New Public Management and ‘Photocopy’ Bargaining in the Australian Public Service

The industrial relations policy of the Federal Coalition Government is to encourage industrial bargaining to occur at the enterprise or individual level, free from ‘outside’ influences. While it encourages devolved bargaining at the agency and individual level within the Public Service (Australian Public Service) this policy creates tensions with its role as a centralized policy maker, economic manager and employer of the APS workforce. It also conflicts with the APS' adoption of New Public Management. In practice, the government retains considerable centralised control over agency bargaining outcomes, which is a de facto method of pattern bargaining. By analysing the substantive outcomes from nine APS agency level certified agreements (hours of work, pay and leave entitlements), the article discusses whether this one size fits all' model is evidence of an appreciation that public sector industrial relations is separate and distinct from private sector industrial relations, or another example of duplicity in the federal coalition government's ideology driven approach to industrial relations.     

关于成人网络游戏玩家与未成年网络游戏玩家的比较研究

尽管网络游戏日益流行,但一直没有关于成人游戏者与未成人游戏者的比较性调查。为此,我们对EverQuest(简称EQ,中文名称为“无尽的任务”,是由美国索尼在线娱乐公司开发的知名网络游戏——译者注)游戏者(n=540)的相关特征进行了网上问卷调查。该调查主要考察了游戏玩家基本的人口学特征、游戏的频率、玩游戏的历史、游戏的偏好及玩游戏的代价等。结果表明未成年的游戏者多为男性,相较于成年游戏者,他们更不喜欢变换角色性别,更愿意牺牲学习和工作的时间。在游戏偏好的比较中,成年与非成年游戏群体的最大区别在于更多的未成年人认为他们喜好…     

Hidden transcripts: The micropolitics of gender in Commonwealth universities

The knowledge economy is a globalised policy discourse which relates particularly to higher education. The findings from the empirical data in the five countries, backed up by international literature, suggest that for many women, entry into higher education can be a means of mitigating gender oppression e.g. via social mobility, financial independence, professional identity and academic authority. However, this is accompanied by contradictions and tensions as women experience a range of discriminatory practices, gendered processes and exclusions within higher education itself. Women report male privilege in pedagogical processes, assessment, promotion and research opportunities and management. A repeated theme is how women perceive fewer opportunities to develop academic capital and how women's professional and intellectual capital are devalued and misrecognised in the knowledge economy.All five countries reported that gender has a significant impact on academic and professional identity formation. Gendered power relations symbolically and materially construct and regulate women's everyday experiences of higher education. Similar concerns about women's unequal status are articulated in spite of different socio-economic and national policy contexts. The gendered environment impedes women's progress as staff and has a detrimental effect on the learning environment for students. Gendered differences are relayed and reinforced in classrooms, boardrooms, and via everyday social practices. These practices need to be exposed and challenged in order for the wider aspirations of gender equity policy initiatives to be achieved.

Endnote

¹ This means something below standard, of poor quality.     

Remedies for Breach of Trust

The decision of the Supreme Court in AIB Group (UK) Plc v Mark Redler & Co confirms the approach taken by Lord Browne‐Wilkinson in Target Holdings Ltd v Redferns: where a trustee misapplies trust assets, a beneficiary is limited to a claim for equitable compensation for losses caused by the trustee's breach of duty. This seems to be a departure from traditional equitable doctrine, which held that the beneficiary could falsify the trustee's unauthorised disbursement and bring a claim for an ‘equitable debt’. This note considers the impact of the decision of the Supreme Court, and how the law regarding ‘equitable compensation’ might continue to develop.     

Intelligence,Iraq and the limits of legislative accountability during political crisis

This article argues that there is an inherent tension in legislative intelligence oversight bodies between their responsibility to the voters who elect them and their political parties who select them to run for office. At a time of acute political crisis, the partisan interests of the legislators who sit on oversight bodies may override their other responsibilities. This can result in distorted and misleading investigations and reports. This hypothesis is examined against the evidence of precisely such a mode of failure in both the British and American legislative inquiries into intelligence on Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’. The authors conclude that any effective oversight must include a range of parallel legislative, judicial, executive and independent mechanisms to try and minimize the inherent weaknesses in each oversight model.     

From special operations to special political action: The ‘rump SOE’ and SIS post‐war covert action capability 1945–1977

This article examines the post‐war dismantling of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and amalgamation with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). It is argued that the existing literature has been unclear on this matter, confusing two very different SIS departments, the Special Operations Branch and the Special Political Action Section. The article then examines how the assets and personnel of SOE were dispersed to three different divisions of the SIS; the Directorates of Production, Training and Development and War Planning, and then examines the separate origins and function of the Special Political Action Section.     

Book notes

Housing Year Book 1983, Longman Community Information Guides, Longman, 1983, pp. 440, £22.00.

Public Expenditure and Leisure: A Study of Central‐Local Relations, W.D. Hamilton, Polytechnic of North London, Papers in Leisure Studies No. 8 1983, pp. 35 £1.50.

Local Authorities and Land Supply, Susan Barrett and Gill Whitting, School for Advanced Urban Studies, Occasional Paper No. 10, University of Bristol, 1983, pp. 87, £5.35.

Speed, Economy and Effectiveness in Local Plan Preparation and Adoption, C. Fudge, C. Lambert, J. Underwood and P. Healey, School for Advanced Urban Studies, Occasional Paper No. 11, University of Bristol, 1983, pp. 150, £7.40.

The Capitalist State, Bob Jessop, Martin Robertson, 1982, pp. 296, £17.00 hardback, £5.95 paperback.

Homes Fit for People, Family Services Unit Discussion Paper, 1983, pp. 48, £1.00.