The governance of grapes: The NSW Inquiry into the Wine Grape Market and Prices (2010) -- An assessment

The contribution of the grape growing and wine making industries to Australia’s continued economic prosperity is under threat. While international market dynamics are often cited as the cause, the problem of oversupply and more specifically calls for government intervention were the focus of the recently completed NSW Legislative Council’s Standing Committee on State Development Wine Grape Market and Prices Inquiry (Catanzariti Inquiry, 2010a). This paper examines the process and outcomes of the Inquiry and the NSW Government’s response to its recommendations. It is argued that a mandatory Code of Conduct ought to be adopted by the industry to govern the relationships between winegrape growers and wine makers

Religion and Life Satisfaction Down Under

© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. We investigated the association between religious involvement and life satisfaction using panel data from the 2004, 2007, and 2010 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Our study provides strong evidence of an association between attendance at religious services and life satisfaction in the Australian social context. While social resources mediate this association, there appears to be a remaining direct influence of attendance at religious services on life satisfaction. To unravel this association, there is a need to disentangle and separately assess the influence that ‘religious social resources’ and ‘secular social resources’ may have on life satisfaction

Peas in a Pod: Are Efficient Municipalities also Financially Sustainable?

© 2016 CPA Australia Are efficient councils financially sustainable? We argue that an efficient council may not necessarily be financially sustainable. Our subsequent empirical analysis finds limited evidence in favour of an ‘efficiency–sustainability’ nexus. Thus, policies aimed at improving a council's efficiency may not automatically enhance their financial sustainability. Public policy makers have principally focused on improving the operational efficiency of local government on the presumption that this will result in a more financially sustainable sector. We argue that it is erroneous to assume that an efficient local government entity will necessarily be more fiscally sustainable. To test this argument, we apply an innovative method for empirically testing the association between financial sustainability and operational efficiency to the New South Wales local government system. Our results suggest limited positive associations between financial sustainability measures and municipal efficiency

Is There a Case for Mandating Directly Elected Mayors in Australian Local Government? Lessons from the 2012 Queensland Local Government Elections

© 2015 Institute of Public Administration Australia. A 'semi-executive' model for Australian mayors, inclusive of direct election, is presently being explored in the Australian local sector (see, in particular, Sansom, 2012). This paper takes advantage of the differences across Australia's federation to examine the recent experience of directly elected mayors in Queensland, especially the results of local government elections held in 2012. It is argued that several factors contributed to the high turnover rates of both mayors and councillors, including the 2012 Queensland state election and the 2008 amalgamation process. However, the requirement for directly elected mayors was an important factor contributing to what the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ, 2012, 12) described as a 'significantly high' proportion of 'corporate knowledge' being lost. Moreover, the direct election of mayors, in particular those charged with 'semi-executive' authority, is fraught with problems and thus should not to be implemented in all Australian local government systems

Options for Rationalizing Local Government Structure: A Policy Agenda

Controversy surrounds structural reform in local government, especially on the question of whether efforts aimed at reducing the number of local authorities enhance the effective operation of the newly created consolidated local government entities. However, the weight of extant conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that while amalgamation typically improves the capacity of local government, it is not only costly, but also has other deleterious consequences. Local council collaboration through resource sharing and joint service provision aimed at capturing the advantages attendant upon scale, but without the adverse democratic and economic effects of consolidation, represents the main alternative form of structural change which still retains local government activity within the public sphere. This paper considers the foundations of shared services, including the embryonic theoretical literature and available empirical evidence, as background to considering the problem of developing policies to promote inter-municipal collaboration

Characterisation of Rosa Mosqueta seeds : cell wall polysaccharide composition and light microscopy observations

The utilisation of enzymes for the extraction of vegetable oils from seeds has been a topic of growing interest in recent years. Knowledge of the cell wall polysaccharide composition is important to select the enzyme(s) necessary for the most effective degradation of the cell walls. The purpose of the present work is to characterise the seeds of Rosa Mosqueta (Rosa aff rubiginosa) by light microscopy (where several differential staining methods were applied to analyse the seed structure) and by the isolation of cell wall polysaccharide extracts. The mature seed of Rosa Mosqueta has a very thick and structurally complex seed coat comprising heavily lignified tissue. The embryo has two cell layers of remaining endosperm tissue (indicating that this is an exalbuminous seed), two voluminous cotyledons that contain the oil, and bundles of provascular tissues distributed perpendicularly to the transverse axis of the embryo. The major non-cellulosic polysaccharides from the non-lignified tissues are glucuronoxylans and pectic polysaccharides; glucans are also present in small amounts. The major non-cellulosic polysaccharides from the lignified tissues are glucuronoxylans. Concerning the use of enzymes for oil extraction, microscopy and cell wall polysaccharide analysis showed that the use of pectic enzymes followed by a xylanase or a cellulase should be explored.União Europeia (UE) - Contract INCO-DC: 96-2205

An Empirical Analysis of Scale Economies in Administrative Intensity in the Paraná State Local Government System in Brazil

A substantial empirical study has investigated scale economies in local government functions, most notably in local transportation, water, and wastewater provision. By contrast, relatively little effort has been directed at the empirical analysis of economies of scale in municipal administration, including in Brazilian local government, despite its significance for public policy on structural reform in local government. In order to address this gap in the literature, we investigate administrative scale economies in the Paraná state local government system in Brazil over the period 2006 to 2018. We find that there was a 'U-shaped' scale effect between council size by population and administrative intensity after controlling for a range of economic and social variables. Various public policy implications are considered

Biochemical characterization of Acacia schweinfurthii serine proteinase inhibitor

One of the many control mechanisms of serine proteinases is their specific inhibition by protein proteinase inhibitors. An extract of Acacia schweinfurthii was screened for potential serine proteinase inhibition. It was successfully purified to homogeneity by precipitating with 80% (v/v) acetone and sequential chromatographic steps, including ion-exchange, affinity purifica- Q2 tion and RP-HPLC. Reducing SDS-PAGE conditions revealed an inhibitor (ASTI) consisting of two polypeptide chains A and B of approximate molecular weights of 16 and 10 kDa, respectively, and under non-reducing conditions, 26 kDa was observed. The inhibitor was shown to inhibit bovine trypsin (Ki of 3.45 nM) at an approximate molar ratio of inhibitor: trypsin (1:1). The A- and B-chains revealed complete sequences of 140 and 40 amino acid residues, respectively. Sequence similarity (70%) was reported between ASTI A-chain and ACTI A-chain (Acacia confusa) using the ClustalW. The B-chain produced a 76% sequence similarity between ASTI and Leucaena leucocephala trypsin inhibitor