School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemA failed innovation?: General practitioners in community health centres( 1993)This paper seeks to examine central policy and practice issues arising out of the presence of doctors in community health centres. The community health program was shaped by the Whitlam era and there were great hopes for its success in delivering new forms of health services. Integral to it was the presence of G.P.'s working from community health centres. The research aims at discovering whether or not community health has successfully incorporated G.P.'s into the program. (From Introduction)
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ItemThe Victorian Boy Scout Movement: a case study of adaptation from Edwardian times to today( 1989)This thesis is an enquiry into the world view of the boy scout association and the way that world view has been adjusted in the light of changing values and societal patterns. The boy scout association has been in existence for some eighty years and it has maintained its strength while almost all other comparable movements have had to disband because of falling membership and insufficient interest. The thesis explores how the association, established in Edwardian times and rooted in imperial middle-class values, has managed the process of adaptation. The thesis is also a case study of scouting in Victoria. The enquiry proceeds by examining three chronological periods selected for their historical significance to the movement. The first is the period from scouting’s inception in Victoria in 1908 until the First World War. The second is the decade 1930 to 1940. Finally is the period from 1967 to 1977. This work does not attempt a detailed historical account of the eras, but pauses to provide only a still shot of the movement at these times. The aim has been to be representative rather than exhaustive in the selection of material. When the movement was established, it was imbued with the spirit of imperialism, militarism and masculinity. It is in terms of these three central concepts that the thinking, values and activities of the movement have been observed to determine how they have survived, rearranged themselves or become something new over the years. This preparatory section will provide a brief sketch of scouting’s ideology, looking specifically at the origins of these three principal elements. (From Introduction)
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ItemSchool closures, alienation and crime: an analysis of the social and economic implications of public secondary school closures in north-west Melbourne( 1995)Between 1992 and 1993 the Victorian State Government announced the closure or amalgamation of more than 255 publicly funded schools around the state (Parents & Friends, 1993; Marginson, 1994: 47). The Coburg/Preston area, located in the inner north-west of Melbourne, lost four public co-educational secondary colleges in the space of a year. 1135 students were affected (Parents and Friends, 1993). Coburg North Secondary College (here on referred to as Coburg Tech) was one of these schools.
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Item"You can't let your children cry": filicide in Victoria 1978-1988( 1991)Child killers, particularly when the perpetrators are the victims' parents, are stereotypically portrayed as "evil" or "crazy" (Wilson,1985:6). Who other than the "mad" or the very "bad" could slaughter their "innocent" offspring? But are these offenders really so aberrant? The social perception of, and response to, these offenders is largely determined by the offenders' sex. In fact, biological determinism is particularly profound in this area. This is a qualitative study of all officially suspected cases of filicide in Victoria between 1978 and 1988. "Filicide" is a particular type of homicide where parents kill their children. The major focus is a gender analysis. In order to identify the relevant issues, and assess the results of this study with other research in this area, a review of the existing literature is necessary. Contemporary official statistics portray filicide as constituting a relatively small proportion of all homicide in Western societies. This ranges from five percent in North America (Resnick,1969:325;Husain & Daniel,1984:596) to ten percent in England (Campion, Cravens & Covan,1988:1143), and eleven percent in Victoria (Polk & Ranson,1989:12). However, the actual incidence of filicide is elusive due to undetected and unreported cases and forensic problems associated with filicide detection. In fact, filicide may be less likely to be detected than other forms of homicide. These issues are discussed in detail in the Methodology chapter. As filicide forms only a small proportion of detected homicides, this may account for its relative neglect in homicide studies. Filicide is nevertheless a significant problem. It demonstrates the darker side of our culture, as does its social response. (From Introduction)
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ItemPunishment and crime: guilt and grandiosity in the life of Ronald Ryan( 1999)This thesis examines the life and crimes of Ronald Joseph Ryan, the condemned man at the centre of the most politically divisive capital punishment case in Australia's history and the last man judicially executed in Australia. Ryan was born Ronald Edmond Thompson in Melbourne in February 1925, the son of impoverished working class parents. His father was a violent, alcoholic miner crippled by miners' phthisis and his mother (who, at the time of the birth, was married to another man) was an alcoholic and sometime prostitute. Ryan's childhood was characterised by early traumatic deprivation, parental abuse and neglect. Following a petty theft at age 11, Ryan was removed from his parents and, by court order, made a ward of state and placed in custodial care at an institution for "wayward and neglected' boys. He absconded from his wardship at age 14 and joined his half-brother, later travelling to Balranald, N.S.W., where he worked as a timber-cutter. The period from age 15 to his mid-20s were relatively productive and law-abiding - he was married in 1950 - but aspects of his personality also became more obvious: his gambling compulsion and certain obsessive compulsive behavioural traits. In 1953, now back in Victoria, Ryan was involved in arson of his rented family home in order to claim insurance monies, although he was subsequently acquitted of the offence. Beginning in 1956, a string of forging and "break-and-enter' offences ensued. When arrested Ryan typically confessed, and later court appearances led to his first brief imprisonment for theft in 1956. Further breaking offences followed in 1959 and 1960, in a period in which he was virtually a professional