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Public Sector Governance in Australia »
Authored by: Meredith Edwards, John Halligan, Bryan Horrigan, Geoffrey Nicoll
Publication date: July 2012
Australia lacks a scholarly book that covers recent developments in public sector governance in Australia and blends cross-disciplinary perspectives from law, management, public administration and public policy. The primary reason for writing this book is to fill the gap in the treatment of this subject, and to provide insights from empirical evidence and current practice.
The book provides the first comprehensive theoretical and empirical work on governance in the Commonwealth public sector. It addresses the issues that emerged under the Howard government as well as their handling under the Rudd and Gillard governments. The book aims to enhance understanding of and communication about public governance across government, industry and the community.
The authors bring to this book expertise gained from political science, public administration and policy, public and private sector law.
Directions in Australian Electoral Reform »
Professionalism and Partisanship in Electoral Management
Authored by: Norm Kelly
Publication date: May 2012
Australia has a proud history of being an international leader in electoral administration, and Australian electoral commissions continue to have a professional, non-partisan approach to the management of elections. Yet their independence is constrained by the electoral laws they need to administer, and parliamentary committees charged with the oversight of the conduct of elections do so with a clear partisan bias.
Elections are all about winners, but who decides who the winners will be? Voters definitely have a big say, but it is the electoral system that determines how votes translate into seats in parliament. Any changes to the electoral system require the support of those in power, and it is important to question who benefits from electoral reforms. It is not surprising that partisanship plays a role and that governing parties usually benefit, although that is not always the case.
This book assesses Australian electoral reforms of the past 30 years using personal interview data and parliamentary debates, to provide a picture of the reform process as well as the outcomes. These issues, such as who gets to vote, the use of postal voting, party registration and vote weighting, have a profound impact on who wins elections. The book also examines Australia’s electoral administration, testing for professionalism, independence and integrity.
Basin Futures »
Water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin
Edited by: Daniel Connell, Quentin Grafton
Publication date: May 2011
This unique book brings together 27 chapters from some of the world’s leading practitioners and experts on environmental water, communities, law, economics and governance. Its goal is to understand the many dimensions of water in the Murray- Darling Basin and provide guidance about how to implement a water management plan that addresses the needs of communities, the economy and the environment. The comprehensiveness of topics covered, the expertise of its authors, and the absolute need to take a multidisciplinary approach to resolving the “wicked problem” of governing our scarce water resource makes this volume a must read for all who care about Australian communities and the environment.
A Bird That Flies With Two Wings »
Kastom and state justice systems in Vanuatu
Authored by: Miranda Forsyth
Publication date: September 2009
This book investigates the problems and possibilities of plural legal orders through an in-depth study of the relationship between the state and customary justice systems in Vanuatu. It argues that there is a need to move away from the current state-centric approach to law reform in the South Pacific region, and instead include all state and non-state legal orders in development strategies and dialogue. The book also presents a typology of models of engagement between state and non-state legal systems, and describes a process for analysing which of these models would be most advantageous for any country in the South Pacific region, and beyond.
The Social Effects of Native Title »
Recognition, Translation, Coexistence
Edited by: Benjamin R. Smith, Frances Morphy
Publication date: October 2007
The papers in this collection reflect on the various social effects of native title. In particular, the authors consider the ways in which the implementation of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cwlth), and the native title process for which this Act legislates, allow for the recognition and translation of Aboriginal law and custom, and facilitate particular kinds of coexistence between Aboriginal title holders and other Australians. In so doing, the authors seek to extend the debate on native title beyond questions of practice and towards an improved understanding of the effects of native title on the social lives of Indigenous Australians and on Australian society more generally.
These attempts to grapple with the effects of native title have, in part, been impelled by Indigenous people’s complaints about the Act and the native title process. Since the Act was passed, many Indigenous Australians have become increasingly unhappy with both the strength and forms of recognition afforded to traditional law and custom under the Act, as well as with the socially disruptive effects of the native title process. In particular, as several of the papers in this collection demonstrate, there is widespread discomfort with the transformative effects of recognition within the native title process, effects which can then affect other aspects of Indigenous lives.
Ink and Land »
Documenting Factionalism around a Prospective Mine in Papua New Guinea
Authored by: Willem Church
Publication date: 2025
Ink and Land is an ethnographic account of political and legal struggles over landownership in Papua New Guinea, in which competing factions seek recognition as customary landowners of Wafi-Golpu, a major prospective copper-gold mine. Drawing on extensive archival research, oral histories, court documents and fifteen months of fieldwork, the book examines how different groups attempt to harness resource extraction for their benefit and how, in doing so, they reshape their social worlds through the medium of affidavits, court declarations and incorporation certificates. To analyse this process, the book advances the concept of antagonistic documentality—a form of conflict in which parties engage in conflicting world-building projects through and about documents and, in doing so, create an order of paper that outlasts the disputes themselves. Through this detailed case study, Ink and Land reveals how legal and bureaucratic battles over resource extraction in Papua New Guinea formalise factionalism, consolidate elite control over new sources of wealth, and redefine the nature of groups and landownership. By focusing on conflict over documents as a process of social transformation, the book offers fresh insights into the politics of land, law and resource extraction in the contemporary Pacific.
