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‘New pacific diplomacy’ ten years on
No full textThe transformation in Pacific regional diplomatic culture associated with the rhetorical and institutional expressions of the principle of regional self-determination in the period 2009–2014 has held over the past decade despite significant challenges from a rapidly changing geopolitical context and threats to regional unity posed by a move by Micronesian states to leave the Pacific Islands Forum. Significantly, what we then called the ‘new pacific diplomacy’ has become institutionalised in the practices and policies of the main regional organisation, the Pacific Islands Forum, and in particular in its 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. This has enabled a continuation of Pacific diplomatic agency in relation to key issues such as climate change, and law of the sea and fisheries, and even regional security. Although the changing geopolitics has not yet succeeded in submerging Pacific diplomatic agency the hardest test is ahead of the Pacific states as they try to defend their interests in a context where the important strategic decisions affecting the future peace of the Pacific Islands region are increasingly made in metropolitan capitals and international groupings outside the reach of the Pacific Islands Forum.Peer-reviewe
The Elite Paradigm Driving Australian Aid Policy: Learning to Live With the ‘Cautious Consensus’
No full textThis article explores the underlying reasons for why the Albanese Labor Governmentʼs stated policy ambition to ‘rebuild Australiaʼs international development program’ has not yet been accomplished and is unlikely to be realised, at least in the near-to-medium term. Based on interviews conducted with 21 Australian Members of Parliament, we find that the ‘cautious consensus’—a collection of ideas guiding elite perspectives on Australian aid policy that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic—has rapidly consolidated, to the point where it can now be considered a paradigm. We identify three main factors that have led to this consolidation: the declining salience of aid; growing elite scepticism about the usefulness of aid; and a combination of political challenges that are difficult for Labor to navigate, as it seeks to become a long-term Government. Given the prospects of shifting the unambitious status quo are unlikely in the in the near-to-medium term, we examine what ‘living with the cautious consensus’ means for the Australian development sector.The research for this paper was funded, in part, by Save the Children Australia and stems from a review of the of Australian Regional Leadership Initiative (ARLI), a program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Interviews were undertaken under the auspices of University of Melbourne ethics approval, Project ID: 27887. We would like to thank Michael Varnay for his exceptional research assistance and Marion Stanton and Carolyn Cummins from Save the Children Australia, especially for their extremely helpful logistical support in arranging interviews. Richard Moore provided valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Finally, we dedicate this article to the memory of Sarah Carter, the longtime Manager of ARLI and driving force behind its success. Open access publishing facilitated by Australian National University, as part of the Wiley - Australian National University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.Peer-reviewe
New Public Management, the Indigenous service market, and their effects
No full textThis research was fully supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP180103453). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government or the Australian Research Council.Peer-reviewe
Media ownership and coverage patterns of established, disruptive, and unconventional climate advocacy groups
No full textGroups advocating on climate and environmental issues often seek to obtain media coverage to increase public awareness of their cause, yet comparatively little is understood about the factors influencing the volume and content of that coverage. This study investigates the quantity and characteristics of media coverage of climate advocacy groups through a mixed-method analysis of 17,380 Australian media articles published between 2017–2022. Four types of advocacy groups were the focus: ‘Established’ groups (large professionalised environmental groups); ‘Disruptive’ groups (the greatest use of civil resistance tactics); and two types of what we call ‘Unconventional advocates’ – those who advocate for action on climate change but from a social identity position that is either typically not associated with climate action (‘Role-based unconventional advocates’, such as parents or doctors) or has a history of conflict with climate or other environmental causes and environmentalists (‘Conflict-spanning unconventional advocates’, such as farmers and political conservatives). Findings indicate that linguistic cues associated with conflict, achievement, and emotional sentiment differed significantly according to the advocacy group type and media ownership. While Established groups gained the greatest volume of coverage, Disruptive groups attracted the highest conflict language and lowest achievement language, particularly in outlets published by News Corp (the Murdoch owned media company). Meanwhile, conflict-spanning unconventional advocates received coverage using language with the lowest levels of conflict and highest levels of achievement. Our findings highlight the potential for new types of climate advocates to gain comparative sympathetic media coverage and potentially expand the social basis of support for climate action.Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions This work was supported by the Australian Government under the Australian Research Council Discovery Project funding scheme (Grant: DP220103155).Peer-reviewe
Contributions of biological and physical dynamics to deglacial CO<sub>2</sub> release from the polar Southern Ocean
No full textAs a critical region regulating air-sea gas exchanges, the polar Southern Ocean has important implications for deglacial atmospheric CO2 rises. However, proxy data evidence is sparse to evaluate the respective roles of Southern Ocean biological and physical dynamics in affecting past air-sea CO2 exchanges due to longstanding challenges in obtaining carbonate materials to reconstruct surface conditions in this region. Here, we circumvent these challenges by constraining polar Southern Ocean surface-water conditions based on preformed deep-water properties derived from paired carbonate ion-phosphate-oxygenation reconstructions during the last deglaciation. We show that polar Southern Ocean carbon losses coincided with increased deep-ocean preformed nutrient concentrations, highlighting reduced biological carbon utilization as a key process for deglacial CO2 outgassing. By comparing total carbon losses with those attributable to biological processes, we further show that enhanced physically-driven air-sea gas exchanges in the polar Southern Ocean strongly drove CO2 outgassing towards the end of the last deglaciation.J.Y. acknowledges support from NSF China 42330403. Y.D. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative, Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (Project Number SR200100008). We thank Brad Opdyke for assistance with sediment sampling.Peer-reviewe
Quantum correlations and an intertwining operator on two dimensional hyperbolic space.
