Stance Of Government Research Articles

China's reaction to the Russia–Ukraine war: A test case for a global ‘Pax Sinica’?

AbstractThis article examines the Chinese government's stance on the Russia–Ukraine war, including the recent development of China's economic relations with Russia. It assesses the factors that have influenced Beijing's position and the narrative it has used to explain it. Considering China's outsized importance for global events, the article also explores what implications its positioning regarding the war can have for the future of the global order. Since Russia's invasion began, China's government has presented itself as a neutral party, but it has de facto adopted a pro‐Russian position in the conflict. Beijing has primarily framed its stance on Ukraine in security terms, embedded in what is essentially a Realist narrative interlinked with pre‐existing ideological worldviews among China's political elites. It has condoned Russia's invasion on the grounds that Moscow is defending its ‘legitimate security interests’, which is an implicit appeal to respect a great power's sphere of influence, even at the expense of smaller states' sovereignty. While this raises questions about the compatibility of Beijing's vision of global order with the broader interests of most other states of the Global South, China (alongside Russia) has intensified its efforts to court these states in the context of the Russia–Ukraine war.

Cohesion and Coherence in Remarks by President Biden in the Joint Statement with Ukraine

This research paper focuses on the analysis of cohesion and coherence in the remarks made by President Biden during the Joint Statement with Ukraine. The study aims to examine the logical flow, consistency, and clarity of President Biden's statements in the context of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. A content analysis approach is employed to analyze the speech delivered by President Biden, including key themes, messaging, and any potential inconsistencies. The findings of this analysis contribute to understanding the effectiveness of President Biden's communication strategy and the coherence of his administration's approach toward Ukraine. The analysis presents a comprehensive understanding of the cohesion and coherence exhibited by President Biden in the Joint Statement with Ukraine, offering valuable insights into the U.S. government's stance towards Ukraine and its broader foreign policy objectives. The findings of this research provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of President Biden's communication strategy and the coherence of his administration's approach toward Ukraine. By assessing the cohesion and coherence in President Biden's remarks, this analysis offers a comprehensive understanding of the administration's commitment to supporting Ukraine in various domains, including security, democracy, and economic development.

‘We will not Relax our Efforts’: The Anti-Nuclear Stance of Civil Society and Government in Post-Independence Fiji

ABSTRACT In the years immediately following independence, Fiji took advantage of its position as the first Pacific Island country in the United Nations to highlight the harms of French nuclear testing. Building on the outspoken efforts of Fijian civil society that reflected deep concerns in the region, the government of Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara took on an increasingly activist role in the international arena around the testing of nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Fiji’s advocacy over this time represented an important moment in Pacific Way politics, tying nuclear resistance to self-determination struggles. Anti-nuclear sentiment at both a community and political level positioned Pacific agency and perspectives in this global discourse. Revisiting the speeches and diplomatic efforts of the Fijian government alongside the advocacy and activities of the ATOM group offers lessons on the importance of collaborative politics in the face of transboundary harms and regional challenges.

The Consumer Attitude Towards the Consumption of Genetically Modified Foods in Zambia: A Case of Kitwe District on the Copperbelt

The purpose of this study was to explore consumer’s attitudes towards the consumption of Genetically Modified foods, in Kitwe district of the Copperbelt Province, Zambia and to learn the current government stance and policy on GM foods. The sample comprised of 353 men and women randomly selected. For data collection and analysis, combinations of both quantitative and qualitative research methods were employed, with instruments consisting of questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. SPSS software was used for generating graphs for quantitative data. Analyses data showed that, most of the respondent’s attitudes towards GM seem to be negative; the biggest issue that drew negativity towards GMO were regarding trust, risk, social norms and the intention to purchase. The public does not trust GMOs because not much tests or research have been done here in Zambia for any side effects.

A decade of biodiversity conservation: insights into corporate social responsibility in an emerging market context

PurposeThis study aims to investigate whether Brazilian companies have increased their reporting on biodiversity within the past decade and whether reporting practices are linked to the government's stance on environmental protection, media coverage and industry biodiversity risk.Design/methodology/approachUsing content analysis and ordinary least squares regression models, the authors examine sustainability reports from Brazilian listed and non-listed companies from 2010 to 2020.FindingsThis study’s empirical analysis indicates that companies have decreased their reporting on biodiversity over the decade. Findings suggest that biodiversity reporting is associated with the level of scrutiny from external constituents, such as industry biodiversity and the president's own public policy agenda and partially by media coverage.Originality/valueThe literature seems to lack an understanding of how political factors may drive social and environmental reporting practices, especially biodiversity reporting. This study addresses this issue by examining the relationship between the government's stance on environmental protection. By focusing on biodiversity reporting in an emerging country like Brazil, this study also generates insights into a highly impactful yet under-researched context.

