This study examined the perception held by members of the NSW Police Service as to the effectiveness of changes made to education, training and development, post the recommendations made by the Wood Royal Commission in 1997. The Commission report highlighted a number of important education, training and development issues. The literature on policing indicated that police jurisdictions have a need to both anticipate and respond to changes and events occurring in the communities they serve. This study thus examined both the general and police literature covering change, culture, management and leadership, professionalisation and the main education, training and development topics that were included in the Commission report. An historical scan of developments within the NSW Police Service was also made. The study basically adopted an empirical, quantitative research methodology, supplemented by qualitative statements made by participants during discussion sessions. Two separate questionnaires were developed: one for respondents in the broader NSW Police Service (one city and one rural region), and the other for sworn officers and academic staff at the NSW Police Academy. The Service questionnaire addressed participant perception of the effectiveness or otherwise, of changes made in relevant aspects of individual, team and organisational learning. Opportunity was also taken to analyse responses to the Service questionnaire, based on a range of selected demographic characteristics. The Academy questionnaire addressed the perceptions held about the effectiveness or otherwise, of changes made in general learning issues, curriculum development, course delivery and the evaluation of training. An analysis of combined responses to like questions in both the Service and Academy questionnaires was also made. Both Pre and Post Royal Commission perceptions, as recorded on a five point Likert scale were collected. From the resulting mean difference scores potential change in the respondent's perception of the effectiveness of the changes made were determined. The findings indicated that respondents perceived some improvement in the effectiveness of education, training and development Post the Wood Royal Commission. There were some important findings related to: (a) perceived differences between the formal Academy recruit training and probationer practicum or field training; (b) the need for 'Professionalisation' Vs 'Craft' training; (c) leadership role models of learning and the creation of a learning culture and climate; (d) the role of knowledge management in intelligence-led and evidence-based policing; (e) the use of information technology and distance learning strategies; (f) the development of reflective practice and the gaining of lessons learnt from experience; (g) the provision of leadership development; (h) support for continuing professional development, as a part of fostering self-managed lifelong learning and, (i) the consistent Quality Assurance review of both the course curriculum and evaluation of training effectiveness at the Academy. The findings have possible implications for practice and further research in the NSW Police.

Salinisation of the shallow groundwater system has occurred coincident with the development of irrigation in the Coleambally Irrigation Area. Salinisation in irrigation areas has previously been attributed to the evaporative concentration of the water table; however, there are other sources of salt such as the accumulation of rainfall by vegetation and the dry deposition of salt-laden dusts. A significant store of crystalline gypsum, together with high concentrations of Na, Mg and Confidence limit, was found within the previously unsaturated zone of the Upper Shepparton Formation. The salt store was identified both within and outside of the groundwater mound; therefore evaporative concentration of the water table cannot be the source of salt. The transition from regional groundwater quality, as applied as irrigation to the ground surface, to shallow groundwater quality is simply explained by solubilisation of this salt store in the presence of soil CO2. Dating of basal palaeochannel sands indicates that the identified salt store, a profile of only 20 m, was accumulated during the last glacial cycle. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the peak in eluate salinity, at approximately 2 m below ground surface, is between 15,000 and 25,000 years old, coincident with the Last Glacial Maximum. The Last Glacial Maximum was a period of significantly enhanced aridity on the Australian continent. It was also found that the peak in eluate salinity coincided with a bi-modal particle size distribution. The bi-modal signature implies that these sediments were subject to the aeolian accession of dusts. It was found that the contribution of salt from dry deposition of dusts exceeded the contribution from rainfall by at least 1.9 to 11 times during the last glacial cycle. The results of this study imply that salt-laden dusts have, and continue to play an important role in the salinity and sodicity of soils in the Coleambally Irrigation Area and beyond.

