Mark Rix

Factors Associated with Research Management in Australian Commerce and Business Faculties

Measurable research outputs have become part of the overall research management structure within Australian universities over the past ten years. As such, policy makers and administrators alike have come to regard effective management structures and mechanisms as fundamental components of a research environment capable of generating desired quantities of quality outcomes. This paper is based on empirical research carried out over the past year that surveyed academics from commerce and business faculties in Australian universities. The data show that factors such as gender, discipline, and academic level appear to impinge on the relative importance of components that make up research management.

Australia’s Anti‐Terrorism Legislation: The National Security State and the Community Legal Sector

Abstract This paper considers the implications for the community legal sector of the Australian Government’s recent national security and anti‐terrorism legislation. Critics of the legislation have deep concerns that, by giving the police and intelligence services considerable new powers in the areas of arbitrary arrest and detention, it will lead to the significant erosion of rights and freedoms that Australians have long been able to take for granted. Other concerns with the legislation relate to the use of force, sedition, and legal representation for those held in preventative detention. In addition, the legislation has no adequate protection against the intelligence services and police misusing or abusing their new, extended powers. Community legal centres (CLCs), that comprise the community legal sector, have the important role of informing citizens of their basic rights and assisting them in exercising these rights in their dealings with government and its agencies. This paper will consider what effects the anti‐terrorism legislation will have on the community legal sector’s effectiveness in playing this role. The sector, which the Australian Government relies on and funds to provide legal services to some of the most disadvantaged members of the Australian community, has as its raison d’être improving access to justice and equality before the law for all Australians. The paper will also consider the impact of the anti‐terrorism legislation on the relationship between the Government and the sector.

Mary van Kleeck, Lillian Gilbreth and the Women’s Bureau study of gendered labor law

This paper examines the 1928 Women’s Bureau report, The Effects of Labor Legislation on the Employment Opportunities of Women. It argues that this was a landmark study, demonstrating that scientific management had the potential to develop into a mature applied social science which could play an important role in the identification, measurement and amelioration of recurrent social problems. It further argues that the report demonstrated the usefulness of scientific management in measuring impartially the effects of gender‐specific labor legislation. The paper highlights the instrumental role Mary van Kleeck and Lillian Gilbreth played in bringing feminism and scientific management together and the manner by which they utilized the Women’s Bureau report to advance the social and economic interests of women.

Counter-Terrorism and Information: The NSI Act, fair trials and open, accountable government

This paper investigates Australias National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act 2004 (Cth) (NSI Act) focusing on its provisions for protecting national security information. The investigation highlights the broad and encompassing definitions of ‘national security’ and ‘information’ used in the Act and considers the measures it prescribes for the protection of so-called ‘security sensitive’ information in Federal civil and criminal proceedings. The paper then examines the implications of the definitions and measures for a suspects prospects of receiving a fair trial in terrorism cases. Here, the paper highlights the serious restrictions the Act places on a legally-aided persons right to engage a legal representative of their own choosing. These restrictions are then compared with those obtaining in some comparable jurisdictions. As important as the NSI Acts definitions and measures are for the way in which they limit a terrorism suspects chances of a fair trial, their significance extends well beyond this very serious issue to even deeper concerns. These relate to the secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding the conduct of terrorism cases, the opaqueness of the processes for classifying and protecting information, and the potential for tendentious or improper use of information by the political executive and national security agencies enabled by the dearth of avenues for external, independent scrutiny. At the core of these concerns, then, are issues of the accountability and integrity of the government and of the agencies under its direction. Using the experience of Mohamed Haneef as a case study, the final section of the paper investigates the important role that defence counsel, the media, and other independent parties can play in facilitating public scrutiny of the conduct of terrorism investigations and trials and in exposing the improper use sometimes made of protected information by the political executive in attempting to influence the conduct of these cases.

The foundations of legal citizenship: Community law, access to, justice and the community legal sector

The conventional role of community legal centres (CLCs) is as specialists in community law. As specialists in community law. CLCs playa vital role in giving practical meaning to the notion of legal citizenship and to the concept of the citizen within the communities they serve. CLCs should also be seen as having a broader role beyond community law, one that encompasses legal citizenship. This concept of a broader role for CLCs is alien to the way most government funding authorities, CLC clients and many CLCs view themselves. However, viewing CLCs in terms of legal citizenship provides an opportunity to focus on how CLCs assist citizens to defend and extend their rights in the areas of civil, administrative and family law.

Liberty, National Security and the Big Society

The aim of this paper is to place discussion of the Big Society (via the specific issue of counterterrorism) in an international context, by drawing comparisons between counter-terrorism policy in the UK and Australia. The Big Society agenda of the UK Coalition Government has had a significant impact on welfare policy as well as the terms of the debate about how it should be provided for and regulated. The ripples have travelled far beyond the UK and similar discussions are occurring in different national contexts. One such has been Australia, where commentators and policymakers are considering the ramifications of a Big Society approach for social policy in that country (Cox, 2010). This debate no longer focuses on the so-called ‘New Public Management’ agenda with its emphasis on outsourcing to third and private sector providers and the creation of market-like structures and mechanisms for welfare provision. Instead, there is a renewed interest in strengthening communities and developing the voluntary capacities within them to enable them to shoulder the responsibility for service delivery, community safety and sustaining the bonds of social cohesion. Nevertheless, essentially the objectives are the same: smaller government, reduced social expenditures and a shrivelled up society. We explore here the implications for counter-terrorism policy, and also provide a contextual discussion of counter-terrorism policy under the New Labour government in the UK from 1997 to 2010. This was a particularly important period, with the policy responses to the invasion of Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.