PRINT MEDIA AGENDA FOR THE GOVERNMENT STANCE ON COMPOSITE DIALOGUE WITH INDIA

Media is playing an important role in portraying Pak-India relations. In the process of supporting or rejecting the issue, the media can set its agenda for this purpose. The study is basically a content analysis of Pakistani Urdu newspapers. It has examined the coverage of “Composite Dialogue between Pakistan and India” in the two Urdu Dailies – The Jang and The Nawa i Waqt from 1st. October 2018 to 30th September 2019 makes the period of one year. The analysis of 2495 stories from two Urdu newspapers suggests that the overall stance of the government of Pakistan on the war on terror is supported by the Pakistani press. Thus, it supports the main hypothesis that the approach of the Pakistani press is more favorable than unfavorable towards the Pakistani government's stance on Composite Dialogue with. Keywords: Print Media Agenda, Composite Dialogue, India, Pakistan

Presuppositions of Social Activism in Marcus Rashford’s Open Letter

This study analyzed the presuppositions in Marcus Rashford's open letter to the UK government regarding free school meals for children all over UK during the outbreak of Covid-19. His open letter is an essential part of social activism in a changing society. It was written with enthusiasm, optimism, and positivity for a new future. The study is conducted to fill the gap between the previous studies since no research has analyzed an open letter before. This study used Yule's theory (1996) of presuppositions and Cutting (2002) to analyze the data found in the letter. The results of the study found that the open letter used four kinds of presuppositions, which is existential, factive, lexical, and counterfactual presuppositions. Rashford was able to provide the audience with new data as an addition to the material they already knew by utilizing those presuppositions. Additionally, it refutes a common misconception. In this case, the UK government's stance is successfully influenced.

ANALISIS FRAMING: PEMBERITAAN MEDIA MASSA MENGENAI KEBIJAKAN LUAR NEGERI INDONESIA DALAM MENANGGAPI RIVALITAS AMERIKA SERIKAT DAN CHINA (2019-2022)

In the second period of President Joko Widodo's government, Indonesia strengthened its cooperative relations with the United States and China through various agreements in the economy and other global issues. Indonesia's decision is influenced by many factors, both internal and external. According to Michael Brecher, in the process of foreign policy formulation, the mass media have a rol to convey and advocate for the general public regarding the government's stance towards certain issues. Through this research, the research team wanted to find out whether the mass media in Indonesia support Indonesia's foreign policy in responding to the rivalry between the United States and China? To answer this question, the research team used the foreign policy formulation system (Michael Brecher) and the framing analysis (Robert N. Entman). The study was carried out on 15 selected news stories from Kompas, The Jakarta Post, and Tempo. Based on the research conducted, the research team concludes that the news conveyed by the mass media in Indonesia shows their support for Indonesia's foreign policy, especially its neutral stance in the rivalry between the United States and China.

The Political Anatomy of Economic Crises -the case of Turkey: 1945-2018

The foundations of economic and financial crises are conventionally attributed to the technicalities of macroeconomic fragilities. Yet political instability (caused by the deficiency of democracy and/or unfunctional political institutions) can also be considered as a major determinant of economic instability by deteriorating the debt dynamics through depreciation of the national currency or the ascent of interest rates. Analogously, political instability, for instance, disruption of cabinet durability, to a large extent depends on the economic performance of governments. Hence, though most economists conceive macroeconomic fragilities as the mother of all crises, the issue is rather complex and there is an intermingled relationship between political and economic crises. 
 
 Besides, as macroeconomic fragilities or structural imbalances are results of inappropriate policies, the political rationale and the social motives behind such misleading policies should also be well comprehended. For that purpose, an elaboration will enable the negation of the dominant argument that it is only economic factors that instigate crises. 
 
