Connections Issue 2

ISSUE 2 > 2OO4 Taking tourism to a remote African villageBreastfeeding in public – still controversial

Alcohol, sirens and smoke – cause for alarm?Birth of a new era – new midwifery training

MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

www.vu.edu.au

2 > Contents

4 VC’s messageWELCOMEVice-Chancellor Professor Elizabeth Harman welcomes readers to the second issue ofConnections, and outlines the values of theUniversity’s new Strategic Plan.

4 In briefNEWSA new institute for sustainability and innovation;Olympic success; VU gets five stars; new rotundabrings joy to handicapped adults; providing coursesto the Department of Justice; public art atFederation Square; plus much more.

7 VU factsVICTORIA UNIVERSITY STATISTICS

8 Taking tourism to TaruTOURISMA community-based tourism project in a remote part of Kenya aims to help the local tribes improve their living standards.

10 When talk is not cheapLAWWhat protection is there for vulnerable consumers who buy mobile phones?

11 Exposing mothers’ breastsPSYCHOLOGYWomen breastfeeding in public is as controversial today as it ever was.

12 Bringing form to the humble chairBUILDING AND CONSTRUCTIONMilan-based furniture designer Marc Krusinbelieves there is a lack of coherence in the design and manufacture of Australian furniture.

14 Alcohol, sirens and smoke: cause for alarm?PSYCHOLOGYHaving a few beers or glasses of wine before bed can increase your risk of becoming a fire fatality – even with a smoke alarm in the house.

16 Firm foundations for a future in scienceFOUNDATION STUDIESAn innovative course is offering students an alternative entry to tertiary studies.

ISSUE TWO2OO4

<connections>PUBLISHER

Marketing and Communications Dept.Victoria UniversityAustraliawww.vu.edu.au

© Victoria University of Technology

CRICOS Provider No: 00124K

MANAGING EDITOR

Phil Kofoed

STAFF WRITERS

Vin MaskellClare Boyd-MacraeNiki Koulouris

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Glen Dower, Jim Buckell,Paul Mitchell, John McDougall

GRAPHIC DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION

Brett Kiteley of Stroke p/l

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Maurice Grant-Drew, Ross Bird, Sharon Jones, Warrick Attwood, Sharon Walker,Thomas Bauer,Brett Kiteley, Matt Ward

CARTOON

Shelley Miller Design

EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES

Phil KofoedPublicationsVictoria UniversityPO Box 14428Melbourne VIC 8001Phone: (03) 9919 4956Email: [email protected]

> 8 > 11 > 12 > 14

COVER PHOTO

Staff and graduates from VU’s TAFE Department of Personal Services featured in a spectacularFrench fashion parade at the 2004 Victorian Hair and Beauty Industry Association Ball.PHOTO BY Sharon Walker

3Victoria University connections><

17 The city in the palm of her handBUSINESS ADMINISTRATIONHong Kong-born Catherine Ng is one of the City of Melbourne’s youngest councillors.

18 After years of darkness, the sun shineson SunburySPORTS ADMINISTRATIONNext year marks the 10th anniversary of SunburyCampus, home to VU’s Sports Administrationdegree. The Campus is a collection of historic hilltop buildings with a bleak history.

20 Magnetic attractionMOLECULAR SCIENCEVU scientists are finding safer methods for treating birds that are victim to oil spills.

22 Masters of multimediaMULTIMEDIAVU took home a swag of prizes at this year’s ATOM Film, Television and Multimedia Awards.

23 Interns take on parliamentWORK EDUCATIONTwo young students took on the affairs of politicswhen they were granted State Parliament internships.

24 Intellectual property–who should own it?RESEARCHDr John McDougall offers a personal view on thecontroversial topic of who should own intellectualproperty created through university research.

26 Birth of a new eraNURSINGMidwifery training undergoes a rebirth at VU.

28 Performances that challenge theordinaryPERFORMANCEPerformance Studies at VU is the antithesis ofconventional acting training.

30 Twinning makes good businessINTERNATIONALVictoria University celebrates a decade-long partnership with Sunway University College in Kuala Lumpur.

31 BooksVU BOOKSThe search for one man’s family history; how thirty-five Australians achieved their dream;Australian Rules football; psychology in the physical and manual therapies; and the ins andouts of international trade are issues explored in new books by VU authors.

32 ArtSTUDENT ARTSTUDENT: Yasmine O’HaraCOURSE: Bachelor of Arts

– Computer Mediated Art (2001)TITLE: Desert 2004MEDIUM: Acrylic on canvas (91cm x 122cm)

> 17 > 20 > 24 > 26

Welcome

4 >VC’s message > In brief

to our second edition of Connections, which celebrates the achievements of our University.

In October I celebrated my first anniversary as Victoria University vice-chancellor. During those first twelve months, University staffworked hard on many projects that will underpin the future successof this institution. Among them was the preparation of our 2004-2008Strategic Plan, which was launched on 15 October.

The Plan includes the University’s new values. These values are:

The people you read about in Connections are examples of howVictoria University staff are making these values real.

Nick Athanasiou is imparting his wonderful enthusiasm for the sciencesto young students, and Professor Brian King is working with WorldVision and Kenyan tourism authorities to encourage sustainable tourismin the African nation. City of Melbourne councillor and VictoriaUniversity graduate Catherine Ng is working for the benefit ofMelbourne residents, and Chris Atmore is seeking to assist marginalisedpeople through her research into the telecommunications industry.

We also showcase our work with Sunshine Hospital in Melbourne’swest, Phillip Island in Victoria and our decade-long partnership withSunway University College in Malaysia.

The people featured in Connections show how Victoria Universitystaff are already embracing our mission, which is to transform thelives of individuals and develop the capacities of industry and communities within the western Melbourne region and beyondthrough the power of vocational and higher education.

I hope you enjoy this edition of Connections.

Professor Elizabeth HarmanVice-Chancellor and PresidentNovember 2004

> knowledge and skills, and critical and imaginative inquiry for theircapacity to transform individuals and the community;

> equality of opportunity for students and staff;> diversity for its contribution to creativity and the enrichment of life;> co-operation as the basis of engagement with local and international

communities;> integrity,respect and transparency in personal and collaborative action; and> the pursuit of excellence in everything we do.

New institute for environmental

sustainabilityVictoria University’s new Institute for Sustainability and Innovation waslaunched in July. It will provide a platform to make Melbourne’s westernregion environmentally sustainable with emphasis on water use and reuse.

The institute’s strategic priorities are: environmental management andrestoration; business and sustainable development; improving water use efficiency; and sustainability and social change. Two water-related projects are already in train.

“The institute is looking at water that comes from the Werribee sewagetreatment plant, and how the salt content of that water could be reduced so the water could be better used for high-value horticulture,” said actingdirector, Professor John Cary. “The other area is sewer mining, where valuable components of effluent are removed from sewage at the site wherethe treated waste water is reused.”

The two projects are in collaboration with the University of New SouthWales and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, which has been instrumental in making deserts bloom and transforming swamps into fertileagricultural valleys in Israel.

>IN BRIEF>IN BRIEF>IN B

catwalkcarnivaleStaff and graduates from Victoria University’s TAFE Department of Personal Servicesfeatured in a spectacular parade of French fashion at the Melbourne Town Hall inearly September. The event was the annual Hair and Beauty Industry AssociationBall, which is also a gala charity night for the Kids Help Line. With the theme ofParis Carnivale, the make-up artists, models, hairdressers and choreographers created a visual treat, featuring ornate wigs with masses of tumbling curls, make-upthat created porcelain-like visages, and flowing haute couture gowns.

