The success of representative governance on superannuation boards

Australia’s superannuation system has transformed the way Australians think about their retirement. But as the size of the funds increase there is additional scrutiny surrounding the governance structures in place to administer the savings of members. The new Federal Government has kick-started the debate with its discussion paper: Better regulation and governance, enhanced transparency and improved competition in superannuation. It has been simultaneously welcomed and condemned, and while its motivations have been questioned there is now more than ever a focus on the governance on these massive pools of savings

The case for a national portable long service leave scheme in Australia

This report provides the most comprehensive framework for the establishment of a National Portable Long Service Leave Scheme ever produced in Australia. Long servIce leave is unique to AustralIa and New Zealand. The origins of Long Service Leave can be traced back to the 19th century as an entitlement given to civil servants which enabled those who had served for a long period of time to travel ‘home’ to Britain, confident that they could return to Australia and return to their previous job. The entitlement was transformed from leave provided to visit Britain, to leave provided after a long period of employment for workers to have a break and return to work fresh and renewed. While the length of leave and qualification periods vary from State to State, the general entitlement a worker receives today is two months leave after ten continuous years of service with the same employer. However, due to the changing nature of employment, Australian workers are more frequently changing jobs and careers. This has meant Long Service Leave in its current form has become inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of Australian workers. Only one in four Australian workers stay with the same employer for 10 years. In this context, the McKell Institute believes the time has come to again restructure Long Service Leave and create a 21st century entitlement by making Long Service Leave fully portable. If Long Service Leave were to follow a worker as they change jobs and careers (as our superannuation does), the majority of Australian workers would again be able to take a well earned break after a long period of time in the workforce. This McKell Institute report was written by Professor Raymond Markey and his colleagues at the Macquarie University Centre for Workforce Futures

Building the Games Students Want to Play: BiblioBouts Project Interim Report #3

The University of Michigan's School of Information and its partner, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, are undertaking the 3-year BiblioBouts Project (October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2011) to support the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the web-based BiblioBouts game to teach incoming undergraduate students information literacy skills and concepts. This third interim report describes the BiblioBouts Project team’s 6-month progress achieving the project's 4 objectives: designing, developing, deploying, and evaluating the BiblioBouts game and recommending best practices for future information literacy games. This latest 6-month period was marked by extensive progress in the deployment and evaluation of the alpha version of BiblioBouts. Major tasks that will occupy the team for the next 6 months are applying evaluation findings to game redesign and enhancement. For general information about game design, pedagogical goals, scoring, game play, project participants, and playing BiblioBouts in your course, consult the BiblioBouts Project web site.Institute of Museum and Library Serviceshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69157/1/bbInterimReportToIMLS03.pd

ICAR: endoscopic skull‐base surgery

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The state of representative participation in Australia: Where to next?

The article first examines the rationale for representative participation, and the circumstances under which it has spread internationally. It then surveys the existing data for representative participation in Australia, and presents a case for legislation to introduce a generalised system of German-style works councils. The paper concludes that the first step towards this end should be the instigation of a major research agenda to discover more regarding the elements of historical and contemporary practice which have accounted for success and failure in representative participation in Australia

Labour and politics in New South Wales, 1880-1900

This thesis studies the motivation and nature of working class mobilization from which the New South Wales Labor Party emerged in the 1890s, and the nature of that Party. It concentrates, in particular, upon the relationship between trade unions and the Labor Party, and the relationship between the Party leadership and its rank and file. The thesis is divided into three parts. Part I \u27 Social and Industrial Structure\u27 considers the material basis of working class mobilization. It examines the working and living conditions of the basic groups within the working class: urban workers, rural workers, coal and metal miners, and transport workers (marine and railway). For all of these groups, working and living conditions commonly fell short of colonial expectations of prosperity during the great economic boom from the 1860s to 1890. In many cases, working and living conditions actually declined in the 1880s. Furthermore, the opportunities for social advancement to independence from wage earning, which had been a powerful aspect of colonial expectations, were declining for most of these groups by the end of the 1880s. These trends were the result of economic problems in major industries, of economic restructuring from primary industry and building towards more large-scale manufacturing industry, and of related changes in productive organisation and workforce structure. Part II, \u27Labour Organization\u27, analyzes the organizational response of the vvorking class. Trade unionism spread rapidly amongst semi and unskilled workers in the 1880s. It was also characterized by a heightened degree of class consciousness and joint organization which saw the Trades and Labour Council develop class leadership. Closer, and more militant, organization also occurred amongst important employers\u27 groups. On the union side, these changes have been associated with the \u27new unionism\u27 of the shearers and miners. But it is argued here that the urban unions, especially the crafts, led in these developments, largely because of the changes in their work experience. The decimation of the unions in the depression and great strikes of the 1890\u27s, together with the hostile role of the state, hastened the unions\u27 organization of the Labor Party. However, during 1892-5 the urban unions lost control of the Party to a coalition of Utopian socialist intelligentsia and the Shearers\u27Union (AWU), which delivered a large number of country Parliamentary seats to the Party.This new leadership marked a change in the participatory democratic and collectivist nature of working class organization, which had been evident in the nature of union government, the growth of co-operatives, and the spontaneous outgrowth of municipal political organization. The Labor Party moved, towards a more centralized form of organization, which emphasized a moderate Parliamentary strategy. This change was reflected in Labor policy and ideology, the subject of Part III. As the new leadership consolidated itself, the emphasis on a class-bdsed Party, with a social democratic policy of political reform and industrial legislation, shifted towards a populist Party, despite a short-lived challenge by socialists. Labor\u27s populism derived from an electoral strategy aimed at \u27 intermediate social strata\u27 as well as the working class, and from the dominant role of the AWU in the Party. The significance of the AWU in this regard was that it was dominated by small landholders. Populism, therefore, was mainly responsible for the \u27Laborist\u27 policy which emerged at the end of the 1890s, and which concentrated on arbitration. White Australia, land reform, and a limited state welfare apparatus. As an ideology, \u27Laborism\u27 assumed the neutrality of the state apparatus. With this ideological basis and policy, the Labor Party became the vehicle for the deliverance of the working class to a National Settlement between the classes in the new Commonwealth, after the most intensive class conflict Australia had ever experienced

Postscript : the significance of the Fisher Labor government, 1910-13

The authors of this thematic issue have substantially rescued the second Fisher-led Labor government of Australia from the relative neglect of labour historians, by acknowledging the significance and achievements of the first majority labour or social democratic national government in the world. The government's significance was twofold: first, its election was based on the creation of a mass working class constituency; and second its busy legislative program extended the Australian Settlement, contributed significantly to the nation-building project, and instigated a progressive redistributive welfare program well in advance of other countries. The government's reforms were based on liberal philosophy as well as prior initiatives, but it also extended the terms of the Australian Settlement and contributed to the divergence of liberalism and laborism. Tins postscript reviews the contributors' arguments in the context of the government's full reform agenda to assess the significance of the Fisher government's achievements.11 page(s

Troubled times : 1967-88

37 page(s

Book review : 'Research handbook of comparative employment relations'

2 page(s

Book review : 'Labour and the politics of empire. Britain and Australia, 1900 to the present

Book review of Labour and the politics of empire. Britain and Australia, 1900 to the Present by Neville Kirk. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011.2 page(s