Melbourne Law School - Research Publications

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    ADM+S submission to the Safe and responsible AI in Australia discussion paper
    Weatherall, K ; Cellard, L ; Goldenfein, J ; Haines, F ; Parker, C (ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society, 2023-08-04)
    The ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) is a cross-disciplinary, national research centre which commenced operations in mid 2020. ADM+S welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Department of Industry, Science and Resource’s consultation on Safe and responsible AI in Australia. Resolving the legal and regulatory challenges posed by artificial intelligence—and how regulatory systems can promote responsible, ethical, and inclusive AI and ADM for the benefit of all Australians—is one of the Centre’s founding objectives. This submission seeks to highlight not only well-known harms and challenges brought about by these technologies (such as privacy risks, or unfair bias and discrimination), but also the new challenges and shifts that are emerging as a result of the rise of generative AI/foundation models and associated developments, including the broad take-up and rapid integration of generative AI, and its broad potential as a general purpose technology embedded in complex supply chains.
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    ADM+S Working Paper Series: The Australian Ad Observatory Technical and Data Report
    Angus, D ; Obeid, AK ; Burgess, J ; Parker, C ; Andrejevic, M ; Bagnara, J ; Carah, N ; Fordyce, R ; Hayden, L ; Lewis, K ; O'Neill, C ; Albarran-Torres, C ; Cellard, L (ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society, 2024-01-08)
    This report provides an overview of the Australian Ad Observatory project’s data, infrastructure, and software tools, and serves as a detailed technical companion to the Background Paper previously published (Burgess et al., 2022). The Australian Ad Observatory (‘Ad Observatory’) is a project of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) that aims to improve the observability of targeted online advertising in Australia using novel data donation infrastructure and hybrid digital methods. The first section of the report provides an overview of the Ad Observatory project’s data donation infrastructure, analytical dashboards and researcher tools. It describes, visualises, and discusses in detail the pattern of reported demographic characteristics and observations gathered from our pool of participants. We explain how this pool is positioned in relation to benchmark populations, with particular focus on the Australian Facebook user population. We outline the data types gathered from Facebook using this infrastructure, which include ad images and text as well as metadata such as the WAIST (Why Am I Seeing This) explanations provided to users. We also explain how meaningful information is extracted and aggregated from this data using the Observatory’s tools and dashboards. The report details the project’s research questions and how these questions are pursued within nested case studies, each of which deploys purpose-specific but linked analytical strategies using the Ad Observatory’s central infrastructure and tools. These questions are linked to methods that are uniquely enabled by the Ad Observatory, and that are designed to investigate the overall volume, dynamics, and targeting patterns of Facebook’s ad system including the relationships between its temporal dynamics, demographic targeting, and the symbolic features of ad content. The final section of the report details three case studies that have been undertaken within the project to date, including accounts of how they have worked with Ad Observatory data to answer topic-specific questions. These case studies are focused on areas of societal risk, where advertising is both potentially influential and subject to public oversight and regulation. The case studies include: investigations of environmental or ‘green’ claims in ads; the temporal patterns, sequencing, and targeting of alcohol advertising; and the extent and nature of online gambling advertising in Australia. The report concludes with brief discussions of how the project team has approached key ethical and compliance challenges, including copyright, human research ethics, defamation, and the amplification of potentially harmful content.
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    Inoculating Law Schools Against Bad Metrics
    Weatherall, KG ; Giblin, R ; Bowrey, K (Elsevier BV, 2021-01-25)
    Law schools and legal scholars are not immune to the expanding use of quantitative metrics to assess the research of universities and of scholars working within universities. Metrics include grant and research income, the number of articles produced in journals on ranked lists, and citations (by scholars, and perhaps courts). The use of metrics also threatens to expand to measure other kinds of desired activity, with various metrics suggested to measure the impact of research beyond scholarly circles, and even more amorphous qualities such as leadership and mentoring. Many working legal scholars are (understandably) unaware of the full range of ways in which metrics are calculated, and how they are used in universities and in research policy. What is more, despite a large and growing research policy literature and perhaps an instinct that metrics are inherently flawed as a means to recognise research 'performance', few researchers are aware of the full scope of known and proven weaknesses and biases in research metrics. In this contribution to a forthcoming book, we describe the use of metrics in university and research and higher education policy (with a focus on Australia). We review the literature on the many flaws and biases inherent in metrics used, with a focus on legal scholarship. Most importantly, we also want to promote a conversation about what it might look like for academic researchers working in law faculties or on legal issues to assess research contributions that promote the shared values of the legal academy. Our focus is on two areas of research assessment: research impact and the bucket of concepts variously described as mentorship, supervision, and/or leadership. We reframe the questions that researchers and assessors should ask: not, “what impact has this research had”, but “what have you done about your discovery?”; not “what is your evidence of research leadership”, but, “what have you done to enable the research and careers of others?”. We also present concrete suggestions for how working legal scholars and faculties can shift the focus of research assessment towards the values of the legal academy. The chapter incorporates some of our thinking on developing meaningful legal research careers - something that will hopefully be of interest to any working legal scholar.