No full textIn this thesis, we study an intertwining operator on two dimensional hyperbolic space introduced by Anantharaman and Zelditch in \cite{ana.zel.2}. This operator intertwines two natural flows: one is the geodesic flow on the cotangent bundle of hyperbolic space, which can be thought of as the evolution of a classical observable under classical dynamics. The other flow is the flow on the space of quantum observables (operators) given by the conjugation of a quantum observable with the free Schr\"{o}dinger propagator on hyperbolic space. This can be thought of as the evolution of a quantum observable under quantum dynamics.
In the first part of the thesis, we modify the construction of the intertwining operator from \cite{ana.zel.2}. The modified intertwining operator is an isometry on the space of square integrable symbols in a particularly natural way without destroying the intertwining property. This allows us to exactly relate two dynamical quantities on the noncompact hyperbolic space, the quantum correlation and the classical correlation, with no error term. Then for the purposes of trying to extend this exact relation to a compact quotient, we explore the structure of the intertwining operator as a Fourier Integral Operator and we describe some features of the canonical relation associated to the intertwining operator.
We will also study the behaviour of a matrix element \langle \Op(a)\phi_j, \Op(b)\phi_k\rangle when we pull the symbol of \Op(a) back via geodesic flow, i.e. we study the quantity \langle \Op(g_t^*a)\phi_j, \Op(b)\phi_k\rangle. The trace over the diagonal matrix elements of \langle \Op(g_t^*a)\phi_j, \Op(b)\phi_k\rangle can be considered the ``principal part'' of the time quantum correlation between operators \Op(a) and \Op(b). Here are a basis of Laplace eigenfunctions on a compact hyperbolic surface and \Op(a) is given by the Zelditch quantisation. We show these matrix elements decay exponentially as under certain assumptions on the symbols. Consequently, the trace also decays in a similar manner under similar assumptions on the symbols. To prove this, we use ideas developed recently on the microlocal analysis of hyperbolic dynamical systems.