PHOPHOTO BY Maurice Grant-Drew

Greg’s wallof many colours

The façade of the SBS/ACMI building at Federation Square in the heart of Melbourne wastransformed into a wall of many colours one night in October, thanks to a public art projectcreated by Victoria University’s Greg Giannis. Greg, a lecturer with the Department of Visual Arts,Design and Multimedia, projected 350 images onto the building’s western wall, which is usually amass of triangles in various tones of brown, black, grey and white. The images were created byvisitors to www.façade.net.au and included contributions from across Australia and the world.“Through the internet I was able to invite the general public to be part of a public art event,”Greg said. “On the night, people would sit there for an hour or so and watch the colours andpatterns change each minute.” The project was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

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Most people recognise the names Drew Ginn and JamesTomkins as half of Australia’s most famous rowing groupthe ‘Awesome Foursome’. In Athens, Drew and Jamescontinued their success in the coxless pairs by clinchingOlympic gold. A little bit of this success may be attributedto the expert advice and assistance received from VictoriaUniversity sports scientist and physiologist Simon Sostaric.

Other Olympians assisted by Sostaric were marathonrunners Lee Troop, who finished 28th and Nick Harrisonwho came 45th. Track cyclist Katie Mactier, who featuredon the cover of the first issue of Connections, won silver inthe individual pursuit.

VU’s Dr Harriet Speed, senior lecturer in sport andexercise psychology, helped three Australian shootersprepare for Athens: Lalita Yauhleuskaya, Linda Ryan andTim Lowndes. Lalita fared the best, coming tenth in herevent, the 25 metre sports pistol.

VU student Ali Abdo, Australia’s only representative infreestyle wrestling, was knocked out in the first rounds ofhis 74 kg weight category. Ali also works as a gyminstructor at St Albans Campus.

Olympic success

VU wins case for CLERK OF COURTSVictoria University TAFE has been appointed the educationalprovider to the Courts Portfolio of the Department of Justice(Victoria), who are replacing the existing Clerk of CourtsQualification with a nationally accredited professional qualification in court administration. “The training program willadopt a vocational approach to learning and will predominantlyentail on-the-job training, self-directed study and online distance education,” said Margaret Parker, head of VU’sDepartment of Administrative and Legal Studies.

The course will be delivered to court employees workingin Melbourne as well as regional centres of Victoria, and willbe built into the existing Certificate IV in Government (CourtServices). It will also articulate into higher-level courses, suchas the Diploma in Government (Court Services). “There hasbeen an outstanding contribution to this project by the SirZelman Cowen Centre for Continuing Legal Education, theJudicial Administration and Justice Studies Institute [bothVU bodies] and teaching staff from the TAFE Departmentof Social and Community Studies, ” Ms Parker said.

Ms Parker said the project is an excellent example of how TAFE and higher education can work together.

PHOTOS BY Sharon Walker

PHOTO BY Matt Ward

OTO BY Newspix/Colleen Petch

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6 > In brief

School gets a

helping hand

A measure ofhappinessIt’s not a question of ‘Can you measure happiness?’ – it’s ‘Where do you measure happiness?’

Visual arts teacher Peter Burke – a former Victoria University student – had anidea. With a $20,000 Arts Victoria grant and support from VU, Federation Square andChannel 31, he saw Flinders Street Station as an ideal place for the Happiness Post.

In July, Burke and his colleagues erected the structure and began measuring.Happiness was abundant – despite it being mid winter. By 2.10 pm on Tuesday 13 July, Melbourne was 95 per cent happy. For the other five per cent it was about12 degrees and a drizzly, cloudy day.

In October, the Happiness Post was still in place, with our happiness down to 50per cent at the last reading. The other 50 per cent must be reading the newspapers.

Warm welcomefor overseas visitorsThe colour, energy and easy humour of two Aboriginal dancers set the tone for a relaxedand enthusiastic introductory session for students at the beginning of Victoria University’sInternational Orientation Week at Footscray Park Campus in late July. The performance byWestern Creations included the haunting sounds of a didgeridoo and rhythm sticks, accompaniedby dances that imitated the kangaroo, emu and goanna to perfection. Nine hundred inter-national undergraduate, postgraduate and exchange program students from 47 countriesstarted their studies at VU in second semester. Welcoming the international students toVU, Vice-Chancellor Professor Elizabeth Harman said her own studies as a student in anoth-er country were a life-changing experience. “The friendships you make here will stay withyou for life,” Professor Harman said. “Take up the challenges, enjoy the people aroundyou, ask the staff for assistance and, as a mother of an international student myself, Iimplore you to communicate with those at home!”

Graduates give VU

five starsThe 2005 Good Universities Guide, which compares the performances of allAustralian universities, reports that Victoria University graduates have given theeducational experience they received at the University a maximum 5-star rating.Educational experience rates courses for overall satisfaction, teaching qualityand learning of generic skills. The rating puts VU in the top 20 per cent ofAustralian universities for the educational experience category.

“Victoria University has been recognised for the great job we are doing educating students across all levels in the western suburbs of Melbourne,”said Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor John McCallum. “We know we aredoing a good job and now this has been affirmed by the Good UniversitiesGuide, which is an independent group.”

Back to backvocational awardThe recent Victorian Training Awards saw Victoria University winning the Victorian VocationalStudent of the Year for the second year in a row. The award was won by Greg Wareham, a student in the Diploma of Meat Processing course offered by the TAFE Department of Scienceand Biotechnology at Werribee Campus. Greg is operations manager at G & K O’Connor, alarge beef exporting company in Pakenham. The Diploma of Meat Processing is offered in on- and off-the-job study mode in association with the Meat Industry Training Council(MINTRAC). Last year Victoria University electrical engineering student Vanessa Wood wonboth the state and national training awards for best vocational student.

PHOTO BY Sharon Jones

PHOTO BY Maurice Grant-Drew

PHOTO BY Warrick Attwood

Seventy-five students from Werribee Secondary College carried out forensic science experiments for their biology studies at Victoria University’s WerribeeCampus in June to help them with their science studies. A fire at their school in May damaged the science wing and completely destroyed other buildings.

The experiments included DNA ‘fingerprinting’ to help them solve a‘crime’. The students were from Year 10 and the Year 9 accelerated learningprogram. Students from the school also spent time studying at VU’s Newportand Sunshine campuses.

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HISTORYFounded in 1916 as Footscray Institute of Technology and established as VictoriaUniversity in 1990.

CAMPUSESCity FlindersCity KingCity South MelbourneFootscray NicholsonFootscray ParkMeltonNewportSt AlbansSunburySunshineWerribee

FACULTIESArtsBusiness and LawHuman DevelopmentScience, Engineering and Technology

TAFE SCHOOLSBusiness, Hospitality and Personal ServicesHuman Services, Science and TechnologyFurther Education, Arts and Employment ServicesEngineering, Construction and Industrial Skills

AFFILIATIONSAustin Research InstituteCommunications Law CentreMelba Memorial Conservatorium of MusicMalthouse Theatre

STUDENT POPULATIONCurrent population more than 52,000Onshore internationalapproximately 4000Offshore internationalmore than 4500Postgraduatemore than 5600

GENERAL ENQUIRIESPHONE: (03) 9919 4000

COURSE INFORMATIONCentre for Commencing StudentsPHONE: (03) 9919 4110EMAIL: [email protected]

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT ENQUIRIESInternational BranchPHONE: 61 3 9919 1164EMAIL: [email protected]

POSTAL ADDRESSVictoria University of TechnologyPO Box 14428Melbourne VIC 8001

WEBwww.vu.edu.au

VUFACTSA new rotunda built by Victoria UniversityNewport Campus pre-apprentices hasbrought great joy to the clients and staff ofMelbourne’s Araluen Centre, a vocationaltraining centre for handicapped adults.

The centre had been planning to buildthe rotunda for several years but could notafford the labour. When Victoria Universityoffered to build the rotunda at cost, thecentre welcomed the offer with open arms.

After two weeks of pre-fabricating thematerials at Newport Campus, teachersPaul Nancarrow and Gary Smithett and adozen Building and Construction pre-apprenticeship students headed to Araluenand got to work making a dream come true.After three weeks, the work was done.

“It is a constant financial struggle toprovide our disabled clients with some ofthe extras that add quality to life and toooften are taken for granted,” said Araluen’sbusiness and finance manager Jeff Tallon.“The magnificent rotunda now has pride ofplace on our property.”

