2013

Public accounting firms provide a necessary and important service for rural and regional areas. However, the provision of high-quality services is hindered by a number of factors. This paper reports the findings from a large-scale survey of professional accounting firm practitioners located in rural and regional Australia, identifying factors cau ....

This paper argues that climate change poses two distinct, if related, sets of challenges for poor rural households: challenges related to the increasing frequency and severity of weather shocks and challenges related to long-term shifts in temperature, rainfall patterns, water availability and other environmental factors. Within this framework, t ....

Whether playing outdoors or working on the farm, rural children acquire science and engineering skills throughout their daily lives. Although 11.4 million children in the United States grow up in rural areas, compared to 14.6 million in urban areas, relatively little attention is given to rural science education. This article demonstrates that ru ....

Our vision is to have resilient rural communities across NSW, driving social and economic change. With this goal in mind, over the past year, we have worked with our partner organisations on a variety of programs. Together we have delivered services to build community capacity, assisted communities to prepare for and manage advers ....

Many nations claim to be pursuing a ‘green growth' model in response to global economic and climate crises including ambitious green jobs projections. The rural dimension of this issue requires closer attention. This article draws on secondary sources and Australian Bureau of Statistics data to critically analyse green jobs projections based on ....

Urban and rural areas enjoy different and often complementary assets, and better integration between them is important for socio-economic performance. This report provides a framework to understand the changing relationships between urban and rural areas. It is focused on one approach that can enhance and better manage rural-urban relationships â ....

This paper examines for the first time health and safety issues for small farms in Australia. It provides evidence that small area farmers face similar hazards to that of larger operations. The results also indicate that further work is required to assist these producers in understanding both their legal obligations in respect to health and safet ....

Grazing experiments are usually used to quantify and demonstrate the biophysical impact of grazing strategies, with the Wambiana grazing experiment being one of the longest running such experiments in northern Australia. Previous economic analyses of this experiment suggest that there is a major advantage in stocking at a fixed, moderate stocking ....

Management of natural resources, particularly water, increasingly requires that likely benefits of particular actions (e.g., allocating an environmental flow) are quantified in advance. Therefore, new techniques are required that enable those potential benefits to be objectively compared among competing options for management (e.g., compared to a ....

In late October, as Tasmania began reviewing its ban on genetically modified (GM) food crops, a group of 97 scientists signed a joint statement that warned: 'The claimed consensus on GM organism safety does not exist.' Katherine Wilson discusses the GM foods issue Report Locationhttp://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Reposito ....

Cross-country labor productivity differences are larger in agriculture than in non-agriculture. We propose a new explanation for these patterns in which the self-selection of heterogeneous workers determines sector productivity. We formalize our theory in a generalequilibrium Roy model in which preferences feature a subsistence food requirement. ....

This paper provides an overview of the research on senior entrepreneurship focussing especially on the scope of the phenomenon, the specific barriers faced by older entrepreneurs, the advantages they may have over younger entrepreneurs and what policy currently does and what it could and perhaps should do. Report LocationClick here to view the ....

Integrating people's values and perceptions into planning is essential for the successful management of natural resources. However, successful implementation of natural resources management decisions on the ground is a complex task, which requires a comprehensive understanding of a system's social and ecological linkages.   This paper inve ....

The purpose of the Jerramungup Shire Health Service Plan is to provide a framework for health care services to meet the current and future health needs of the community. The Shire service plan will guide service development and delivery, building partnerships, workforce development/sustainability, information technology and asset planning. Key o ....