This thesis investigated aspects of plant recruitment across an altitudinal gradient of mountain tops in the Victorian Alps, Australia, and provides a baseline for the patterns and processes of alpine plant recruitment in the absence of large-scale disturbance. The patterns in alpine vegetation across the study sites were described in relation to abiotic environmental factors. Temperatures were lower and precipitation was higher at the high altitude sites. The vegetation did not differ significantly between the sites, although sites at low altitudes were shrubbier than those at high altitudes. Analysis of the soil seed bank revealed high mean densities of germinable seed (80 to 1400 seeds m-2) across the gradient of sites. The similarity between the seed bank samples and the standing vegetation was low (qualitative similarity: 0.08 to 0.2; quantitative similarity: 0.03 to 0.19). In laboratory germination experiments, I found rapid and substantial germination. Final percent germination was above 90% for most species. One species, Aciphylla glacialis, showed evidence of dormancy mechanisms. In subsequent experiments, I found that innate primary seed dormancy in this species could be broken with cold-wet stratification. There were no significant patterns in natural seedling recruitment across the altitudinal gradient. Similarities between the seedling flora and the standing vegetation were low (qualitative similarity: 0.18 to 0.45: quantitative similarity 0.04 to 0.09). Mean seedling density was best predicted by a combination of soil wilting point, altitude and plant litter. In some cases, seedling density was greater than 80 seedlings m-2. The relative importance of either negative (competitive) or positive (facilitative) interactions between seedlings with adjacent vegetation were investigated in relation to seed germination, seedling growth and seedling survival. Facilitative interactions were common at the higher altitude sites. At lower altitudes, facilitative and competitive interactions were common. Without close neighbours at high altitudes, seedlings were unlikely to survive into their second year. An understanding of plant recruitment can provide a useful basis for predicting species responses to large-scale disturbance and climate change.

While recognising the complexity of inclusive educational policy for teachers, this thesis argues that a constructive approach for future action may be accomplished by drawing on teachers’ own accounts of significant characteristics contributing to effective inclusion. Accordingly, it is proposed that an understanding of the realities constructed by teachers involved in inclusive practice provides imperatives for future action. In particular, this study explores the finer structures of changed pedagogy, professional development of teachers and the vision of quality education for all that underpin the fabric of inclusive schooling. Furthermore, the study suggests that the focus on teachers’ own accounts or voice provides a major resource with which to theorise and analyse the actuality of inclusive practice and to help overcome barriers to success. In examining the work realities of teachers involved in inclusive education this thesis reports on the results of an empirically grounded and theoretically informed enquiry of the major educational reform of including students with disabilities into regular classroom settings. The case study site for this investigation included two schools, within the State of Victoria, Australia. Primary evidence generated through this study suggests that teachers’ work is a vital contributing factor to successful inclusion, despite the overpowering emphasis on additional funding within the political construction of policy implementation. However, teachers’ existing professional expertise and their professional development needs have not been a key focus of policies directed at sustaining the changed political culture required by inclusion. Drawing on relevant research literature and research evidence, this study argues against the political reductionism of both liberal pluralism and systems theory approaches that have dominated State policy action in inclusive education. In contrast the evidence presented in this thesis suggests the need to reconsider and revalue the knowledge and expertise generated by the education policy actors in this field, namely classroom teachers and school administrators involved in institutional planning and practice. It is these knowledgeable education workers who really influence policy implementation. The significance of this research is that the ‘insiders’ are presented as potentially important drivers shaping the mechanisms for educational reform. For this reason the framework of this study centres on the communicative infrastructures within existing institutions (schools) and the policy actors (teachers) who come together to formulate issues and professional directions. Therefore, the review of the research literature sets out to identify key theories and evidence pertaining to the teachers’ knowledge and learning communities. Literature on the importance of individual and collective agency is reviewed and situated in terms of the debates over the communicative action and life worlds of teachers at the sites of inclusive education reform. In turn, this provides a pathway for establishing the secondary evidence concerning what is currently known about the life worlds of teachers where change engages with struggles over ideological totality, elitist political agendas and the actualities of educational reform. Transcending critical and interpretive paradigms of educational research, capturing teachers���� voice on the complexities of inclusive education, the study moves beyond critical analysis of the way policies construct, or fail to construct, institutions and individuals within them. Inclusion is viewed through the life worlds of teachers involved in integration and inclusive programs, and situated within the context of their communicative actions. Data was generated through unstructured interviews where there was an emphasis on informal contexts and open communication that was free from system distortion. Communicative interaction was then expanded through a second semi-structured interview for the purpose of validation of the data and for testing the researcher’s construction of received messages. In addition feedback regarding emergent themes and representative quotes was also requested from participants. In this study the situated meaning of teachers’ work as an expression of policy-in practice was explored in relation to the textual framing created by State policy, institutions (schools) and teachers’ own skills and knowledge. The major perceptual elements for this research focus on the interrelation between these policy contexts, the paradigm that frames teacher’s professional knowledge and the pathways and processes for teaching and learning to occur. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The thesis studies history-making in Melbourne’s central civic sphere, from its emergence in the 1880s to its decline in the 1930s. It identifies public history’s major themes and forms, and the relationships between them, based on four main cases of history-making: the articulation of the past and history in Melbourne’s 1888 Centennial International Exhibition; the historical backgrounds, development, unveilings and partial after-lives of Sir Redmond Barry’s statue, unveiled in Swanston Street in 1887, and the Eight Hours’ Day monument, unveiled in Carpentaria Place in 1903; and history-making around Victoria’s 1934-1935 Centenary Celebrations, with special emphasis on the Shrine of Remembrance and a detailed study of Cooks’ Cottage.