The study on different extension approaches was undertaken in the Bathurst area of New South Wales, Australia. One hundred farmers were surveyed in random pairs according to those who belong to the formal group, ???Landcare???, and those who did not. The survey included questions on personal, physical resources, ecological and economic factors, farm practices and management (including actual practice, use of extension methods and information sources) Focussing on behavioural change over time, attitudes, perceptions and intentions. The impact of extension approach on different levels of innovation was considered: simple (e.g. tree planting), medium (e.g. pasture development) and complex (soil erosion control) on behavioural change. It was hypothesised that the ???group??? extension approach should be more effective with complex innovations, but the main significant differences found were in level of tree planting (higher in government funded Landcare), money spent on erosion control (including tree planting) and attitudes to the severity of local erosion (all higher in Landcare members). There were no other differences in attitudes, intentions or change in farming practice except that non-Landcare farmers planted more pasture and applied more lime. The outcomes did not support the hypothesis, and it was not possible to distinguish the differences that did occur in performance from extension approach versus access to funds. Field days are an important extension method for the adoption of cropping by landholders. Among the different extension methods, those who conducted erosion control through pastures, preferred government officers and meetings. Those who adopted tree planting and were in Landcare preferred magazines as the extension method. This added further weight to the argument that the formal group extension approach may not be perceived by its members to have any influence on adoption at this level. Generally, mass media was more important in the early stages of adoption and personal influence more important in the evaluation stage. This also applied to simple versus complex innovations. Surprisingly all farmers placed a very high reliance on government officers for information and decision-making, particularly those in Landcare, compared to neighbours or family. Formal group extension still needs assessing but using models other than Landcare.

OBJECTIVES The overall aim of the project were to conduct a survey of the physical and mental health status of prisoners in New South Wales (NSW). A more specific aim, which is addressed in this PhD, was to analyse in detail a number of key health areas which have particular relevance to prisoner populations namely: tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, herpes simplex type 2 virus, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), and drug and alcohol use. METHODS A cross-sectional, random sample of prisoners, stratified by sex, age and Aboriginality was chosen from 27 correctional centres (24 male and 3 female) in NSW in 1996. Screening was conducted by nurses from within the correctional health system. A detailed face-to-face interview was used to collect self-reported information on a range of physical and mental health characteristics, and behavioural issues. The physical health component covered chronic illness, recent symptoms, health services utilisation, medications, and self assessed health status. Mental health issues which were covered included: suicide attempts, self-harm, prior mental illness and psychiatric medication. Standardised screening instruments were used to test for depression, hopelessness and suicidal intent. Behavioural factors sought were drug and alcohol use, gambling, and sexual abuse. Blood samples were taken to screen for a range of infectious diseases and health indicators. These included HIV, syphilis, herpes simplex type-2 virus, rubella, chlamydia, and hepatitis (B, C, and G). A Mantoux skin test was performed to screen for tuberculosis infection. Hearing was assessed using otoacoustic emissions. RESULTS A total of 789 inmates (657 males and 132 females), including 235 Aboriginal people were screened, representing approximately 11% of males and 40% of females in full-time incarceration. For the key areas examined in the chapters we found: Overall health status ???? Overall health status was poor compared with the NSW general population in regard to self-reported chronic illness, recent health complaints, and well-being. Hospitalisation was less frequent in male prisoners than general community males but higher in female prisoners for mental health problems compared with community females. Tuberculosis ???? No previously undetected cases of tuberculosis were found; however, Mantoux positivity was higher in Aboriginal and overseas born prisoners. Viral hepatitis ???? Markers for hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and hepatitis G were significantly more common in the NSW prisoner population than in the general community. Significant disparities were found between prisoners???? self-report of past exposure to hepatitis (B and C) and their serostatus. Thirty five percent of inmates who were hepatitis C antibody positive believed that they were negative, and for hepatitis B, 72% of positives reported they were negative. Multivariate analysis identified Aboriginality, long-term injecting, and injecting while in prison as risk factors for HBV. Risk factors for exposure to HCV were female sex, non-Aboriginality, history of childhood institutionalisation, and injecting-related behaviours. For HGV, female sex, and previous imprisonment were significant risk factors but injecting was not; being aged 25-39 years was associated with a decreased risk for HGV as compared to younger and older inmates. Herpes simplex virus type 2 ???? The prevalence of HSV-2 antibodies in this prisoner population was similar to that observed in NSW STD clinic attendees, and was higher in females than males. Exposure was related to: increasing age and Aboriginality for men, and higher reported number of lifetime sexual partners and the presence of hepatitis C antibodies for women. Few prisoners (1%) reported a previous diagnosis of genital herpes. Childhood sexual abuse ???? The prevalence of self-reported childhood sexual abuse was higher in females than males, and similar to that observed in clinical populations. There was an association between CSA and mental health outcomes, including a history of psychiatric treatment and suicide attempts. Male survivors of CSA were more likely to report self-harm, depression, and involvement in violent relationships. Both men and women with a history of CSA were more likely to report having a sexually transmissible disease (STD). Females exposed to CSA were more likely to report subsequent abusive adult relationships involving physical assault, sexual assault, and verbal abuse. Drug use ???? Overall, 64% of prisoners had used illicit drugs at some time in the past with cannabis (males 56%, females 63%) and heroin (males 29%, females 49%) being the most common. Forty four percent of prisoners had a history of injecting drug use, with injecting prevalence significantly higher in females than males (64% vs. 40%). Half of male and female injectors had done so while in prison. Harmful or hazardous use of alcohol was associated with imprisonment for violent crimes, whereas opiate and methadone use were associated with non-violent crimes. Sixty two percent of property offenders had an injecting history. Alcohol intoxication at the time of offending was associated with imprisonment for homicides and assaults. Males were more likely than females to seek treatment in prison for drug problems. IMPLICATIONS Prisoners in NSW have a number of special health needs which are evidenced in the high levels of infectious diseases (hepatitis B, hepatitis C, hepatitis G, and herpes simplex virus type 2) and exposure to factors (childhood sexual abuse and alcohol and drug use) with a clear relationship to adverse health outcomes. Prisons represent an opportunity for public health interventions to address some of the health problems identified in this study. Potentially valuable programmes include education to prevent the spread of blood borne communicable diseases and STDs, immunisation for vaccine preventable diseases such as hepatitis B, and treatment to alleviate the effects of drug use and childhood sexual abuse. In the case of prison drug use the prison environment itself presents a threat to health in that sterile injecting equipment is not available to prisoners despite evidence that injecting in prison is widespread. The challenge for prison health planners is twofold: to make maximum use of the window of opportunity to improve the health status of this group, and to provide a continuum of care between the community and prison.

