Journal articles: 'Australia's legal system' – Grafiati (2024)

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AbstractOn 14 December 2004, Australia announced the institution of a ‘Maritime Identification Zone’, extending 1000 nautical miles from its coast and involving the identification of vessels seeking to enter Australian ports, as well as vessels transiting Australia' Exclusive Economic Zone. This Article analyses the legality of these security measures under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, new developments through the International Maritime Organization and the Proliferation Security Initiative. The implications of prescribing and enforcing identification requirements on the high seas and in the EEZ, the impact on maritime boundaries and avenues for dispute settlement are all explored.

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Australia’s tropical river systems are poorly understood in comparison with Australia’s temperate freshwater and tropical marine systems. Tropical rivers convey ~70% of the continent’s freshwater runoff, and are increasingly being targeted for development. However, existing knowledge is inadequate to support policy for tropical regions that avoids repeating the environmental problems of water use in southern Australia. This paper summarises existing knowledge on the hydrogeomorphic drivers of tropical catchments, fluxes of sediments and nutrients, flow requirements and wetlands. Key research issues include improved quantification of available water resources, hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological linkages at systems scales, understanding and valuing ecosystem processes and services, and projecting the effects of long-term climate change. Two special considerations for tropical Australia are the location of major centres of government and research capacity outside the tropical region, and the legal title of much of tropical Australia vesting in Aboriginal communities with different cultural values for rivers. Both issues will need to be addressed if tropical research is to be effective in supporting resource management needs into the future. Systems-scale thinking is needed to identify links between system components and coastal enterprises, and to protect the environmental, social, and economic values of Australia’s tropical river systems.

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The Anglo-Australian legal system has not readily recognised Indigenous constitutions. The absence of such recognition does not, however, deny that Australia's Indigenous nations have had constitutions for thousands of years and continue to do so. In this article, we explain how Indigenous laws, institutions and systems of authority are constitutional. Using the constitutions of the Gunditjmara peoples and Ngarrindjeri nation as examples, we identify three dimensions of Indigenous constitutions in Australia: first, the foundation of Indigenous constitutions in the continuing and inherent authority of Indigenous nations; secondly constitutional features deriving from Indigenous law; and thirdly the use in Indigenous constitutions of institutions and processes that also have status under Australian law. We suggest that this new understanding of Indigenous constitutions provides a basis for contributing to current efforts in Indigenous constitution-making and to the development of a more inclusive understanding of the Australian constitutional system.

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Abstract This article investigates the policy and practice of Australia's so-called ‘eugenic phase’ of border control embedded within the 1912 Immigration Act. It highlights the efforts of the first London-based Commonwealth Medical Officer - Dr William Perrin Norris - who designed a medical bureaucratic system intended to keep ‘defectives’ out of Australia. Norris' vision is revealed to be befitting of his character, experience, and a passion for uniformity which went beyond his legal jurisdiction. In examining the associated political debates, procedural instructions and the practicalities of the legislation, this article advances a more nuanced historical understanding of this period of Australian border control, and traces the evolution of the idiot and insane prohibited immigrant clause in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

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AbstractThe Western Kangaroo Island Marine Park (WKIMP) was declared as part of South Australia's representative system of Marine Protected Areas in 2009. Sanctuary Zone 3 (SZ-3) of the WKIMP is a no-take area protected from fishing since 1 October 2014 and is located within the Northern Zone Rock Lobster Fishery (NZRLF). In February 2017, a dedicated survey was undertaken to estimate the relative abundance (catch per unit effort (CPUE), kg/potlift) and size of southern rock lobster (Jasus edwardsii) inside and outside SZ-3. Survey results were then compared with historical estimates of abundance and size obtained from commercial fishery-dependent data. Survey estimates of relative abundance of legal-size lobsters were 4.4 times greater inside SZ-3 compared with outside in 2017. Since 2014, when fishing was last permitted inside SZ-3, the relative abundance of lobsters increased by 75%. The mean size of legal-size female and male lobsters also increased by 4.1% and 12.5%, respectively. The population responses recorded are consistent with the results recorded for southern rock lobster stocks in marine parks in other jurisdictions.

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This article advocates for empowering Australia’s Indigenous custodians through innovative legal devices with respect to their traditional lands. This is because Indigenous Australians possess certain rights and duties that are unique to their being. Regrettably, these rights have crystallised into an aging Native Title system inherently characterised by Crown supremacy and Indigenous subservience. In exploring the Native Title machinery through the lens of Australia’s colonial legacy, this article illuminates the many injustices in containing a dynamic and complex culture within the unforgiving parameters of this outdated system. Thus, a great inequity exists at the very foundation of Native Title when those most adversely affected by colonial dispossession are inadequately protected. Nevertheless, contemporary legal precedents are increasingly recognised as significant developments in expanding a legal universe rooted in the proscriptive common law tradition. Achieving ‘case-by-case’ reform is ultimately overshadowed by the financial, emotional and physical burdens placed upon Indigenous litigants. Beyond the Native Title horizon lies an unchartered territory, a place where Indigenous autonomy can coexist within legal systems of land governance. In this innovative spirit, Australian lawmakers are challenged to adopt a co-governance scheme modelled on New Zealand’s Te Awa Tupua Act to empower Indigenous Australians and dismantle entrenched principles of anthropocentric environmentalism.

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This paper discusses the role of the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) in monitoring inmate deaths in custody on a national basis. It also provides a descriptive overview of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous inmate deaths in custody during the eighteen-year period between 1980 and 1998.In October 1987, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) commenced investigating the deaths of Australia's Indigenous people in custody throughout Australia between January 1, 1980 and May 31, 1989. RCIADIC's task was to examine the circ*mstances of the deaths; the actions taken by authorities; and the underlying causes of Indigenous deaths in custody, including social, cultural, and legal factors. The investigation found that the major factor contributing to the high number of Indigenous deaths in custody was the disproportionately higher rates at which Indigenous people come into contact with the criminal justice system. RCIADIC concluded that the most significant reason for this contact was the severely disadvantaged social, economic, and cultural position of many Indigenous people.

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Marine invasive alien species are sea-based organisms that are non-native to a marine ecosystem, and which can or have spread to a degree that has an adverse impact on biodiversity and human livelihoods. In a globalized and inter-connected world, the threats posed by marine invasive alien species are here to stay. Accordingly, it often has been lamented that the threats from marine alien species are too difficult to combat effectively. In Australia, these threats are exacerbated by the country's unique characteristics such as its sheer size, as well as its geographical and historical isolation from the rest of the world. More importantly for the purposes of this article, Australia's unique constitutional framework that entrenches its national system of federalism has led to complex power-sharing arrangements between the Commonwealth, and the State and Territory governments in the management of invasive alien species, which are arguably inadequate to combat marine invasive alien species effectively. In Australia, laws have been made to manage only one vector of marine invasive species, ballast water from vessels, but not for other vectors. This article analyses how marine invasive alien species are currently managed within the Australian legal framework, and discusses what can be done to improve the status quo in order effectively to control the spread of such foreign organisms. It argues with optimism that marine invasive alien species can be effectively managed under a strong legal framework that seeks to prevent their occurrence and minimize the negative impacts of their occurrence. Such a legal framework consists of sound domestic laws and institutions, the effects of which can be enhanced by greater international cooperation.

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In 2010, the Commonwealth government proposed Australia's third attempt to give federal constitutional recognition to local government. In 2013, the government secured the passage through Parliament of a Constitution Alteration but, due to political events, and amid much controversy, the proposed amendment was not put to the people. This paper examines the merits and prospects for success of the proposed reform, with an eye to lessons for the future of local government's place in the federal system. It argues that the legal and constitutional cases for the alteration were strong, but limited, and poorly contextualised, theorised and articulated. We use public opinion evidence to conclude that had it proceeded, the referendum result would probably have been a third failure. These lessons are important for ongoing debate over sub-constitutional and constitutional reform to Australian intergovernmental relations, including questions of federal financial redistribution at the core of the proposal. Overall, the events of 2013 reinforce arguments that reforms to the position of local government, while important, should only be pursued as part of a holistic package of federal reform and renovation; and that more robust deliberative processes and principles must be adhered to before again attempting any constitutional reform.

