Australian Policy Makers Research Articles

Immigrants and innovators: financial inclusion and the ‘de-banking’ of the digital asset industry

ABSTRACT ‘De-banking’ refers to banks limiting or withdrawing banking services from perceived ‘high-risk’ clients. ‘High risk’ is not merely commercial risk relating to a client’s ability to pay. It also includes ‘non-commercial’ risks such as client dealings in illicit funds or activities. Debanking decisions might also be made on operational-cost grounds where continued servicing of a particular customer base becomes uneconomical. In Australia, the de-banking issue has impacted migrant communities. More recently, de-banking has impeded the ability of digital assets service providers. Under the guise of rigorous compliance legal standards, Australian banks have limited or even cut-off banking services to many Australian digital asset firms. As the financial gatekeepers to the Australian economy, Australian banks (already very protected from competitors) are undermining an industry that could potentially compete for market share. Examining strategies adopted in other jurisdictions, Australian policy makers should supplement the introduction of a licensing regime, as proposed by the Digital Assets (Market Regulation) Bill 2023 (Cth), with additional balanced measures in order to support innovation in the digital asset sector and maintain financial integrity.

Consent as Social Reproduction: Making Space for the Transformative Labour of Refugee and Migrant Anti-violence Advocates in Australia

ABSTRACT Following #MeToo, sexual violence and consent have become more important to Australian governments, policy makers, and organisations addressing gender-based violence. Locating consent in a specific social system of ‘labour’, this article takes social reproduction as an entry point to examine the experiences of refugee and migrant anti-violence advocates in Australia. I suggest that current discourses of consent, as bodily autonomy and judicial power, act as a site of social reproduction through the creation of norms that uphold patriarchy and whiteness. Considered in this way, marginalised groups such as refugee and migrant women are not afforded adequate space and resources to theorise consent based on their own lived experiences. Interview participants (n = 19) are active in their ethnic and faith communities addressing GBV, as well as in organisations such as NGOs and policy domains. Utilising a lens of ‘Transformative Labour’ (Swanson, Resha Terae, and Erin Devorah Carreon. 2024. “Uncovering the Transformative Labor in Black Women’s Community Work.” Affilia, 08861099231223935. https://doi.org/10.1177/08861099231223935), the findings demonstrate the limits of consent when applied to refugee and migrant communities; the ways a history of different feminisms play out in current front-line interventions; and how mainstream, dominant groups might make space for marginalised groups to articulate their own identities, and the time and resources to theorise consent based on their own struggles.

Defending Primary Victims Who Face Criminal Charges for the Use of Defensive Force against Their Abusive Partners: Attempting to Change ‘Laws’ Practices’

Australian lawyers, scholars and policy makers have grappled for decades with the barriers faced by victim-survivors in successfully raising self-defence in response to criminal charges for the use of force against their abusive partners. In this article we discuss a recent legal innovation developed to address similar barriers in the New Zealand context. The defence in R v Ruddelle was ground-breaking in Australasia in that expert evidence on ‘intimate partner violence entrapment’ was admitted at trial from an expert who was not a psychologist or psychiatrist. The aim was to assist the jury in more accurately understanding the facts for the purposes of determining whether the Indigenous defendant’s defensive force was ‘reasonable’ in self-defence. Similar evidence was provided at sentencing. In this article we assess the gains that were made in taking such an approach at sentencing, as well as the limitations of this strategy at trial in this particular case.

Research outcomes informing the selection of public health interventions and strategies to implement them: A cross-sectional survey of Australian policy-maker and practitioner preferences

BackgroundA key role of public health policy-makers and practitioners is to ensure beneficial interventions are implemented effectively enough to yield improvements in public health. The use of evidence to guide public health decision-making to achieve this is recommended. However, few studies have examined the relative value, as reported by policy-makers and practitioners, of different broad research outcomes (that is, measures of cost, acceptability, and effectiveness). To guide the conduct of research and better inform public health policy and practice, this study aimed at describing the research outcomes that Australian policy-makers and practitioners consider important for their decision-making when selecting: (a) public health interventions; (b) strategies to support their implementation; and (c) to assess the differences in research outcome preferences between policy-makers and practitioners.MethodAn online value-weighting survey was conducted with Australian public health policy-makers and practitioners working in the field of non-communicable disease prevention. Participants were presented with a list of research outcomes and were asked to select up to five they considered most critical to their decision-making. They then allocated 100 points across these – allocating more points to outcomes perceived as more important. Outcome lists were derived from a review and consolidation of evaluation and outcome frameworks in the fields of public health knowledge translation and implementation. We used descriptive statistics to report relative preferences overall and for policy-makers and practitioners separately.ResultsOf the 186 participants; 90 primarily identified as policy-makers and 96 as public health prevention practitioners. Overall, research outcomes of effectiveness, equity, feasibility, and sustainability were identified as the four most important outcomes when considering either interventions or strategies to implement them. Scores were similar for most outcomes between policy-makers and practitioners.ConclusionFor Australian policy-makers and practitioners working in the field of non-communicable disease prevention, outcomes related to effectiveness, equity, feasibility, and sustainability appear particularly important to their decisions about the interventions they select and the strategies they employ to implement them. The findings suggest researchers should seek to meet these information needs and prioritize the inclusion of such outcomes in their research and dissemination activities. The extent to which these outcomes are critical to informing the decision of policy-makers and practitioners working in other jurisdictions or contexts warrants further investigation.