 This study investigates the political background of eight economic crises in Turkey, since 1946. It is observed that in all of them, significant levels of devaluation and retraction of growth are experienced. All of the devaluations were indispensable, except the first one in 1946 which was discretionary and precautionary. The crises of 1978/9, 1994, and 2001 ended with drastic austerity programmes, albeit the others, where governments refrained with macroeconomic adjustment through fiscal and monetary measures. The 2001 twin-crisis was so peculiar, as it was to a large extent caused by the design-defection of the programme recommended by the IMF. Yet, since the attempt of financial liberalization, all of the other economic crises were prompted by capital flights. The 2008/9 crisis was due to global contagion and the 2018 crisis was caused by the tensions in the bilateral relations with the US, amid high private sector foreign debt. In all economic crises, the profligate fiscal stance of governments has played a prominent role, as well as the maintenance of appreciated exchange rates, but such choices had a political rationale. Finally, in the background of all the economic crises in Turkey, we observe stern political instability.
 
 Political instability not only restricts the rational decision-making capacity of the policy-maker, especially if it converges into a political crisis, but also exacerbates economic sentiment, either by consumer confidence or by investor appetite, which subsequently results in economic decline. It also intensifies risks and causes exchange rate depreciation as well as interest rate hikes, both of which degenerates debt dynamics. Since the financial liberalization attempt, as portfolio investments have boosted, political stability has become imperative to sustain the stability of risk-sensitive financial markets. Both the experience of the 2008/9 and especially the 2018 financial crisis, have verified the importance of political instability as a determinant of economic crises. In short, economic crises cannot be analysed disregarding their political anatomy.

A Study of Trump’s Narrative about Islam in US Press

The study's goal is to investigate the coverage of Donald Trump's anti-Islam narrative in the United States press. The events of September 11, 2001, in New York City, and in San Bernardino,California, among others, impacted the socio-cultural, socio-economic, socio-political, and foreign policies of many countries throughout the world. The current research is essentially a content analysis of two editorials from two different newspapers in the United States (The NewYork Times and The Washington Post). The editorial contents were divided into four categories: A (US government relations with Muslim countries), B (coverage of Islam/Muslims in the war on terrorism), C(Donald Trump's stance on US-Muslim Countries bilateral relations),and D (US government's stance on US-Muslim Countries bilateral relations). To assess the association between different variables, the Chi-square statistical test was performed. The findings show that following the 2016 presidential elections in the United States, editorial overage of Trump's anti-Islam narrative was less favorable than previously.

COVID-19 in Ethiopia: Policy Stance, Leadership Response, and Challenges

International community impacted by the incidence like COVID-19 in different point of time. The virus caused by RNA virus that belongs to the family of CORONA (Latin Crown, from the structure of the virus under electron microscope) virus. The world both developed and underdeveloped nations has been challenged/challenging by the virus significantly. It was the first reported in China in Wuhan City at the end of 2019. The disease began to create destruction and the devastating effect of the pandemic forced the World Health Organization to declare it as a global pandemic. COVID-19 is animals and the virus spread in the form of human-to-human transmission. Physical contact and respiratory routs are the two most important well-established routs of transmission of the virus. Poor hand hygiene practice, overcrowding, and close physical contacts like hand shaking contributes for the fast spread of the virus with in very short period. In China the disease was first recognized shows educating the public is proven as a key in preventing transmission. The main objective was to explain and explore the practice of leadership response, policy stance and challenges of COVID-19 in Ethiopia. The report includes describing the response of leadership and policy stance of stance of Ethiopian government towards COVID-19 lesson from Ethiopia. The major purpose of this desk review was to arrive at synthesis opinion, analyses the data, evaluate the practice of COVID-19 protection, and provide possible conclusion and recommendation to for further regulatory directives and research issues of the government of Ethiopia. Qualitative research techniques have been used for the desk review. The method includes literature review by analyzing secondary data, research findings, and case analysis. The major governmental response of Ethiopia was like closed schools due to COVID-19 on 16 March 2020, following the declaration of the virus as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 12 March 2020. The Ministry of Education of Ethiopia developed a ‘Concept Note for Education Sector COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan’ on 3 April 2020. The national COVID-19 prevention guideline dictates the roles and responsibilities of Health care workers’ Rights, Employers and managers in health facilities and Health care workers. Though, the government doing things well, since June 2020, the number of identified COVID-19 cases has increased substantially in Ethiopia. There are insufficient network capabilities, high-quality digital education resources, and teacher capacity in use of information technology, and online teacher-student interaction and emotional communication.