On a sunny Melbourne winter’s day a group of fiveVietnamese women picked and tasted the yellow fruitfrom a Kangaroo Apple bush. A larger group ofIndians and Sri Lankans examined a young nativegrass called black anther flax lily, a plant that has edible blue berries. Meanwhile Sudanese toddlersclimbed out of their strollers and wandered about the plant nursery.

Iramoo – the sustainable living precinct atVictoria University’s St Albans Campus that includesa grassland wildlife reserve – once again lived up toits name. One of the meanings of the Kulin Aboriginal

word iramoo is ‘a meeting place between tribes’.Iramoo’s community sustainability officer Craig

Wallace was hosting a group of fifty local residents originally from such countries as Vietnam, Sudan,Syria, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India. The visit waspart of a tour of several local environmental sitesorganised by the City of Brimbank and the MigrantResource Centre North West.

Through four interpreters Craig explained thephilosophy of conservation and sustainability behindIramoo. “This is a community space – for everybody,”he said.

a dream come trueRotunda

Getting a taste of

Iramoo

Victoria University connections><

PHOTO BY Sharon Jones

PHOTO BY Sharon Walker

8 >Tourism

The Taru shopping centre was littered with discardedplastic cups, old newspapers and scraps of paper.

Nearby, the well-worn health centre awaited the day

when it would present a bright new face to the world.

The sight was a dramatic contrast to the colour and

movement of the local Duruma tribe when it performed

the traditional welcoming dance. And along the Mombassa

– Nairobi road a few hours later, the Masai of the remote

Maili Kubwa village also gave a traditional welcome.

But these were not tourists that the dancers

welcomed, although tourism was the visitors’ long-term

aim. The visiting group was on a fact-finding mission

as part of a workshop organised under the auspices of

Victoria University’s School of Hospitality, Tourism

and Marketing.

With problems like malnutrition, lack of sanitation,

bad roads, water shortages, malaria and HIV/AIDS,

virtually no electricity, three major religions and more

than 70 tribal groups, Taru and the surrounding area

could easily be labelled a ‘too hard’ basket case.

But not by World Vision Australia and a group of

Victoria University colleagues. The first step was taken

when Tim Rae, World Vision Australia’s program officer

for the Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe team of its

Development and Relief Services looked for expert advice.

“I contacted the School [of Hospitality,Tourism and

Marketing] to draw on the experiences of [Professor]

Brian King and [Associate Professor] Margaret Deery from

the Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Research,” Rae

says. “We had decided that if we were going to do it,

we wanted to do it properly.”

The plan is to introduce community-based tourism

to the Taru community. Tourism is already one of

Kenya’s biggest foreign exchange earners. However, in

contrast to market-led tourism, community-based

tourism is designed to be sensitive to the needs of the

community and enhance living standards, particularly

among the poorest and most marginal groups. The

rewards of community-based tourism can include

education and training, land reform, the empowerment

of women, health provision, the introduction of

information technology and access to credit facilities.

At Taru, one plan is a proposed elephant sanctuary

on communally owned land between the Mombassa –

Nairobi road and the internationally renowned Tsavo

East National Park. The park boundary is not fenced

here, and elephants use their migratory path every

season, as do lions, giraffes, zebra and wildebeest. Other

native animals include rhinoceros, leopard, crocodile,

waterbuck, kudu, gerenuk and Aruba Hunter’s harte-

beest. Also planned are walking tours, bird watching,

tented accommodation and a community-designed,

built and staffed wildlife viewing facility.

This is an exciting possibility, but with a downside.

Because there are no fences where Taru abuts the Tsavo

East National Park, elephants can wander without

restraint, often destroying crops and sometimes killing

people. This highlights the problem of how to balance

tourism, wildlife conservation and land use with a long-

standing conflict between the local people and wildlife.

After discussing Taru with Rae, Professor King

“They have to ask themselves ifthey actually want tourists, andif so, how many and how often.”

A community-based tourismproject in a remote part ofKenya aims to help the localtribes improve their living standards by overcoming malnutrition, water shortagesand malaria, and improving agriculture and education.GLEN DOWER reports.PHOTOS BY Thomas Bauer

TO TARUTAKING TOURISTAKING TOURIS

TO TARU

9

contacted Victoria University alumni Dr Thomas

Bauer (Master of Business in Tourism Development,

1991) of Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of

Hotel and Tourism Management, and Melphon Mayaka,

a former staff member with the School of Hospitality

and Tourism and now a lecturer at Moi University’s

School of Business and Management in Nairobi.

A tourism workshop was held in Mombassa

last May, with 40 participants including officials and

managers from Kenya’s private and government-

operated wildlife and tourism organisations, community

leaders — including the local MP, councillor and two

chiefs – and representatives of World Vision Australia,

World Vision Kenya and World Vision Tanzania.

“Our job was to advise World Vision on the pit-

falls of tourism projects, and to work with them on

creating the program,” Professor King says. “We helped

by doing presentations and facilitating workshops

… we were trying to bring to life what could be,

using examples of places that have successfully

implemented community-based tourism to show

what it can achieve.”

For World Vision Australia, a prominent non-

government organisation renowned for its work in

sponsoring children, the tourism project was a

different approach to the same goal – helping

people have a better life. Rae was impressed by the

contribution made by the energetic group of

participants from the local community.

“The workshop brought out a lot of issues for con-

sideration, including who manages the facility and

how any money should be divided,”Rae says.“The whole

idea of the workshop was to help the community

become familiar and aware, and there were lively

discussions about the challenges of developing local

tourism while dealing with potential problems. A very

sensitive matter is the lack of clarity about land

ownership, and there are concerns about developers

and outside entrepreneurs coming in to find an

opportunity to take land and gain the greatest benefits.

“The World Vision approach is that we work in a

community for 15 years. We were only in the community

for two or three days, so we only got a postcard

snapshot of what is there. So far only 15 or 20 people

are involved from a community of several thousand,

so at this stage we are still at ground zero.”

The key stakeholders are committed – the

government officials, the wildlife and tourism man-

agers, the community leaders and the overseas rep-

resentatives. The scheme is in the hands of the com-

munity, being developed with the guidance and sup-

port of World Vision in Kenya, Tanzania and

Australia, and Moi University. Mayaka and his

colleagues at Moi University will undertake project-

based research to make a comprehensive audit of

Taru’s resources and potential.

Victoria University would remain involved,

Professor King says, noting the local community’s

increasing aptitude. “The decision makers at the

workshop were almost exclusively Kenyans – not a

bunch of expats,” he says. “And there are still some

big questions to be asked.

“They have to ask themselves if they actually

want tourists, and if so, how many and how often.

And what sort of knowledge do they need to have to

be able to participate in tourism. And what help, such

as financial aid, is needed to achieve self-sufficiency.

Then there could be disagreement about how the

community should present itself to visitors.”

He says getting the locals totally involved creates

a sense of pride and ownership of the project.

“Which means equally sharing the problems and

costs as well as the benefits, which affects the way

the enterprise is handled. Happy people will create

a happy tourism experience.

“The Taru project should be seen as part of a

wider development scheme. Using an integrated

approach means other activities like agriculture are

incorporated into the project, and then you have a

multiplier effect.”

At the community or village level, tourism-

related industries can generate income and create

jobs for the unemployed and under-employed, for

people with limited skills or little education, and

for the entrepreneurial.

One of World Vision’s tasks is to provide an

infrastructure to ensure an even spread of opportunities,

as well as continuing in its role of supervision and

capacity-building using Kenya-based resources as

much as possible.

“But it’s not just about elephants and a wildlife

sanctuary,” Professor King says. “We also want to

raise the awareness of local culture and history –

among others, the Duruma, Wariangulu and Masai

tribes – and their beliefs, their customs and crafts.”

