Archive for the 'School of Law' Category

The publication of two articles by UNE School of Law Property Law lecturer,
John Page, and Lincoln University Public Policy lecturer Dr Ann Brower, is
causing a high profile re-appraisal of the nature of Crown pastoral tenure in
New Zealand. Covering nearly 10% of New Zealand’ land mass, Crown pastoral
and iconic landscapes, the high country known world-wide as the setting for the
Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Challenging the traditional orthodoxy surrounding Crown pastoral tenure, the
articles have questioned the legal bases for run-holder’s assertions of exclusivity of possession.
Tapping into Dr. Brower’s research that examined the policy implications of tenure review
(the conversion of former Crown leasehold into freehold title and conservation land), Page
and Brower’s legal analysis has initiated an invited seminar at the University of Canterbury
Law Faculty, a Parliamentary Select Committee submission, legal opinion from New Zealand’s
Crown Counsel in response to the research, and national press attention.

In the latest development Fish and Game, a Crown entity mandated with protecting the interests
of recreational fishers and hunters, has commenced High Court litigation. Fish and Game are
seeking a declaratory judgment that Crown run-holder’s rights do not preclude public recreational access.
A hearing is expected by March 2009.
This collaborative research project was facilitated by Professor Paul Martin of UNE’s Centre for
Agriculture and Law. Additional research outputs from the project are anticipated in the near future.

Michael Eburn is a Senior Lecturer in the School. His areas of research interest are
(1) the law relating to the emergency services; and
(2) emergency management, and criminal law.
Michael’s current research is looking at Australia’s legal preparedness to cope with a catastrophic disaster that would require Australia to receive international disaster assistance. This builds on his work on emergency management generally and will focus on the role of the Commonwealth government in emergency management. This research has taken him to Geneva to meet with representatives from the UN, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee of NGOs involved in disaster response.
His research is attracting interest from around the emergency services community. He was recently invited to attend the workshop to develop National Research Priorities on Climate Change and Emergency Management and has been invited to give presentations to Emergency Management Australia, the Office of the Victorian Emergency Services Commissioner, the NSW State Emergency Service and the Bureau of Meteorology.
A key outcome of his current research will be to develop law reform proposals to facilitate a national disaster response in the event of a catastrophic disaster such as the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina. The proposals will ensure Australia adopts an ‘all hazards’ approach to disasters and bring the national response to natural disasters into line with the response to terrorist related incidents.

Dr Amanda Kennedy is a lecturer in the School of Law. She was awarded her PhD in 2007, which focused on individualism and collectivism within higher education employment regulation, and in particular, the use of Australian Workplace Agreements in universities. Amanda is currently working on a number of research projects, including joint research with a practitioner colleague into the personal liability of company officers for breaches under the NSW Occupational Health and Safety Act. Amanda is also conducting research into employee liability for private out of hours conduct, assessing recent case law which has re-ignited the debate concerning the blurred boundaries between work life and private life. A case note is to be published in the forthcoming Australian Journal of Labour Law, and further papers arising from this research will be presented at conferences in England and Ireland later this year.

Amanda is leading an exciting cross-disciplinary Rural Professions Research Network, established within the Faculty of The Professions, to find ways in which the availability of rural professional services can be improved. She has recruited a large number of professional bodies, spanning health, social welfare, science, law and accounting to help in scoping a cross-disciplinary research program to tackle this important issue. One of the aims is to identify research with the professions, and then applying for large external research grants to address these questions. The first phase of this has been the organisation of the Rural Professions Summit, to be held in Bingara on 9 May 2008. At the Summit, delegates from a diverse range of community groups and organisations will explore key issues with respect to rural professions, engaging rural professional networks in the design of research programs and grant applications that they will actively support. Amanda will then drive the establishment of these projects within the Faculty, assisting in positioning UNE as strong leader in integrative, solutions-focused research into rural professions.

Dr Jacky Williams is a post doctoral fellow with the AgLaw Centre (funded by the CRC for Irrigations Futures) undertaking research of the institutional barriers to sustainable water use in the MacIntyre Brook catchment in South Western Queensland and the South Creek catchment in Western Sydney. Jacky completed her PhD on the success attributes of regional NRM systems in Australia in late 2006 with the University of Queensland and has been working with the Aglaw Centre since March 2007. Jacky is an Environmental Scientist with 18 years applied experience in Natural Resource Management (NRM) in Australia. Jacky’s areas of expertise include regional NRM systems; NRM Institutions and governance; translation and harmonisation of regional NRM to property scale through Property Management Systems, and NRM policy development and implementation in particular land use, biodiversity and water quality.

2007 was the final year of an ARC Discovery grant on terrorism in which Associate Professor Russell Hogg collaborated with former colleagues at ANU and UNSW. As part of this project he published a major paper on criminology and political violence in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, contributed a chapter on executive proscription of terrorist organisations in Australia to an edited collection to be published in early 2008 and made several submissions (written and oral) to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

In his other major area of research, rural crime and justice, Russell co-edited a collection with Elaine Barclay (Rural Futures), John Scott (Sociology) and Joe Donnemeyer (Ohio State) and was successful in obtaining an ARC Discovery grant on rural masculinity and violence (with Kerry Carrington and John Scott, Sociology, UNE) to commence in 2008.