What police want from liquor licensing legislation: the Australian perspective

Qualitative interviews were undertaken with 53 Australian police officers with specialist expertise in liquor law enforcement to ascertain their perspectives concerning the liquor licensing legislation in Australia’s eight states and territories. Respondents generally indicated that current arrangements favoured the interests of the alcohol industry and did not sufficiently empower them to reduce alcohol-related harms. Other key themes included: ambiguity surrounding the police role in liquor licensing; difficulties in enforcing drunkenness-related offences; partnerships; strategies to enhance enforcement; data/intelligence gathering; and the separation of Ministerial responsibilities for liquor licensing and policing. Overall, police in Australia are not currently being given the tools they require to effectively reduce alcohol-related harms.     

Can We Protect How We Do What We Do? A Consideration of Business Method Patents in Australia and Europe

In the long history of monopolies, business method patents area novel and recent edition. In the Digital Age, where time ismoney and speed is everything, innovative methods for undertakingbusiness are as important to a business as the products or servicesit provides to its clients. In recent years several reviews,conducted in both Australia and internationally,⁴ have questionedthe appropriateness of patenting business methods. This paperreviews the availability of business method patents in Australiain light of the 2006 decision of the Full Court of the FederalCourt in Grant v Commissioner of Patents,⁵ which confirmed theneed in Australia for a ‘useful product’ to issuefrom the working of a method (business or otherwise) in orderfor the method to be patentable. This paper will review argumentsboth criticising and defending business method patents and considerwhether business methods warrant special treatment.     

Agency, Structure, and Social Chance as Cross-Disciplinary Concepts

It is appropriate that social scientists should develop explicit conceptualisations of agency, structure and social chance, these being three major dimensions of social and political life. The agency–structure debate, which refers to theoretical and ontological issues that tend not to be explicitly discussed by political scientists, is an important interdisciplinary starting point for conceptual and empirical work involving collaboration between political scientists and sociologists. Following a theoretical review of agency, structure and chance, it is argued that empirical research concerned with the study of politics and policy – indeed, social scientific research on any topic – should employ an ontology and methodology that focuses on the dynamics of interaction between agency, structure and social chance.