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BHP is a leading global resources company which comprises four main business groups: BHP Copper, BHP Minerals, BHP Steel and BHP Petroleum. BHP Petroleum (BHPP) global operations are divided into four Regions and Australia/Asia Region is responsible for exploration, production, field development and joint ventures in the Asia-Pacific region. In Australia, the Company's largest producing assets are its shares of the Gippsland oil and gas fields in Bass Strait and the North West Shelf project in Western Australia.BHPP operates three Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels-Jabiru Venture, Challis Venture and Skua Venture-in the Timor Sea and one FPSO, the Griffin Venture, in the Southern Carnarvon Basin. Stabilised oil is offloaded from all four FPSOs by means of a floating hose to a shuttle tanker. Gas from the Griffin Venture is compressed and transferred through a submarine pipeline to an onshore gas treatment plant.BHPP's Asian production comes from the Dai Hung oil field offshore Vietnam where BHPP is the operator and from Kutubu in Papua New Guinea.In Melbourne, BHPP operates a Methanol Research Plant and produced Australia's first commercial quantities of methanol in October 1994.BHPP is an extremely active offshore oil and gas explorer and has interests in a number of permits and blocks in the Australian-Indonesian Zone of Co-operation.This paper discusses BHPP's approach to safety management, both for its worldwide operations and specifically in Australia/Asia Region. It explains how BHPP's worldwide safety management model takes regional regulatory variations into account. It shows, specifically, how this has been done in Australia/Asia Region using what BHPP considers to be a best practice approach.The paper describes how BHPP Australia/Asia Region benchmarked its performance against other operators in Australia and the North Sea. It explains how the findings of the benchmarking study were used to plan the preparation of a safety management system (SMS). The structure of the SMS is described along with the legal requirements in Australia.The paper concludes that implementation of the SMS is progressing according to plan and points out that safety cases for the FPSOs have been submitted to the Regulators. Implementation of the SMS and the drive for world class safety standards is having a substantial effect and safety performance is improving. One measure of safety performance, the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) is down from around 15 at the end of 1994 to under 3 in December 1996.

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The Australian legal system is based on the principle of equality before the law for all its citizens. The government of Australia also passed the international Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act in 1986, although these rights are not accessible to all Australians in the legal system (Bird 1995:3). The Australian legal system has failed to grant equality for all its people. The Aboriginal community is severely disadvantaged within the legal system because the Australian criminal justice system has “institutionalised discrimination” against Aboriginal people through communication barriers (Goldflam 1995: 29).

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<p><em>Recent years have seen fierce public debate on whether Australia’s parliaments are passing laws that undermine fundamental democratic values, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association. Such debate has tended to focus on a few contentious laws, including s 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), s 35P of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 (Cth) and Queensland’s anti-bikie legislation. This article conducts a survey of the federal, state and territory statute books in order to determine whether such examples are isolated, or indicative of a broader trend. It identifies 350 instances of laws that arguably encroach upon rights and freedoms essential to the maintenance of a healthy democracy. Most of these laws have entered onto the statute book since September 2001. The article finds that the terrorist attacks of that month marked a watershed moment in the making of Australian laws, and that since that time parliamentarians have been less willing to exercise self-restraint by not passing laws that undermine Australia’s democratic system.</em></p>

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Abstract A great work of literature does more for international criminal justice than providing evidence. By couching the evidence in conceptual categories, literature can offer insights on how law should be interpreted. This review essay seeks to demonstrate this argument about legal interpretation through a reading of Behrouz Boochani’s much-acclaimed No Friend but the Mountains. In doing so, it seeks to offer a reflection on the significance of literary evidence authored by those subjected to atrocity. Boochani is far from being the first author whose work has enormous value both as literature and as testimony (an overlap that has been widely studied in the humanities and social sciences). Yet the relationship between the two is still seldom appreciated by lawyers and seldom appreciated for its value to legal theory. The essay aims to contribute to the latter discussion, specifically as it pertains to contemporary abuses against asylum seekers.

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This article explores the barriers experienced by Indigenous Australians that prevent adequate engagement with the coronial system in New South Wales. The findings presented here are the result of a qualitative study involving key legal professionals and advocates in the coronial jurisdiction. A number of significant shortcomings are identified, including inadequate funding, a lack of information and appropriate communication, and significant delays between time of death and conclusion of the inquest.

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This paper identifies and describes a number of global trends in regulatory theory and legal scholarship. It points out the huge level of complexity demanded by globalisation and the unfortunate complication of this is that there is legal indeterminacy. The legal indeterminacy springs from the desire to amend and alter existing models. That has been the thrust of the Council of Australian Governments changes to adapt and add huge amounts of complexity to a flawed system. This paper argues that an effective water regulatory model requires a fundamental re-examination of the concept of water ownership and a capturing by the State of the right to allocate rainfall. This foundation is effective and the way forward to deal with the key issues in this transition phase. The second key element to an effective regulatory model is the concept of performance-based assessment. This requires information and schemes to be set up to work out ways to monitor and evaluate the performance of the utility on selected criteria. For Australia at present there is a dire lack of agreed criteria on these key issues and these have the potential to pull apart the whole process. The key issues are indigenous rights, governance issues, public participation, alteration of pre-existing rights and incorporation of environmental requirements.

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How litigious are Australians? Although quantitative studies have comprehensively debunked the fear of an Australian civil justice system in crisis, the literature has yet to address the qualitative public policy question of whether Australians are under- or over-using the legal system to resolve their disputes. On one view, expressed by the insurance industry, the mass media and prominent members of the judiciary, Australia is moving towards an American-style hyper-litigiousness. By contrast, Australian popular culture paints the typical Australian as culturally averse to formal rights assertion. This article explores the comparative law literature on litigiousness in two jurisdictions that have attracted significant scholarly attention — the United States and Japan. More specifically, it seeks to draw lessons from this literature for both understanding litigiousness in modern Australia and framing future research projects on the issue.

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The starting point in understanding Australia’s socio-legal place in an international context is to be familiar with its Western legal tradition. Some of the characteristics of the Western idea of law include the separation of law from other normative systems (such as religion), the centrality or primacy of law as a method of regulating society, and the inherent authority of law. Other major socio-legal features of contemporary Australia include a multicultural population and government by representative democracy. Australian law has sprung out of the English branch of the Western legal tradition, therefore the English heritage of Australian law will first be considered.

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The starting point in understanding Australia’s socio-legal place in an international context is to be familiar with its Western legal tradition. Some of the characteristics of the Western idea of law include the separation of law from other normative systems (such as religion), the centrality or primacy of law as a method of regulating society, and the inherent authority of law. Other major socio-legal features of contemporary Australia include a multicultural population and government by representative democracy. Australian law has sprung out of the English branch of the Western legal tradition, therefore the English heritage of Australian law will first be considered.

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Abstract Australia’s Migration Act 1958 (Cth) provides for visas that honour Australia’s international non-refoulement obligations; it also provides for visas to be refused or cancelled on criminal grounds, resulting in removal from Australia. In 2014, Australia introduced mandatory visa cancellation for certain criminal non-citizens sentenced to 12 months or more in prison. Coinciding with these changes was the codification of aspects of refugee and human rights law, the severing of references to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and the introduction of section 197C in the Migration Act, which provides that non-refoulement obligations are irrelevant when considering the power to remove non-citizens. This article focuses on the interaction between these changes in the law, analysing the application of the complex legal provisions which govern the legal position of those seeking protection or owed international non-refoulement obligations. This analysis identifies a number of unintended consequences that appear to have resulted from these changes. These include risks that Australia’s international non-refoulement obligations may not be adequately considered or safeguarded, resulting in serious consequences for the individual concerned, including the possibility of indefinite detention or refoulement. They also include implications for the rule of law, and uncertainty, delay, and cost in aspects of the system for decision making and review.

