Indigenous Australia and health rights

Over the last decade, there has been a significant shift in public policy in relation to indigenous Australians. The new policy frameworks have been marked by an antipathy towards a policy discourse based on a human rights framework. This has also been associated with a shift from an approach based on "self-determination" to one founded on the idea of "mutual obligation". This article describes these developments in detail and considers the implications for human rights discourse.     

Employers' liabilities for bullying-induced psychiatric injuries

Important opportunities exist for employees who are bullied in the work place to take civil action against employers for failing to provide them with a safe work environment. However, many logistical impediments lie in the way of successful actions for harm caused by bullying. This editorial scrutinises two important cases, Naidu v Group 4 Securitas Pty Ltd [2005] NSWSC 618; Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Naidu; ISS Security Pty Ltd v Naidu [2007] NSWCA 377 and Green v DB Group Services (UK) Ltd [2006] EWHC 1898 where workers were successful in such actions and explores the repercussions of their success.     

Performance Management,Evaluation and Learning in ‘Modern’ Local Government

Public sector reforms throughout OECD member states are producing a new model of ‘public governance’ embodying a more modest role for the state and a strong emphasis on performance management. In the UK, the development of performance management in the context of the ‘new public management’ has been primarily ‘top‐down’ with a dominant concern for enhancing control and ‘upwards account‐ability’ rather than promoting learning and improvement. The development of performance management and evaluation in local government in the UK has been conditioned by external pressures, especially reforms imposed by central government, which have encouraged an ‘instrumental–managerial’ focus on performance measurement. The new Labour government's programme of ‘modernizing local government’ places considerable emphasis on performance review and evaluation as a driver of continuous improvement in promoting Best Value. However, recent research has indicated that the capacity for evaluation in local government is uneven and many obstacles to evaluation exist in organizational cultures. Local authorities need to go beyond the development of review systems and processes to ensure that the capacity for evaluation and learning is embedded as an attribute of ‘culture’ in order to achieve the purpose of Best Value.     

Huntington's disease and the law

Huntington's disease (HD) is a relentlessly progressive and fatal neurological condition that is inherited. It has serious and disabling physical and mental components. As such, it impacts upon those who have HD, those with the potential to inherit it, and those who care for those with HD in a wide variety of ways. These can have many legal ramifications including in relation to evolving impairments of capacity which can have an outcome in terms of involuntary status as mental health patients, testamentary capacity and the need for guardianship and administration. It can have effects upon fitness for parenting, obligations for spousal maintenance, and the quantum of compensation from a tortious incident to which a person is entitled. It has repercussions for criminal liability and culpability. This article reviews case law from a number of countries in relation to such matters, noting the broader radiation to others of the effects of HD, and reflecting on the need for legal and medical professionals to be aware of the legal consequences of HD for them to be able to discharge their responsibilities holistically, sensitively and informedly.     

Mine host is searching for a ‘neutrality’ principle!

This article examines the Advocate-General's comments on the ‘hosting’ provision in the eCommerce Directive (00/31/EC). He suggests the existence of a ‘neutrality’ principle in respect of intermediary liability, which operates irrespective of an intermediary's knowledge about the legality or otherwise of the hosted content. This article critically examines this suggestion within the broader debate about the role and responsibilities of intermediaries in a cyberspace context.     

Managing “Self‐Preservation”: Charles Pearson's National Life and Character and the Early Australian Commonwealth

In National Life and Character (1893), Charles Pearson argued that the breakdown in “character” threatening social cohesion in Britain was a phenomenon that was replicated on a global scale in the late nineteenth century. The economic and technological progress that characterised the industrial revolution in Britain had stimulated urbanisation, and unleashed, Pearson claimed, a “bestial element in man”, degrading the quality of civic and economic life, and leading to a rising population of “stunted specimens of humanity”. Most analyses of National Life and Character focus on its fear of non‐white races and influence on policies of racial restriction; we argue that National Life and Character is a more ambitious work of political economy preoccupied, as Pearson observed, with the “self‐preservation” of the white European race, grappling with the tension of managing a potentially degraded population as new forms of state intervention, decline of traditional religious faith, and global expansion transformed white society, leaving it declining into a “stationary state” and vulnerable in the face of the rising non‐European peoples. These concerns were shared by many of the architects of Australian Federation, influencing the policy initiatives of the post‐Federation period.     

How can we better align private security with the public interest? Towards a civilizing model of regulation

How can we better align private security with the public interest? This question has met with two answers in the literature on private security regulation, one seeking to cleanse the market of deviant sellers, the other to communalize the market through the empowerment of buyers. Both models of regulation are premised upon a limited neoclassical economic conception of how market transactions map onto the public interest. This article makes the case for a new model of regulation, one that seeks to civilize the market. Drawing upon the insights of economic sociology, our model regards the market for security as a moral economy in which commodity and non‐commodity values jostle and collide. On this basis, we propose a regulatory architecture where buyers and sellers are cast not only as economic actors but also as moral actors, revealing new avenues through which to encompass private security within the democratic promise of security.     

Legislative Capacity and Credit Risk

Legislatures differ in their institutional capacity to draft and enact policy. While strong legislatures can increase the congruence of policy outcomes to the electorate's preferences, they can also inject uncertainty into markets with their ability to alter the political economic landscape. We argue that this uncertainty will manifest in a state's ability to borrow and hypothesize a negative relationship between legislative capacity and creditworthiness. Using ratings of general obligation bonds issued by the American states over nearly two decades and data on the institutional capacity of state legislative assemblies, we find support for the claim that having a legislature that is better equipped to affect policy change increases credit risk evaluations. The results we present broaden our understanding of the importance of legislative institutions, the determinants of credit risk, and the economic implications of democratic responsiveness.