ISM ISM


10 >LawVictoria University connections><

Ann has a significant intellectual disability that makeslearning difficult, and she cannot read. A friend told

her she should get a pre-paid mobile phone, but she

ended up coming out of a mobile phone retailer

having signed up to a two-year plan. Ann had

thought the phone was free and she is now several

thousand dollars in debt. Her only income is a

disability support pension. Now she is getting calls

and letters from both the telephone company and a

debt collection agency.

Dr Chris Atmore of the Communications Law

Centre – a Victoria University affiliate – has discovered

many stories like Ann’s. As part of its long-term

research into telecommunications contracts, the centre

has been documenting problems faced by mobile

phone buyers who have impaired judgement due to

an intellectual disability, mental illness, acquired

brain injury, dementia or illness.

In short, those consumers whose understanding

of something as convoluted as a mobile phone sales

contract would be extremely limited.

While Atmore’s report describes approximately

30 incidents, she believes this is only the tip of the

iceberg. “I came across two organisations that

together received reports of just over 100 incidents

per year in Victoria alone,” she said from her

Melbourne office. “I think that number is probably a

gross underestimation of the problem.”

Of the seven biggest telecommunication providers

three refused to co-operate. However, Telstra, Optus,

AAPT and Virgin were helpful. “They abide by

standard law and the industry’s code of conduct,”

she says. “They are also part of the telecommunication

industry ombudsman’s process of addressing

complaints from especially vulnerable consumers

like those with judgement-impaired conditions.”

Atmore points out that telecommunications

companies tend not to have detailed policy in relation

to disputes that arise from experiences like Ann’s.

“Rather, disputes are handled on a case-by-case

basis,” she says. “To some extent the consumer is then

dependent on the individual company’s commitment

and awareness of disability and hardship issues, and

even the goodwill of the particular staff member.”

“Mobile phone contractsoffer a form of unregulatedcredit that would be unheardof in the banking industry.”

Among Atmore’s case studies are instances of

consumers whose use of a mobile phone has become

addictive or obsessive-compulsive. “Some people

like to use the 1900 premium services quite a lot:

calling up horoscopes and chat lines and psychics,”

she says. “The sky’s the limit in terms of how much

you can end up spending on these. Often the telcos

[telecommunication providers] will ask a debt col-

lection agency to try to collect the debt. Debt collec-

tors vary a lot and some are dodgy.They are not usu-

ally negotiators. They’ve been a general consumer

problem for quite a while.”

Atmore says many of the issues she has come

across are simply more extreme instances of problems

facing all consumers in the telecommunications

field. “For example, consumers often find themselves

in serious debt because mobile phone contracts

offer a form of unregulated credit that would be

unheard of in the banking industry.” She says one of

the biggest dilemmas is the right of everyone to pur-

chase a service, and the need to protect vulnerable

people from exploitation. “For some people with a

judgment-related disability it is perfectly appropri-

ate to have a telephone contract, and increasingly,

mobile phones are becoming perceived as an essen-

tial part of daily life.”

The report, completed in August, makes

recommendations to the State Government for

legislative changes and to the telecommunications

industry for changes to policy.

The Communications Law Centre is a non-

profit public interest body, specialising in media,

communications and online law and policy.

It has offices in both Melbourne and Sydney

and is affiliated also with the University of New

South Wales.

The Communications Law Centre has publishedseveral papers on telecommunications contracts in recent years. Its recent audit of mobile phonecontracts commissioned by Consumer AffairsVictoria criticised the industry for widespread unfairness in contract terms. It revealed wide-spread breaches of the Fair Trading Act by bothmajor and smaller providers in all of their contracts.

Common unfair terms in the contracts included hidden costs, unreasonable consumer obligations,excessive rights for the provider at the expense of the consumer, and terms that were unclear andin too small type.

“We found examples where the customer wasexpected to pay extra fees to unlock a phone, or pay for a text message regardless of whether it got to its destination, or pay for malfunction ofequipment,” says Elizabeth Beal, director of theMelbourne office of the CLC. She says it is now up to Consumer Affairs whether prosecutions willresult from the audit.

WHEN TALK IS NOT CHEAPWhat protection is there for vulnerable consumers when they buy mobile phones? VIN MASKELL reports.

PHOTOS BY Brett Kiteley

>Psychology 11Victoria University connections><

2003 was a good year for breastfeeding publicity inMelbourne. State MP Kirsty Marshall fed her new baby inParliament and was asked to leave. Media personality KateLangbroek fed her newborn on the live television show, ‘ThePanel’ and The Herald Sun ran a poll that found most peoplesupported banning breastfeeding in the workplace.

Meanwhile, second-year Victoria University psycholo-gy students were deciding on qualitative research projectsfor their social research methods subject. Lecturer WendySaunders urged them to consider taking on something topical – even controversial.

“We just looked at each other and said ‘breastfeeding!’”say students Deborah Goralski, Natalie Stead andCatherine Clarke. Male colleagues Ben Jackson and SpiroGinakis soon joined the group.

After extensive reading of research literature, thegroup of five decided to investigate a rarely explored area:male attitudes to breastfeeding. Each researcher inter-viewed four men. They audiotaped the interviews, tran-scribed them and coded the responses. The twenty mencame from the northern and western suburbs of Melbourne,ranged in age between 25 and 52 and had diverse ethnicbackgrounds. All were employed and their jobs ranged fromthe trades to the professions.

Four major themes seemed to shape the men’s perceptions of breastfeeding in public: social discomfort;confusion about the multiple roles of the breast; experience oftheir own children being breastfed; and the social setting ofthe breastfeeding. Greatest discomfort was reported whenthe breastfeeder was either a work colleague or a mate’s wife.

In the words of the report: “Most men were in favourof breastfeeding, but made reference to the conflictbetween the feeding breast and the sexual breast … [the]thought that breastfeeding is natural and is a source ofnutrition for the infant clashed with their sensual urges,resulting in a degree of inner conflict and social discomfort.”

One interviewee described it this way:“Well, there is a breast for them [men] to see isn’t

there, and I think nearly all men like looking at breasts. ButI think most of us realize that while a woman is breastfeed-ing, the function of the breast is totally different.”

Their research yielded some surprises. “It was difficultfor them,” says Goralski. “They had thought about breast-feeding but had never expressed their thoughts. I was concerned about me, as a woman, interviewing men aboutsuch a sensitive topic. But I got some very open and honest answers. I was surprised at the strength of men’sconfusion about the different roles of the breast. I must be a bit naïve [she laughs] but I didn’t realize how much men focused on the breast.”

Ginakis says that breastfeeding is not a thing a manwould talk about with his mates. “It’s a very minor part of aman’s world,” he says. “They think about breasts, but notabout breastfeeding. They were very conscious of the factthat we were taping the interviews. The men were a lot morefrank after the tape was switched off. There’s such moralconfusion about the breast in western society. And men arealso dealing with shame – wondering, ‘Should I feel this orshouldn’t I?’ What’s normal is a big thing for men.”Discretion about breastfeeding is seen as very important.

But this is a two-edged sword, says Goralski. “Invisibility isseen as something to aspire to, and it’s particularly important to acquire the skill of feeding without showing thenipple,” she says. “But this actually adds to the problem.Social discomfort emerged as a major theme, and many ofthe men appeared to place the responsibility of reducingthis discomfort on to the mother.”

One interviewee said: “I’m always very pleased withthe way my wife does it. She does it in such a discreet fashion.In fact, most people passing close by would have no idea ofwhat’s going on.” One of the students, Natalie Stead, foundout she was pregnant the day the project was handed in. “Iwas surprised that a couple of my participants said a blanketand emphatic ‘No!” when I asked them if they thoughtwomen should be allowed to breastfeed in public,” she says.“And one of my male friends said, ‘If you breastfeed in frontof me, Nat, I’ll tell you to put it away!’”

Last June the students received the Faculty of ArtsSchool of Psychology Special Achievement Award for their project. And peer review journals have expressed interest in publishing their results. “It’s most unusual for thiskind of interest to be shown in undergraduate research,”says Saunders.

Greatest discomfort wasreported when the breast-feeder was either a work

colleague or a mate’s wife.