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The paper deals with the features of the legal regulation of genetic research in the Commonwealth of Australia with due regard to the state structure, national, ethical and other factors. The primary source of law in Australia is the common law articulated in judicial precedents (case law) that has recently been supplemented by acts of statutory regulation. The paper thoroughly investigates the processes of storage, access and protection of full-genome sequencing data. The authors analyze the peculiarities of functioning of the judicial system of Australia; the experience of normative consolidation of informed consent for genetic research, confidentiality of obtained information, strategic priorities in integration of the results of genetic research into Australia’s health system. The paper provides the analysis of the list of documents containing indications of cases in which medical organizations should not collect confidential information about a person. As a result of the study, the authors identify certain gaps in the normative legal regulation of genetic research and inconsistencies and contradictions of certain normative legal acts. The paper focuses on specifics of genetic research with the participation of the Aboriginal population of Australia, which, in turn, will help in the formation of the relevant legal framework in the Russian Federation.As a conclusion, the authors note that in the field of legal regulation of the processes of storage, access and protection of genetic information in Australia there is a tendency to use normative regulators. Particular attention is drawn to the normative consolidation of the priority of public interests over private interests and its reflection not only in numerous reservations and exceptions, but also in the framework of generally relevant strategic priorities. Presuming the development of the similar legal framework in the Russian Federation and taking into account the multiethnicity of the population, it should be highlighted that Australia’s experience in implementing the genetic research involving the Aboriginal population should be implemented.

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The wrongful conviction of David Harold Eastman in the Australian Capital Territory represents one of Australia’s most recent and high-profile public failures of the criminal justice system and highlights the limits of the Australian legal system. Further, the Eastman case draws into question the use of inquiries into miscarriages of justice, particularly when an inquiry’s recommendations can be disregarded by governments (as it was in this instance). This article provides an overview of the Eastman case and critically evaluates how it sheds light on the use of inquiries as an avenue to investigate and correct wrongful convictions more broadly in Australia.

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This article critically examines techniques employed by the Australian state to expand its control of refugees and asylum seekers living in Australia. In particular, it analyses the operation of Australia’s unique Asylum Seeker Code of Behaviour, which asylum seekers who arrive by boat must sign in order to be released from mandatory immigration detention, with reference to an original dataset of allegations made under the Code. We argue that the Code and the regime of visa cancellation and re-detention powers of which it forms a part are manifestations of what Beckett and Murakawa call the ‘shadow carceral state’, whereby punitive state power is extended beyond prison walls through the blurring of civil, administrative and criminal legal authority. The Code contributes to Australia’s apparatus of refugee deterrence by adding to it a brutal system of surveillance, visa cancellation and denial of services for asylum seekers living in the community.

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Australia’s system of law and government contains a range of mechanisms through which the executive branch is held to account for its actions. However, in emergencies, these accountability mechanisms are often significantly eroded in a range of ways. This article examines how the forms and types of powers that Australian governments have relied on to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic have avoided many of the political, legal and administrative accountability mechanisms that ordinarily apply to government decision-making. It looks at whether these accountability limits are justified and asks whether we ought to be concerned.

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Abstract This article identifies 8 key lessons for those States contemplating a free trade agreement with the United States (U.S.) arising from Australia’s experience. The standards of intellectual property protection under the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and their impact on pharmaceutical prices in Australia are a particular focus. Prospective parties must first conduct a national interest self-assessment which reviews the desired strength of intellectual property protection under national law and their preference for using flexibilities available to them under the existing international intellectual property rights framework. The United States negotiates free trade agreements in light of previous ones, negotiating outcomes obtained in other fora and the decisions of international trade tribunals. Negotiations typically occur behind closed doors, which is a process having adverse implications for transparent decision-making, public consultation periods and contributions from interested non-governmental actors. A concluded agreement will build on prior treaties and influence the course of future international arrangements. But the impact of a United States free trade agreement is not always clear, including because of a lack of reliable data, and the extent of national legal change is a contested issue given existing reform agendas and external influences. The United States seek to redesign national health care systems in its own image and had little success in Australia’s case. National legal systems need not be harmonised: although there can be some convergence in intellectual property rights regimes, significant differences may also remain. Negotiators must reconcile competing cultures, philosophies and perspectives between States for a free trade agreement to be worthwhile.

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This article examines the use of solitary confinement of juveniles within the Western Australian justice system. Examining the legal framework, it points to the issues of inadequate accountability and oversight. Often manifesting itself under different names such as regression or simply confinement, it still results in extended periods of social isolation, minimal environmental stimulation and minimal opportunity for social interaction. The negative consequences of such confinement on children and young people are briefly examined before it is considered within the international human rights framework, specifically, in light of Australia’s international obligations and their stated commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Beijing Rules and Havana Guidelines.

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Evidence from both Australian and international jurisdictions show that children in residential care are over-represented in the criminal justice system. In the current study, we interviewed 46 professionals who had contact with young people in residential care settings in New South Wales, Australia. Our sample included police officers, residential care service providers, legal aid lawyers and juvenile justice workers, about their perceptions of the link between residential care and contact with the criminal justice system. Factors identified by the participants included the care environment itself, use of police as a behavioural management tool, deficient staff training and inadequate policies and funding to address the over-representation. These factors, combined with the legacy of Australia’s colonial past, were a particularly potent source of criminalisation for Aboriginal children in care.

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This paper examines whether key legislative and regulatory frameworks for the provision of water services in Sydney, Australia, successfully support the complex task of planning and managing urban water systems to balance water security, cost and sustainability considerations. The challenges of managing urban water systems under a changing and uncertain climate became starkly apparent during Australia's ‘Millennium Drought’, a decade-long period of extremely dry conditions throughout the 2000s. As the drought progressed, several state and territory governments assumed control of planning and approvals processes in order to implement large water-supply infrastructure projects with great urgency. However, at the end of the decade La Niña rains saturated catchments, spilled over dam walls and devastated several communities with flooding. Analysis of the frameworks for third-party access, private-sector participation, planning, and water-conservation initiatives reveals that the rules, roles and responsibilities of the many actors are interlinked but not always effectively integrated. The introduction and expansion of competition in the urban water industry are an ongoing experiment with great influence on the governance of the sector and the ways in which water services are planned for and provided.

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The mission of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), established under the Federal Government’s national collaborative research infrastructure program, is to deliver ocean observations to the marine and climate science community. However, the observations have many uses, ranging from real-time operational forecasting to understanding of processes and policy decision making. Observations need to be provided in a format that fits the purpose of the intended application. Turning observations into usable data, time series, gridded products and analyses broadens the use of such observations. Value adding by developing products that are relevant to end-user needs and easily accessible to non-scientists is also required as a strategic response to new and emerging socioeconomic, legal and policy priorities. This paper describes some of the pathways on which IMOS observations are being delivered and used in Australia, demonstrating the value that ocean observations have for society.

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This paper presents results of a telephone survey of 400 Western Australians regarding attitudes to laws relating to possession of cannabis for personal use. Over a third of respondents believed cannabis should be made as legal as alcohol. Support for decriminalization increased from 64.0% to 71.5% when possible penalties associated with decriminalization were described. When penalties were described, more women than men favored decriminalization but age, political affiliation, and city or country residency no longer predicted attitudes to decriminalization. Almost two-thirds of respondents believed that many people used cannabis without experiencing serious problems and that the court system was overburdened by minor cannabis offenses. Half the sample believed it would not be a bad thing for the community if people were legally able to grow cannabis for their personal use. Results suggest there is considerable community support for removing criminal penalties for simple cannabis offenses.

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Background Medical billing errors and fraud have been described as one of the last “great unreduced healthcare costs,” with some commentators suggesting measurable average losses from this phenomenon are 7% of total health expenditure. In Australia, it has been estimated that leakage from Medicare caused by non-compliant medical billing may be 10–15% of the scheme’s total cost. Despite a growing body of international research, mostly from the U.S, suggesting that rather than deliberately abusing the health financing systems they operate within, medical practitioners may be struggling to understand complex and highly interpretive medical billing rules, there is a lack of research in this area in Australia. The aim of this study was to address this research gap by examining the experiences of medical practitioners through the first qualitative study undertaken in Australia, which may have relevance in multiple jurisdictions. Method This study interviewed 27 specialist and general medical practitioners who claim Medicare reimbursem*nts in their daily practice. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using thematic analysis. Results The qualitative data revealed five themes including inadequate induction, poor legal literacy, absence of reliable advice and support, fear and deference, and unmet opportunities for improvement. Conclusion The qualitative data presented in this study suggest Australian medical practitioners are ill-equipped to manage their Medicare compliance obligations, have low levels of legal literacy and desire education, clarity and certainty around complex billing standards and rules. Non-compliant medical billing under Australia’s Medicare scheme is a nuanced phenomenon that may be far more complex than previously thought and learnings from this study may offer important insights for other countries seeking solutions to the phenomenon of health system leakage. Strategies to address the barriers and deficiencies identified by participants in this study will require a multi-pronged approach. The data suggest that the current punitive system of ensuring compliance by Australian medical practitioners is not fit for purpose.

