible near trailing apocenter should exhibit a tight trend of velocity with distance separate from the older debris, and we suggest that this will serve as an especially useful probe of the outer Galactic potential.Comment: Submitted to MNRA