Australia’s foreign debt: a quick guide

This quick guide looks at the level of Australia’s foreign debt, the interest liability on foreign debt and how these have changed over time. It also looks at foreign debt as a component of net foreign investment, the other component being equity investment. Finally, given that Australia’s gross foreign debt is now bigger than its annual gross domestic product (GDP), the quick guide also considers whether our foreign debt level is too high. What is foreign debt? Foreign debt is the amount borrowed from non-residents by residents of Australia. It includes securities such as bonds, as well as loans, advances, deposits, debentures and overdrafts. Foreign debt is a subset of the financial obligations that make up Australia’s foreign investment position.  It is distinguished from other forms of foreign investment capital inflow such as equity investment (foreign ownership) by the obligation to pay interest and/or repay capital. Foreign debt is not to be confused with national debt, which is the total government debt. National debt comprises government borrowings from overseas residents and government borrowings from Australian residents and thus excludes overseas borrowings by the private sector. A distinction is made between gross and net foreign debt. Gross foreign debt is the total amount of borrowing from non-residents. Net foreign debt is equal to gross foreign debt minus the sum of lending by residents of Australia to non-residents and official reserve assets held by the Reserve Bank

Casual employment in Australia: a quick guide

The casualisation of the Australian workforce proceeded at a more or less steady pace from 1992 to 2004. Introduction There is no formal definition of casual employment in the sense that it has a meaning set down in law or specified in awards and agreements. Instead, casual employment has generally been regarded as employment in which there is an absence of entitlement to paid annual leave or sick leave. The absence of paid leave entitlements was first adopted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) as a proxy measure of casual employment in 1988. While this approach can be justified on the grounds that most persons on a casual contract receive a pay loading in lieu of paid annual leave and sick leave, the problem is there is no necessary correlation between type of employment contract and qualifications for these entitlements. The ABS has since dropped the term ‘casual’ and now simply distinguishes between employees with paid leave entitlements and those without. While the ABS also collects information for a category of worker it describes as ‘self-identified casual’, this quick guide maintains the proxy measure that a casual employee is an employee without paid leave entitlements. It should be noted, however, that owner managers of incorporated enterprises (OMIEs) are excluded from the scope of the definition of casual employee. There is no sense in which OMIEs can reasonably be regarded as casual employees and, even though the ABS has tended to treat OMIEs as employees of their own business, it is possibly for this reason that from 2007 the ABS ceased to ask OMIEs if they gave themselves paid leave

Performance of manufacturing industry: a quick guide

This guide looks at a number of key economic indicators to provide an overview of what has been happening in Australia\u27s manufacturing industry. Introduction As with many other Western countries, the relative importance of the manufacturing industry in Australia has been declining. Its contribution to total Australian output is less than half what it was four decades ago. This Quick Guide, which draws on the Manufacturing performance report, a monthly report produced by the Department of Industry, looks at a number of key economic indicators to provide an overview of what has been happening in the industry

The Failing Structures of Animal Health Services: Room for Improvement

he current avian flu situation has clearly demonstrated what we already knew: that animal health service structures are malfunctioning in most parts of the developing world. We have seen that flu sending the animal health system to the top of many Governments’ agenda. However, if Governments and donors are primarily preoccupied with containing the risk of a human pandemic there are serious doubts that the results of the commotion around avian flu will significantly improve smallholder poultry producers’ access to animal health services.If Governments and donors are primarily preoccupied with containing the risk of a human pandemic there are serious doubts that the results of the commotion around avian flu will significantly improve smallholder poultry producers’ access to animal heal

Shakespeare, Ovid, and the Expression of Feminine Voice

The way in which femininity is represented in literature often reinforces the idea of the objectified woman and the dominant man. William Shakespeare, influenced by the writings of Ovid, attempts to challenge these social constructs by developing alternative feminine voices in his works. Lavinia from Titus Andronicus, Lucrece from The Rape of Lucrece, and Imogen from Cymbeline serve as examples of women who must utilize a voice outside what is characteristically feminine in order to gain power from the unspeakable events such as rape and mutilation that alter each woman\u27s perception of self. These women also prove how the eyes of a voyeur can manipulate and misinterpret the voice a woman communicates

The meaning of convenience in smart home imaginaries:tech industry insights

Smart home technology (SHT) is being promoted for the enhancement of occupants’ convenience, as well as more efficient and sustainable energy consumption. However, recent research indicates that convenience often takes precedence over energy reduction, threatening to affect inhabitants’ everyday practices in a non-sustainable way. In order to understand the social and environmental consequences of SHT, the meaning of convenience is investigated. How is the concept of convenience developed in concert with technological development? Presenting SHT imaginaries from the industry, the paper builds on qualitative interviews with 11 SHT professionals. By exploring the practices, roles, and relations at play in SHT development, it is demonstrated how the vision to enhance convenience in everyday life is related to a user imaginary characterized by passivity and disengagement from energy savings. Furthermore, convenience is enabled and enforced through the notion of interoperability. Interoperability refers to not only technologies ‘speaking together’ but also a strong interdependency between professional actors. By exploring the practices at play in SHT development, the meaning of convenience is revealed to be an outcome of this interdependency as well as the collectively shaped ideas, and technological standards embedded in the industry. Policy relevance SHT is shaping our domestic futures, influencing material environments as well as social life and energy consumption. Currently, SHT is promoted and supported widely in policy. For instance, the European Commission stresses automation as a means to ensure the more efficient operation of buildings, generating cost and energy savings. However, a focus on convenience risks counteracting sustainability considerations. This study shows how convenience can take precedence across various branches of SHT development, with a consequence of creating passive users who are disengaged from sustainability issues. When policymakers promote the adoption of SHTs and automation of the built environment, a more critical stance is needed toward convenience in order to avoid user passivity and masked energy consumption. Policy instruments, such as the smart readiness indicator (SRI), should not only include calculations of what is technically possible in terms of automation but also examine the outcomes, practices, and behavior that SHT promotes