ОБРАЗ ПРАВОСЛАВНОГО СВЯЩЕННОСЛУЖИТЕЛЯ-РЕНЕГАТА В СОВЕТСКОЙ АНТИРЕЛИГИОЗНОЙ ПРОПАГАНДЕ В 1922-1923 ГГ

The article is devoted to anti-religious activities in the USSR in 1922-1923. The article deals with the problem of using the image of a renegade clergyman in anti-religious propaganda, which, in turn, was the main one in the entire anti-religious propaganda of the period under study. Not the least role in anti-religious propaganda was played by the Soviet newspaper Bezbozhnik, which was not only one of the many periodicals in the 1920s that directly or indirectly related to the Soviet government stance on religion, but was the leading newspaper specializing in aggressive propaganda of godlessness. In addition, this newspaper was a consolidating and organizing platform for the atheists of the USSR, and in the future, acted as an organizing force in the creation of the "Union of Militant Atheists" - organization that aims to completely eradicate religion. Some cases of the denial of Orthodox clergymen from the church are investigated. The article analyzes the methods of propaganda of atheism by the “Atheist” newspaper. The propaganda image of a renegade priest created by anti-religious propaganda is examined in detail. The history of the anti-religious policy of the Soviet state is being studied. When writing the article, the author used the historical-systemic approach and the principle of historicism.

Pakistani English Press during War on Terror: A Media Conformity Approach

The present research focused on how much Pakistani English press tracked the foreign policy stance of the Pakistani government in the presentation of incidents related to the war on terror. Pakistani authorities reinforced war on terror and Afghanistan war but did not support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. For the present analysis, the editorials of Dawn and the Nation were selected from 12 September 2001 to 11 September 2003. Thematic analysis of the editorial coverage through NVIVO 10 was conducted. It was found that, during the war against Afghanistan that took place in 2001, Pakistani English press did not support the Pakistani governments stance. Many critical themes were noted from the data. However, during Iraq war that happened in 2003, Pakistani English press toed the Pakistani governments policy during and stressed the government to take more proactive stance against Iraq war. Overall, it could be stated that the Pakistani English press partially conformed the foreign policy stance of Pakistani government.

Media Agenda on War against Terrorism: An Analysis of British Newspapers

The war against terrorism was started by the Bush administration after the attacks of September 11th . In this context, America attacked Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 alongside British forces and NATO allies. The present article explored the agenda of the British press regarding War against Terrorism in British press. The study conducted thematic analysis of two mainstream British daily newspapers i.e. The Guardian and The Independent. The standpoint of the British press was inferred to find out either they supported the government stance or they adopted a critical viewpoint regarding these two wars. The results indicated that the British press advised their government to adopt responsible approach to deal with the crisis. Mostly, the issues related to terrorism, Al-Qaeda, US policies and British role in the war against terrorism dominated the news agenda of the British newspapers. The press stressed on the strong role of UNO during the war against terrorism.

Analysis of ’Editorial Treatment’ of US Drone Attacks by the Prominent English Dailies in Pakistan

Drone attacks inside Pakistan remained the core issue in international relations and communication scholarship. This study aims to investigate the editorial treatment of US drone attacks inside Pakistan. The researcher has employed a content analysis method to examine the frequency and themes within the editorial published by The Nation and Daily Times from February 18th 2008 to February 28th 2011. The study found that Daily Times supports the Pakistani government stance on US drone attacks inside Pakistan and The Nation as opponent to the government regarding US drone attacks inside Pakistan. The findings imply that media in Pakistan is presenting diverse and pluralistic voices on political issues specifically on an international issue of drone attacks. In this way, its role in public opinion formations cannot be under estimated in the working democracy of Pakistan.

The Rise, Success and Dismantling of New Zealand's Anglican-led Māori Education System, 1814–64

Anglican missionaries, serving under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), were the first Europeans to settle in New Zealand. Within months of arriving in the country in 1814, they began to convert the language of the indigenous Māori into a written form in order to produce religious texts that would assist with Māori education and conversion. The CMS missionaries also established schools for Māori which later grew into a de facto state education system until the colonial government accelerated its plans for a secular school regime from the mid-1840s. Despite the sometimes awkward religious and cultural entanglements that accompanied missionary proselytizing in this era, the mission schools established by the CMS flourished in the succeeding decades, elevating Māori literacy levels and serving as a highly effective tool of Anglican evangelization. This article traces the arc of the CMS mission schools from their inception in 1814 to their demise in the early 1860s, a period during which the British, and later New Zealand, government's stance towards the mission schools went from ambivalence, through assistance, to antipathy.