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Developing resilient communities and sharing responsibility for hazard management is the key to Australia’s ‘National Strategy for Disaster Resilience’. There are, however, a wide range of conflicting views on the appropriate responsibilities of governments, citizens and communities that are not well recognised in the national policy discourse. What the ideas of resilient communities and shared responsibility mean for wildfire management and how these ideas might shape wildfire safety thinking and practice is therefore unclear and contested. This paper makes explicit some of the necessary, but often hidden, trade-offs between competing values that are implicit in assessments of where responsibility for wildfire management lies, and how it should be shared. After describing different ways in which responsibility is attributed and legitimated through legal and governance systems, this paper compares and contrasts potential legal and governance implications of four hypothetical scenarios for wildfire management, each of which portrays a contrasting set of extreme value trade-offs. The underlying purpose of the exercise is to encourage stakeholders to draw on the frameworks to explicitly acknowledge and debate the value trade-offs that are necessary, but most often unacknowledged, in more moderate decision-making about how to share responsibility for risk management between governments and citizens.

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ABSTRACTThis article considers the legal and policy issues surrounding the establishment of continental shelves beyond 200 nautical miles (nm) from sub-Antarctic islands. Under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) a coastal state may establish a continental shelf that extends seawards beyond 200 nm where the continental shelf continues, normally to a total distance of no more than 350 nm. To establish such an extended continental shelf (ECS) a coastal state must file a submission of delineation data with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), a technical body established by UNCLOS.The rights of coastal states present particular difficulties in the Antarctic Treaty area (ATA), due to the general non-recognition of the seven territorial claims and the provisions of article IV of the Antarctic Treaty. Accordingly, Antarctic claimant states are generally adopting a restrained approach to the issue of ECS as appertaining to claimed territories in Antarctica in their submissions to the CLCS. These states appear to recognise that they cannot secure the normal prerogatives of a coastal state from territorial sea baselines within the ATA, at least for the duration of the present Antarctic Treaty system (ATS). A different approach is being taken with respect of sub-Antarctic islands lying north of the ATA. Sovereignty over sub-Antarctic territory north of the ATA is, with the exception of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, not contested. Accordingly, rights in relation to any continental shelf attaching to sub-Antarctic islands may be realised, apparently without challenging the Antarctic modus vivendi.However, the ECS of several sub-Antarctic islands penetrate the ATA. In 2008, the CLCS largely endorsed the 2004 Australian submission that included data on ECS from Australia's sub-Antarctic islands of Macquarie Island and the Heard and McDonald group. The ECS from both groups penetrates south of 60°S into the ATA, in the case of Heard and McDonald covering a huge area. Although the wider dispute regarding sovereignty between the United Kingdom and Argentina adds complexity to the case, the South Sandwich Islands are sufficiently close to the ATA that their continental shelf also penetrates the area. In the event that the CLCS were ever able to make a recommendation on a submission of data relating to the South Sandwich Islands (something that could only occur with the consent of Argentina and the United Kingdom) the result would be a situation similar to that pertaining to the Australian sub-Antarctic islands.The consequence of these developments is that rights to seabed areas within the ATA have been assigned to individual states. On the face of it, this appears to be in conflict with the norm of collective responsibility that was established by the Antarctic Treaty 50 years ago precisely to constrain sovereignty issues in the region. What is suggested by this practice is a difference in the attitude of Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) to rights generated from territory within the ATA and rights generated from external territory. Nonetheless, there may be significant implications flowing from the latter for resource issues within the ATA. Minerals exploitation on sub-Antarctic extended continental shelf within the ATA is precluded in the near-term because of cost, the formal prohibition under article 7 of the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, and the fact that all sub-Antarctic coastal states are ATCPs. However the situation in regard to other resource activities is less clear. Bioprospecting could proceed subject to coastal state approval pursuant to the provisions of UNCLOS relating to marine scientific research, and there is no mandatory regulation under the ATS. The possibility that a coastal state may seek to realise rights on the ECS in relation to genetic resources may complicate collective ATS approaches and pose wider geopolitical challenges. In the longer term, the fact that some Antarctic states are presently seeking to secure rights that are essentially about ensuring their preclusive access to resources may have significant implications for strategic interests in the greater Antarctic region.

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This paper analyses soil governance in Australia and the challenges facing sustainable natural resource management within the context of a cooperative system of federation and a globalised market economy. With only 6 per cent of the Australian landmass considered arable, one would assume that protecting Australia’s valuable soil resource would be of national significance. However, Australia currently lacks nationally consistent policies and legal instruments to ensure that its soil is protected, maintained and enhanced for future generations. While recognising that soil governance is a broad discipline encompassing many areas of soil science and management, this discussion will only focus on the soil conservation aspects of sustainable ecosystems and sustainable food and fibre in Australia; it will not explore in depth issues of soil contamination and other pollution related areas. The paper discusses: the state of Australian soils and the managers of these resources; current soil governance in Australia (based on the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations definition); and a case study example of an Australian state approach to landuse conflict and the protection of agricultural lands. The paper highlights policies and institutional arrangements required for the protection of Australian soil and the very communities that are attempting to steward these resources for future generations.

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The use of nursing assistants has increased across health systems in the past 20 years, to alleviate licensed nurses' workload and to meet rising health care demands at lower costs. Evidence suggests that, when used as a substitute for licensed nurses, assistants are associated with poorer patient and nurse outcomes. Our multimethods study evaluated the impact of a policy to add nursing assistants to existing nurse staffing in Western Australia's public hospitals, on a range of outcomes. In this article, we draw the metainferences from previously published quantitative data and unpublished qualitative interview data. A longitudinal analysis of patient records found significantly higher rates adverse patient outcomes on wards that introduced nursing assistants compared with wards that did not. These findings are explained with ward-level data that show nursing assistants were added to wards with preexisting workload and staffing problems and that those problems persisted despite the additional resources. There were also problems integrating assistants into the nursing team, due to ad hoc role assignments and variability in assistants' knowledge and skills. The disconnect between policy intention and outcomes reflects a top-down approach to role implementation where assistants were presented as a solution to nurses' workload problems, without an understanding of the causes of those problems. We conclude that policy makers and managers must better understand individual care environments to ensure any new roles are properly tailored to patient and staff needs. Further, standardized training and accreditation for nursing assistant roles would reduce the supervisory burden on licensed nurses.

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The Native Title Act 1993 (NTA) introduces a new dimension to Australia's land tenure systems; new property rights are established for native title parties via the creation of a 'right to negotiate' (RTN) with respect to future acts on land where native title might be determined. There is growing recognition that, legal uncertainties about the potential co-existence of native title on pastoral leases aside, there are elements of the NTA that are resulting in sub-optimal outcomes for the petroleum industry. Within a Coasian analytical framework it is demonstrated that owing to unclear property rights, transactions costs for negotiating exploration and production with native title parties are high. Recognising this, the Commonwealth government has proposed a package of amendments that attempt to address industry concerns while balancing these against indigenous interests. These recommendations include a once-only RTN, a higher threshold for registration of claims, automatic renewal of existing production leases and mandatory statutory functions for Native Title Representative Bodies (NTRBs) that will require them to resolve competing native title claims and to sign-off agreements with resource developers. Noting that strategic behaviour by industry, indigenous parties and especially State governments have hampered effective operations of the NTA, the paper ends by considering the choices available to the petroleum industry to ensure that statutory amendments are in its best interests.

