Policy issues for the Community Development Employment Projects scheme in rural and remote Australia

One of the most important programs for Indigenous community and economic development is the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme. CDEP employs around 35,000 Indigenous Australians and accounts for over one-quarter of total Indigenous employment. This paper reviews the evidence on the social and economic impacts of the scheme. The available evidence demonstrates that the scheme has positive economic and community development impacts and that it is cost effective in achieving these outcomes. The paper argues that the CDEP program should continue to be supported and resourced and outlines options for future policy directions in regard to Indigenous economic development and the role of the CDEP scheme.Indigenous; labour market programs; economic development

Improving ENSO Simulations and Predictions Through Ocean State Estimation

Simulations and seasonal forecasts of tropical Pacific SST and subsurface fields that are based on the global Consortium for Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) ocean-state estimation procedure are investigated. As compared to similar results from a traditional ENSO simulation and forecast procedure, the hindcast of the constrained ocean state is significantly closer to observed surface and subsurface conditions. The skill of the 12-month lead SST forecast in the equatorial Pacific is comparable in both approaches. The optimization appears to have better skill in the SST anomaly correlations, suggesting that the initial ocean conditions and forcing corrections calculated by the ocean-state estimation do have a positive impact on the predictive skill. However, the optimized forecast skill is currently limited by the low quality of the statistical atmosphere. Progress is expected from optimizing a coupled model over a longer time interval with the coupling statistics being part of the control vector

A NEED FOR RICHER PUBLIC SERVICE MOTIVATION

While there are many outstanding questions surrounding the motivations of employees, a key problem is that there is not a defining construct to explain why public employees behave as they do. Although the concept of Public Service Motivation (PSM) has developed over the past three decades to help explain these motivations, there are still disagreements as to the definition, characteristics, and value of PSM. Moreover, this lack of congruity in the literature suggests that the underlying components of PSM, historically studied via cross-sectional quantitative surveys, have not yet been well-defined via rigorous theory-building. Accordingly, this study looks at PSM from a more fundamental level of motivation – basic human needs – to study how need-based motivations might affect the relationship between PSM and public employee behaviors. To obtain context-rich data on employee’s emotions, perceptions, and feelings toward work and public service, 30 semi-structured interviews of existing public servants were conducted in Monterey County, California. Utilizing grounded theory principles, a theoretical framework emerged that describes how temporally-specific circumstances influence an individual employee’s sector choice, person-sector fit, and the development of PSM behaviors as moderated by their identity-based motivations. Based on this framework and the interview data, recommendations for future PSM research and strategies / tactics for public sector managers are presented

The importance of planetary rotation period for ocean heat transport

The climate, and hence potential habitability, of a planet crucially depends on how its atmospheric and oceanic circulation transports heat from warmer to cooler regions. However, previous studies of planetary climate have concentrated on modelling the dynamics of their atmospheres whilst dramatically simplifying the treatment of the oceans, which neglects or misrepresents the effect of the ocean in the total heat transport. Even the majority of studies with a dynamic ocean have used a simple so-called aquaplanet having no continental barriers, which is a configuration which dramatically changes the oceanic dynamics. Here the significance of the response of poleward ocean heat transport to planetary rotation period is shown with a simple meridional barrier – the simplest representation of any continental configuration. The poleward ocean heat transport increases significantly as the planetary rotation period is increased. The peak heat transport more than doubles when the rotation period is increased by a factor of ten. There are also significant changes to ocean temperature at depth, with implications for the carbon cycle. There is strong agreement between the model results and a scale analysis of the governing equations. This result highlights the importance of both planetary rotation period and the ocean circulation when considering planetary habitability

The allocation and management of royalties under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act: options for reform

In response to post-war mining developments on Northern Territory Aboriginal reserves, policy innovations established the principles that a special rate of royalties could be levied on those developments and applied to the benefit of Northern Territory Aborigines, and that a proportion of those royalties should be reserved for the people of the area where mining was taking place. The Woodward Land Rights Commission accepted these two principles and also created Aboriginal land councils as a third class of beneficiary. The Commission thus proposed the 40/30/30 formula to govern the distribution of mining royalty equivalents (MREs) among these Aboriginal interests. From the inception of the Land Rights Act, the application of this formula has been beset by problems of logic, fairness and practicality. While changes to the financial provisions of the Act have been minor, only one element of this formula, the 30 per cent directed to areas affected by mining, has remained unchanged. Provision for supplementary funding of land councils has operated at the expense of general grants to Territory Aborigines. There is now, in the wake of the Reeves Review, an opportunity to re-think and amend the financial framework of the Land Rights Act. With respect to each class of beneficiary of MREs, this paper argues: • Payments to land councils should be fixed at 50 per cent of MREs, in order to provide for an expansion of regionalisation and land management activities in the post-land claims era. That percentage should be calculated on a rolling average of the previous ten years of MREs received by the Aboriginals Benefit Reserve (ABR) in order to make land council income more stable and predictable, and preserve its political independence. Supplementary funding should be allowed only under exceptional circumstances. • Ensuring accountability of royalty associations raises several issues that require critical review. The instrument of negotiated agreements should be more fully exploited to ensure both that associations’ expenditures serve community purposes, and that those services do not substitute for government programs. Financial policies need re-thinking, especially with respect to individual cash distributions and long-term investments. Land councils need to justify any claim, as against other possible agencies, to exercise greater oversight of association affairs. At the same time, the terms and application of s.35(2)(b) require reform in order to provide royalty associations with a more secure niche in the land rights scheme. • The level of grants to Territory Aborigines is too low to justify a separate administrative process and share of MREs. The accumulated capital fund of the ABR will soon be large enough to provide a substitute source of grants, if it is thought necessary to retain a limited pool of funds for general access

Geochemical proxies of ocean circulation and weathering inputs: Radiogenic isotopes of Nd, Pb, Sr, Hf, and Os

Marine records of the radiogenic isotope composition of the elements neodymium (Nd), lead (Pb), hafnium (Hf), strontium (Sr), and osmium (Os) allow the reconstruction of past ontinental weathering inputs on different time scales as a function of their respective oceanic residence times. Sr and Os have oceanic residence times significantly longer than the global mixing time of the ocean and are efficiently mixed on a global scale. Their isotope composition changes on long time scales as a function of plate tectonics and major orogenies, which allows their use as precise stratigraphic tools for the entire Phanerozoic. In contrast, Hf, Pb, and in particular Nd, have residence times on the order of or shorter than the global mixing time of the ocean, which results in distinct isotopic signatures of water masses and allows the reconstruction of past water mass mixing and weathering inputs on both long and short time scales. Here applications of these isotopes systems with a focus on the shorter residence time tracers are reviewed (without claiming to be comprehensive) and problems and potential solutions are discussed. Keywords: Radiogenic isotopes, paleo-oceanography, ocean circulation, water mass mixing, continental weatherin

Policy issues for the Community Development Employment Projects Scheme in rural and remote Australia

One of the most important programs for Indigenous community and economic development is the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme. CDEP employs around 35,000 Indigenous Australians and accounts for over one-quarter of total Indigenous employment. This paper reviews the evidence on the social and economic impacts of the scheme. The available evidence demonstrates that the scheme has positive economic and community development impacts and that it is cost effective in achieving these outcomes. The paper argues that the CDEP program should continue to be supported and resourced and outlines options for future policy directions in regard to Indigenous economic development and the role of the CDEP scheme