Australian Policy Research Articles

The Effects of COVID-19 Epidemic on the AUD/CNY Currency Exchange Rate

Contemporarily, the COVID-19 has affected various fields around the world, which has strongly affected the global economy. As a macroeconomic indicators, exchange rate might has been influenced at least in some exytents. On this basis, this article examines empirically whether the COVID-19 outbreak has an impact on the Australian foreign exchange markets in terms of SARIMA and LSTM models. The results are obtained and analyzed based on daily AUD/CNY exchange rate data with one-year time intervals from 2018 to 2021. According to the analysis of the RMSE values of the SARIMA and LSTM models, it is revealed that the Australian foreign exchange market experienced a transitory shock. Thus, some possible explanations for the shock are put forth. Assuming the Efficient Market Hypothesis holds, these included the Australian lock-down policy, a shift in confidence, and the conventional Uncovered Interest Parity theorem. Overall, these results shed light on guiding further explortaion of currency exchange rates variations during pandemic.

The Australian Centaur State and the Post-Pandemic Economic Recovery

AbstractThis article uses Loïc Wacquant’s concept of the centaur state to analyse symbolic framings of the meaning and future of work in the Australian policy response to COVID-19 in 2020. In contrast with historical conceptualisations anchored in rights and social security, contemporary Australian social welfare policy discourse is dominated by political representations of the imperative to work. For people currently outside of the labour market, self-reliance through paid work is a primary objective of social security policy. In 2020, economic impacts of national lockdowns were ameliorated by large transfers from the state to businesses and individuals. Concurrent announcements of plans for a ‘business-led’ post-pandemic economic recovery centred the message that the meaning of work lies in its individual and social utility. Prior to the pandemic, transformation of the modes of organisation of work had already brought into question normative claims about the meaning of work, and what is comprehended by the term ‘job’. Analysis of key ‘economic recovery’ policy initiatives illustrates that they combined considerable corporate welfare with a construction of job seekers as having unrealistic expectations of meaningful work, for which there could be no room in the institutional machinery driving economic recovery. In the policy trajectory of the Australian centaur state, the future of work for people currently unemployed is to serve as a resource to fuel the business-led recovery.

Smoking Cessation Interventions for LGBT Populations: A Scoping Review and Recommendations for Public Health

Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community are at increased risk for health threats when compared to their peers, including significantly higher rates of cigarette smoking and tobacco use, conferring risks for preventable tobacco-related illnesses and cancers. Health disparities for this group are associated with social and structural inequities, stigma and discrimination. As such, there are systemic and societal barriers to accessing smoking cessation services and too few services aim to reach and engage these groups. To date, three reviews have systematically summarized the literature about smoking cessation programs in LGBT samples; one review focused on young adults only, one review is eight years old, and one was focused on Australian policy. We conducted a scoping review of the literature and identified 71 studies examining smoking cessation in LGBT groups. Implementation barriers included in these studies were coded by raters. No studies were found that summarized or describe implementation science models for smoking cessation programs for LGBT groups. The Dynamic Sustainability Framework provides a structure for disseminating and implementating recommendations from smoking cessation research for practical use with LGBT communities. Interventions exist at the individual, family, systems, and national policy levels. More research is needed to determine whether tailoring or targeting of interventions matters. Using the Framework for Knowledge Translation, we created an easily disseminable sheet of information for community partners about how to use the lessons learned from these research articles to increase access to smoking cessation for LGBT individuals and communities and to increase public health.

From Bolsonaro to Lula: The opportunity to rebuild universal healthcare in Brazil in the government transition.

This paper takes the government transition that took place between 2022 and 2023 in Brazil as a case study and aims to analyse how a cycle of radical right-wing populist government acted to dismantle Brazil's national health system foundations. It describes how governance was built based on political-clientelism and market-privatising interests and on the adoption of long-term fiscal austerity policies, whose results are public defunding and weakening and disorganisation of the country's national health system, with a significant worsening of health indicators and the capacity to respond to the population health needs. The lessons from recent experience in Brazil should serve as learning and a source of academic and political reflection, since there is an ongoing international movement and signs of rise of radical right-wing populist regimes in several countries, which endanger the Democratic Rule of Law, institutions, and social policies. It allows putting into perspective how political cycles of this nature can affect national universal health systems, including those that have experienced substantial progress towards universal access and universal health coverage. Keeping in mind the Brazilian experience, it was possible to observe the progressive structuring of a radical right-wing neo-populism and in the sanitarian.