Women breastfeeding in public is as controversial todayas it ever was. CLARE BOYD-MACRAE looks at newresearch that examines male attitudes on the issue.

EXPOSING MOTHERS’ BREASTSPHOTO BY Dez Murad

12 >Building and Construction

Students took on the challenge of constructinga chair that was not to look like a chair.

“The key word is inspiration — whetherdone through education or othermeans, it is the only route to change.”

bringing formto the humble chair

The Herald & Weekly Times Photographic Collection

Marc Krusin


>In Italy it starts with the patterns in your first cappuccino of the day. It is an innate sense of beauty and, by association, a sense of design.

It is design awareness, or ‘design thinking’, and according to furniture

designer Marc Krusin it is a mindset that separates the artisans of

Europe from their Australian contemporaries.

“Attitudes are very different in Australia,” Krusin says. “It’s just not

part of the general — and I stress the word ‘general’— culture. But this

doesn’t mean that nobody knows what beauty is, and in fact there are

plenty of young Australians who live for it.”

Krusin, 31, held a series of intensive workshops at Victoria University’s

Newport Campus in May. With Gary Frencham, a furniture designer/

builder and architect from Geelong, he worked with groups of teachers,

furniture design students and apprentice carpenters, joiners and cabinet-

makers. Krusin is an honours graduate in furniture design from Leeds

Metropolitan University, and came to Melbourne on a fellowship awarded

by VU and the International Specialised Skills (ISS) Institute.

In Europe, prestigious Italian companies like Bosa ceramiche,

Fontana Arte, Pallucco, Caop d’Opera,Viccarbe and Saporiti seek his talent

and experience. In Australia, Krusin sees a country with excellent raw

materials and young designers with plenty of potential and enthusiasm,but

instead of a coherent ‘design-and-manufacture’ furniture industry, there

are two distinct entities of furniture and design.

Attitudes must change, he says, or Australia will languish in the

distant background of design.“What is important is to inspire and motivate

people through awareness, and make available the knowledge of other

points of view. I noticed while I was at Victoria University that the

presence of a designer from Italy (himself) managed to inspire many

people who had literally no idea of what design thinking was.” He says

increasing awareness and disseminating various points of view are pri-

mary objectives of the ISS Institute.

The ISS Institute is an independent government body created in 1990.

Through grants and fellowships, it encourages creative and innovative ways

of thinking and producing for both the domestic and overseas marketplace.

Krusin is adamant that only inspiration can bring about an attitude

change where ‘design thinking’ becomes an integral part of the furniture

creation process. “At Victoria University, I did not see that such a change

would have been likely on its own,” he says.“Everyone needs inspiration, and

I believe that some, by the end of the workshop, had undergone this change.

“The key word is inspiration — whether done through education or

other means, it is the only route to change. It must be taken to all

levels, from teachers to students to industry to practising designers.”

Meanwhile, at Newport Campus, the wheels of change are turning

as they have for many years, according to Alan Hill, head of TAFE’s

Department of Building and Construction. Recalling the workshop,Hill says

there was no problem at all with the students’ technical skills. “And they

were very good when introduced to the design concepts,” he says. “We

hope this flexibility carries through to the workplace.”

Under the auspices of Marc Krusin and Gary Frencham (also an ISS

fellowship holder), students took on the challenge of constructing a chair

that was not to look like a chair. Even the name was changed — it was

now a ‘sitting object’.

It was a hands-on project encompassing design, innovation, construc-

tion techniques and materials. Using thumbnails, roughs and working

drawings, the apprentices and design students followed the process from

developing a concept to creating a prototype suitable for manufacture.

Hill plans to see this flow from concept and design to prototype and

manufacture adopted in the Department of Building and Construction.

“Our intention is to embrace design, production and marketing as a

seamless process,” he says. “Unlike Scandinavia, where manufacturers

and designers work as a team, there have been too many cases in

Australia where manufacturing and design have not worked together.”

He says when design principles are taken seriously, they are even

applied to transport and storage. As an example, he cites Ikea’s flat-stack

products. “They stack nicely in boxes, and then the boxes stack in con-

tainers for export. And the Asian countries often export their furniture

in kit form for the mass market.

“Australia has always made good quality, competitive furniture. We

have the raw materials and the skills, but the problems come from our

high production costs. About 60 per cent of Australian furniture is

imported, and that figure is increasing.”

Hill has no doubts about his department’s ability to train makers

of world-class furniture.

What makes the department — and VU TAFE — stand out? “The

teachers, and the way TAFE works with industry to deliver in a flexible

manner,”he says.“We train on-site, and with course competencies we work

out what areas employers can cover and what areas TAFE can cover.

“But whether you’re on-site or in the classroom, the teacher has to

be able to get the best out of students. And most importantly, a teacher

must have the ability to impart knowledge.”

Attitudes must change or Australia will languishin the distant background of design.

Victoria University’s Department of Building and Construction offers apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship training in carpentry,cabinet making, boat building, bricklaying and joinery. There arealso diplomas in Building, Building Design and Drafting, BuiltEnvironment and Building Surveying.

Building B (the aptly-named ‘Building Barn’) of the Newport Campusis a hangar-sized structure that shelters half a dozen timber housesranging in size from 5 to 19 squares. In an adjacent space duringsecond semester, there were more than 20 boats under construction– a ski boat, a speedboat, dinghies, kayaks and canoes.

Milan-based furniture designer Marc Krusin believes there is a lack of coherence in the design and manufacture of furniture in Australia. He recently held workshops at Victoria University to address the issue.GLEN DOWER reports.

>PHOTOS BY Maurice Grant-Drew

14 >Psychology

Lower-pitched signals weresignificantly more successfulthan the high-pitched signalsof Australian smoke detectorsfound in homes.

Most people know that smoking in bed is a fire hazard. But notmany know that having a few beers or glasses of wine beforebed can increase their risk of becoming a fire fatality – even witha smoke alarm in the house. NIKI KOULOURIS reports.

Danger, danger there is a fire! Get up now! You must get up and investigate, there is afire! Get up now! … Danger, danger there is a fire! Get up now! You must get up and investigate, there is afire! Get up now! … When I first hear a woman’s voice reiterating this urgent message, the hairs

on the back of my neck rise. What I find even more disturbing is that a young

man is soundly sleeping nearby, despite the fact that her cry is coming from

speakers just a metre away from his head.

Danger, danger there is a fire! Get up now! … The warning, which started at a whisper, or at 35 decibels, is getting uncom-

fortably loud for research assistant Michelle Barnett and myself. We are in

the dining room of a suburban home, separated from the young man’s bed-

room by a hallway and two sets of closed doors. He is still fast asleep.

Danger, danger there is a fire! Get up now! … It is the early hours of the morning and I am observing research being

undertaken by Victoria University that is examining how alcohol affects

one’s ability to wake up to alarms. A world first, the research is being carried

out by PhD candidate Michelle Ball, who is working under the supervision of

Professor Dorothy Bruck, head of the University’s School of Psychology.


Does the Australian public need to be warned that the type of firealarms they have at home could be designed to be more effective?

It seems an eternity before Barnett – who is monitoring the young man’s

brainwaves on a laptop for changes in his sleep patterns – tells me that he has

woken up. It has taken the young volunteer, Thomas, a full nine minutes to

wake. He ‘reacts’ by pressing a button on his bedside table three times.

During the last three minutes of his sleep, the warning was at 95 decibels,

a noise level that by occupational health and safety standards would require

the wearing of ear protection. Another unsettling fact was that Thomas had

only had a few standard drinks before he went to bed. His blood-alcohol con-

centration (BAC) was only .04.

Thomas soon goes back to sleep and Barnett will wait until he is at stage four

of sleep – the deepest state – signified by long, ‘ropey’ green waves on the laptop

screen. Before midnight, Barnett had spent 45 minutes wiring Thomas to the

Electroencephalogram on her laptop by placing electrodes on his scalp and head.

