Issues arising from climate change and long-term natural climate variability have become the focus of much recent research. In this study, we specifically explore the impacts of long-term climate variability and climate changes upon flood frequencies. The analyses of the flood frequencies are carried out in a comparative manner in catchments located in semiarid-temperate and tropical landscapes in Australia, namely Perth, Newcastle and Darwin, using a process-based derived flood frequency approach. The derived flood frequency analyses are carried out using deterministic rainfall-runoff models that capture the intrinsic water balance variability in the study catchments, and driven by temporal rainfall event sequences that are generated by a stochastic rainfall model that incorporates temporal variabilities over a multiplicity of time scales, ranging from within-event, between-event to seasonal, multi-annual and multi-decadal time scales. Six climate scenarios are considered for Newcastle, that combine the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) and IPO (Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation) modes of variability, and six different climate scenarios are considered for Perth and Darwin that combine these different ENSO modes and step changes in climate (upwards or downwards) that occurred in 1970 in both regions, which were identified through statistical analysis. The results of the analyses showed that La Niña years cause higher annual maximum floods compared to El Niño and Neutral years in all three catchments. The impact of ENSO on annual maximum floods in the Newcastle catchment is enhanced when the IPO is negative and for Perth, the impact of ENSO weakens in the post-1970 period, while it strengthens in Darwin in the same period. In addition, the results of sensitivity and scenario analyses with the derived flood frequency model explored the change of dominant runoff generation processes contributing to floods in each of the study catchments. These analyses highlighted a switch from subsurface stormflow to saturation excess runoff with a change of return period, which was much more pronounced in Perth and Darwin, and not so in Newcastle. In Perth and Darwin this switch was caused by the interactions between the out-of-phase seasonal variabilities of rainfall and potential evaporation, whereas the seasonality was much weaker in Newcastle. On the other hand, the combination of higher rainfall intensities and shallower soil depths led to saturation excess runoff being the dominant mechanism in Newcastle across the full range of return periods. Consequently, within-storm rainfall intensity patterns were important in Newcastle in all major flood producing events (all return periods), where they were only important in Perth and Darwin for floods of high return periods, which occur during wet months in wet years, when saturation excess runoff was the dominant mechanism. Additionally, due to the possibility of a change of process from subsurface stormflow to saturation excess when conditions suited this switch, the estimates of flood frequency are highly uncertain especially at high return periods (in Darwin and Perth) and much less in Newcastle (when no process change was involved).

In August 2000, Justice O�Loughlin of the Federal Court of Australia handed down the decision in Cubillo v Commonwealth in which Lorna Cubillo and Peter Gunner took action against the Commonwealth Government, arguing that it was vicariously liable for their removal from their families and communities as children and subsequent detentions in the Northern Territory during the 1940s and 1950s. The case is the landmark decision in relation to legal action taken by members of the Stolen Generations. Using the decision in Cubillo as a key site of contestation, my thesis provides a critique of legal positivism as the dominant jurisprudential discourse operating within the Anglo-Australian legal system. I argue that the function of legal positivism as the principal paradigm and source of authority for the decision serves to ensure that the debate concerning reconciliation in Australia operates rhetorically to maintain whiteness at the centre of political and discursive power. Specifically concerned with the performative function of legal discourse, the thesis is an interrogation of the interface of law and language, of rhetoric, and the semiotics of legal discourse. The dominant theory of evidence law is a rationalist and empiricist epistemology in which oral testimony and documentary evidence are regarded as mediating the relationship between proof and truth. I argue that by attributing primacy to principles of rationality, objectivity and narrative coherence, and by privileging that which is visually represented, the decision serves an ideological purpose which diminishes the significance of race in the construction of knowledge. Legal positivism identifies the knowing subject and the object of knowledge as discrete entities. However, I argue that in Cubillo, Justice O�Loughlin inscribes himself into the text of the judgment and in doing so, reveals the way in which textual and corporeal specificities undermine the pretence of objective judgment and therefore the source of judicial authority.

In August 2000, Justice O�Loughlin of the Federal Court of Australia handed down the decision in Cubillo v Commonwealth in which Lorna Cubillo and Peter Gunner took action against the Commonwealth Government, arguing that it was vicariously liable for their removal from their families and communities as children and subsequent detentions in the Northern Territory during the 1940s and 1950s. The case is the landmark decision in relation to legal action taken by members of the Stolen Generations. Using the decision in Cubillo as a key site of contestation, my thesis provides a critique of legal positivism as the dominant jurisprudential discourse operating within the Anglo-Australian legal system. I argue that the function of legal positivism as the principal paradigm and source of authority for the decision serves to ensure that the debate concerning reconciliation in Australia operates rhetorically to maintain whiteness at the centre of political and discursive power. Specifically concerned with the performative function of legal discourse, the thesis is an interrogation of the interface of law and language, of rhetoric, and the semiotics of legal discourse. The dominant theory of evidence law is a rationalist and empiricist epistemology in which oral testimony and documentary evidence are regarded as mediating the relationship between proof and truth. I argue that by attributing primacy to principles of rationality, objectivity and narrative coherence, and by privileging that which is visually represented, the decision serves an ideological purpose which diminishes the significance of race in the construction of knowledge. Legal positivism identifies the knowing subject and the object of knowledge as discrete entities. However, I argue that in Cubillo, Justice O�Loughlin inscribes himself into the text of the judgment and in doing so, reveals the way in which textual and corporeal specificities undermine the pretence of objective judgment and therefore the source of judicial authority.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Deakin University, Victoria, 2005. / Submitted to the School of Education of the Faculty of Education, Deakin University. Degree conferred 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-225)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Political Science, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 289-319)

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wis. / bibl.; diags.; Typescript (processed). eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 442-447).