Empowerment or Holding the Child Responsible? An Australian Recovery-Oriented Mental Health Policy Analysis

Abstract Recovery, as a concept is internationally recognised as a means to empower children to manage their own mental health. Recovery-oriented mental health policy production and service delivery in many Western countries, however, occurs in a discursive field influenced by biomedical and neo-liberal discourses. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate an Australian policy—'A National Framework for Recovery-Oriented Mental Health Services: Guide for Practitioners and Providers', to critically analyse the competing versions of recovery. The findings reveal ideological slippages at work and show the operation of biomedical, developmental, collaborative, empowerment and responsibilisation discourses that compete in this mental health policy. This article shows how social workers require critical analysis to discern the consequences of different understandings of recovery in the child and youth mental health field. Despite the collaborative and strengths-based language of recovery, the analysis demonstrates the need to recognise the fine line between empowerment and the neo-liberal imperative for children to self-manage their mental health concerns.

Reimagining climate change research and policy from the Australian adaptation impasse

Despite two decades of investment in climate change adaptation knowledge, planning and policy, the Australian policy and scientific community is now at an adaptation impasse, with effective, equitable and timely adaptation rare and negative impacts proliferating as a result. Drawing on Australia as an illustrative and globally relevant case study, we describe and diagnose the adaptation impasse using a novel four-part heuristic – Adaptation as Spectre, Signal, Social and Systems – to characterise adaptation knowledge and action and their evolution over time. We examine the relationship between these adaptation types and argue that an underlying political economy at odds with the demands of adapting to climate change is generating the adaptation impasse. We suggest that to overcome the impasse we need to transform adaptation into a science and practice that is imaginative, pluralist, and caring.

Use of General Practitioner Telehealth Services During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Regional Victoria, Australia: Retrospective Analysis.

In March 2020, the Australian Government expanded general practitioner (GP) telehealth services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study sought to assess use patterns of GP telehealth services in response to changing circumstances (before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and with or without a lockdown) in regional Victoria, Australia. We conducted a secondary analysis of monthly Medicare claims data from July 2019 to June 2021 from 140 regional GP practices in Western Victoria. The longitudinal patterns of proportion of GP telehealth consultations stratified by type of consultation (ie, videoconference vs telephone) and by geographical, consumer, and consultation characteristics were analyzed. Telehealth comprised 25.8% (522,932/2,025,615) of GP consultations over the 2-year period. After the introduction of the Australian telehealth expansion policy in March 2020, there was a rapid uptake in GP telehealth services (including telephone and video services), from 0% before COVID-19 to 15% (11,854/80,922) of all consultations in March 2020, peaking at 55% (50,828/92,139) in August 2020. Thereafter, the use of telehealth declined steadily to 31% (23,941/77,344) in January 2021 and tapered off to 28% (29,263/103,798) in June 2021. Telephone services and shorter consultations were the most dominant form, and those aged 15-64 years had higher telehealth use rates than younger or older age groups. The proportion of video consultations was higher during periods with government-imposed lockdowns and higher in the most socioeconomically advantaged areas compared to less socioeconomically advantaged areas. Our findings support the continuation of telehealth use in rural and regional Australia post pandemic. Future policy must identify mechanisms to reduce existing equity gaps in video consultations and consider patient- and system-level implications of the dominant use of short telephone consultations.

The immigration scholarship of Stephen Castles

The immigration scholarship of Stephen Castles

Capturing the neglected extremes of UK poverty: a composite modelling approach to destitution and food bank usage

‘Destitution’ has re-entered the lexicon of UK social policy in the 2010s, highlighted by the rapid growth of food banks and rough sleeping in a context of controversial welfare reforms and austerity policies, yet theoretical literature on this remains limited. Specialist surveys have been developed to measure and profile these phenomena, but these remain separate from the mainstream statistical approach to poverty, which relies heavily on large-scale household surveys. Evidence from recent work in this area, including qualitative evidence, is very suggestive of risk and driving factors, but it is difficult to weigh the relative importance of different factors or to predict the effects of policy measures. A composite survey approach is developed, linking a specialised survey targeting households at risk of destitution with a major national household panel dataset, to enable predictive models to be fitted to data including significant representation of hard-to-reach and non-household populations. Models predicting destitution and food bank usage are developed and compared, highlighting the roles of key factors. Vignettes are used to show how the risks vary dramatically between households in different situations. The potential role of such models in micro-simulation or prediction of impacts of different scenarios is discussed.