“Thomas says he’s a fairly deep sleeper, but he is not as deep as some of

the others in the trial,” says Barnett, as she watches the tight green waves on

her computer become looser and looser, indicating that Thomas is once again

sinking into deep sleep. One of the volunteers in the trial slept through 95 decibels.

Barnett, who is studying a Master of Psychology in Clinical

Neuropsychology, will stay up in her dimly lit Keilor Downs home to repeat the

exercise two more times during the night. Volunteers are tested on three sep-

arate occasions – first with no alcohol in their systems, then with a BAC of

approximately .05, and then with a BAC of about .08.

Ball and Professor Bruck have been conducting the sleep trials since the

beginning of the year. They were also keen to find out whether deep sleeping

young adults under the influence of alcohol would wake to three different alarm

signals, including the shrill, high-pitched sound of the smoke alarms in most

Australian homes. As well as the lower-pitched female actor’s voice, they also

tested a low frequency sound – not unlike the sound of a truck in reverse gear.

This sound is now the standard smoke alarm signal across North America.

The researchers found that alcohol had an effect on the amount of time it

took volunteers to wake up in response to all three alarm sounds. Even low to

moderate levels of alcohol could seriously affect a person’s ability to respond.

“The biggest jump in the time it takes to respond to the alarms is between

being sober and .05,” Ball says. “The results so far also show that the more the

young people had to drink the longer it took them to respond to the alarms.”

But perhaps the most important finding was that the lower-pitched signals

were significantly more successful than the high-pitched signals of Australian

smoke detectors found in homes. Professor Bruck has had similar findings in

her trials with children aged six to ten – high frequency signals were also less

effective in waking them.

“What we think is an urgent sound when we are awake is different when we

are asleep,” Ball says. “When we are asleep our brains monitor the environment

for a range of sounds close to human pitch. That is why we suspect the T3

[low-pitched, beeping signal] and human voice signals have been more

successful in our trials so far.”

Ball and Professor Bruck have been working closely with Victoria

University’s Centre for Environmental Safety and Risk Engineering (CESARE),

a world leader in developing a comprehensive risk model to determine the

probability of risk in fire under a wide variety of residential circumstances.

CESARE director, Professor Ian Thomas, says the centre has been involved in

Professor Bruck and Ball’s research because it recognises that the conven-

tional wisdom of a few years ago may not be correct.

Professor Thomas was part of a Victoria University team, which included

Ball and Professor Bruck, that presented six papers at the ‘Third International

Symposium on Human Behaviour in Fire’ in Belfast last September.

“It is well understood by the engineering and fire safety community that quite

a few people who die in fires are alcohol affected,”Thomas says.“The longer it takes

for a person to respond to a fire or a smoke alarm, the more likely that the fire will

grow and the person will be affected by the smoke and/or heat from the fire.”

So what are the implications of Ball and Professor Bruck’s preliminary

findings? Does the Australian public need to be warned that the type of fire alarms

they have at home could be designed to be more effective? According to Ball,

more work needs to be done. “First our results need to be replicated,” she says.

“We in Australia need to look closely at the type of [smoke alarm] signal we are

selling, pending the conclusion of our ongoing research. In the Australian

standards for smoke alarms, no requirements are laid down regarding pitch,

just volume. But our findings so far need to be investigated further.”

And do we need to be warned about the effects of even one alcoholic drink

on our ability to wake up in response to a signal during the night? “It is of vital

importance that the general public be provided with this information in the

hope that awareness will lower the number of alcohol-implicated fire fatalities,”

Ball says.

PHOTOS BY Warrick Attwood

16 >Foundation StudiesVictoria University connections><

There aren’t many tertiary courses that promise ahelicopter ride over the Yarra River,milking a cow and

a swim with sharks at the Melbourne Aquarium.

Not to mention a row on the river at Studley Park, a

plane ride to country Victoria, zipping to the top of

the towering Rialto building in Melbourne’s CBD

and conducting colourful experiments with primary

school students. But it’s all par for the course in a

unique Victoria University program.

Victoria University is known for its commitment

to disadvantaged students, and getting into tertiary

education can be pretty daunting if you’ve been out

of the system for a while.This is where Foundation

Studies comes in. It’s an alternative, one-year, HECS

exempt pathway for students who are mature age or

don’t have the right VCE score to enter the University’s

Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology (SET).

“The idea of Foundation Studies is to ‘learn how

to learn’,” explains Nick Athanasiou, the program’s

developer and co-ordinator.“Although exams have their

role in this program, we are more concerned with

teaching students a learning process – how to research,

how to ask questions and how to seek answers.”

Students do three or four subjects over 12

months, and if they pass they get automatic entry

into the SET course of their choice. If they are doing

particularly well, they can get into a mainstream

course before their year is up, or get exemptions

once they start.

All students spend two hours a week for five

weeks visiting primary schools where they intro-

duce kids to the delights of hands-on science. “It’s

like a science show, but we keep it as entertaining

as we can, doing things like making gases change

colour,” says student Scott Nicholson.

“We do things like cooking pancakes to explain heat capacity. It’s a great way to learn chemistry, and you getpancakes out of it!”Foundation Studies began with 65 students in

2002, and has already doubled its numbers. It is

unique in that the majority are local students,

whereas equivalent courses at other universities

have primarily fee-paying overseas students.

The success of the program can be measured

in all sorts of ways. Two students received a Dean’s

scholarship this year. There is a very low drop-out

rate. And the ‘customers’ appear more than satisfied.

“I always said I’d go back and do my degree,

but kept putting it off,” says Scott, originally from

the UK, who had been working in hospitality for

ten years. “Nick really puts his heart and soul into

it. We do things like cooking pancakes to explain

heat capacity. It’s a great way to learn chemistry,

and you get pancakes out of it!”

Scott has done so well that he is already

studying some first-year subjects. “I went into it not

knowing if I could go back into the education system,

but it’s been fantastic,” he says.

Stuart Balsillie, 32, is a Foundation Studies

graduate who worked as a mechanic in the army

for many years and then restored pianos for a living.

His other passion in life is racing car engineering,

and he dreams of building, designing and being

part of a motor racing team.

Students raced aroundMelbourne with nothing but aMET ticket, finding clues thatled them on to the next one.Stuart is now studying first-year mechanical

engineering, having excelled in Foundation Studies

and consequently been fast-tracked into his new

course. He says Foundation Studies has a different

style of teaching. “It’s a bit more laid back, but

actually you could learn more,” he says. “It’s been

excellent. It really helped someone like myself

who’d never done physics, chemistry or maths.”

So where do the helicopter ride, cows and

sharks fit in? It was all part of the great Reference

Race day in September, where students raced

around Melbourne with nothing but a Met ticket,

finding clues that led them on to the next one.

It finished at the Melbourne Aquarium. The

students said it was both fantastic and exhaust-

ing. Highlights were definitely the helicopter ride

and the flight in a Cessna between Melbourne and

Geelong, says Nick. “The chopper ride was great

because the students had no idea about it until

they saw it landing on the University oval.”

Despite the success of the race, Nick isn’t

resting on his laurels. “We want this to be a really

different kind of course next year,” he says. “I think

I’ll redesign it. We want it to be more adventurous.”

An innovative course is offeringstudents an alternative entry to tertiary studies. CLARE BOYD-MACRAE reports.

FIRMFOUNDATIONSFOR A FUTUREIN SCIENCE

>

Nick Athanasiou demonstrates the magic of science. PHOTO BY Maurice Grant-Drew

>

Looking for the next Reference Race clue at Federation Square. PHOTO BY Sharon Walker

>

Students take to the skies as part of the Reference Race. PHOTO BY Maurice Grant-Drew

>

It was all smiles at the National Gallery of Victoria when the next cluewas uncovered. PHOTO BY Sharon Walker

>Business Administration 17Victoria University connections><

Catherine Ng is the City of Melbourne’s first Chinesefemale councillor. But it’s not a fact she likes to

highlight. “I see myself as representing everyone,”

says Catherine, Victoria University’s 1999 Master of

Business Administration (MBA) Student of the Year,

and at forty years of age, one of the Council’s

youngest members.

