The introduction of New Public Management reforms to the Australian Public Service in the 1980s and 1990s marked a substantial shift away from the traditional process-based public sector model to a market-driven one. These reforms accelerated with the election of the Howard government in 1996, which moved the public sector to become more like the private sector, but failed to address directly the changes needed in accountability and control of the APS. This study explores the evolution of corporate governance as a means of filling that gap in the APS. The ultimate responsibility for ensuring corporate governance is appropriately applied in departments of state rests jointly with the minister and the secretary, in their roles in administering and managing the organisation, and in particular fostering and modelling appropriate organisation citizenship behaviour. Corporate governance exists In the APS, as in the private sector, as a dichotomy offormal and informal elements, and the informal elements play a paramount role in achieving results for government that are lawful, fair and reasonable; adherence to formal corporate governance processes alone is insufficient to protect an organisation from failure. The example of DIMA was used to demonstrate that even an organisation with a proud international record in assisting the most vulnerable in the world through its refugee and humanitarian programs can fail if its corporate governance mechanisms are not universally and correctly applied throughout the organisation, resulting in outcomes described as "catastrophic" for the individuals concerned.

This Thesis is a study of the communication process through which prospective migrants became informed about life in Australia. It is addressed particularly to migration from Italy, where data was obtained during the period 1979 to 1981. The Study focusses upon the communication of information from official sources, namely the government, as represented by the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. Given the basic premise that appropriate information is an important aid to settlement, the proposal is made that problems can arise in the communication of that information. Various solutions to problems of settlement have been sought and applied since the inception of Australia's post-war immigration program. While the period since 1977 has witnessed an increasing attention to the provision of post-arrival services for migrants, it is suggested that there has been little change in the provision of information overseas which might assist prospective migrants in the critical pre-migration period. The Thesis sets out an historical overview of the problem: a study of the principal participants in the present day context, a report of the research undertaken in Italy to examine both the communication process and the information needs of prospective migrants, and an analysis of the data based upon the application of communication theory. The Study revealed that certain topics, for which prospective migrants had expressed an information need, were not covered in pre-migration counselling sessions. Information on other topics reflected the orientation of the government, as communication source, and the migration officer as transmitter, and were not within the frame of reference of the applicants as receivers of the communication. Lack of mutuality regarding the purposes of information transfer, and the differing attitudes and perceptions of the participants in the communication process, created problems. The Study found that prospective migrants presented at different stages of readiness to receive information, and that assumptions were made regarding the information needs of Italian applicants which failed to take into account the fact that conditions have changed within Italy. Group counselling was initially successful, from a communication point of view, as a two-way process, but its unexpected outcome was decreased efficiency which conflicted with institutional objectives. If the communication of information is accepted as an important aid to settlement, the application of educational principles (which should improve both the communication process and the information conveyed) would lead to improved chances for settlement, with benefit to prospective migrants, the government, and the receiving society.

In 1945 the Australian Government created the Department of Immigration. Its purpose was the promotion of a solution to Australia’s limited natural population growth in the face of defence fears and of an Australian society which, using the voices of its politicians, was increasingly willing to depict itself as an isolated and threatened British outpost. The fears themselves revolved as much around the defence of a singularly British heritage in terms of political, social and economic institutions, as a purely geographical or military threat. While the “threat” was more often perceived as assuming an Asian or non-European identity, Australians also had a history of feeling socially insecure when confronted by “non-British groups” within their own shores; the extent of that insecurity varying according to more specific ethnic categorisations within the general “non-British” label (i.e. northern c.f. southern Europeans, western c.f. eastern Europeans). The significance of the post-war period is that within two years of the formation of an Immigration bureaucracy by a party which had traditionally been hostile to immigration, an immigration programme had also begun to be formulated which would eventually allow, encourage, and financially assist, the introduction of groups which, traditionally, were depicted as posing the very threat to Australian homogeneity which immigration had been posited as assuaging.