Remote Australia Online

Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach.

There have been many studies of regional well-being in Australia, but few match the range of variables and spatial detail employed in this paper. Twenty two socio-economic variables were drawn from the 1986 census and used to classify all 148 Commonwealth electorates. Two procedures were adopted, both based on a principal components analysis, and compared to test the robustness of the classifications generated The first approach summed factor scores to provide a status index, and the second employed Ward's clustering algorithm. The resultant groupings are seen to both complement and reinforce each other and indicate the complex and often subtle variations in well-being across the country.

This study reviews the environmental changes that have occurred in Australia since European settlement. It discusses the history of changing attitudes towards the natural environment in Australia and the problems of assessing change. Contents 1. Changing Views of the Australian Environment 2. Assessing Changes in the Australian Environment since 1788 3. The Effects of Agriculture 4. Forestry and Its Impacts 5. Mining 6. Marine and Coastal Environments 7. Urbanisation and Its Effects 8. Water Supply and Use 9. Nature Conservation

This report deals with priorities for research into rural communities and rural social issues. Although the study was commissioned by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), the views expressed are those of the team from Edith Cowan University responsible for its preparation. These views have been informed and tempered by input from many other organisations and people interested in this important field. The report is based on an extensive literature review, together with information derived from a survey of policy-making agencies and researchers, as well as discussion at a national workshop held in Canberra on 19 May 1999. The literature review concentrates on work published in the past five years, although some seminal, older publications are also mentioned. An e-mail survey questionnaire was used to obtain information on recent publications, research projects currently under way and issues that respondents considered should be accorded priority for further research. The recommendations contained in the report give priority to issues that meet each of the following criteria 1. The issue is itself one of major importance. 2. There is a major gap in recent research in this field. 3. Further research has the potential to inform policy-making, public discussion and/or social practice. The report is structured as follows: Chapter 1 outlines the background, purpose and methodology of the study. Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of issues involved in defining the term ‘rural’. After considering various types of social research, it discusses the relationship of RIRDC’s research program to that of other agencies. Chapter 3 examines the range of large-scale economic adjustments that have affected life in rural Australia, particularly as these relate to agriculture, regional development, local government, demographic change, and the viability of small towns and rural communities. Chapter 4 deals in more detail with labour markets, employment and unemployment in country towns and rural communities. Chapter 5 takes up the issue of social wellbeing, and problems in measuring the impact of policies and socioeconomic changes on different segments of the population. It discusses the integration of social, environmental and economic objectives in the quest for sustainable rural communities. Chapter 6 addresses issues of education and learning as they bear upon rural productivity, employment opportunities, personal development, and the resilience of rural communities. Chapter 7 considers a broad range of health-related issues, including health service delivery, the health needs of particular segments of the population, issues of safety at work and on the roads, and mental health. Chapter 8 discusses further infrastructural issues that are salient to the wellbeing of rural communities. These include telecommunications, banking services, housing, transport and the consequences of a rapidly growing tourist industry. Chapter 9 reviews other possible priority areas for research. These include Indigenous issues, women, youth, farm succession, disasters and risk management, and crime.

Using the settled areas of South Australia as a case study, this paper seeks to demonstrate the specific importance of rural population and settlement density as an important variable in understanding the social, population and settlement geography of sparsely settled rural regions, where sparse and falling density presents both practical and conceptual problems for rural planners. After a review of the literature on population density, the case is argued for the use of net rural rather than gross density in the analysis of settlement patterns. The paper then tests a series of hypotheses on the empirical relationship between rural density as independent variable and selected demographic and socio-economic indicators as dependent variables, at two specific points in time. For the same region, points in time and set of indicators, it goes on to compare the predictive power of rural density as an independent variable with that of three other important qualities of rural settlement patterns (remoteness, settlement size and urban concentration). Rural density is found to be a significant explanatory variable, both in its own right and in comparison with the three other variables tested. In conclusion, the findings are related to policy development measures for rural Australia.

Recently has there been a revival of interest among policymakers in Australia in exploring the impact of escalating house prices on low to medium paid workers. This marks a distinctive change in the focus of the contemporary housing policy debate. In the recent past, concern over the provision of affordable housing has primarily focused on developing rental options for those on the lowest incomes. As a result, Australian housing assistance policy today is almost solely targeted on supporting rental housing.