criminal, and he was eventually prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to 8 ½ years imprisonment. While in prison Ryan appeared strongly motivated toward rehabilitation, successfully undertaking further education. He was regarded by prison authorities as an outstanding, high-achieving model prisoner. Released after serving 3 years, Ryan quickly returned to crime, however, and his offences at times involved violence. A series of shop- and factory-breakings and safe-blowings between 1963 and 1964 saw him convicted and returned to prison for 8 years. In 1965 he escaped from Pentridge prison in Melbourne, during which he shot and killed a pursuing prison officer. Following his recapture, Ryan and his co-escapee, Peter Walker, were tried in the Victorian Supreme Court. Ryan was convicted of murder and Walker convicted of manslaughter. Despite exhaustive legal appeals and unprecedented media and community opposition, Ryan's death sentence was not commuted by the Victorian Cabinet and he was hanged on 3 February 1967. Utilising archival records, primary sources and extensive interviews with his family and contemporaries, the thesis presents a biographical account of Ryan's life. It documents the social conditions of Ryan's childhood and institutionalisation and his later criminal and prison history, but more particularly it seeks - through the evidence of his behaviour and his writings - to elucidate his inner life as a way of understanding the contradictions between Ryan as model prisoner and ambitious professional criminal. The thesis advances a hypothesis about Ryan's criminal personality: grandiose in his phantasied criminal role, a prisoner to obsessive rituals and compulsive gambling for much of his life, driven by a compulsion to confess to his crimes, and prone to hero phantasies and acts of rescue and reparation. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the thesis explores the extent to which Ryan's criminality can be understood as an expression of his unconscious wish for punishment, as derived 'from a sense of guilt' , and shaped by his narcissistic grandiosity.
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ItemBlue murder: press coverage of fatal shootings of and by police in Victoria( 1994)This study is a qualitative content analysis of two newspapers' coverage of three fatal shootings in Victoria in October 1988. The shootings are those of Graeme Jensen, killed by the Armed Robbery Squad on 11 October 1988, and Constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre who were killed by offender/s unknown the following day. Qualitative content analysis consists of a detailed reading of a text in order to provide an interpretation by drawing out the latent meaning of the text. In conducting the analysis the overriding concern is not with whether the reports are true or false, but how meaning is created and to what effect. The newspapers studied represent the killing of Graeme Jensen as unproblematic, depicting it as lawful and necessary. Graeme Jensen is represented as a dangerous criminal living outside the community; his death is presented not as a tragedy but as the fulfilment of his life's destiny. Other ways of viewing the shooting, that are at least as well supported by the evidence, are given little space. In contrast, the killing of the two police officers is represented as a terrible crime. The great emphasis given to the brutality of the killings and killers, and the innocence of the police victims, constructs the officers as martyrs whose dead bodies provide the rhetorical base for police demands for greater powers, resources, and harsher punishments. The press coverage of the shootings supports the organisational legitimacy and interests of the police; there is little evidence of competition for meaning within the reports, and alternative viewpoints are only included to give the illusion of a contest.
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ItemMinisterial advisers in the Victorian Labor government, 1982-1991( 1993)Ministerial advisers were a noticeable feature of the Victorian Labor government from 1982 and were a development from arrangements in the Whitlam era when the Whitlam Government “made provision for each Minister to have a small staff of well-qualified (and well paid) individuals to provide political and expert advice as an alternative to that of the public service”. Alan Oxley says that the public service took some time to adjust to the system. He notes that they were accustomed to “Private Secretaries” who made appointments and “Press Secretaries” who handled the mysterious world of the media and occasionally countermanded advice from the public service on the distasteful grounds of political expediency.” They were concerned with the potential for the erosion of their prerogative as the legitimate source of advice to the ministers. Halligan and Power contend that the ministerial adviser has been one of the most prominent additions to executive branches over the last two decades. They observe that: “The political executive has used advisers to increase its power by extending the scope of influence of the ministerial office. This has served to enlarge the partisan element within the executive. The adviser can exercise a major influence on policy processes – if not always on the content of policy – and this is extremely important for providing a minister with a means for sustaining his or her authority” and point out that while partisan advisers had existed before Whitlam they “became the norm under his government.” The advent of advisers had the potential to change the balance between the political and the bureaucratic arenas in government.
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ItemA party in disarray: Victorian Labor after the split 1955-1965( 1980)Political parties, as Edmund Burke saw them, were bodies of united men agreed on some particular principle promoting national interest. The demands of a mass-electorate in Western democratic societies have rendered obsolete Burke’s conception of “party,” except in the sense that mass political parties seek power in government and in so doing may seek to promote the national interest as they define it. The modern mass-clientele party, as it operates in Western societies, is commonly at variance with Burke’s conception. Mass-clientele parties are not united bodies in Burkean terms, but rather are coalitions of interests, rarely agreed on particular principles except in the most general way. This dissertation seeks to make a contribution to the theory of mass-clientele parties operating in a predominantly two-party system. Generalizations will be suggested that may have application to mass-clientele parties per se, based on the experience of the Australian Labour Party (hereafter ALP) in Victoria.