The gay sauna played a central role in the battle for gay liberation in Sydney during the latter part of the twentieth century. This thesis examines the conjunction of social and political forces which contributed to the acceptance of the gay sauna by Sydney???s civic society. Two questions reveal this process: 1. How was an illegal and clandestine place for homosexuals, perceived as a threat to the moral standards of Sydney, transformed into an institutional entity, legally recognised as ???crucial???, and important within particular environs of this city? 2. How did the evolving public domain of gay saunas contribute to the development of gay culture in Sydney by fostering the opportunities for individual and collective expression of homosexual practices? This study is contextualised within international and Australian studies of the sexualisation of urban spaces???such as Michel Foucault???s, Manuel Castells??? and Lawrence Knopp???s???and the role of the built environment in the development of sexual identity and sexual practices???such as Gayle Rubin???s, John Ricco???s, and Joel Brodsky???s. The first part of the thesis is an empirical analysis of development applications for gay saunas in Sydney between 1967 and 2000 which reveals the play of forces within state and local government, legislative processes, the homosexual community and broader civic stakeholders through which the gay sauna achieved acceptance in Sydney???s civic society. Two principal research approaches???documentary research and twenty in-depth interviews???were used in this first part. The second part of the thesis is an ethnography that uses twenty-nine in-depth interviews to provided a unique insight into the evolving public domain of Sydney???s gay saunas and how they fostered the experiences of gay men, allowing gay men to develop individual and collective sexual identities and practices. This exploration of the interplay of built form, sexuality, civic governance, social identity and social action provide a sociological contribution which will also be of interest to gay studies, anthropology, architecture, geography and planning. Essential to an experience of the thesis is a concurrent reading of the Special Enclosures???a schematic chronology of Sydney gay saunas, plans of Sydney and architectural plans of its saunas.

Typescript (photocopy) / 2 v. (524 leaves) : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Botany, 1981