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    Submission to the Select Committee on Job Security
    McDonald, P ; Marston, G ; Hardy, T ; Charlesworth, S ; Mayes, R ; Williams, P ( 2021)
    Work is a central human activity, critical to social cohesion and social identity, future economic prospects and the fulfilment of human potential. Yet over successive decades, paid employment has become more precarious and insecure. Insecure work includes fixed-term contracts; seasonal work; marginal part-time, casual and on-call work; labour hire and temporary agency work; and ‘dependent’ or ‘disguised’ self employment. .
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    Strengthening Australia’s cybersecurity regulations and incentives: Response to the Department of Home Affairs Discussion Paper
    Achrekar, A ; Ahmad, A ; Chang, S ; Cohney, S ; Dreyfus, S ; Leckie, C ; Murray, T ; Paterson, J ; Pham, VT ; Sonenberg, E ( 2021)
    The development of the regulatory and incentives framework is a key opportunity to align Australian enterprises’ cybersecurity practice with latest research, particularly on consumer protections, and emerging cyber threats and security challenges. The Australian Government has an essential role in establishing incentives to encourage best practice and consequences to combat poor practice. It will be increasingly important for government at all levels to act as a role model, by following best practice in the conduct of its public business.
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    Inclusion of Combatants in Constitution-Building
    Dziedzic, A ; Ramirez, SM (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and the Constitutional Transformation Network, 2020)
    Where constitution-building occurs in a conflict-affected context, the inclusion and participation of combatants in constitution-building processes raises challenging and distinctive issues. In such contexts, constitution-building is likely to overlap with a wider peace process that comprises the negotiation of peace agreements, and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes.
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    Consultation, Deliberation and Decision-Making: Direct Public Participation in Constitution-Building
    Dziedzic, A (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and the Constitution Transformation Network, 2020)
    Direct public participation is now regarded as an essential part of a constitution-building process. In the 21st century, almost every exercise in constitutional reform has involved an opportunity for members of the public to engage in the process. The right to participate in public affairs is internationally recognized and a consensus has emerged that public participation is good practice in constitution-building.
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    Review of domestic violence deaths involving non-fatal strangulation in Queensland.
    Sharman, L ; Douglas, H ; Fitzgerald, R (The University of Melbourne and The University of Queensland, 2021-11-01)
    This report draws on files held by the Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Unit in the Coroners Court of Queensland to examine 20 intimate partner homicides where strangulation was either present in the relationship before death, was the cause of death, or both. All deaths occurred between 2011 and 2020, before and after the introduction of the non-fatal strangulation legislation (Queensland Criminal Code Qld, s. 315A) in 2016. Research for this report was conducted on closed coronial investigations only and is not necessarily reflective of all deaths of this nature within the time period.
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    Investing for Sustainable Food Systems: Current Practice in Australia
    Carey, R ; Parker, C ; Robinson, E ; Sacks, G ( 2021-08-19)
    Summary • Food systems are a major driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, depletion of freshwater resources and pollution of waterways. • We examined the extent to which major institutional investors engaged in responsible investment in Australia consider sustainable food systems as part of their investment approach. • Nineteen out of 35 investors incorporated considerations related to sustainable food systems into investment decisions in some way. • We identified six strategies that investors used to incorporate sustainable food system considerations into their decision making. • The most common strategy used by investors was 'corporate engagement and shareholder action’ (using shareholder power to influence corporate behaviour). • The sustainable food system themes most commonly mentioned by these investors were ‘human rights’ (specifically labour rights in the food supply chain) and ‘animal welfare and anti-microbial resistance’. • Only one company, Australian Ethical, had a comprehensive policy on investment decisions related to sustainable food systems. • Examples of good practice included engaging with companies in relation to modern slavery concerns in the food supply chain, negatively screening intensive animal agriculture due to concerns about animal welfare and environmental sustainability, and investing in agricultural land to support a climate transition. • Future research will focus on engaging with investors to identify opportunities for progressing an investment agenda that promotes sustainable food systems in Australia.