Resettling Refugees in Rural and Regional Australia: Learning from Recent Policy and Program Initiatives

Conscious policy and program support for the resettlement of refugees in regional and rural areas is a relatively recent trend in Australia. Resettlement is a complex process that hinges on the establishment of viable communities. This review suggests that its outcomes, especially for refugee communities, are potentially mixed. However, an appropriately resourced, well managed and well planned refugee resettlement program can potentially provide beneficial outcomes for refugees and host communities. This article draws on existing empirical data and contributions made at a VicHealth Roundtable in late 2007 to thematically explore the challenges facing rural and regional resettlement programs. Given that settlement is a dynamic process and the approaches to rural and regional settlement are evolving, this article provides 12 propositions for a more effective and integrated approach to policy and practice.     

A constitutional interpretation of the firm

When members of a firm make firm-specific investments they will earn rents. Potential rent-seeking on the part of the owner of the firm and other employees reduces the value of an employee's firm-specific investment and, as a result, reduces the level of those investments. In this context the firm can be thought of as a set of interdependent relationships where the actions of any one individual can affect the rents of all others. The owner of the firm will desire to set up an institutional arrangement to protect the individual's property rights in specific investments as part of his effort to maximize profit. Establishing this institutional arrangement is similar to the establishment of a constitution by the state or other organization. This constitution protects the property rights of the members of the firm and as a result encourages the creation of property, that is, the firm-specific investments. The constitution of a firm consists of a set of interdependent explicit and implicit contracts between the firm and its various members, as well as mechanisms for enforcing and monitoring these contracts. As a practical matter, it is obvious that workers normally do not enjoy costless or near-costless mobility, and thus an ordinary “at will” employment contract may no longer be sufficient to induce workers to join a firm. If, in order to function productively within an enterprise, individuals have to accumulate, and pay for, firm-specific capital assets, the simple neoclasical logic fails (Furubotn, 1988: 167).     

ENERGY FLOW IN AUSTRALIA: MATCHING NEEDS AND SUPPLIES*

Abstract: Energy flow and transformation, being a fundamental driving force behind organization, should be subject to long term government policy. A pre-requisite for formulating energy policy is detailed knowledge of the dynamics and thermodynamics of energy supply and utilization. The lack of coherent policy in the past has led to the development of a society which is physically, institutionally and psychologically locked into an unsustainable liquid fuel consumption pattern requiring not only high but also growing consumption. An expression of this situation is the widespread assumption that coal and nuclear energy are the only significant realistic longer term options for the future, even though these would involve unproven technology and considerable environmental and social risks. The other long term option—the diffuse energy option based on widely distributed, renewable energy sources such as wind and the sun—is generally regarded as unrealistic. This is a social judgement determined more by the inertia of existing institutions and perceptions of our needs than by technical reality. It is possible however, that the measures which might be taken to deal with the crisis of oil depletion in the next couple of decades may swing community structure and attitude and bureaucratic organization into a conservation-minded pattern in which the long term option based on low, stable consumption, diffuse energy sources and decentralized conversion systems seems as realistic to policy makers as the other extreme—the centralized, nuclear-electric, growth society. This flexibility could only emerge, however, if energy research expenditure is diversified very soon.