This research aimed to identify the motivations of, and tradeoffs made by, low-income households who choose to relocate from metropolitan cities to rural and regional Australia. Specifically, the project sought to determine the importance of housing considerations vis-à-vis other factors in location choice and whether, in the search for appropriate and affordable housing, the net welfare of movers is affected. The bias towards lower income earners in out-migration flows from Australian cities has been noted for some years by researchers. Particularly in Sydney an association between immigration and out-migration has been noted and commentators have inferred that people are being forced out of the city by high housing prices. To the extent that the net welfare of movers is reduced due to relocation, policy issues related to housing subsidies and provision of human services arise. Whilst some light can be shed on these issues with secondary data from key sources such as Population and Housing Censuses and the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) longitudinal data set on income support recipients, direct questioning of those relocating is required to get accurate information on decision factors and their levels of welfare before and after relocation. This research therefore involved surveying a sample of low-income households who had recently relocated from Sydney and Adelaide to non-metropolitan localities in NSW and South Australia, respectively. The level of out-migration from Sydney is higher than for other Australian cities and Sydney's housing prices are by far the highest. The extent to which people are in fact being forced out by high housing prices is likely to be most sharply manifest there. But the phenomenon of low income out-migration is evident around Australia so the inclusion of one other state in the study will go some way towards determining the extent to which the outflow from Sydney is uniquely influenced by housing affordability. The study design focused on income support recipients (aged, unemployed, disabled, sole parents) since these people are likely to most sharply embody the sorts of considerations just referred to. Operationally this choice makes it efficient to identify a sample of movers since FaCS databases enable direct identification of movers from metropolitan postcodes to selected non-metropolitan localities.

historical reference

The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 incorporated, in large measure, progressive social measures recommended by Mr Justice Woodward to facilitate economic development for Aboriginal people. These included financial provisions for mining moneys to be channelled to Indigenous interests in order to facilitate the empowerment of land councils and the independent funding of the land claim process; to support regional economic development and the amelioration of the negative impacts of mining; and to assist general improvements in the socioeconomic status of Aboriginal people throughout the Northern Territory. This paper broadly assesses how over $300 million in mining royalty equivalents paid in the last 20 years to the Aboriginals Benefit Trust Account (ABTA) have been utilised; whether largely unchanged provisions in the Land Rights Act made in 1976 are still appropriate in 1996 after passage of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989 and the Native Title Act 1993; and if not, what changes to the statute need to be considered by Indigenous interests to ensure that access to scarce discretionary resources are utilised optimally in the future. The analysis will end on a speculative note by assessing where Aboriginal economic development and land rights will be in 20 years time, with and without changes to the statute.

The extent to which social policy should foster economic adaptation and compensate the 'losers' from economic forces is of growing concern to policy makers in the 1990s. From an Aboriginal policy perspective this concern is familiar. The recent endemic levels of unemployment experienced by the non-Aboriginal population have been a long-term experience for Indigenous Australians. The paper explores an approach from the Aboriginal affairs social policy arena - the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme - and considers both its ability to compensate disadvantaged Indigenous Australians and its applicability in the wider community. The concept of Indigenous 'losers' is critically examined in the light of the considerable cultural, economic and geographic variation within the Aboriginal population itself. The current level of Indigenous disadvantage also reflects complex historical processes. The CDEP scheme is a community-oriented approach which offers a potentially radical economic adaptation; the most significant being the 'Aboriginalisation' of work and a high degree of local control over setting employment outcomes and work schedules. However, the paper argues that the longer-term employment and income improvement outcomes from the scheme are far from clear. The CDEP scheme does not appear to be particularly effective in reducing poverty and in some regions it may perpetuate an employment enclave for the disadvantaged. Finally, it remains unclear whether the scheme has the capacity to compensate especially disadvantaged individuals at the community level, or to move unemployed Indigenous Australians towards equality with other Australians. The scheme appears to suit the particular circumstances of many Indigenous Australians, but any moves to introduce the scheme more widely would need to proceed cautiously.