背景 The View from 2010

背景 The View from 2010 Xu Xi In 2010, the second morning of the Year of the Pig is the day after Valentine's. Hong Kong's in a good mood. On ATV Home, Harmony News broadcasts a senior citizen activity organized by a Christian social welfare group. Its goal—to reproduce past times by displaying personal possessions these seniors have preserved and staging pop songs and dances they perform, sporting makeup, wigs, and clothing from their youth. One woman could still wear her wedding dress. Today, ATV no longer exists, this free-to-air television station with two language channels—Cantonese Home and English World. The station died on April 1, 2016, its license renewal denied by the Hong Kong government. Home couldn't compete with more commercially popular TVB Jade, though World gave TVB Pearl a run for its money. ATV World was perhaps too good at broadcasting all our news in English, the global language, news too readily rebroadcast worldwide, because by 2016, protests in my city had grown louder, and discontents simmered to a dangerous boil. But on the second day of that Pig year, I am watching Home because mornings are when I catch up on local news, harmonious or contentious, in Cantonese, the language of my city's heart. Our minority language, English, has less to say locally in the mornings, and the Anglo channels—CNN, BBC, Australian Broadcasting, as well as France 24, NHK, Arirang, Al Jazeer, DW, all that foreign media—have fewer correspondents than in days of yore, when Britannia still ruled waves, and us. ________ It's impossible, if not heretical, to consider my city today without that "view from behind" of our 背景, as Chinese articulates a background or backstory. In February 2010, I move home once again to live in my birth city; it's the last time I'll do so. My personal 背景 of courage, cowardice, and compromise is this insider's entry path to reflect on our chaotic present. It takes courage for protesters to wave the British flag in 2019, when the world is witnessing the largest and most prolonged protests by the citizenry, some of whom perpetrate the worst violence in Hong Kong's [End Page 588] history. Nineteenth-century gunboat diplomacy—how unequal treaties were signed in favor of the colonizer—seems tame by comparison. Is it Dutch courage or true heroism Grandma Wong displays, this sixty-plus-year-old who consistently appears, wielding a large Union Jack? She will not compromise: Hong Kong under England, she claims, had a future. Many protesters do not agree; as a colonized people, we were second-class citizens. Likewise, the courageous minorities on different spectrums—those demanding independence, freed of Chinese rule; those resorting to violence, risking arrest, because only then will they not be ignored—they, too, cannot compromise. Most protesters disagree, but the more recalcitrant the local government's stance, in line with China's unwillingness to accede to demands for greater democracy, the more likely the protests and strikes will be prolonged, with perhaps more violence and even louder cries for independence. The ball is in the Hong Kong government's court, more than it's ever been in the history of our city, and they must find the right compromise. It troubles me to see such outrage in our streets, grassroots courage, a courage that should have manifested much earlier in our short history. To mount a real revolution, as opposed to the polite tea parties1 of Hong Kong's numerous protest marches. The Chairman knew: revolution was the Long March, bloodshed and sacrifice, something Hong Kong's youth are finally discovering late, too late. Should I have had the courage to abandon my family and city when I was younger, as young as many of these protesters are today? In the journey of my private revolution, I, too, did not find courage soon enough to completely transform my life. ________ I left Hong Kong for good in the fall of 2018. Since my first departure at the age of seventeen, it's been a lifelong shuttle, mostly between New York and Hong Kong, in my quest to live...

Germany's brake on European capital-market development

In February 2015, the European Commission published a Green Paper in which it put forward the goal to ‘build a true single market for capital’ for all European Union member states by 2019. The present paper argues that there is no realistic prospect of achieving this goal given that the Green Paper omits any reference to a formidable impediment blocking a European capital-market union: the German government's stance on debt. The inescapable fact is that this government's reluctance to increase the supply of its bonds is depriving the European capital market of one of the essential ingredients necessary to its enlargement on the one hand and to the efficiency of its operation on the other: the former because capital-market enlargement crucially depends on attracting institutional investors who must hold a substantial proportion of their bond portfolios in the form of safe government bonds; the latter because the efficient functioning of the capital markets crucially depends on the efficiency of the money markets where safe government bonds are by far the most important form of collateral.

PabloYanguasWhy We Lie About AidLondon: Zed Books, 2018. 275 p.