The impact of US housing demand and supply shocks on the Australian economy: Analysis implementing a SVAR model

AbstractThis thesis develops an open economy structural vector autoregression model to determine how the Australian economy is affected by both a US housing demand shock and a US housing supply shock. Previous literature has either grouped Australia with other economies or has excluded Australia altogether. This leaves a significant literature gap in explaining how the Australian economy is solely impacted. The results of the model indicate both a US housing demand and a US housing supply shock significantly impact the Australian economy, with the most significant being the impact of a US house price shock upon Australian GDP which is large and persistent over time. The results contribute to the understanding of how Australian policymakers should incorporate the US housing market into policy decisions and central bank modelling.

Will Australia's tightened prescription system reduce nicotine vaping among young people?

Australia introduced a prescription only policy for e-cigarettes in 2011 to prevent uptake among youth while allowing smokers to access e-cigarettes for cessation. This is one of the restrictive forms of regulation for e-cigarettes recommended by the World Health Organisation. To assess whether the policy has prevented e-cigarette youth uptake and facilitated smokers' access to e-cigarettes for cessation; and to examine a proposed toughening of the policy. An analysis of survey and administrative data on e-cigarette use and smoking and a critical analysis of the contents of submissions to parliamentary inquiries into the policy. E-cigarette use among youth and young adults has increased steeply since 2016 but very few of these products have been obtained through the prescription system, because medical authorities discourage their use. A policy change in 2021 to increase the prescription of e-cigarettes has not reduced e-cigarette use among youth and only marginally increased rates of prescribing. Australian policy makers have nonetheless tightened the prescription system by banning any use of e-cigarettes unless prescribed by a doctor and dispensed by a pharmacist. Australia's tightened prescription policy for e-cigarettes may reduce adolescent vaping but at the risk of reducing smokers' access to e-cigarettes and increasing the size of the illicit market for combustible cigarettes and e-cigarettes. A more effective policy would allow vapes to be sold as consumer products by licensed tobacconists under regulations that require prior product approval, plain packaging, bans on their promotion and enforced age restrictions on purchases.

Development and Decolonisation: the 1964 UN Conference on Trade and Development and the Independence of Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT The 1964 UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is often presented as a pivotal moment in the post-Second World War relations between the Global North and Global South. At this conference, Australian policymakers devised a Middle Zone policy that sought to present Australia as neither ‘developed’ nor ‘developing’. This had significant consequences for the colonial administration of Papua New Guinea (PNG), which Australia administered as a UN Trust Territory. In the two decades following the Second World War, Australia had administered PNG in a way that promoted gradual development, arguing that the road to independence would be a slow one. By 1964, however, international pressure (exemplified by the call for UNCTAD) had made this policy less viable. This article examines the impact of UNCTAD on the decolonisation of PNG, as it sparked an acceleration of calls for PNG independence in the second half of the 1960s. The Conference also prompted indigenous leaders within PNG to engage with the increasingly diverse field of development in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Local leaders, such as Michael Somare, became increasingly prominent as decolonisation loomed large. Their developmental approaches, informed by other movements within the Global South, steadily became a part of the plan for an independent PNG. UNCTAD can be seen as a starting point for this process. By examining the connections between the 1964 UNCTAD and the decolonisation of PNG, this paper adds a new dimension to the scholarship of the Conference as well as the process of decolonisation in the Pacific.