An issues paper on 'Aborigines and Tourism' was commissioned by the Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) Tourism Working Group on 3 June 1991. It followed a verbal presentation on Aboriginal issues to the ESD Tourism Working Group by the authors in May 1991. The paper is divided into three parts, as specified in consultancy terms of reference: A review of research on the impacts of tourism on Aboriginal communities. An outline of the characteristics of an ecologically sustainable tourism industry in the context of the industry's interface with Aboriginal communities. A discussion of policy alternatives to achieve an ecologically sustainable tourism industry for Aboriginal communities. The methodology for the issues paper required a search of the literature, with special reference to the consultants' own work on the impacts of tourism on Aboriginal communities in remote Australia (in Altman's case) and in rural and urban areas in south-east Australia (in Finlayson's case).

Some 25 years after the implementation of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) and with the legislation currently under review and 'at risk', as some have argued, it is timely to reconsider the class of organisation referred to as 'royalty associations'. This paper examines the organisational history, objectives, and activities of the oldest royalty association in the Northern Territory, the Ngurratjuta/Pmara Ntjarra Aboriginal Corporation (hereafter referred to as the NAC or the Corporation), and presents key findings made by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research's recent review of that organisation. The opportunities and challenges encountered by the NAC are described in order to highlight lessons relevant to all Indigenous royalty associations. A model of royalty associations The paper develops a general model of royalty associations per se, and makes a considered evaluation of the related public policy implications arising from the review by John Reeves QC (1998) into the ALRA and the subsequent inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. Findings It is concluded that, in performing their primary function of receiving, managing and distributing moneys, royalty associations operate in a critical position as brokers and negotiators between two economic systems of production and distribution. As result, they: have become multi-dimensional financial organisations, delivering a wide range of social, economic, cultural and political services; need to target their functions and service delivery to key financial activities in which they have a competitive niche; should secure service delivery agreements with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and government to ensure their activities are part of a coordinated approach to regional service delivery; would benefit from a consortium approach to obtaining independent commercial expertise and advice; should separately and collectively undertake a period of strategic planning; should have their operations broadly monitored by the land councils; and will need to maintain dual investment strategies, preferably by way of statutory or constitutional commitment, which ensure both income stream protection for future members, and income generation to facilitate enterprise development and targeted employment.

This paper was presented at the 4th Doing Business with Aboriginal Communities Conference held in Alice Springs in February 1998. Conference presentations covered a great deal of material on Indigenous, governmental and industry perspectives on doing business with Aboriginal communities. These included a number of empirical best practice case studies; perspectives of native title tribunal, legal and bureaucratic practitioners; and an Indigenous community voice. In an attempt to add value, I presented this overview under the broad rubric ‘new horizons, new opportunities and new strategies’ of the respective and highly interactive roles that Indigenous communities, governments, and industry can play to facilitate a higher degree of business engagement by Indigenous communities. The overarching conceptual framework utilised here is a gross simplification of reality because it is clear that there is enormous diversity within each of the three simplified categories of Indigenous community, governments, and industry. For example, where does the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) fit within such a framework: is it Indigenous community or government or, as some unkindly suggest, ‘an industry’? The answer is, perhaps, all three. For this analysis ATSIC is placed firmly in the governmental domain, despite the enormous differences in many views between the current federal government and the ATSIC Board of Commissioners. It is assumed that, for analytical purposes, these simplifications will be accepted. There is an ongoing and highly stylised exchange relationship that is continually occurring between these three entities. Government attempts to provide industry with the right environment and signals it to operate competitively and profitably. Industry provides government with taxes (sometimes in exchange for government-owned resources like mineral rights) and contributions to a healthy economy through job creation and other multiplier effects. Indigenous communities, where bestowed by rights of consent or rights of negotiation, provide industry with access to resources. Industry provides these communities with direct and indirect benefits increasingly defined in formal agreements. The interaction between government and Indigenous communities is a little more complex, because there is an overarching social compact between the two based on citizenship entitlements and responsibilities. Nevertheless, in the doing business, development context, government provides Indigenous communities with economic programs and financial resources (sometimes as compensation) in exchange for direct or indirect savings, be they in taxes paid or welfare payments saved. It would not surprise that in this greatly simplified world and under ideal conditions ‘doing business with Aboriginal communities’ would require a tripartite (or three-way) approach that includes all three parties. Within this overarching conceptual framework this paper aims to: * examine of broad economic and policy context to structurally and institutionally situate the position at this juncture in relation to doing business with Indigenous communities, focusing in particular on the role of the three distinct entities of Indigenous communities, business, and government; and * highlight some new horizons, new opportunities and new strategies for Indigenous business development while reiterating, perhaps a little pessimistically, some old challenges. In conclusion there is a view to the future, identifying new hurdles and cautiously noting the role that business might play in overall Indigenous economic development.