Australia is not only the driest continent, but its streams are among the most variable in the world. To date in Australia there has been no large-scale study of Australia’s low flow hydrologic characteristics, and consequently there is a fundamental need to develop methods that can be readily used to assess the hydrology during times of low flow. This thesis describes the development and derivation of a methodology for the estimation of low flow characteristics and yield in small ungauged rural catchments. The methodology has been applied to 184 catchments located in New South Wales and Victoria, in south-eastern Australia. A systems approach was adopted in which multivariate techniques were used to develop relationships between low flow parameters and climatic and land information data. The low flow and yield parameters considered include: descriptive statistics of monthly and annual flows, ratio of baseflow to total streamflow volumes, streamflow recession constants, flow duration curves for daily, monthly and annual durations, low flow frequency curves for durations from 1 to 284 days, duration of low flow spells below a given threshold, deficiency volume of low flow spells below a given threshold, estimate of storage to satisfy a specified draft at a given level of reliability, and parameters of a simple rainfall-runoff model for conversion of daily rainfall to monthly streamflow volumes.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis traces NSW Aboriginal political activity and demands from 1909 to 1939. In examining the background to the situations of Aboriginal communities in the early 1900's, two factors appear to have been of major importance. One was the degree of compatibility between Aboriginal and rural capitalist land use. The other was the labour requirements of rural industries. There are clear indications of internal colonial economic relations continuing until at least the late 1930's. As European land use intensified regionally, Aborigines attempted to secure their position by demanding tenure over land of significance to them. Initially, the creation of reserves was as much a result of this Aboriginal demand as of white settler desires to segregate Aborigines.

Doctor of Philosophy / During the 1990s, governments, managements and unions have been focused upon improving the cost efficiency of firms. This focus has been strongest for firms in the public sector where improved outcomes can be expected to significantly improve the Gross Domestic Products of whole economies. This case study looks at the cost efficiency of NSW rail passenger services over a 41 year period to 1991/92, long suspected (but hitherto only tentatively demonstrated) as a paradigm of cost inefficiency. The case study focuses upon the use of the total factor productivity (TFP) index, as a datum point for measuring change in productivity in four markets: suburban, internrban, country and interstate passenger services since 1951/52. From this datum, changes over the years in management, technology and other external factors can be identified and assessed. The thesis identifies management quality (the organising element in the firm) as the preeminent factor in determining productivity change, and the role that new technology plays in its impact on failures in management. We establish the linkages between management and innovation, with TFP, pricing efficiency and economic resource use efficiency, to present a rich paradigm for assessing the economic performance of any business firm. Borrowing from systems theory and other management practices such as total quality management, we disaggregated the case firm into its component systems, sub-systems and processes, for separate study in relation to impact on TFP. The database for 41 years of rail behaviour is the richest ever compiled for any railway in Australia, and with enhanced modelling, enables a systematic treatment of the performance through time of State Rail's passenger services.

"1994". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, School of English and Linguistics, 1995. / Bibliography: leaves 356-373 (pt. 1) / Introduction -- Research in joint book-reading and the discourse of literacy pedagogy -- The study : Part A: Research questions, preliminary analysis and participant selection -- Part B : Data gathering and preparation -- Language, context and semantic variation -- A semantic network for the description of linguistic interaction in joint book-reading -- Reading The three little pigs at home -- Results of the message semantic analysis of the interactive text -- Interpretations -- Joint book-reading in the discourse of literacy pedagogy -- Concluding comments -- Appendices. / The study contributes to the fields of educational linguistics and semantic variation by examining linguistic interaction during joint book-reading between mothers and four-year-old children, and between teachers and Kindergarten classes at the beginning of school. -- Joint book-reading was selected because of its centrality to the metaphor of a partnership between home and school in children's literacy development. The problem for the study was to investigate possible systematic semantic variation in linguistic interaction associated with social class locations of speakers, and relations between any such variants and features of interaction in joint book-reading in Kindergarten. -- A preliminary survey of 427 families in two sociogeographically contrasted sites established that joint book-reading was a common social practice, and gave sufficient indications of variation to justify an intensive socio-semantic study. Two sets of ten mother-child dyads, contrasted for class locations using Bernstein's (1990) theory of class relations, were constructed and recordings of joint book-reading sessions made by mothers. Recordings of interaction in two sets of ten Kindergarten classes in the same socio-geographical areas were made by teachers. -- Vygotsky's theory of semiotic mediation was the general resource used for interpreting children's learning, but it was necessary to resolve problems in the theory in the modelling of contexts for learning, and of mediational means. For this purpose the systemic functional linguistic concept of context of situation, as proposed by Halliday (1978) and expanded by Hasan (in press (a)), was deployed. -- Transcripts of recordings were analysed through a semantic network developed for the study, based on a network proposed by Hasan (1983). -- Semantic variation associated with class locations of families was found across all four metafunctions described within systemic theory, and one variant found to be associated with Kindergarten classroom interaction. The variable semantic features were interpreted as the realization of different principles regulating the individuation of experience, using Bernstein's theories of coding orientation and pedagogic discourse. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 2 parts (373, 539 p.) ill