Financial development as a new determinant of energy diversification: The role of natural capital and structural changes in Australia

This paper investigates the relationship between financial development and energy diversification for Australian economy by considering natural capital, structural changes, economic growth, and export diversification as additional determinants of energy diversification demand function. The bootstrapping ARDL cointegration approach is applied for examining cointegration relationship between energy diversification and its determinants by considering presence of structural break stems in the series. Our empirical analysis reveals that financial development affects energy diversification positively. Natural capital is positively linked with energy diversification. Structural changes have favourable effect on energy diversification. Economic growth declines energy diversification. The relationship between export diversification and energy diversification is negative. Financial development and energy diversification have a nonlinear relationship between with an inverted-U shaped. The bootstrapping ARDL Granger causality analysis reveals the presence of feedback effect between financial development and energy diversification. This empirical analysis provides new policy insights for Australian policy makers using financial development as economic tool to boost up energy diversification.

Conceptualising the education and care workforce from the perspective of children and young people

Children are significant stakeholders within education and care settings. Their views can be invaluable in thinking about what matters to conceptualising, assessing and improving quality in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) settings. As stakeholders, children’s views are rarely listened to by Australian policy makers to assess what constitutes quality and how the quality can be improved. In the process of updating two nationally approved Australian Learning Frameworks (ALFs): Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia 2.0 and My Time Our Place: Framework for School Age Care in Australia 2.0, children’s responses provided meaningful insights into their perceptions of the practices of the educators. The children’s perspectives were gathered in a combination of research methodologies of talking circles, dialogic drawing, and visual elicitation. Their responses about experiences in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) contexts were analysed to provide a deeper understanding about the characteristics of their experiences in the settings. The research process delivered information about children’s perspectives about pedagogical principles and practices that describe the Australian children’s education and care workforce and environments. The process of gathering the children’s perspectives is not without limitations, however the information is invaluable in considering the assessment and improvement of quality in children’s services.

Role of trade liberalization, industrialisation and energy use on carbon dioxide emissions in Australia: 1990 to 2018.

Australia is one of the largest nations in the globe in terms of land area and is home to numerous animals alongside unique and unusual climates and immense forests and oceans. Despite having a very tiny population, the nation is an extremely valuable ecological territory. Unfortunately, due to several changes in land use, habitat loss and deterioration-particularly in light of the recent severe bush fires exacerbated by climate change-the environmental issues in Australia have got the attention of many academics. Therefore, this paper seeks to assess the association between Australia's energy use, [Formula: see text] emission, trade liberalization, industrialization and economic growth from 1990 to 2018. An autoregressive distributed lag and a vector error correction model (VECM) are employed to take care of possible endogeneity and the long-run association. Our results demonstrated that economic growth and energy use have positive and statistically significant effects on emissions of [Formula: see text], but trade liberalization has a significantly adverse influence on emissions of [Formula: see text] both in the long and short term. Granger test in VECM uncovered single-direction Granger interrelationships among trade liberalization and industrialization, as well as among industrialization and carbon dioxide. When attempting to implement effective energy policies, Australian policymakers should first take into account the prominent role played by energy usage and trade liberalization in promoting economic development and impeding environmental health.

How do Australian policymakers frame the causes of and policy solutions to poverty? A critical examination of Anti‐Poverty Week parliamentary debates from 2012 to 2021

AbstractIn recent decades, poverty has increasingly been marginalised in Australian policy discourse. One strategy used by social justice advocates to revitalise a poverty policy agenda has been the annual Anti‐Poverty Week campaign, which aims to stimulate community debate around policy innovations to relieve poverty. This paper analyses the Commonwealth parliamentary debates around Anti‐Poverty Week for 10 years from 2012 to 2021. We analyse and compare how politicians from three political parties – the Liberal and National Party Coalition, the Australian Labor Party and The Australian Greens – identified the key statistics for and groups in poverty, their sources of evidence, the consequences of poverty for those affected, the causes of poverty including whether or not disadvantage was linked to wider structural inequities, and the framing of poverty and potential policy solutions. Some conclusions are drawn from these findings about potential strategies for reinvigorating the poverty debate.

Balancing against China with Confidence: Australia's Foreign Policy toward China in 2020–22

executive summary: This article examines how Beijing's economic sanctions on Australia have encouraged Canberra to double down on its balancing strategy toward China. main argumentWith the relationship already under pressure, political discord between Australia and China was exacerbated in April 2020 by Australia's call for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus. In response, Beijing has since targeted several Australian industries with economic sanctions, using economic coercion to express its hostility toward Canberra's actions. Far from causing Australia to acquiesce to Beijing's preferences, however, China's economic coercion has perversely empowered Canberra and given it confidence to shore up the country's influence in the Indo-Pacific area and balance against China on both conventional and new fronts. At the same time, the source of this confidence may not be sustainable, and balancing should not be the only feature of Australia's policy toward China or preclude efforts to reset the relationship. policy implications• China is not a strategic competitor to Australia, and Australia's strategic interests cannot be achieved without a functioning, constructive relationship with China. Diplomacy, reassurances, and cooperation must also accompany other efforts to balance China. • To attain a bilateral relationship with China that benefits Australia's overall national interest, the Australian government should carefully manage the diplomatic signals it sends to guide China's expectations of Australia, and it should at the same time manage its own expectations of China. • Australian policymakers should improve their understanding of the psychological makeup of Chinese leaders and their strategic culture to help avoid misconceptions and misunderstandings in China's motives and foreign policies and to better interpret signals from Beijing aimed at thawing the relationship.

