Should directors be pursued for insolvent trading where a company has entered into a deed of company arrangement?

This article examines the tension in Australia between the insolvent trading prohibition and the voluntary administration regime provided for in the Corporations Act. The tension exists since the former seeks to prosecute directors for incurring debts that the company cannot pay whereas the latter provisions seek to allow a company in financial distress to resolve the means of dealing with financial difficulty with its creditors and move forward on an agreed basis. The case of John Elliott is the first case in Australian corporate law history concerning the relevant provisions where an agreement was made with creditors, after which the director was prosecuted pursuant to the insolvent trading prohibition

Strokes for Representing Univariate Vector Field Maps

Particle systems make an excellent tool for creating tracks (which we call strokes) in vector fields. The question addressed in this paper is how such tracks should be made to vary in size and colour in order to reveal properties such as local direction and strength of the field. We find that for strokes that vary from large to small, direction is indicated by the large end. We also find that for strokes that vary in colour, the colour of the background is the most important determinant of perceived direction

Mending Canada's Employment Insurance Quilt: The Case for Restoring Equity

Under the current Employment Insurance (EI) system, long-lasting EI benefits are more easily accessed in regions with high unemployment rates than in regions with low unemployment rates where workers face tighter restrictions to access short-lived benefits. This complicated screening procedure, intended to better support the various circumstances facing unemployed workers across the country, creates a number of undesirable consequences: the most glaring being pockets of high, chronic unemployment. The goals and intentions of the EI regime should be simplified to better address the needs of Canada’s unemployed workers.Social Policy, Canada, employment insurance (EI), EI reforms

Nineteenth Colin Clark Lecture: November 2009: What Have we Learnt? The Great Depression in Australia from the Perspective of Today

This lecture examines the lessons learnt from Australia’s experience in the 1930s, and how these lessons have informed more recent economic policy decisions including the policy responses to the current global financial crisis. The lecture argues that the lessons learnt from the Great Depression have informed the macroeconomic frameworks of today. While Australia’s policy frameworks of the 1930s were tragically ill equipped to cope with anything other than small, inconsequential macroeconomic or financial market shocks, the policy frameworks put in place in the modern era have rendered the economy much more resilient to such shocks.