Enduring inequalities: Fifty years of gender equality talk in the media and cultural industries

This article provides a critical overview of gender equality talk within the media, arts and cultural industries, focusing on a case study of Australian cultural policy discourse from the 1970s to 2020s. It aims to expand on existing understandings of postfeminism and popular feminism by exploring how these sensibilities have been taken up and expressed within arts and cultural policy discourse. How has the problem of the cultural gender gap previously been understood? And how has that changed in light of increased public attention to feminist concerns? While there are important differences across the decades there are also recurring notions of pragmatism, self-empowerment, resilience, vigilance and trickle-down logics – which cultivate a sense of movement without progress. By looking at policy discourses and gender equality talk through a longer lens, considering situations of feminist visibility and invisibility, acceptance and repudiation, and inequalities that are speakable and unspeakable, we see how inequalities in the creative and cultural industries come to be both enduring and endurable.

Integrating management of marine activities in Australia

Integrated management (IM) has been widely proposed, but difficult to achieve in practice, and there remains the need for evaluation of examples that illustrate the practical issues that contribute to IM success or failure. This paper synthesises experiences of academics and practitioners involved in seven Australian case studies in which there have been attempts to integrate or take a broader, holistic perspective of management. The evaluative framework of Stephenson et al. (2019a) was used as a lens to explore, through workshops and a questionnaire survey, the nine key features and five anticipated stages of IM in the Gladstone Harbour Project, the Great Barrier Reef, the Northern Prawn fishery and regional development, the South-East Queensland Healthy Waterways Partnership, the Australian Oceans Policy, the New South Wales Marine Estate reforms, and progress toward Integrated Management in the Spencer Gulf. Workshops involving experts with direct experience of the case studies revealed that most of the key features (recognition of the need; a shared vision for IM; appropriate legal and policy frameworks; effective process for appropriate stakeholder participation; comprehensive suite of objectives (ecological, social, cultural, economic and institutional); consideration of trade-offs and cumulative effects of multiple activities; flexibility to adapt to changing conditions; process for ongoing review, evaluation and refinement; and effective resourcing) were seen as important in all case studies. However, there are only a few examples where key features of IM were implemented ‘fully’. A subsequent questionnaire of participants using ‘best-worst’ scaling indicated that an appropriate legal and institutional framework is considered to have most influence on IM outcomes, and therefore is the most important of the key features. This is followed in salience by effective stakeholder participation, effective resourcing, capacity and tools, and recognition of the need for IM. Key features may change in relative importance at different stages in the trajectory of IM.

The moral economy of universal public healthcare. On healthcare activism in austerity Spain.

Spain has a national health service, universal in access and free at the point of use. The global economic crisis of 2008, with its subsequent austerity policies, has put the universality of public healthcare at risk. This has led to an increase in healthcare activism, whose aim is to fight healthcare cuts and privatization to safeguard the national health service for all. This article addresses such healthcare activism. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with a heterogeneous set of actors ranging from individual activists and unions to ad hoc activist collectives, I will analyze the moral economy of healthcare activists in Madrid, to understand why and in which terms they defend universal healthcare as a common good and challenge its marketization. In Spain, since the democratic transition, struggles around what constitutes a common weal have been highly politicized and affect-laden. The national health system stands as one example here, as it is closely linked to the emergence of the democratic welfare state in the late 1970s, following decades of Franco's dictatorship. This makes Spain a particularly interesting case, as the widely acknowledged understanding of public healthcare as a public and social good is intimately linked to democratization and welfare. Therefore, struggles over the nature of health systems are also struggles over the political, moral and economic organization of society, over (il)legitimate forms of power and over ways of caring for each other. In such struggles, visions of the public, the state and the political economy come to the fore. In Spain, there is ambivalence about the state's role as both protector and provider of the public good, but also as facilitator of capitalism, which this article will address.