OP70 Gaps In The Evaluation Of Clinical Decision Support Software (CDSS): Interviews With Australian Policymakers

IntroductionClinical Decision Support Software (CDSS) can improve the quality and safety of care by providing patient-specific diagnostic and treatment recommendations. However, robust evaluation is required to ensure that the recommendations provided are clinically valid, up-to-date, and relevant to a specific clinical context. Most evaluation studies assess CDSS performance from the perspective of end-user requirements. But only occasionally is CDSS subject to stringent pre- and post-market evaluation, making it difficult to determine the safety and quality in practice. This study aimed to assess CDSS evaluation in Australia to identify gaps in evaluation approaches.MethodsWe conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with different policymakers from committees involved in digital health activities in Australia. Data were thematically analyzed using both theory-based (deductive) and data-driven (inductive) approaches.ResultsOur findings indicated that evaluating CDSS as a purely technical intervention has overly narrowed the assessment of benefits and risks by inadequately capturing the sociotechnical environment. Existing evaluation methods, adopting a static view of the implemented system, cannot discern the impact of the dynamic clinical environment and rapidly evolving technology on CDSS performance. The timeframe of evaluation studies are also incongruent with fast software upgrade cycles, with clinical practices and software potentially changing by the time evaluation is complete. The regulation of software as a medical device depends on the intended use. CDSS are exempt from regulation because they only ‘produce advice’; however, this ignores the fact that they can transition to specifying a diagnosis and treatment after a software update. There is no framework for continuous post-market monitoring, and this is especially important when a CDSS algorithm can change and impact on patient management.ConclusionsThe sociotechnical environment is a significant factor influencing the impact of CDSS on clinical practice, therefore evaluation approaches must acknowledge the dynamic nature of clinical and organizational contexts. Pragmatic and data-driven methodologies are required for CDSS evaluation that acknowledge the evolving landscape of clinical practice and its relationship to technology.

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

Exploring small newspaper attitudes to a collaborative approach with Australia’s primary public broadcaster (ABC)

Collaborative approaches to news production are increasingly being trialled across the globe in an attempt to alleviate a well-documented crisis in local news. Of particular interest to Australian policy-makers is the BBC Local Democracy Reporting project which funds journalists to be based in local news outlets to provide local government reporting, as well as data journalism initiatives. There is political will that such an approach could be adopted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to support the nation’s rural and regional news provisions. This article draws on data from six interpretive focus groups involving 50 news workers from independent Australian local news publishers to consider whether smaller publishers would welcome a collaborative approach with the ABC. It finds that a one-size-fits-all collaborative approach is unlikely to be suitable for the Australian regional media landscape and that more work is needed developing an understanding of an appropriate framework that may be tailored to best meet the needs of different local news outlets.

Challenges and opportunities in implementing clinical decision support systems (CDSS) at scale: Interviews with Australian policymakers

ObjectivesWhile many pilot projects have provided proof-of-concept information on CDSS efficacy, they encompass disparate systems unable to fully realise digital transformation. A lack of system-wide guidance on CDSS integration limits the efficacy of even technically well-positioned systems. The objective of this study was to identify challenges and opportunities relating to CDSS implementation in Australia. MethodsOpting for a qualitative approach, we purposefully sampled at national and state levels policymakers involved in CDSS implementation in Australia. We completed 11 semi-structured interviews from March to June 2020. The data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. ResultsThe Australian digital health landscape for CDSS implementation appears to be fragmented, characterised by a lack of integration between clinical and technological elements. This fragmentation is exacerbated by the lack of a shared understanding and collaboration between key stakeholders, increasing the risk of conflicting interests. CDSS are usually designed for a particular clinical workflow, and a lack of interoperability reduces the information flow between systems. Most efforts to achieve data standardisation are limited to organisational or state-level programs, thus increasing the risk of uncoordinated care across organisations. Considering different stakeholder perspectives on the value of CDSS could help to foster sustainable partnerships between governments, organisations, and consumers. ConclusionOur findings emphasise the importance of three things, each underpinned by stakeholder engagement: developing a clear and shared vision for innovation, building clinicians’ skills and organisational capacity for change, and establishing a national consensus on data standards for interoperable CDSS.