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Vietnam Task »
The 5th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, 1966–67
Authored by: Robert O’Neill
Publication date: November 2022
On 24 May 1966, eight hundred men of the 5th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, landed at Nui Dat, in Viet Cong territory. For the next 12 months they were faced with the task of restoring peace, civil law and regular commerce to the Vietnamese of Phuoc Tuy province. This book is a detailed record of those months in the monsoon jungles—of the problems that were faced and the solutions that were found.
Captain O’Neill’s position as battalion intelligence officer enabled him to view the war from the standpoint of the battalion as a whole. However, he does not omit description of personal feelings—towards the Viet Cong, the jungle environment and the Vietnamese people, as well as the other Allied forces involved in the war.
Most of the book was written on the spot in Vietnam. On operations or at Battalion Headquarters, Captain O’Neill jotted down details of the war against the Viet Cong, putting the events of each day in order, often in the small hours of the following morning. Thus not only is this a factual account of the 5th Battalion’s activities over the year; it is also a vivid and compelling picture of the war in Vietnam from the soldier’s point of view.
Histories of Australian Rock Art Research »
Publication date: September 2022
Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often engaging with earlier rock markings. The art reflects and expresses changing experiences within landscapes over time, spirituality, history, law and lore, as well as relationships between individuals and groups of people, plants, animals, land and Ancestral Beings that are said to have created the world, including some rock art. Since the late 1700s, people arriving in Australia have been fascinated with the rock art they encountered, with detailed studies commencing in the late 1800s. Through the 1900s an impressive body of research on Australian rock art was undertaken, with dedicated academic study using archaeological methods employed since the late 1940s. Since then, Australian rock art has been researched from various perspectives, including that of Traditional Owners, custodians and other community members. Through the 1900s, there was also growing interest in Australian rock art from researchers across the globe, leading many to visit or migrate to Australia to undertake rock art research. In this volume, the varied histories of Australian rock art research from different parts of the country are explored not only in terms of key researchers, developments and changes over time, but also the crucial role of First Nations people themselves in investigations of this key component of their living heritage.
Made in China Journal: Volume 6, Issue 3, 2021 »
Edited by: Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere, Shui-yin Sharon Yam
Publication date: March 2022
In 2019 and 2020, Hongkongers witnessed—and, in many cases, participated in—one of largest and most exacting grassroots movements in the city’s history. Triggered by a proposed Extradition Bill and fuelled by a decades-long struggle for democracy and political freedom, the decentralised protest quickly seeped into the city’s everyday life. While some of the protestors confronted the police in black blocs, others participated in strikes, sit-ins, and economic boycotts. To suppress the movement, the Hong Kong police deployed an alarming use of force and violence. To put an end to the movement once and for all, in June 2020 the Chinese and Hong Kong government abruptly implemented the National Security Law (NSL), effectively rendering any expressions of dissent seditious and illegal. Since then, prominent pro-democracy activists and politicians have either gone into exile or have been imprisoned under the NSL; books penned by activists have been removed from the shelves of public libraries; key historical events and political concepts have been censored from textbooks; and around 60 advocacy groups and independent media outlets were forced to disband. Given the chilling effect of the NSL, many Hongkongers have chosen to emigrate. Amid this ongoing crackdown, this issue of the Made in China Journal takes stock of the aftermath of the protest movement and reflects on the sociopolitical changes that are taking place in Hong Kong’s political and civil society in the post-NSL era.
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Finding the Enemy Within »
Blasphemy Accusations and Subsequent Violence in Pakistan
Authored by: Sana Ashraf
Publication date: September 2021
In the past decade, Pakistan has witnessed incidents such as the public lynching of a student on a university campus, a Christian couple being torched alive, attacks on entire neighbourhoods by angry mobs and the assassination of a provincial governor by his own security guard over allegations of blasphemy. Finding the Enemy Within unpacks the meanings and motivations behind accusations of blasphemy and subsequent violence in Pakistan.
This is the first ethnographic study of its kind analysing the perspectives of a range of different actors including accusers, religious scholars and lawyers involved in blasphemy-related incidents in Pakistan. Bringing together anthropological perspectives on religion, violence and law, this book reworks prevalent analytical dichotomies of reason/emotion, culture/religion, traditional/Western, state/nonstate and legal/extralegal to extend our understanding of the upsurge of blasphemy-related violence in Pakistan.
Through the case study of blasphemy accusations in Pakistan, this book addresses broader questions of difference, individual and collective identities, social and symbolic boundaries, and conflict and violence in modern nation-states.