Shane Homan, Seamus O’Hanlon, Catherine Strong and John Tebutt. Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy (review)

Documenting cultural life in contemporary Australia seems a fraught and daunting task, if not for the one-sided narratives so consistently reinforced through early scholarship, then at least due to the geographical vastness and diverse population that makes generalisation so difficult. The arrival of Music City Melbourne: Urban Culture, History and Policy is thus welcomed for its resolute specificity and unique historical lens. The book narrates and delineates popular music in Melbourne from the 1950s until the mid-2000s, exploring how it has shaped, and been shaped by, cultural policy and migration. The text is a much-needed contribution to scholarship on both Australian cultural policy, which focuses predominantly on the fine arts, and Australian popular music that in general fails to account for the historical contributions made by marginalised groups. Indeed, the authors describe Music City Melbourne’s historical emphases and use of subtly critical language (most notably, their casual use of the term ‘invasion’ as opposed to ‘settlement’ of Australia) as ‘an important corrective of Anglo Saxon accounts’ of Australian history (p. 3, emphasis added). [...]

Policy on innovation in Australia: Divergence in definitions, problems, and solutions

AbstractInnovation has joined the mainstream in many nations as governments search for new ways to tackle challenging societal and economic problems. But Australia is seen to be lagging on innovation policy. Is this related to how governments define innovation? What do they regard as the problem they are addressing? What proposed solutions follow from this? This paper examines how Australian governments have defined innovation over four decades, signalling their policy intentions about how to make the nation more innovative. Definitions of innovation are analysed using 79 Australian (national level) policy documents published from 1976 to 2019. Close reading of these documents suggests two main definitions: innovation as technology, and innovation as culture. Topic modelling uncovers more differentiated themes, shows how definitions change over time, and demonstrates an association between definitions and political parties in government. The divergent approaches suggest a lack of coherence and continuity to policy on innovation in Australia.Points for practitioners Innovation has expanded and broadened in its definition and governments and policymakers have paid increasing attention to it. In Australia, there are two main definitions of innovation used in policy—one related to technology and one related to culture. The technology view of innovation can be further divided into a focus on businesses or a focus on research and development (R&D). Different innovation definitions, problems, and solutions dominate at different times, with Coalition governments tending to favour business and technology over culture, and Labor governments doing the opposite. There are divergent approaches to policy on innovation in Australia which suggest a lack of coherence and consistency in policy over the long term.

Religious Freedom and LGBTIQA + Students

IntroductionThe United Nations called member states to better support the education rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and asexual (LGBTIQA +) people in recent years. However, Australian policy debates about schools’ ‘religious freedom’ and exemptions around gender and sexuality discrimination continue.MethodsThis article explores 1293 LGBTIQA + students’ experiences around religious freedom, gender, and sexuality by school type using data from the 2022 ‘Gender and Sexuality Expression in Schools’ survey. To understand correlations for students’ religious vs. non-religious educational institution types, basic descriptive and correlative statistical analyses were undertaken for quantitative data in SPSS and Excel including chi-square tests, alongside Leximancer-supported thematic analyses of qualitative responses.ResultsAttending religious schools was associated with (1) increased anti-LGBTIQA + and religious freedom-restricting policies, messages, and practices; (2) increased sexual orientation and gender identity and expression change efforts (SOGIECE) messages and practices; and (3) increased negative consequences and feelings. In religious education sites, professionals — especially teachers/educators — were more likely to spread anti-LGBTIQA + messaging at class/group and school-wide levels especially around ‘sinning’; however, professional codes appeared deterrents for school psychologists. In government schools, students more often unofficially spread anti-LGBTIQA + messaging around ‘brokenness’ or ‘social harmfulness’, mostly one-on-one.ConclusionsThe article shows the value of anti-discrimination laws and professional codes in reducing official problematic practices, for those contexts and professionals they applied to.Policy ImplicationsRemoval of exemptions for religious education institutions in anti-discrimination laws, revisions of education policies, and clearer protections for LGBTIQA + people in educators’ professional codes are recommended.