Development aid is so riddled with contradictions, controversies, equivocation, and hypocrisy that almost any critique, left or right, is welcome—as is this one. The basic argument presented here is that development is a transformational process that requires institutional change. As such, it creates winners and losers. Therefore, only a political understanding of the development process and an approach to supporting it rooted in political analysis can achieve desired change. The author offers his own understanding of how such an approach, which he styles “contentious development politics,” should be designed. Foreign aid is a political football in donor countries, instrumentalized by political forces to project their values and priorities. The usual fracture is between a conservative view that aid is a disincentivizing boondoggle and a progressive one that it is a moral imperative that can deliver tangible results for both donor and beneficiary. Some implications are straightforward and obvious: the Americans are big on private sector development and civil society, the Swedes on gender equality, the Danes on human rights, for example. But there are aberrations: on the right, for example, President George W. Bush's PEPFAR (President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief) and the catalyst that that conservative president provided for the Millennium Development Goals in Monterrey in 1999. Caught up in the political winds of development assistance is the aid establishment, whose members depend for a living on the fiscal largesse and ideological stance of donor governments. But the fact that aid is used to pursue favored political objectives or please selected political constituencies is not the main point of the book. The main point is that the implementation of aid programs and projects has become dominated by (Tony) Blairite New Public Management or, to use the author's preferred term, Value for Money (VfM). The VfM hydra has many heads, but prominent among them are logical frameworks (“logframes”), theories of change, SMART (Specific Measurable Assignable Realistic Time-related) indicators, Results-oriented Monitoring (RoM), randomized control trials (RCTs), “lessons learnt,” etc. Taken as a whole, these are supposed to promote a culture of tracking whether and why assistance, translated into actions, translated into results, translated into tangible beneficial impacts on target populations—or did not, as the case may be. The problem, the author argues, is that fetishization of efficiency along these lines— John Foster Dulles called it “bang for the buck” in the nuclear strategic context, and the phrase travels well—distorts aid in the direction of interventions with quantifiable bang (and, the author might have added, good photo ops for the Ambassador and funding agency representatives). More transformational, long-term, long-shot, interventions—say in rule of law or democratic governance or conflict prevention or gender or civil society strengthening; where an entire way of life is being interrogated—are underfunded unless there is a tight security sector link. The argument is supported by credible, in-depth case studies on Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Honduras. The symbiotic relationship between aid providers and recipients is analyzed, yet somehow lacking in the analysis is global realpolitik: the money has to flow. It has to flow to strengthen strategic relations between donor and recipient countries. It has to flow to support an important client class. The theme of subalternity is never pursued in depth and that most overused word in the aid world, “partnership,” is never really queried, although the author is well positioned to do both. Despite his experience treading the halls of major development agencies, the author never quite comes to grips with the micro-experience of the program officer, tasked with pushing massive amounts of money out the door under time pressure and the exquisite scrutiny of auditors, evaluators, politicians, and civil society organizations. It is only at the level of individual incentives that the question why we lie about aid is best engaged. So, some critical opportunities were missed. But that said, the book is well written, informative, and entertaining. Its strongest point is that the author, a researcher at the University of Manchester, is also an experienced consultant to aid agencies, giving him a perceptive combined town-and-gown perspective. Bibliography; index.

Industrial legislation in Australia in 2017

This article examines key industrial legislation passed by federal Parliament in 2017. The main development in federal industrial legislation for this year, which passed with bipartisan support, saw a weakened Coalition Government (forced from its traditional industrial relations (IR) stance) act to improve protections for vulnerable workers. This initiative introduced extended liability provisions regulating franchisors and holding companies. However, these provisions are a narrow response to an economy-wide problem because they do not establish measures to better regulate supply chains, labour hire and gig economy arrangements for the protection of vulnerable workers. Back in more familiar territory, the Coalition Government managed to implement part of its agenda to further regulate unions by establishing legislation that criminalises bargaining payments by employers to unions. A constitutional crisis over the citizenship status of federal Parliamentarians prevented the Coalition Government from passing legislation designed to curtail trade union activities. The article also considers significant State legislative developments including the introduction of mandatory labour hire licensing laws in South Australia and Queensland, industrial manslaughter laws in Queensland and regulation of ridesharing arrangements in Victoria. The article concludes by contrasting federal criminal penalties against union activity with civil penalties for businesses that exploit vulnerable workers, before suggesting future directions in industrial legislation.