The Environmental Technology Centre at Murdoch University (David Beyer), and The Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, UWA (Bernhard Elber and Grant Revell) have undertaken a study for the Cooperative Research Centre(CRC) for Sustainable Tourism to develop a Best Practice Model for Sustainable Tourism Facilities in remote areas. The study aimed to develop a holistic and independently verifiable 'best practice' assessment system. The study involved visits to low-impact facilities including Longitude 131 in N.T., and Paperbark Camp in N.S.W.

Tourism is a competitive industry. Countries compete with other countries to attract overseas visitors. Regions within Australia compete with other similar regions to attract visitors. In fact regional Australia has not only overseas destinations and other regional Australian destinations to compete with, but also capital cities. This report identifies critical success factors, at the local level, that promise to lift the performance of regional Australia. It considers a number of key questions outlined to the left.

This monograph has been written with two main objectives in mind. The first is to present empirical data about the economic impact of tourism on Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. There is some concern in the wider community that Aboriginal ownership of important tourist destination constrains tourism growth, but this has never been rigorously examined. The evidence presented here suggests this concern may be misplaced. Secondly, I have canvassed a range of tourism policy issues that need to be addressed, especially by Aboriginal people contemplating involvement in this industry. This policy discussion has been animated by my longer term research focus on the impact of land rights on the economic status of Aboriginal people. Will ownership of important tourism destinations, like Kakadu and Uluru National Parks, provide Aboriginal people with economic and political leverage? If not, is the granting of land rights truly ‘a first step on a long road towards self-sufficiency and eventual social and economic equality for Aborgines’? (Woodward 1974)

This article poses the question: are there cultural limits to tourism? It argues that tourism is a culture industry in the sense that it markets cultural products to tourists as cultural experiences. The three elements of tourism as culture are: the cultural foundations of tourism products, the sophistication of tourists’ perceptions and experiences of tourist cultures, and the cultural consequences of tourism development on resident communities. Yet these aspects are usually treated in a tokenistic way in favour of economic and environmental considerations, ignoring the cultural consequences of major changes to destination communities as a result of tourist development. This article proposes that the changes and consequences of tourism on the culture of destinations and on the culture of tourists should be central to debates about sustainable tourism development. The article proposes a number of conditions or indicators to identify the matrix of impacts of tourism from which acceptable and unacceptable limits can be determined. The use of these indicators should be central to planning, management and monitoring practices to achieve sustainable tourism.

There is no doubt that place branding is a powerful and ubiquitous practice deployed around the globe. Parallel to its acceptance and development as a distinct discipline is an understanding that place branding as responsible practice offers the means to achieve widespread economic, social and cultural benefits. Drawing on work around place and identity in cultural geography and cultural studies, this paper engages critically with this vision. Specifically, it challenges the widely-held assumption that the relationship between place branding and place identity is fundamentally reflective, arguing instead that this relationship is inherently generative. This shift in perspective, explored in relation to current responsible place branding practice, is central to the realisation of place branding as a force for good.

The scope for an anthropology of mining has been dramatically transformed since the review by Ricardo Godoy, published in this review journal in 1985. The minerals boom of the 1980s led to an aggressive expansion of mine development in greenfield areas, many of them the domains of indigenous communities. Under considerable pressure, the conventional binary contest between states and corporations over the benefits and impacts of mining has been widened to incorporate the representations of local communities, and broad but unstable mining communities now coalesce around individual projects. Focused primarily on projects in developing nations of the Asia-Pacific region, this review questions the often-monolithic characterizations of state, corporate, and community forms of agency and charts the debate among anthropologists involved in mining, variously as consultants, researchers, and advocates, about appropriate terms for their engagement.