Lastly, we provide a chapter exploring similar ideas in the contrasting geometric context of the Euclidean torus. The significance here is that we have the well known Weyl quantisation in this context which satisfies the desirable ``exact Egorov" property we hope to develop an analogy of in the hyperbolic case. We apply our analysis in the Euclidean case towards understanding toral quantum ergodicity at small length scales
Conceptual Engineering in Context
No full textI argue that conceptual engineering, on the understanding I favour, is the identification and naming of the properties we need for this or that worthwhile purpose, independently of whether they are properties named in extant theories. So understood, it is obvious that conceptual engineering should be supported, and I give some non-controversial examples. I discuss the connection between our description of conceptual engineering in terms of properties and words, and the more usual one in terms of concepts. The implications of conceptual engineering for a number of live issues in analytical philosophy—knowledge, Swampman, narrow content, proper names—are discussed. I conclude by noting that our defence of conceptual engineering does not imply that traditional conceptual analysis has no worthwhile role to play but does imply that its role needs a certain amount of rethinking. I illustrate this with the example of personal identity.Peer-reviewe
Scratching the surface of the Gulf Coastal Bioregion: <i>Lerista munuwajarlu</i> sp. nov. (Scincidae; Sphenomorphini), a new fossorial skink from the Northern Territory, Australia
No full textWe describe a new skink species, Lerista munuwajarlu sp. nov., from the Gulf Coastal Bioregion of the north-eastern Northern Territory, Australia, based on morphological and mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Lerista munuwajarlu sp. nov. is currently known from only two individuals collected 10 years and ca. 120 metres apart on Pungalina-Seven Emu Sanctuary. The new species lacks forelimbs, has hindlimbs with two toes, and features a broad, dark upper-lateral stripe. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that L. munuwajarlu sp. nov. is sister to a group containing L. carpentariae, L. stylis, L. karlschmidti, and the L. wilkinsi clade—although this relationship is recovered with low statistical support. The new species is diagnostically different to these and all other Lerista species with respect to several aspects of limb reduction, scalation, and colour-pattern. We also collected two specimens of L. carpentariae from Limmen National Park, which are the first genetically confirmed records of this species on mainland Australia.We thank Daphne and Peggy Mawson, Elders of the Garrwa People, for providing a name for the new species. We thank John Kanowski, Eridani Mulder, and Amanda and Matt Warr of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy for facilitating our research on Pungalina-Seven Emu Sanctuary in 2012 and 2022, and the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland\u2014Hayley Freemantle, in particular\u2014for organising the initial 2012 field work at Pungalina-Seven Emu. We thank Genevieve Perkins, Justin Perry, Scott Macor, Naomi Laven, and Jordan Mulder for field assistance, Naomi Laven for finding the holotype, Kate O\u2019Hara for assistance with laboratory work, Gavin Daley, Danielle Edwards, Suzanne Horner, and Alana de Laive for access to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Jodi Rowley and Dane Trembath for access to the Australian Museum, Danielle Edwards for assisting with measurements, Tony Griffith at the Flora & Fauna unit at Northern Territory Government for providing valuable field reports on biodiversity surveys in Limmen NP in the 1990s, and Gina Zimny for her advice, knowledge and support with regards to Pungalina-Seven Emu. Sanger sequencing was done by the Genome Discovery Unit, ACRF Biomolecular Resource Facility, John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University. Laboratory work was funded by a Mike Bull Award for Early Career Nature Scientists (to SMZ). This work was done while SMZ was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) National Taxonomy Research Grant Program (NTRGP).Peer-reviewe
Designing with Decolonial Intent: Towards a Decolonial Archive in Resistance to Epistemicide
No full textThis paper follows a trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural arts research endeavour which seeks to utilise the restitution of neglected archival materials to engage the social and cultural trajectory of the villages and nation from which that material and intangible heritage was taken, stolen, destroyed, lost, or diminished. The paper engages with tensions in colonial and decolonial design of digital heritage between the potential for counter-histories and imaginaries on the one-hand and the colonial impulse of computing and its logics on the other. Through the research through design activities formed with a decolonial praxiology, we explore how the systems, practices and technologies of archival practices in this project develop an ethics of knowledge-making that neither satisfies or diminishes decolonial intent. We tentatively argue for approaches to decolonial design that are accounted for in local and pragmatic modes of knowledge making that are delinked from globalised and abstracted systems that otherwise repress them.Peer-reviewe
Populism and international law: the Morrison years in Australia
No full textThere exists a growing literature on a claimed populist anti-elitist backlash, within liberal democracies, against international law and institutions. Yet this literature tends to paint generalised trends and lack context-specific studies on where, and with what effects on multilateral engagement, political leaders have used scapegoating or de-legitimisation of supra-national institutions for national-level political advantage. This article is one contribution to addressing this empirical deficit. It considers Prime Minister Morrison’s 2019 address attacking the ‘negative globalism’ of international institutions staffed by an ‘unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy’. That address announced a review into Australian multilateralism. The similarity between Morrison’s phraseology and that of President Donald Trump (promoting US isolationism) generated alarm among those who value Australia’s commitment to (and reliance upon) the ‘rules-based international order’. The article assesses Morrison’s rhetoric and action in light of the ‘populism + international law’ literature, the relevance of which continues given the tone of the second Trump presidency. Reinforcing the call for greater empiricism, the article argues that the Morrison example does not necessarily support the literature’s assumption of ‘populism = multilateral disengagement’. The article also explores the research agenda in exploring tensions between bureaucrats’ commitment to multilateralism and their imperative to be responsive to elected leaders.This work was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Project award DP220101584 (\u2018Reconceiving Engagement with International Law and Institutions in an Era of Populism\u2019).Peer-reviewe