Melbourne was the obvious choice as a prototype of a nineteenth century colonial city in the following study in urban history. It succeeded early to a pre-eminent position within Victoria, indeed of the entire Australian continent and its position of supremacy went unchallenged until the twentieth century. It was never seriously threatened by the claims of rival cities such as Ballarat, Sandhurst or Geelong. In this respect, Melbourne was a classic primate city with a whole-state hinterland and was justly described as "the commercial metropolis of the South". Its favourable geographic location, centrally placed between eastern and western halves of the colony, together with its position at the northern end of Port Phillip Bay provided the logical point of convergance for a railway network spanning the reaches of the interior. This gave a nodal quality to the city which made it the sole effective input-output point for all commerce with the mainland interior.(For complete abstract open document)

In January 2000 the Victorian government established a 'Ministerial Review of Postcompulsory Education Pathways in Victoria'. This explores the work of this Ministerial Review using an organisational discourse approach to the policy-making process. The study examines how the initial problem was represented that required policy intervention. I ask what the Brack's Victorian State Government defined, understood and represented the 'problem' to be regarding young people's participation in post-compulsory education. The research then focuses on establishing how the Ministerial Review set out to validate the initial representation of the problem. The research then concentrates on how the Ministerial Review came to develop its policy recommendations to address the policy problems it had identified. This involves establishing what solutions to the 'problem' were proposed by the Ministerial Review panel and why they were recommended as policies. Finally this study evaluates the value of the Ministerial Review process.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis explores the sense of place formed during childhood, as remembered by adult Australians who reconstruct their youth through various forms of life writing. While Australian writers do utilize traditional tropes of Western autobiography, such as the mythology of Eden and the Wordsworthian image of the child communing with Nature, these themes are frequently transformed to meet a uniquely Australian context. Isolation and distance from Europe, and the apparent indifference of our landscape towards white settlement, have received much critical attention in Australian studies generally and, indeed, broadly influence the formation of children’s sense of place across the continent. However, writers are also concerned with the role of place on a more local level. Through a comparison of writing from Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria, this thesis explores regional landscape preoccupations that create an awareness of local identity, variously contributing to or frustrating the child’s sense of belonging. Western Australian writing is dominated by images of isolation, the fragility of white settlement in a dry land lacking fresh water, and a pervasive beach culture. A strong sense of the littoral pervades writing from this region. Queensland’s frontier mythology is of a different flavour: warm and tropical, nature here is exuberant, constantly threatening to overwhelm culture, already perceived as transient due to the flimsy aspect of the “Queenslander” house. Writing from Victoria, to some extent, tends to more closely follow English models, juxtaposing country and city environments, although there is a distinctly local flavour to many representations of urban Melbourne and its flat, grid-like organization. As Australian society becomes more concentrated on the coastal fringe, the beach is an increasingly significant environment. Though more prominent in writing from some regions than others, coastal imagery broadly reflects the modern Australian’s sense of inhabiting a liminal zone with negotiable boundaries.