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Introduction:Technology advances have resulted in cheaper and quicker genomic sequencing (panels, exomes, whole genomes). Uptake into clinical practice has been rapid despite limited consideration of workforce, patient safety, consent, practice standards, guidelines and cost benefit. AUD 150M (USD 113M) has been independently allocated to genomic initiatives by Australian state and federal governments that don't reflect a national approach to genomics.Methods:Modified horizon scanning (HS) methodology identified issues around genomic sequencing to be considered by governments regarding their support, or otherwise, before appropriate implementation and diffusion into local healthcare systems. A national jurisdictional advisory group was subsequently established that undertook extensive stakeholder consultation across Australia, including written submissions, over a four-month period.Results:HS identified that genomic sequencing is diffusing rapidly through the health system and flagged issues of pressing concern, including: workforce requirements; education, training and literacy for the medical workforce and community; infrastructure; data; and ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI). HealthPACT recommended a national coordinated approach to policy development across jurisdictional boundaries to ensure appropriate adoption of genomics. Stakeholder consultation confirmed overwhelming support for greater national coordination of the application of genomic knowledge in healthcare. Five strategic priorities were developed to support appropriate integration of genomics into health care for Australians: person-centered approach; workforce; financing; services; and, data. Three principles underpin strategic priorities: i) application of genomic knowledge is ethically, legally and socially responsible and community trust is promoted; ii) access and equity are promoted for vulnerable populations; and, iii) application of genomic knowledge to health care is supported and informed by evidence and research.Conclusions:HS identified significant policy, workforce, funding and sustainability issues already facing state and territory governments that would, in time, face the federal government. The National Health Genomics Policy Framework outlines an agreed high-level national approach to policy, regulatory and investment decision-making for genomics and was approved by all Australian health Ministers in November 2017.

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Context: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has precipitated an unprecedented volume of medical research. Articles reporting two studies were recently retracted from prestigious journals for reasons including the (thus far) unverifiable provenance of data. This commentary adopts a health information management lens to focus on aspects of data in one of the studies (investigating the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19). The issues: Referencing the Australian context, the current article considers some of the study’s reported hospital administrative and coded data categories within the context of Australian hospitals’ health information management practices. It highlights potential risks associated with the collection and interpretation of ‘big’ health data. Implications: This article identifies pitfalls that confront researchers undertaking multi-country studies and the need to consider country-specific: (i) collected administrative data items; (ii) health information-related ethical, legal and management policy constraints on the use of confidential hospital records and derived data; and (iii) differences in health classification systems and versions used in the coding of diagnoses and related procedures, interventions and health behaviours. Conclusions: The article concludes that the inclusion of a qualified, senior Health Information Manager in research teams and on institutional Human Research Ethics Committees would help to prevent potential problems.

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Objective Limitation of Medical Treatment (LMT) forms are an essential element of end-of-life care. Decision making around LMT is complex and often involves patients with dementia. Despite the complexity, junior doctors frequently play a central role in completing LMT forms. The present study sought perspectives from a range of stakeholders (hospital clinicians, medical education personnel, legal and advocacy staff) about junior doctors’ roles in completing LMT forms in general and for patients with dementia. Methods Qualitative data were gathered in semi-structured interviews (SSI) and theoretical concepts were explored in roundtable discussion (RD). Participants were recruited through purposive and convenience sampling drawing on healthcare and legal personnel employed in the public hospital and aged care systems, selected from major metropolitan hospitals, healthcare and legal professional bodies and advocacy organisations in Victoria, Australia. The contents of the SSIs and RD were subject to thematic analysis using a framework approach. Data were indexed according to the topics established in the study aim; categories were systematically scrutinised, from which key themes were distilled. Results Stakeholders reported that completing LMT forms was difficult for junior doctors because of a lack of medical and legal knowledge, as well as clinical inexperience and inadequate training. Healthcare organisations (HCOs) either lacked policies about the role of junior doctors or had practices that were discordant with policy. In this process, there were substantial gaps pertaining to patients with dementia. Recommendations made by the study participants included the provision of supervised clinical exposure and additional training for junior doctors, strengthening HCO policies and explicit consideration of the needs of patients with dementia. Conclusions LMT forms should be designed for clarity and consistency across HCOs. Enhancing patient care requires appropriate and sensitive completion of LMT. Relevant HCO policy and clinical practice changes are discussed herein, and recommendations are made for junior doctors in this arena, specifically in the context of patients with dementia. What is known about the topic? Junior doctors continue to play a central role in LMT orders, a highly complex decision-making task that they are poorly prepared to complete. LMT decision making in Australia’s aging population and for people with dementia is especially challenging. What does this paper add? A broad range of stakeholders, including hospital clinicians, medical education personnel and legal and advocacy staff, identified ongoing substantial gaps in education and training of junior doctors (despite what is already known in the literature). Furthermore, LMT decision making for patients with dementia is not explicitly considered in policy of practice. What are the implications for practitioners? Current policy and practice are not at the desired level to deliver appropriate end-of-life care with regard to LMT orders, especially for patients with dementia. Greater involvement of executives and senior clinicians is required to improve both practice at the bed side and the training and support of junior doctors, as well as creating more robust policy.

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Australia’s corporate regulatory authorities have been extensively lobbied during the last 10 years to move to adopt an international set of accounting standards that the major nations of the world have evolved. Following the establishment of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in the UK, that body has moved to promulgate a broad range of accounting standards. Australia has been a member of the IASB from its early days.The IASB has moved to promulgate some accounting standards. The Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) has moved to adopt these same standards. In effect, the intent of those standards has been converted to Australian terms. The bulk of these new accounting standards (AASBs) will be effective for the first time to accounts of reporting entities for the years after 1 January 2005.The intention of the adoption of these standards has been to provide a consistent platform for the preparation of accounts in all of the major countries of the world. The expectation is to promote consistent reporting and more ready comparability between participants in various industries and between industries and from year to year.For a number of oil and gas listed companies, however, the short to medium-term is likely to produce the exact opposite in results and comparability terms. Accounting results for years prior to the adoption of the new AASBs will in certain circ*mstances bear results so dissimilar that their usage will be misleading.The conversion effort from the old standards to the new standards will involve considerable effort by all participants in the oil and gas industry; this should have started months ago.There will also be spin-off problems causing many legal documents, including borrowing agreements and performance bonus agreements that will need to be re-written. There will only be havoc in an administrative context if those oil and gas companies have not prepared themselves well and in a timely fashion. There may be financial havoc if the changes in accounting policies via the International Financial Reporting System (IFRS) make it difficult to raise new capital or cause problems under existing borrowing covenants.

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Background The Cracks in the Ice (CITI) community toolkit was developed to provide evidence-based, up-to-date information and resources about crystal methamphetamine to Australians. Given the high rates of internet use in the community and the potential for misinformation, CITI has the potential to play an important role in improving knowledge and challenging misconceptions surrounding crystal methamphetamine. Objective This study aims to determine (1) whether the CITI toolkit is achieving its aim of disseminating evidence-based information and resources to people who use crystal methamphetamine, their family and friends, health professionals, and the general community and (2) examine the association between the use of CITI and the knowledge and attitudes about crystal methamphetamine. Methods A cross-sectional web-based survey, open to Australian residents (aged ≥18 years), was conducted from November 2018 to March 2019. People who had previously visited the website (referred to as “website visitors” in this study) and those who had not (“naïve”) were recruited. At baseline, knowledge, attitudes, and demographics were assessed. CITI website visitors then completed a series of site evaluation questions, including the System Usability Scale (SUS), and naïve participants were asked to undertake a guided site tour of a replicated version of the site before completing the evaluation questions and repeating knowledge and attitude scales. Results Of a total 2108 participants, 564 (26.7%) reported lifetime use of crystal methamphetamine, 434 (20.6%) were family/friends, 288 (13.7%) were health professionals, and 822 (38.9%) were community members. The average SUS score was 73.49 (SD 13.30), indicating good site usability. Health professionals reported significantly higher SUS scores than community members (P=.02) and people who used crystal methamphetamine (P<.001). Website visitors had significantly higher baseline knowledge than naïve participants (P<.001). Among naïve participants, knowledge scores increased following exposure to the website (mean 15.2, SE 0.05) compared to baseline (mean 14.4, SE 0.05; P<.001). The largest shifts in knowledge were observed for items related to prevalence, legal issues, and the effects of the drug. Stigmatizing attitude scores among the naïve group were significantly lower following exposure to CITI (mean 41.97, SE 0.21) compared to baseline (mean 44.3, SE 0.21; P<.001). Conclusions This study provides an innovative evaluation of a national eHealth resource. CITI is achieving its aim of disseminating evidence-based, nonstigmatizing, and useful information and resources about crystal methamphetamine to key end user groups and has received good usability scores across its target groups. Interaction with CITI led to immediate improvements in knowledge about crystal methamphetamine and a decrease in stigmatizing attitudes. CITI demonstrates the important role of digital information and support platforms for translating evidence into practice and improving knowledge and reducing stigma.