In trying to understand resource economies, the article develops the idea of local models. A local model, in contrast to a universal model, is sensitive to the peculiarities of geographical context. Those peculiarities, rather than being reduced to some higher order of logic as in universal models, are kept intact, forming the very basis of understanding. Our approach to local modeling draws specifically on institutional economics. That tradition makes the argument that the economy is shaped by various institutions (not all of which are economic), which are continually changing and which take on different constellations in different places. By setting out a grid of central institutions operating in resource economies, and comparatively using the examples of the forest economies of British Columbia, Canada, North Island, New Zealand, and Tasmania, Australia, the article constructs three local models. Each has the same constituent elements, but how they are related and what eventuates are peculiar to the specific region.

People in local communities are becoming increasingly influential as government decentralises its decision making in key areas such as environment and development. Over the last ten years, increased public participation in environmental approval processes has become a feature of many jurisdictions internationally. There is still, however, a lack of clarity concerning the roles and power of participants in these decision making processes, against a backdrop of changing relationships between governments, companies and civil society. One key shift is the expectation that companies will form direct relationships with communities, where previously this relationship was mediated by government (Bridge, 1998, 225). These changes give rise to new forms of relationships and new understandings of the democratic process.

By examining the policies of Australia and other Western nations, this book provides a critical account of the discourses and practices of self-help in contemporary rural development. While it examines the problems of a self-help approach, it also moves beyond a straightforward exposition of the impediments to self-help that are often experienced by those facing disadvantage. Instead, taking a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, it puts forward a theoretical analysis of the self-help concept, assessing it as a means of governing rural development in an advanced liberal manner. Contents 1. Introduction : the problem of self-help 2. Power and government : a governmentality perspective 3. Contemporary discourses of self-help 4. A problematics of government : self-help as discursive practice 5. Technologies of capacity building : disciplining and regulating conduct 6. Relations of rule : self-help in Warmington and Woomeroo 7. Docile bodies? : translating self-help 8. Conclusion : implications for rural development.

Mining companies in Australia are increasingly required to interact with Indigenous groups as stakeholders following Native Title legislation in the early 1990s. A study of five mining companies in Australia reveals that they now undertake a range of programs involving Indigenous communities, to assist with access to land, and to enhance their public profile. However, most of these initiatives emanate from carefully quarantined sections of mining companies. Drawing upon cross-cultural and diversity research in particular, this paper contends that only initiatives that strive towards power sharing with Indigenous groups and strategies for broadening the organizational interface with Indigenous groups, will contribute to more ethical practices in mining and other companies.

It is generally understood that local people with local knowledge and a longterm interest in their area are uniquely equipped to create sustainable solutions to local needs. At the same time, higherlevel support and resourcing is often needed to make ‘grassroots' solutions work. Current governance models thus posit a facilitatory vertical relationship between government agencies and local actors in which the former devolves responsibility and resources to the latter - often characterised as the quest for greater ‘local participation.' Questions are frequently raised, however, about the amount of local autonomy that is actually achievable within these vertical governance frameworks. How can locals influence the larger contexts in which they work? This paper discusses and reflects upon several recent local experiences of inter-agency action in a rural Australian town. As local organisations come together to tackle common issues and themes at the local level, they create new governance spaces that lie outside of existing government and organisational bureaucracies. What is the potential for such arrangements to leverage local influence over existing higher-level structures, and to what extent is local action still constrained?

In response to widespread and increasing criticism, the mining industry has started to pay serious attention to its environmental and social impacts. This has recently manifested itself in the formulation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and strategies and a proliferation of CSR, environmental, sustainability and community reporting. Several brief case studies are used to illustrate the issues and conflicts that arise between mining company operations and the environment and community, and how these have led to the development of corporate strategies to deal with environment and community issues. The paper then examines mining company reports, revealing the language and constructs used by the mining industry to frame its responsibility to the environment and community and role in possible conflicts. Companies need to better understand the complex nature of the communities in which they operate in order that suitably tailored strategies are developed.