Melbourne Law School - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableHow to Talk to a Populist About Climate Change(Graham Holding Company, 2019)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableMurray-Darling report shows public authorities must take climate change risk seriously(The Conversation AU, 2019-02-04)The tragic recent events on the Darling River, and the political and policy furore around them, have again highlighted the severe financial and environmental consequences of mismanaging climate risks. The Murray-Darling Royal Commission demonstrates how closely boards of public sector corporate bodies can be scrutinised for their management of these risks. Public authorities must follow private companies and factor climate risk into their board decision-making. Royal Commissioner Brett Walker has delivered a damning indictment of the Murray Darling Basin Authority’s management of climate-related risks. His report argues that the authority’s senior management and board were “negligent” and fell short of acting with “reasonable care, skill and diligence”. For its part, the authority “rejects the assertion” that it “acted improperly or unlawfully in any way”. The Royal Commission has also drawn attention to the potentially significant legal and reputational consequences for directors and organisations whose climate risk management is deemed to have fallen short of a rising bar.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCan money buy you (climate) happiness? Economic co-benefits and the implementation of effective carbon pricing policies in Mexico(Elsevier, 2020-12)It is difficult for governments to implement effective climate change mitigation policies because they often create short-term costs for concentrated industry groups who oppose them. As such, climate policy scholars have theorized that governments will be more willing and able to implement mitigation policies where they align with other economic policy objectives. The logic of this “economic co-benefits” argument is that co-benefits create short-term gains for governments to offset the immediate costs they face in introducing mitigation policies. Through a most-similar systems design comparative study of a carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme (ETS) in Mexico, this article interrogates the economic co-benefits theory of mitigation policy adoption. By comparing the motivations underpinning two carbon pricing policies in a single country, the article suggests that the presence of immediately accruing fiscal revenues created short-term incentives for the Mexican government to implement the carbon tax, whereas such short-term incentives were not present with respect to the ETS. However, in both cases concentrated affected industry groups were able to dilute the carbon prices to which they were subject. The implications of this study are that economic co-benefits may not be as useful in achieving effective mitigation policy outcomes, in the absence of measures which also independently change the interests of concentrated industry groups.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableConsumer Choice as a Pathway to Food Diversity: A Case Study of Açaí Berry Product Labelling(Springer International Publishing, 2018)Forest lands and the rich social and ecological diversity contained within are being lost as demand for agriculture land expands globally. During this process traditional cultivation practices are marginalised resulting in a loss of dietary diversity. As Vira et al. observe 'Despite the huge potential of forest and tree foods to contribute to diets, knowledge on many forest foods, especially wild foods, is rapidly being lost because of social change and modernisation' . Forest loss coupled with the associated declines in dietary diversity and traditional knowledge are a threat to the human right to food. This right requires diverse food production systems that are sustainable, support livelihoods (especially those who are most marginalised) and meet nutritional needs. This chapter explores the exporting and labelling of a traditional food source the "acai berry" and examines whether the production and sale of acai has the potential to improve food diversity.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe Meaning of Home for Children and Young People After Parental Separation( 2018)A new study exploring the meaning of home for children and young people after separation aims to inform living arrangements that work for them.
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ItemWhat Can 100,000 Books Tell Us About the International Public Library e-Lending Landscape?(University of Borås, Sweden, 2019)Introduction. We investigated the relative availability of e-books to libraries for e-lending in five English-language countries & analysed their licence terms and prices. Method. We created a unique dataset recording author, publisher, price and terms for 100,000 titles and 388,045 e-lending licences across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and United Kingdom through the aggregator Overdrive. We developed new algorithms to estimate the original publication year for each title & to match titles across jurisdictions. Analysis. We examined the relationships between title price, age, terms, jurisdiction, publisher and publisher type using various statistical analyses and machine learning. Results. Price and licence differences across countries are largely attributable to the Big 5 publishers. Prices are largely independent of title age (unless the title is in the public domain) or the rights libraries obtain in exchange. Licence terms are not affected by age either, meaning that the most restrictive terms are often applied to older, less demanded books. Conclusions. By setting terms independent of titles' value to libraries, publishers may discourage libraries from adding older and less-demanded books to their collections. We will test this hypothesis in a follow-up library survey.
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ItemA New Copyright Bargain? Reclaiming Lost Culture and Getting Authors Paid(Columbia University Libraries and Columbia Law School, 2018)Copyright’s fundamental structure is based on outdated assumptions, including that marginal costs of copying and distribution are high, and registration systems necessarily onerous and expensive. International treaties embedded these assumptions into domestic laws worldwide, and for good reasons: when the Berne Convention prohibited formalities in 1908, it was a necessary response to compulsory registration systems that unfairly burdened authors. And, when those high marginal costs meant only the most popular works could be made enduringly available anyway, there was little downside in granting long terms that could outlast their owners’ interest: those less popular works were going to be lost regardless.
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ItemAsking the Right Questions in Copyright Cases: Lessons from Aereo and its International Brethren(Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2018)This chapter addresses the implications of business models that fulfill demand for individual access to works in a manner which avoids liability for infringing the public performance and reproduction rights. The authors argue that the opportunistic engineering choices that obscure some courts’ perceptions of the impact on the on-demand access market risk removing evolving markets from the scope of copyright owners’ exclusive rights. Businesses that free-ride on copyrighted works also obtain an unfair competitive advantage over copyright licensees. The authors argue that liability should not turn on ancillary questions such as who did the act, whether unique copies were made, or the size of a transmission’s potential audience, because these bases for (or against) liability can be vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. Instead asking the ‘right’ questions should lead to principled conclusions about the legal effects (if any) that should flow from distinctions between technological modes of exploitation.
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ItemWhy were Commonwealth Reversionary Rights Abolished (and What Can We Learn Where They Remain)?(Sweet and Maxwell, 2019)In this Paper we examine the development and removal of the 1911 Imperial copyright reversion right. We find this right was spuriously removed in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We then find that criticisms of the right in Canada (it still exists there) can help teach us what a new, effective reversion right might look like.