2005

Much effort has been expended in recent years attempting to reform the Australian health system in order to deliver more efficient and effective systems of care for an ageing and increasingly chronically ill population. Rural health care systems in particular have been a focus of reform programs, and new initiatives such as Univers ....

Community participation in planning for health programs and services can be difficult to achieve, in part because community participation is rarely conceived as development of place. This paper explores how and why communities of place become involved in health service development. It looks at research that examined community initi ....

The Rural Towns-Liquid Assets project is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project that aims to provide an integrated water management solution for salinity in sixteen priority Western Australian Wheatbelt towns. A key aim of the research is to ensure that water management options are tailored to meet the specific social, economi ....

Fishing is an important economic and social activity for many Australians. Both commercial and recreational fishing provide employment and income, particularly in coastal areas of the country, as well as a range of other lifestyle and health benefits for the Australian community. The fishing sector faces many challenges, and is in ....

A rapid expansion of plantations occurred over 1991 to 2001 in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. From an estate of only 6,150 hectares in 1991, the total area of plantations expanded to just under 127,500 hectares by the start of 2001. Most plantations are located in three local government areas in the region - Albany ....

A large area of softwood plantation has been established in the South West Slopes (SWS) of New South Wales since the 1920s and plantation timber has been processed on a large scale in the region since the 1950s. There has been ongoing expansion in the volume of wood harvested, and in the capacity of processing facilities in the reg ....

This information booklet summarises the key findings of a recent study conducted by the Bureau of Rural Sciences, examining socioeconomic impacts of the plantation sector in the Great Southern region of Western Australia and the South West Slopes of New South Wales between 1991 and 2004. The study was funded by the Forest and Wood ....

The 2005-06 State of the Regions report theme is at the very core of the issues that may well shape the economic development opportunities and competitiveness of Australia's regions. The Report explores the case for the use of telecommunications infrastructure, to assist regions improve their performance. Report Locationhttp://alga.asn.au/?ID=3 ....

Using the example of the regional Victorian city of Bendigo, this paper discusses new drivers for change in planning for regional cities. Key challenges are associated with environment, global relationships, urban amorphism, water security, sustainable growth, application of new planning policy, the clash between heritage and moder ....

Historically, the Sunshine Coast, which includes the three local government areas of Noosa, Maroochydore and Caloundra, has had an unemployment rate considerably higher than the national and Queensland state averages. However, recent analysis of unemployment trends by the Sunshine Coast Research Institute for Business Enterprise (S ....

The growth in consumption of supermarket 'own brand' food lines is having a significant impact on the organization and management of agri-food supply chains. In past decades, first-generation supermarket own brands were usually produced by established processing companies, which simply put a supermarket label on food lines already being marketed ....

This paper reviews regional natural resource management (NRM) plans prepared by regional NRM bodies in Queensland under the guidelines of the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (NAPSWQ) and the Natural Heritage Trust (NHT). The review focuses on how the regional NRM plans addressed water quality and water supply cr ....

A survey conducted on behalf of the Joint Commonwealth State and Territory Research Advisory Committee (JCSTRAC) examined how well the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (RSMS) had performed against a number of indicators. These included the proportion of migrants who stay in regional areas and continue to contribute to the local ....

Local government in Australia ought to be aware of specific community needs and goals, and be willing to initiate and facilitate practices that will encourage cooperation and interaction within communities and between communities, service providers and all levels of government. Social capital theory is discussed as a technique that ....