She says, for her, being a councillor is like

another person’s hobby. “Someone else might have a

full-time job and might also be a member of a football

club. But instead of becoming a member of the football

club, I became a member of the Council.”

Elected last July, Catherine’s ‘hobby’ includes

being chair of Council’s Planning, Development and

Services Committee, and Deputy Chair of City

Marketing, Business Development and Major Events.

Her full-time job is general manager of Angliss

Consulting, a wholly-owned subsidiary of William

Angliss Institute of TAFE, where she oversees the

subsidiary’s three divisions: Trading Operations;

Multimedia; and International Projects in China.

Catherine is the person for whom the palm

pilot was invented. Regarding her council work, I

ask what a typical week might hold for her. In reply

she fishes in her handbag and retrieves a palm

pilot, lays it on the table and begins to tap its LED

screen with a little black plastic pencil.

I look across the table and see that her council

work occupies mainly breakfast and evening

meetings (lunchtimes are usually out – I’m a lucky

exception). She says her work is often not time critical,

so she can schedule meetings with ratepayers and

group leaders well in advance, and within a sched-

ule already packed with the meetings and rigours of

her full-time management job.

“I would call myself a new breed of councillor,”

she says, adding that she uses email and phone

more than other councillors, many of whom are

retirees. “I was told I broke the record when I sent

118 emails one weekend … and my mobile phone

bill is really high,” she laughs. She says many

people in her constituency work full time so they

appreciate having morning or evening meetings and

dealing with issues via email or phone.

Her council work often centres on issues like

busking, planning permits, potholes in the street,

launching events and discussions with key city stake-

holders. She has particular interests in promoting

tourism, expanding the city’s open spaces and

assisting small business, but lately, rubbish

collection has been her focus. Where suburban people

are usually concerned about rubbish collection

when the collectors don’t arrive, those living in the

city have to deal with rubbish trucks visiting sever-

al times, every day.

“We have changed the local law so that we have

the power to regulate the time of rubbish collection

so people can have a good night’s sleep,” she says.

“We have thirteen waste management companies, so

in the same street rubbish can be collected thirteen

times throughout the night.” She says rubbish is

now not collected between 11pm and 6am in some

sensitive areas. “This is one of the significant

achievements I have made to enhance the liveability

of the city.”

While she loves her council work, she carefully

chooses the issues with which she becomes

involved. “I choose those where I feel I can make a

difference,” she says, adding that her MBA in marketing

helped her gain skills such as being able to identify

issues, work with people, solve problems and effectively

acquire knowledge.

“I know the city, I love the city and I think there

are a lot of things that need to be done. If you are clever

you can juggle the responsibilities – there’s nothing

stopping younger people from being councillors.”

Since her MBA, Catherine has studied what she

calls the softer side of business – people skills and

leadership. “It adds another dimension to your

work,” she says. “You need more than the technical

know-how of marketing.”

She says despite her packed schedule she still

has time to have friends over for dinner. “I even make

my own jam.” But she says she couldn’t do everything

she does without her supportive husband. They find

time to see movies, wander around bookshops and have

meals together in the city. “We don’t have children, so

I can do my council work and my job because I don’t

have the commitments other people have.”

Catherine’s surname, ‘Ng’, is very common,

though hers originates from Hong Kong,where she was

born, not Vietnam where the name originates.

Despite the surname’s regular use in Melbourne,

Catherine grew tired of people trying to add a vowel to

it and decided to change the pronunciation to ‘en gee’.

“They often said ing or ung. I would say

Catherine nnn and they would say, Catherine what?

And then when I changed it to en gee, people would

still say, en gee eee?”

No matter how you pronounce it, the name

Catherine Ng is likely to figure prominently in

Melbourne’s public life for many years to come.

It all seems a long way from being an artist, an

ambition Catherine once had. “I’d like to go back to

painting,” she says. “Maybe it’s something you do

when you retire.”

THE CITYIN THEPALM OFHER HAND

Hong Kong-born Catherine Ngis one of the City of Melbourne’s youngest councillors. She spoke to PAUL MITCHELL about life in local governmentat the hub of Australia’s second largest city.

“I know the city, I love the city,and I think there are a lot of

things that need to be done.”

PHOTO BY Ross Bird

18 >Sports Administration

There are ghosts on Jackson’s Hill. And they’re not just from the cemetery at its edge.The nineteenth century buildings that look over

the township of Sunbury, northwest of Melbourne are as lovely

as any you’ll find in Australia, but their history is disturbing.

Their first incarnation was as the Sunbury Industrial School.

Built between 1864 and 1866, it was a posse of bleak bluestone

buildings that were home for hundreds of destitute children.

Conditions were appalling by today’s standards. Children were

given rancid food, little water, no bedding and many went blind

from untreated opthalmia. One in ten children died during the first

year – the home was nicknamed the ‘Sunbury slaughterhouse’.

Their second incarnation was as the spookily named Sunbury

Lunatic Asylum. Belying their grim function, the solid redbrick

buildings built between 1891 and 1914 that housed the inmates

are symmetrical and grand. But the cells and dormitories are grim

reminders of what went on within the walls. The grounds were

designed by Hugh Linaker, a renowned pioneering landscape

designer, and were maintained by a dozen gardeners. Today, the

grounds are still grassy and studded with exotic mature trees.

Over the years, the Lunatic Asylum was renamed as a psy-

chiatric hospital and then as a mental hospital. At its peak in

1914 there were 1000 patients.The site’s third incarnation, which

lasted from 1968–92, was as the Caloola Training Centre for the

intellectually disabled. Knowing the history of Jackson’s Hill, it

is not surprising that there have been many ‘sightings’ of ghosts

in and around the buildings.

The sobering history of Jackson’s Hill makes the transformation

that has occurred in the last decade even more remarkable. The

site’s fourth incarnation is as Victoria University’s Sunbury Campus.

The Victorian Government transferred Caloola to Victoria

University in January 1994, and it became the University’s fifth

campus (today there are eleven). The University undertook to

restore Sunbury to its grand original style – tacked-on sixties

makeovers have been torn down and the colours of the interior

were painstakingly researched before the walls were repainted

in authentic colours of the period. Today, the Queen Anne and

Edwardian style pavilion buildings and surrounding grounds

are heritage-listed by the National Trust. Lectures are held in the

old dormitories, and solitary cells – complete with a spy hole in

the door – have been transformed into staff offices.

A nineteenth century Dickensian children’s home became a grim lunatic asylumbefore being transformed into Victoria University’s heritage-listed Sunbury Campus.CLARE BOYD-MACRAE reports.

After years of darkness,the sun shines on Sunbury

Bob Stewart has been at Sunbury Campus

since day one. PHOTO BY Sharon Walker

SUN

BURY


The first TAFE and higher education courses at Sunbury Campusstarted in February 1995. One of these was the Sports

Administration degree. Bob Stewart, Caroline Symons and Rob

Hess have been there from the first week of classes. Stewart, the

founding course co-ordinator, clearly remembers those days.

“We were trying to teach classes with building going on all

around us,” he says. “Many of the early classes were held in

Building 4, which had only two small tutorial rooms. Lectures

were held in the hall. It was spacious but produced the worst

possible acoustics. However, we all saw the potential of the

Sunbury Campus. The site and the surrounding views were out-

standing and the heritage buildings had a special quality to

them, even in their half-finished state.”

Until then, Stewart had been a lecturer in sport history and

sport business at Footscray Park Campus. He could see a future in

sports administration and chose to move out to Sunbury

because it provided an enormous opportunity to create a unique

program in a field of study that was developing rapidily.

He still teaches in the course and says there have been

many changes. “The course started with fifty students but since

then has grown into a multi-program, multidisciplinary arrange-

ment that attracts students from all around Victoria,” he says.

Matthew Nicholson, current co-ordinator of the course, has

been introducing cutting-edge online learning into the program,

for which he won a Vice-Chancellor’s teaching award last year.

