This study examines three basic questions. Why did so many familiar floral species with which agricultural people have more or less successfully contested places for some 10,000 years apparently become highly problematic in New Zealand? How did those in whom the developing contest aroused considerable anxiety try to solve the problems they saw emerging? And what were the outcomes of their chosen courses of action? This study is organised around three main themes, science, the law and agricultural practices. Within each theme I take into consideration the ways New Zealanders used particular aspects of these broad disciplines to try to identify, understand and solve the problems they perceived to have been caused by their weedy biota. I also consider the extent to which recourse to these means has helped or hindered the ends they sought. The methodology adopted for this study is a variation of an 'organisational approach', advocated by the German environmental historian Frank Uekoetter. It focuses on the ways responses to perceived environmental problems are organised within a society. From my use of Uekoetter�s model I conclude that, despite a number of setbacks during the mid to late 19th century, by 1939 New Zealanders had developed highly dynamic processes within their weed science, extending into the wider farming community, by which they could feel their way with some confidence into a future where they might better manage the contest with their weeds, if not actually eradicate them.

Despite the considerable existing body of academic literature, increasing employee motivation for environmental endeavors continues to be poorly understood. Recently Govindarajulu and Daily (2004) presented a comprehensive theoretical framework for environmental performance by looking at the crucial employer and employee factors affecting environmental performance. The authors identified management commitment, employee empowerment, feedback and review, and rewards as key human resource (HR) factors in increasing employee motivation for enhanced environmental performance. However, no published studies to date have empirically validated the framework. Therefore, one purpose of this dissertation is to address this void. Additionally, job satisfaction and organizational commitment were proposed as mediators in the relationship between the HR factors and environmental performance.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines the use of cross applications in civil protection order proceedings in New South Wales (NSW) (known as Apprehended Domestic Violence Orders, ADVOs). A cross application takes place when one person in an existing or former intimate relationship, usually the woman, applies for an ADVO and sometime afterwards the defendant in that originating application, usually the man, seeks an ADVO against the first person. The focus on cross applications provides a means to investigate the nature of men’s and women’s competing allegations about domestic violence, and to explore the way in which professionals working within the ADVO system approach, and seek to unravel, these competing claims. This thesis draws on the extensive debate within the sociological literature about ‘what is domestic violence’ and whether domestic violence is gendered in its perpetration. This debate has been paid scant attention in the legal literature. This thesis examines the assumptions underpinning the legal definitions and understandings of domestic violence in the civil protection order system, with reference to these theoretical debates about ‘what is domestic violence’ and ‘what counts as domestic violence’. To do so it draws on empirical work: semi-structured in-depth interviews with women involved in cross applications and key professionals working in the field, documentary analysis of court files, and observations of court proceedings. The key contribution of this thesis to this literature is threefold: (1) it explores the question of gender perpetration through the investigation of official data (a data source little explored in debates about gender and domestic violence), (2) it combines qualitative and quantitative methods in a single study, and (3) it extends questions about the gendered perpetration of domestic violence to the legal arena (in particular the prime legal arena that responds to domestic violence in NSW, the ADVO system, a system ostensibly designed to better respond to domestic violence). This thesis found that, like other studies in this field, the analysis of quantitative data alone reveals few differences between the types of violence men and women are alleged to use against their intimate partners. However when supplemented by qualitative data differences started to emerge particularly for men who lodged their application second in time. This qualitative analysis reveals not only that male second applicants appeared to make claims of a different nature, but that some men appeared to use the ADVO process to undermine women’s claims for legal protection. The differences that emerged between men and women’s alleged experiences of domestic violence resonated with feminist understandings of domestic violence that highlight its function of control and the repetitive, cumulative environment in which violence is perpetrated by men against women. While the study focussed on cross applications, its findings reveal a number of issues of concern for the ADVO system more broadly: its focus on incidents, the poor quality of complaint narratives, the brevity of court proceedings and the emphasis on settlement. These features undermine the progressive potential of the ADVO legislation to capture more than single incidents of largely physical violence. This was further compounded by the fact that while the professionals interviewed articulated broad definitions of domestic violence, this tended to be lost when responding to practice-orientated questions (here professionals returned to incident-based definitions). Perhaps more significantly the defining feature of domestic violence as a mechanism of control is not articulated in the NSW legislation, and hence (not unsurprisingly) was generally not articulated in the complaint narratives examined in this thesis. Yet control was the dominant way in which the women interviewed described their relationship with their former partner. The failure of complaint narratives to reflect the dimension of control, combined with the failure of key professionals to give sufficient emphasis to control in their practice under the ADVO legislation, an absence highlighted through the focus on cross applications, is an issue of concern for the ADVO system generally. This is important given the growing recognition in the research literature of the fundamental nature of control to the experience of domestic violence, particularly women’s experiences of domestic violence.

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This research focused on how child protection practitioners in the Department of Child Safety, Queensland used the Structured Decision Making (SDM) tools in their practice with children and families. SDM is a set of tools designed to assist practitioners with their decision making, promote consistency in practice and target the children most in need of a service. This research focused on how practitioners used four of the SDM tools in the intake and investigation stages of a case: the Screening Criteria (used to assess which cases should be accepted for investigation), the Response Priority Tool (used to assess the urgency with which an investigation should commence), the Safety Assessment Tool (used to assess whether a Safety Plan needs to be developed or a child needs to be removed from parental care) and the Family Risk Evaluation Tool (used to assign levels of risk to cases and assist in decision making about further Departmental intervention). More broadly, the research aimed to address a gap in the literature about how child protection practitioners use risk assessment tools in their practice with children and families. / Theoretically the research drew from ethnomethodology to explore the ‘unstated conditions’ (Garfinkel, 1967) in relation to how the tools were used by practitioners. Methods for data collection were drawn from ethnography and involved three months fieldwork at six Child Safety Service Centres in Queensland during 2007/08. The fieldwork involved observing the practice of practitioners in intake and investigation teams at the different offices, interviews with 46 practitioners and audits of 51 case files. / A significant finding of the research was that practitioners were not using the tools in the way that they were intended to be used by their designers (primarily to assist decision making). Rather the tools were considered as tools that met organisational requirements for accountability and consistency. The ‘unstated conditions’ that emerged from the research provide not only description about how the tools were used, but also explanation about why the tools were used in certain ways. These explanations provide insights which have implications more generally for the future development and implementation of tools to assist practitioners with assessment and decision making.