Doctor of Philosphy(PhD) / This thesis explores the sense of place formed during childhood, as remembered by adult Australians who reconstruct their youth through various forms of life writing. While Australian writers do utilize traditional tropes of Western autobiography, such as the mythology of Eden and the Wordsworthian image of the child communing with Nature, these themes are frequently transformed to meet a uniquely Australian context. Isolation and distance from Europe, and the apparent indifference of our landscape towards white settlement, have received much critical attention in Australian studies generally and, indeed, broadly influence the formation of children’s sense of place across the continent. However, writers are also concerned with the role of place on a more local level. Through a comparison of writing from Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria, this thesis explores regional landscape preoccupations that create an awareness of local identity, variously contributing to or frustrating the child’s sense of belonging. Western Australian writing is dominated by images of isolation, the fragility of white settlement in a dry land lacking fresh water, and a pervasive beach culture. A strong sense of the littoral pervades writing from this region. Queensland’s frontier mythology is of a different flavour: warm and tropical, nature here is exuberant, constantly threatening to overwhelm culture, already perceived as transient due to the flimsy aspect of the “Queenslander” house. Writing from Victoria, to some extent, tends to more closely follow English models, juxtaposing country and city environments, although there is a distinctly local flavour to many representations of urban Melbourne and its flat, grid-like organization. As Australian society becomes more concentrated on the coastal fringe, the beach is an increasingly significant environment. Though more prominent in writing from some regions than others, coastal imagery broadly reflects the modern Australian’s sense of inhabiting a liminal zone with negotiable boundaries.

If the observations of unregulated and recently deregulated essential services were to hold for electricity reform, we could expect to see market segmentation of household customers. This is a corporate strategy aimed at the acquisition of attractive customers and the avoidance of unattractive customers. It is a function of market relations and commodification. Some markets already segment and assign unattractive customers to 'residual' markets, 'sub-prime' markets or 'markets of last resort'. Residual markets tend to involve market abuse by suppliers because these customers lack market power. It is possible therefore to suggest that segmented markets are characterised by simultaneous competition and monopoly. The implications for the supply of essential services, such as electricity, are profound. This research sought to identify whether there is evidence of emerging segmentation of the domestic electricity market in Victoria. In practice, few essential services areas are completely deregulated. The history of segmentation in the US insurance and lending industries provides valuable insights into markets, market failure and social protections. Taking this history and the more recent experiences of reforms in the US, the UK and Australia, it has been possible to identify three models of social protection: 'universal service', a 'civil rights' model, and a 'market' model. The Victorian reforms reflect some elements of each of these. The social protections included in the reform package both encourage and present barriers to market segmentation. At the time of the research, some elements of the safety net arrangements and customer inertia (born out of negative attitudes to competition) have acted to inhibit segmentation. Customer inertia in its own right poses questions for the efficacy of competition policy. The key understanding that is gained from this research is that both civil rights and socioeconomic entitlements (social rights) are required to prevent markets in essential services acting upon and exacerbating inequality. This suggests that universal service, as a model of social protection, is most likely to ameliorate the impacts of inequality.

A social and cultural study of the development of the Port Fairy Folk Festival within the context of the current revival of folk music in Australia. The folk music movement is a social and cultural phenomenon, as well as a musical event.

The lack of attention to quality control by house builders in the Australian State of Victoria has been a contentious issue for more than two decades. Ina an attempt to improve the quality of housing, various mechanisms such as voluntary and compulsory registration schemes have been adopted and discarded by industry-based organisations and government. While builders are encouraged to improve construction quality, little is known and published about the quality of housing produced by owner builders specifically during the seven year warranty period after construction is completed. With this in mind, this thesis presents research findings that compare the latent defects in houses built by owner builders with those of registered builders. Using inspection reports provided by Archicentre <a subsidiary of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects> a sample of 1772 houses, of which 1002 were owner builders <HO> and 770 were registered builders <HR> was used to determine the severity, the incidence, and location of defects within each house type. Houses less than a year old were found to contain a siginificant proportion of defects for both types of builder. In addition, it was found that HO builders had a mean of 2.74 defects per house and HR builders mean of 2.30 defects per house for the seven-year warranty period. To determine whether there was a significant difference between the quality of housing produced by HO and HR the statistical technique of Chi-squared analysis was undertaken at a 5% level of significance. The analysis revealed that there was a significant difference between the quality of housing procured by owner <HO> and registered <HR> builders. In particular, it was found that the important category of workmanship for HO builders had significantly less defects that HR builders, which suggests that HR builders need to improve their managerial practices and the quality of on-site supervision. In essence, this thesis has provided a series of benchmark metrics for latent defects against which current and future legislative programs con be compared for new housing in the State of Victoria. It is recommended that future research focus on the methods for improving the role of the on-site supervisor as they are considered to be the important link in the quality chain.