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The delivery of quality care at the end of life should be seamless across all health care settings and independent from variables such as institutional largeness, charismatic leadership, funding sources and blind luck … People have come to fear the prospect of a technologically protracted death or abandonment with untreated emotional and physical stress. (Field and Castle cited in Fins et al., p. 1–2). 1 Australians are entitled to plan in advance the medical treatments they would allow in the event of incapacity using advance directives (ADs). A critical role of ADs is protecting people from unwanted inappropriate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at the end stage of life. Generally, ADs are enacted in the context of medical evaluation. However, first responders to a potential cardiac arrest are often non-medical, and in the absence of medical instruction, default CPR applies. That is, unless there is a clear AD CPR refusal on hand and policy supports compliance. Such policy occurs in jurisdictions where statute ADs qualifying or actioning scope is prescriptive enough for organisations to expect all health professionals to appropriately observe them. ADs under common law or similar in nature statute ADs are open to broader clinical translation because the operational criteria are set by the patient. According policy examples require initial medical evaluation to determine their application. Advance care planning (ACP) programs can help bring AD legislation to effect (J. Cashmore, speech at the launch of the Respecting Patient Choices Program at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide, SA, 2004). However, the efficacy of AD CPR refusal depends on the synergy of prevailing AD legislation and ensuing policy. When delivery fails, then democratic AD law is bypassed by paradigms such as the Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) community form, as flagged in Australian Resuscitation Council guidelines. 2 Amidst Australian AD review and statute reform this paper offers a perspective on the attributes of a working AD model, drawing on the Respecting Patient Choices Program (RPCP) experience at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital (TQEH) under SA law. The SA Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Act 1995 and its ‘Anticipatory Direction’ has been foundational to policy enabling non-medical first responders to honour ADs when the patient is at the end stage of life with no real prospect of recovery. 3 The ‘Anticipatory Direction’ provision stands also to direct appointed surrogate decision-makers. It attunes with health discipline ethics codes; does not require a pre-existing medical condition and can be completed independently in the community. Conceivably, the model offers a national AD option, able to deliver AD CPR refusals, as an adjunct to existing common law and statute provisions. This paper only represents the views of the author and it does not constitute legal advice. What is known about the topic?Differences in advance directive (AD) frameworks across Australian states and territories and between legislated and common law can be confusing. 4 Therefore, health professionals need policy clarifying their expected response. Although it is assumed that ADs, including CPR refusals at the end of life will be respected, unless statute legislation is conducive to policy authorising that non-medical first responders to an emergency can observe clear AD CPR refusals, the provision may be ineffectual. Inappropriate, unwanted CPR can render a person indefinitely in a condition they may have previously deemed intolerable. Such intervention also causes distress to staff and families and ties up resources in high demand settings. What does this paper add?That effectual AD law needs to not only enshrine the rights of individuals but that the provision also needs to be deliverable. To be deliverable, statute AD formulation or operational criteria need to be appropriately scoped so that organisations, through policy, are prepared to legally support nurses and ambulance officers in making a medically unsupervised decision to observe clear CPR refusals. This is a critical provision, given ADs in common law (or similar statute) can apply broadly and, in policy examples, require medical authorisation to enact in order to ensure the person’s operational terms are clinically indicated. Moreover, compliance from health professionals (by act or omission) with in-situ ADs in an unavoidable emergency cannot be assumed unless the scope harmonises with ethics codes. This paper identifies a working model of AD delivery in SA under the Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Act 1995 through the Respecting Patient Choices Program. What are the implications for practitioners?A clear, robust AD framework is vital for the appropriate care and peace of mind of those approaching their end of life. A nationally recognised AD option is suggested to avail people, particularly the elderly, of their legal right to grant or refuse consent to CPR at the end of life. ADs should not exclude those without medical conditions from making advance refusals, but in order to ensure appropriate delivery in an emergency response, they need to be scoped so as that they will not be prematurely enacted yet clinically and ethically safe for all health professionals to operationalise. Failure to achieve this may give rise to systems bypassing legislation, such as the American (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) POLST example. It is suggested that the current SA Anticipatory Direction under the Consent to Medical treatment and Palliative Care Act 1995 provides a model of legislation producing a framework able to deliver such AD expectations, evidenced by supportive acute and community organisational policies. Definitions.Advance care planning (ACP) is a process whereby a person (ideally ‘in consultation with health care providers, family members and important others’ 5 ), decides on and ‘makes known choices regarding possible future medical treatment and palliative care, in the event that they lose the ability to speak for themselves’ (Office of the Public Advocate, South Australia, see www.opa.sa.gov.au). Advance directives (ADs) in this paper refers to legal documents or informal documents under common law containing individuals’ instructions consent to or refusing future medical treatment in certain circ*mstances when criteria in the law are met. A legal advance directive may also appoint a surrogate decision-maker.

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At present, the increasing trend of medical disputes has become a serious problem in the work of medical institutions, and directly affects the social stability and orderly development of the institutions. We searched the literature on medical disputes and crisis management in China and Australia within PubMed (2010-2019), China Knowledge Network (CNKI, 2010-2019), and Wanfang Data Knowledge Service Platform (2010-2019). There are several drawbacks in the management of hospital medical disputes in China: 1) the knowledge of crisis is unilateral and not systematic; 2) there are too much stereotype thoughts in crisis management; 3) the crisis attribution is too simple; the crisis impact assessment is insufficient. It is worth learning from Australia’s system, including the legal system, relevant non-governmental organizations, and doctor-patient communication. In view of the malpractice existing in China's medical dispute management, Australia's legal system for handling disputes, doctor-patient communication and other aspects are worthy of our reference. In particular, the construction of third-party supervision and mediation institutions and the prevention of doctor-patient disputes should be optimized.

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This article critically considers the legal regulation of Indigenous people's cultural heritage in Western Australia and its operation within the framework of Australia's federal system of government. The article also sets out the different ways in which Indigenous cultural heritage is conceptualised, including as a public good analogous to property of the crown, an incidental right arising from group native title and as the subject of private contract. The article explores the various notions of 'Indigenous cultural heritage' that exist under Western Australian public law and the significant role of private contractual arrangements. Particular attention is devoted to the uneasy nexus between the laws of native title and heritage in Western Australia.