Are austerity measures really distressing? Evidence from Italy

Since 2007 financial recovery plans have been adopted by some Italian regions to contain the costs of the healthcare sector. It is legitimate to ask whether spending cuts associated with the austerity policy have had any effect on the health of the citizens. We examine the indirect impact of financial recovery plans on a broad set of health indicators, accounting for several dimensions of both physical and psychological diseases. We use an instrumental variable fixed-effects model to control for time-varying heterogeneity and to deal with the potential endogeneity of the enrolment in the austerity programme. We find that the Italian austerity policy Piano di Rientro resulted in unintended negative effects on several dimensions of health, hurting and potentially jeopardising the health of citizens.

A ‘leftist premium’ to protest movements?: How incumbent partisanship conditions austerity-spurred mass protest

Fiscal austerity is a policy characteristic of governments that adhere to conservative economic ideologies. In recent decades, however, especially after the 2009 Eurozone Crisis, leftist and left-centre coalition governments have also adopted austerity policies. While it is documented that fiscal austerity incurs electoral costs upon incumbent governments and these costs depend on their partisanship, whether and how the partisanship of the incumbent government affects the pattern of protest movements remains unknown. In this paper, I hypothesized that fiscal austerity by leftist governments, through adding a ‘premium’ to public grievances and demining citizens’ utility of electoral participation, results in a higher likelihood of protest movements than fiscal austerity implemented by right-dominant governments. I supported this hypothesis by analysing panel data for 37 developed countries between 1973 and 2015. Besides, the partisan-pronounced effects on the protest likelihood are observed particularly for non-violent protests such as demonstrations and strikes and for the post-2000 era.

How a 25-year-old periodic survey for lesbian, bisexual and queer women responded and adapted to gender diversity: a reflexive analysis

ABSTRACT Twenty-five years ago, the first Sydney Women and Sexual Health (SWASH) survey sought to generate knowledge about HIV risk for women in contact with Sydney’s gay and lesbian community. SWASH has gone on to become the longest running periodic survey of lesbian, bisexual and queer (LBQ) women’s health. It reflects LBQ women’s lives back to them and makes LBQ women knowable for Australian public policy. But, like all research, the social reality SWASH produces is a partial representation of the target population. As it entered its 12th iteration, it became clear the survey needed to change to better represent trans and gender diverse people’s lives. In this paper, we describe our process of first adding inclusive gender indicators, and then applying a gender diversity lens to all survey questions, data collection and reporting. We reflect on our motivations and fears, and where we can, the consequences on data of previous and new research design choices. Reflexive analysis such as ours, though still rare in quantitative research, promotes accountability to communities we research and the sectors who use the knowledge we produce.

Territorial development in Bavaria between spatial justice and austere federalism: A historical-materialist policy analysis of Bavarian regional development politics and policies, 2008–2018

This paper examines the territorial development reforms in the federal state of Bavaria, Germany between 2008 and 2018 in light of the rise of austerity policies, introducing the concept of ‘austere federalism’ as a new state spatial process in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Methodologically, the paper draws on the historical-materialist policy analysis and identifies three processes – municipalisation, competitisation, and responsibilisation – as key elements of a new hegemonic project. Our findings suggest that the years following the crisis saw a paradigm shift in spatial planning taking place, characterised by a carrot-and-stick policy of planning deregulation and austerity discipline. Rather than diminishing disparities, however, this shift runs the risk of exacerbating spatial inequality.

Dynamics of tax collection in Mexico during January 2018-February 2022

After the current economic crisis derived from the global pandemic, the deterioration that the Mexican economy had already been showing worsened and with the measures implemented such as confinement and the austerity policy, it is prudent to analyse the behaviour of tax collection during the last years. Therefore, in the present work, studies through the X-12 trend-cycle decomposition the dynamics of federal collection with respect to the economic dynamics reflected in the Global Index of Economic Activity (IGAE) and in Private Consumption in the period 2018.01-2022.02. The results allow us to conclude that the poor performance of the economic activity is prior to the pandemic and that it worsened even more during the period, while for tax collection this was not the case, it even reached its historical maximum points in 2021; which implied a very contractionary fiscal policy and for this reason the recovery of our country has been so short.