The decline and fall of the Australian automotive industry

AbstractThis article assesses the historical political economy of the Australian automotive industry alongside the paradigmatic policy shift in economic policy away from protection towards neoliberalism and globalisation. It focuses on the politics of policy change and government assistance, providing a detailed historical narrative of the development and decline of the Australian automotive industry. From the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s, policy-makers oversaw the decline and fall of the Australian automotive industry. The process of decline occurred within a long-term cycle of new assistance, declining protection, new investment, inadequate restructuring, weak profitability, declining market share, and new assistance. Each cycle, however, was unable to stave off renewed crisis and eventual demise. Over the same period, Australian policy-makers transformed the economy from one of the most protectionist in the developed world to one of the most open. The article outlines the impact of neoliberalism on the automotive industry and analyses what the decline of the industry tells us about how the neoliberal policy structure operates in the ‘actually existing’ political economy. It argues that while the burgeoning neoliberal policy structure in the 1980s and 1990s acted to restrict the range of policy choices available for restructuring the industry, the domestic politics of industry assistance acted to restrict the neoliberal colonisation of the policy agenda. Neoliberal governance has had to contend with political imperatives for continuing assistance, while, at the same time, those political imperatives have been increasingly shaped by neoliberalism.

Explaining China's strategy of implicit economic coercion. Best left unsaid?

ABSTRACT The recent ‘trade war' between Australia and China has understandably sparked fear amongst Australian policymakers, voters and businesses. China's alleged economic coercion towards Australia has the strange property that Chinese leaders are not making any clear explicit demands of Australia. Moreover, this behaviour follows a pattern in recent Chinese dealings with other Asia-Pacific states. Why would a state initiate economic coercion without making clear demands? In this paper, I offer an explanation, building on the logic of audience costs in wars of attrition. I suggest that China's strategy of economic coercion without explicit demands serves a key strategic purpose. Omitting specific demands makes the outcome of any given dispute less clear and hence makes it easier for either side to claim victory. This negates a key advantage which democratic states have in bargaining with autocratic adversaries—the fact that their audience costs for backing down are usually higher, which makes them less likely to initiate but more likely to win international disputes. Implicit economic coercion should therefore be a strategy which is primarily targeted at China’s democratic trading partners. I examine the record of Chinese uses of economic coercion in the past and find that this pattern finds much support.

The battle of the Coral Sea: Australia’s response to the Belt & Road Initiative in the Pacific

ABSTRACT Australia has not been alone in declining the opportunity to take part in China's Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Instead, this article contends, Australia launched its own infrastructure initiative in the Pacific that has attempted to reduce the attractiveness of the BRI to the region. The article focuses on Australia’s intervention in the Coral Sea Cable System, an action which vastly reduced the role of Chinese firms such as Huawei in building telecommunications infrastructure in the Pacific. Informed by a postcolonial perspective, we explain Australia’s stance on the BRI in terms of its intimate but at-times problematic relations with Asia and the Pacific. This was reflected in Australia’s unwillingness to acknowledge the legitimacy of the BRI as a foreign policy initiative, in its invocation of the ‘rules-based order’ to justify its intervention in the cable project, and in the design of its regional infrastructure program, which bore some uncanny resemblances to what Australian policymakers have depicted as the worst aspects of the BRI itself.

Identifying Australian Policy Makers’ Perceptions of EHealth Interventions for Smoking Cessation: Cross Sectional Study

Background: The increasing volume of research on electronic health (eHealth) smoking cessation interventions presents a challenge for policymakers and service providers when they try to decide which strategies to select for health promotion programs. This study aimed to explore the perceptions of Australian policymakers and service providers regarding the effectiveness and quality of eHealth and mHealth interventions for smoking cessation against the evidence in a recent systematic review. Methods: This cross-sectional study invited 38 Australian public health policymakers and service providers in smoking cessation to participate in an online survey assessing their knowledge of the current available evidence-base. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the results of the survey against the published review. Results: Eighteen participants completed the survey. Comparison identified that the majority of participants failed to correctly identify the effects and the quality of the evidence of popular smoking cessation interventions. They lacked knowledge of the usefulness and quality of some eHealth and mHealth interventions for smoking cessation. Conclusions: The finding of this study indicates that the prior perceptions and beliefs held by Australian policymakers and service providers about the effects of eHealth and mHealth interventions for smoking cessation are significantly detached enough from the evidence-base to affect the provision of effective interventions to smokers who want to quit. This has potentially widespread implications for improving health promotion and communication between policymakers, service providers, and the current smoking population.