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It is January 1930 and the restless Southern Ocean is heaving itself up against the frozen coast of Eastern Antarctica. For hundreds of kilometres, this coastline consists entirely of ice: although Antarctica is a continent, only 2% of its surface consists of exposed rock; the rest is buried under a vast frozen mantle. But there is rock in this coastal scene: silhouetted against the glaring white of the glacial shelf, a barren island humps up out of the water. Slowly and cautiously, the Discovery approaches the island through uncharted waters; the crew’s eyes strain in the frigid air as they scour the ocean’s surface for ship-puncturing bergs. The approach to the island is difficult, but Captain Davis maintains the Discovery on its course as the wind howls in the rigging. Finally, the ship can go no further; the men lower a boat into the tossing sea. They pull hard at the oars until the boat is abreast of the island, and then they ram the bow against its icy littoral. Now one of the key moments of this exploratory expedition—officially titled the British, Australian, and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE)—is about to occur: the expedition is about to succeed in its primary spatial mission. Douglas Mawson, the Australian leader of the expedition, puts his feet onto the island and ascends to its bleak summit. There, he and his crew assemble a mound of loose stones and insert into it the flagpole they’ve carried with them across the ocean. Mawson reads an official proclamation of territorial annexation (see Bush 118-19), the photographer Frank Hurley shoots the moment on film, and one of the men hauls the Union Jack up the pole. Until the Australian Flags Act of 1953, the Union Jack retained seniority over the Australian flag. BANZARE took place before the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which gave full political and foreign policy independence to Commonwealth countries, thus Mawson claimed Antarctic space on behalf of Britain. He did so with the understanding that Britain would subsequently grant Australia title to its own Antarctican space. Britain did so in 1933. In the freezing wind, the men take off their hats, give three cheers for the King, and sing “God Save the King.” They deposit a copy of the proclamation into a metal canister and affix this to the flagpole; for a moment they admire the view. But there is little time to savour the moment, or the feeling of solid ground under their cold feet: the ship is waiting and the wind is growing in force. The men row back to the Discovery; Mawson returns to his cabin and writes up the event. A crucial moment in Antarctica’s spatial history has occurred: on what Mawson has aptly named Proclamation Island, Antarctica has been produced as Australian space. But how, exactly, does this production of Antarctica as a spatial possession work? How does this moment initiate the transformation of six million square kilometres of Antarctica—42% of the continent—into Australian space? The answer to this question lies in three separate, but articulated cultural technologies: representation, the body of the explorer, and international territorial law. When it comes to thinking about ‘turf’, Antarctica may at first seem an odd subject of analysis. Physically, Antarctica is a turfless space, an entire continent devoid of grass, plants, land-based animals, or trees. Geopolitically, Antarctica remains the only continent on which no turf wars have been fought: British and Argentinian soldiers clashed over the occupation of a Peninsular base in the Hope Bay incident of 1952 (Dodds 56), but beyond this somewhat bathetic skirmish, Antarctican space has never been the object of physical conflict. Further, as Antarctica has no indigenous human population, its space remains free of the colonial turfs of dispossession, invasion, and loss. The Antarctic Treaty of 1961 formalised Antarctica’s geopolitically turfless status, stipulating that the continent was to be used for peaceful purposes only, and stating that Antarctica was an internationally shared space of harmony and scientific goodwill. So why address Antarctican spatiality here? Two motivations underpin this article’s anatomising of Australia’s Antarctican space. First, too often Antarctica is imagined as an entirely hom*ogeneous space: a vast white plain dotted here and there along its shifting coast by identical scientific research stations inhabited by identical bearded men. Similarly, the complexities of Antarctica’s geopolitical and legal spaces are often overlooked in favour of a vision of the continent as a site of harmonious uniformity. While it is true that the bulk of Antarctican space is ice, the assumption that its cultural spatialities are identical is far from the case: this article is part of a larger endeavour to provide a ‘thick’ description of Antarctican spatialities, one which points to the heterogeneity of cultural geographies of the polar south. The Australian polar spatiality installed by Mawson differs radically from that of, for example, Chile; in a continent governed by international consensus, it is crucial that the specific cultural geographies and spatial histories of Treaty participants be clearly understood. Second, attending to complexities of Antarctican spatiality points up the intersecting cultural technologies involved in spatial production, cultural technologies so powerful that, in the case of Antarctica, they transformed nearly half of a distant continent into Australian sovereign space. This article focuses its critical attention on three core spatialising technologies, a trinary that echoes Henri Lefebvre’s influential tripartite model of spatiality: this article attends to Australian Antarctic representation, practise, and the law. At the turn of the twentieth century, Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen trooped over the polar plateau, and Antarctic space became a setting for symbolic Edwardian performances of heroic imperial masculinity and ‘frontier’ hardiness. At the same time, a second, less symbolic, type of Antarctican spatiality began to evolve: for the first time, Antarctica became a potential territorial possession; it became the object of expansionist geopolitics. Based in part on Scott’s expeditions, Britain declared sovereignty over an undefined area of the continent in 1908, and France declared Antarctic space its own in 1924; by the late 1920s, what John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge refer to as the nation-state ontology—that is, the belief that land should and must be divided into state-owned units—had arrived in Antarctica. What the Adelaide Advertiser’s 8 April 1929 headline referred to as “A Scramble for Antarctica” had begun. The British Imperial Conference of 1926 concluded that the entire continent should become a possession of Britain and its dominions, New Zealand and Australia (Imperial). Thus, in 1929, BANZARE set sail into the brutal Southern Ocean. Although the expedition included various scientists, its primary mission was not to observe Antarctican space, but to take possession of it: as the expedition’s instructions from Australian Prime Minister Bruce stated, BANZARE’s mission was to produce Antarctica as Empire’s—and by extension, Australia’s—sovereign space (Jacka and Jacka 251). With the moment described in the first paragraph of this article, along with four other such moments, BANZARE succeeded; just how it did so is the focus of this work. It is by now axiomatic in spatial studies that the job of imperial explorers is not to locate landforms, but to produce a discursive space. “The early travellers,” as Paul Carter notes of Australian explorers, “invented places rather than found them” (51). Numerous analytical investigations attend to the discursive power of exploration: in Australia, Carter’s Road to Botany Bay, Simon Ryan’s Cartographic Eye, Ross Gibson’s Diminishing Paradise, and Brigid Hains’s The Ice and the Inland, to name a few, lay bare the textual strategies through which the imperial annexation of “new” spaces was legitimated and enabled. Discursive territoriality was certainly a core product of BANZARE: as this article’s opening paragraph demonstrates, one of the key missions of BANZARE was not simply to perform rituals of spatial possession, but to textualise them for popular and governmental consumption. Within ten months of the expedition’s return, Hurley’s film Southward Ho! With Mawson was touring Australia. BANZARE consisted of two separate trips to Antarctica; Southward Ho! documents the first of these, while Siege of the South documents the both the first and the second, 1930-1, mission. While there is not space here to provide a detailed textual analysis of the entire film, a focus on the “Proclamation Island moment” usefully points up some of the film’s central spatialising work. Hurley situated the Proclamation Island scene at the heart of the film; the scene was so important that Hurley wished he had been able to shoot two hours of footage of Mawson’s island performance (Ayres 194). This scene in the film opens with a long shot of the land and sea around the island; a soundtrack of howling wind not only documents the brutal conditions in which the expedition worked, but also emphasises the emptiness of Antarctican space prior to its “discovery” by Mawson: in this shot, the film visually confirms Antarctica’s status as an available terra nullius awaiting cooption into Australian understanding, and into Australian national space. The film then cuts to a close-up of Mawson raising the flag; the sound of the wind disappears as Mawson begins to read the proclamation of possession. It is as if Mawson’s proclamation of possession stills the protean chaos of unclaimed Antarctic space by inviting it into the spatial order of national territory: at this moment, Antarctica’s agency is symbolically subsumed by Mawson’s acquisitive words. As the scene ends, the camera once again pans over the surrounding sea and ice scape, visually confirming the impact of Mawson’s—and the film’s—performance: all this, the shot implies, is now made meaningful; all this is now understood, recorded, and, most importantly, all this is now ours. A textual analysis of this filmic moment might identify numerous other spatialising strategies at work: its conflation of Mawson’s and the viewer’s proprietary gazes (Ryan), its invocation of the sublime, or its legitimising conflation of the ‘purity’ of the whiteness of the landscape with the whiteness of its claimants (Dyer 21). However, the spatial productivity of this moment far exceeds the discursive. What is at times frustrating about discourse analyses of spatiality is that they too often fail to articulate representation to other, equally potent, cultural technologies of spatial production. John Wylie notes that “on the whole, accounts of early twentieth-century Antarctic exploration exhibit a particular tendency to position and interpret exploratory experience in terms of self-contained discursive ensembles” (170). Despite the undisputed power of textuality, discourse alone does not, and cannot, produce a spatial possession. “Discursive and representational practices,” as Jane Jacobs observes, “are in a mutually constitutive relationship with political and economic forces” (9); spatiality, in other words, is not simply a matter of texts. In order to understand fully the process of Antarctican spatial acquisition, it is necessary to depart from tales of exploration and ships and flags, and to focus on the less visceral spatiality of international territorial law. Or, more accurately, it is necessary to address the mutual imbrication of these two articulated spatialising “domains of practice” (Dixon). The emerging field of critical legal geography is founded on the premise that legal analyses of territoriality neglect the spatial dimension of their investigations; rather than seeing the law as a means of spatial production, they position space as a neutral, universally-legible entity which is neatly governed by the “external variable” of territorial law (Blomley 28). “In the hegemonic conception of the law,” Wesley Pue argues, “the entire world is transmuted into one vast isotropic surface” (568) upon which law acts. Nicholas Blomley asserts, however, that law is not a neutral organiser of space, but rather a cultural technology of spatial production. Territorial laws, in other words, make spaces, and don’t simply govern them. When Mawson planted the flag and read the proclamation, he was producing Antarctica as a legal space as well as a discursive one. Today’s international territorial laws derive directly from European imperialism: as European empires expanded, they required a spatial system that would protect their newly-annexed lands, and thus they developed a set of laws of territorial acquisition and possession. Undergirding these laws is the ontological premise that space is divisible into state-owned sovereign units. At international law, space can be acquired by its imperial claimants in one of three main ways: through conquest, cession (treaty), or through “the discovery of terra nullius” (see Triggs 2). Antarctica and Australia remain the globe’s only significant spaces to be transformed into possessions through the last of these methods. In the spatiality of the international law of discovery, explorers are not just government employees or symbolic representatives, but vessels of enormous legal force. According to international territorial law, sovereign title to “new” territory—land defined (by Europeans) as terra nullius, or land belonging to no one—can be established through the eyes, feet, codified ritual performances, and documents of explorers. That is, once an authorised explorer—Mawson carried documents from both the Australian Prime Minister and the British King that invested his body and his texts with the power to transform land into a possession—saw land, put his foot on it, planted a flag, read a proclamation, then documented these acts in words and maps, that land became a possession. These performative rituals and their documentation activate the legal spatiality of territorial acquisition; law here is revealed as a “bundle of practices” that produce space as a possession (Ford 202). What we witness when we attend to Mawson’s island performance, then, is not merely a discursive performance, but also the transformation of Antarctica into a legal space of possession. Similarly, the films and documents generated by the expedition are more than just a “sign system of human ambition” (Tang 190), they are evidence, valid at law, of territorial possession. They are key components of Australia’s legal currency of Antarctican spatial purchase. What is of central importance here is that Mawson’s BANZARE performance on Proclamation Island is a moment in which the dryly legal, the bluntly physical, and the densely textual clearly intersect in the creation of space as a possession. Australia did not take possession of forty-two percent of Antarctica after BANZARE by law, by exploration, or by representation alone. The Australian government built its Antarctic space with letters patent and legal documents. BANZARE produced Australia’s Antarctic possession through the physical and legal rituals of flag-planting, proclamation-reading, and exploration. BANZARE further contributed to Australia’s polar empire with maps, journals, photos and films, and cadastral lists of the region’s animals, minerals, magnetic fields, and winds. The law of “discovery of terra nullius” coalesced these spaces into a territory officially designated as Australian. It is crucial to recognise that the production of nearly half of Antarctica as Australian space was, and is not a matter of discourse, of physical performance, or of law alone. Rather, these three cultural technologies of spatial production are mutually imbricated; none can function without the others, nor is one reducible to an epiphenomenon of another. To focus on the discursive products of BANZARE without attending to the expedition’s legal work not only downplays the significance of Mawson’s spatialising achievement, but also blinds us to the role that law plays in the production of space. Attending to Mawson’s Proclamation Island moment points to the unique nature of Australia’s Antarctic spatiality: unlike the US, which constructs Antarctic spatiality as entirely non-sovereign; and unlike Chile, which bases its Antarctic sovereignty claim on Papal Bulls and acts of domestic colonisation, Australian Antarctic space is a spatiality of possession, founded on a bedrock of imperial exploration, representation, and law. Seventy-four years ago, the camera whirred as a man stuck a flagpole into the bleak summit rocks of a small Antarctic island: six million square kilometres of Antarctica became, and remain, Australian space. Works Cited Agnew, John, and Stuart Corbridge. Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy. London: Routledge, 1995. Ayres, Philip. Mawson: A Life. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1999. Blomley, Nicholas. Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power. New York: Guilford, 1994. Bush, W. M. Antarctica and International Law: A Collection of Inter-State and National Documents. Vol. 2. London: Oceana, 1982. Carter, Paul. The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History. London: Faber, 1987. Dixon, Rob. Prosthetic Gods: Travel, Representation and Colonial Governance. Brisbane: UQP, 2001. Dodds, Klaus. Geopolitics in Antarctica: Views from the Southern Oceanic Rim. Chichester: Wiley, 1997. Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997. Ford, Richard. “Law’s Territory (A History of Jurisdiction).” The Legal Geographies Reader. Ed. Nicholas Blomley and Richard Ford. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. 200-17. Gibson, Ross. The Diminishing Paradise: Changing Literary Perceptions of Australia. Sydney: Sirius, 1984. Hains, Brigid. The Ice and the Inland: Mawson, Flynn, and the Myth of the Frontier. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2002. Imperial Conference, 1926. Summary of Proceedings. London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1926. Jacka, Fred, and Eleanor Jacka, eds. Mawson’s Antarctic Diaries. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988. Jacobs, Jane. Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City. London: Routledge, 1996. Pue, Wesley. “Wrestling with Law: (Geographical) Specificity versus (Legal) Abstraction.” Urban Geography 11.6 (1990): 566-85. Ryan, Simon. The Cartographic Eye: How the Explorers Saw Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Tang, David. “Writing on Antarctica.” Room 5 1 (2000): 185-95. Triggs, Gillian. International Law and Australian Sovereignty in Antarctica. Sydney: Legal, 1986. Wylie, John. “Earthly Poles: The Antarctic Voyages of Scott and Amundsen.” Postcolonial Geographies. Ed Alison Blunt and Cheryl McEwan. London: Continuum, 2002. 169-83. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Collis, Christy. "Australia’s Antarctic Turf" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0403/02-feature-australia.php>. APA Style Collis, C. (2004, Mar17). Australia’s Antarctic Turf. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture,7,<http://www.media-culture.org.au/0403/02-feature australia.php>

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Young Australians exiting Out-of-Home Care (OOHC) face some of the most challenging access to justice issues due to experiences of trauma, increased interactions with the justice system, distrust of government services, high rates of socioeconomic disadvantage and a lack of accessible support services. This article outlines the experience of the Mid North Coast Legal Centre (MNCLC) which, through the LevelUP Project, aimed to bridge this access to justice gap with a shake-up of the traditional legal services model. Through this experience, MNCLC offers some suggestions for legal centres seeking to improve access to justice for this disadvantaged group.

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Abstract Global Positioning System (GPS) position verification and legal traceability in Australia supports industry, trade, science and innovation and is trusted and recognized domestically and internationally. At the end of 2017, the Australia’s national datum was transitioned from the Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994 (GDA94) to the Geocentric Datum of Australia 2020 (GDA2020). As such, the datum for the legal traceability of GPS positions in Australia has also moved to GDA2020. This paper highlights the importance of legal metrology and measurement in terms of GPS positions in accordance with the National Measurement Act 1960 (Commonwealth of Australia). Here we provide an overview of the process of issuing the so-called ‘Regulation 13 Certificates’ for Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) across Australia. The position verification methodology is detailed, including the quality control, metadata assurance, and dynamic management of the certificates as well as positional uncertainty determination of CORS with varying quality. A quality monitoring system of positions is also discussed along with how measurement traceability is ensured including short-term and long-term position monitoring schemes.

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Purpose Indefinite immigration detention causes well-documented harms to mental health, and international condemnation and resistance leave it undisrupted. Health care is non-independent from immigration control, compromising clinical ethics. Attempts to establish protected, independent clinical review and subvert the system via advocacy and political engagement have had limited success. The purpose of this study is to examine the following: how indefinite detention for deterrence (exemplified by Australia) injures asylum-seekers; how international legal authorities confirm Australia’s cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; how detention compromises health-care ethics and hurts health professionals; to weigh arguments for and against boycotting immigration detention; and to discover how health professionals might address these harms, achieving significant change. Design/methodology/approach Secondary data analyses and ethical argumentation were employed. Findings Australian Governments fully understand and accept policy-based injuries. They purposefully dispense cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and intend suffering that causes measurable harms for arriving asylum-seekers exercising their right under Australian law. Health professionals are ethically conflicted, not wanting to abandon patients yet constrained. Indefinite detention prevents them from alleviating sufferings and invites collusion, potentially strengthening harms; thwarts scientific inquiry and evidence-based interventions; and endangers their health whether they resist, leave or remain. Governments have primary responsibility for detained asylum-seekers’ health care. Health professional organisations should negotiate the minimum requirements for their members’ participation to ensure independence, and prevent conflicts of interest and inadvertent collaboration with and enabling systemic harms. Originality/value Australia’s aggressive approach may become normalised, without its illegality being determined. Health professional colleges uniting over conditions of participation would foreground ethics and pressure governments internationally over this contagious and inexcusable policy.