He describes these technological improvements as a chance to

“provide students with an enhanced learning experience and to

ameliorate some of the tyranny of distance faced by the Campus.

“Another successful aspect of the course is its practical

placement program. We used to run the final work placement in

the first semester of their final year but had to change it

because so many of the students got employment that they

weren’t completing the course,” Nicholson says. “Heaps of

students get ongoing employment from their work placement.”

One such student is Tom Petroro, who wanted to be an AFL

players’ agent since the age of 15. He went straight to university

from Year 12 and completed the double degree of Sports

Administration – Business Management at the end of 2001. He

says he did two of his three work placements at FlyingStart,

one of Australia’s leading AFL player management groups.

“The course prepared me so well for the workforce,” Petroro

says. “Especially the placement opportunities. That’s probably

the reason I did the course – for the actual field experience.” His

current position is Client Manager/Talent Manager with

FlyingStart. In this dual role he looks after major AFL players

as well as thirty younger AFL recruits, being what he calls “a

cross between a big brother and a business advisor”.

Bruce Kaider was one of the first Sports Administration

graduates, completing the course in 1997. He now works as

sponsorship manager with the winner of the 2004 AFL Grand

Final, Port Adelaide Football Club.

Another successful alumnus who graduated in 2001,

Andrew Holmes, is race day co-ordinator for the Melbourne

Racing Club at Caulfield Racecourse and works as a consultant

at Flemington Racecourse.

Sunbury Campus continues to develop and grow. Today it

also offers degrees in business, education and music, and TAFE

qualifications in music, hospitality, nursing and theatre. The

new Melba Music School, in the old Sunbury Women’s Refractory

Ward, and improved on-campus student accommodation in

Sunbury Hall will be ready in early 2005.All developments are care-

fully planned in accordance with the heritage overlay of the area.

Sometimes known as the jewel in the Victoria University

crown, Sunbury Campus combines the best of the old – beauti-

ful, stately, spacious buildings – with the best of the new with

its pioneering work in online learning.

Knowing the history of Jackson’sHill, it is not surprising that there

have been many ‘sightings’ ofghosts in and around the buildings.

Next year marks the 10th anniversaryof the Campus and the University’sSports Administration degree.

Sports Administration graduate Andrew Holmesis race day co-ordinator at Caulfield Racecourseand a consultant at Flemington Racecourse.PHOTO BY Brett Kiteley

<

20 >Molecular Science

It’s not a pretty sight. Every year thousands of marine birds acrossthe world are contaminated by oil. The birds can suffer

hypothermia, dehydration, drowning and starvation. They can

also suffer poisoning and become debilitated, making them easy

prey or less likely to reproduce.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster is believed to have killed

640,000 birds. A mere 1600 were treated and cleaned with

detergents at an estimated cost of $32,000 per bird. Only 800

birds survived.

Not all spills are as devastating. In 2000, after an oil spill

off Cape Town, South Africa, 20,250 birds were treated and

18,200 later released back into the wild – a testimony to the

skills and dedication of the wildlife rescuers involved.

The traditional method of cleaning oiled birds – repeated

washing with warm water and detergents – has its drawbacks. It

requires transportation to a treatment centre and sometimes a

lengthy period of rehabilitation. The detergents themselves may

also be detrimental to the bird.

All this could change, following almost a decade of

research and development by Professor John Orbell, colleagues

and students from Victoria University’s School of Molecular

Science. Collaborating with scientists from the Phillip Island

Nature Park Research Centre, they believe the answer is in tiny

‘oil drinking’ magnetic particles, consisting of a finely powdered

form of iron that is both non-toxic and a non-irritant.

The cleansing technique involves dusting the oil-coated

feathers with the magnetic powder and then using a magnetic

probe to remove both the powder and the oil together (see

sequence of photos above).

A series of experiments – first with clusters of feathers,

then with whole bird carcasses, and with a limited number of

live birds – has the scientists on the verge of a method that

promises to remove 100 per cent of oil from a bird without

damaging the waterproof qualities of the bird’s feathers.

Recently they have been able to remove oil and other contami-

nants that had dried onto feathers. The iron powder method

looks to be a faster, safer and cheaper alternative to using deter-

gents to clean oiled birds.

“We are now in a position to approach a commercial part-

ner to create a field device for animal rescuers to use,” says

Professor Orbell from his Werribee Campus office. “Such a device

could also be adapted for household use, for cleaning clothes

and carpets for example.”

Professor Orbell explains that the field device would be

portable and manageable by a single person. It would be

capable of removing the bulk of contamination upon first

encountering the bird. “This would provide a great advantage

over detergent-based methods since the bird would not have to

remain contaminated until it arrives at a treatment facility,

often quite a distance away from remote oil spills.”

Lateral thinking by Victoria Universityscientists may lead to increasingly efficient and safer methods of treatingbirds that are victim to oil spills. VIN MASKELL reports.

magneticattraction<

Photos 1–5: an oil-polluted featherundergoes the magnetic powdercleaning process. Photo 5 showsthe cleaned feather (at right)beside a non-polluted feather.

PHOTOS BY Ross Bird

1 2 3

4

5


Professor Orbell (front left) and colleagues Ali Abdirahman,Sally Ryan, Hien Dao Van, Dr Lawrence Ngeh and AssociateProfessor Stephen Bigger (front right).

What was the impetus for a group of Victoria University chemiststo become involved in wildlife rehabilitation? Ironically, the VU

researchers were not initially looking at ways of cleaning

birds. They were thinking of how to clean large oil spills from

beaches and undulating foreshore. “It was a very ambitious

idea to cover beaches with the polyethylene-coated beads, like

snow, and then ‘harvest’ the beads and the oil magnetically,”

Professor Orbell says. “It turned out to be an example of

classic scientific research: aiming for one thing at the start

and ending up doing something else much better.”

Experiments in the mid to late 1990s using iron powder to

pick up small oil spills from a surface were dramatic. The

researchers then thought this method could help remove oil from

contaminated feathers. Further experiments showed that up to 98

per cent removal was possible for a wide range of contaminants.

The success of these experiments created considerable

interest internationally when they were published in 1999,

with enquiries from science colleagues, wildlife rescuers and

the media from as far afield as Uruguay, the Netherlands,

Germany, the United States and Britain.

The publication of recent VU research on whole bird

models (the carcasses of ducks and penguins), based on the

PhD research of Dr Lawrence Ngeh at VU, has also attracted

considerable international attention, including a recent report

in the prestigious science journal Nature.

Professor Orbell is also excited by the work of AusAID

research student, Hien Dao Van, who has demonstrated that

by careful selection of the physical characteristics of the

magnetic iron powder particles, 100 per cent removal of oil is

possible. Hien’s research has also recently demonstrated how

the magnetic particles can be employed to remove up to 98 per

cent of contamination that has dried onto feathers.

“In the past, this problem of ‘weathered’ contamination

has been particularly intractable,” Professor Orbell says.

Many birds in the wild have contamination of this type,

including the penguins Dr Peter Dann and colleagues have

treated at Phillip Island Nature Park Research Centre. Of

course, penguins are just one of many seabirds affected by oil.

“The survival of flying seabirds such as awks, cormorants and

diving petrels after contamination by oil is quite low,” Dr

Dann says. “The iron powder technique of cleaning could make

an incredible difference. This research has implications

across the world.”

Since 1999 over 700 penguins have been brought to

Phillip Island for treatment, with 95 per cent surviving. While

the centre, according to Professor Orbell, has an “extraordinary

success rate” at rehabilitating oiled wildlife using conventional

detergent cleansing methods, it sees great potential in the

VU research.

<“The iron powder technique of cleaning could make an incredible

difference. This research has implications across the world.”

Researcher Hien Dao Van holds afeather that has been cleaned severaltimes through the magnetic attractionof oil and iron powder.

A jackass penguin covered in oil from an oil spill off RobbenIsland, South Africa.PHOTO BY Martin Harvey/ANTPhoto.com

22 >MultimediaVictoria University connections><

Victoria University’s Advanced Diploma in Multimedia(Design) course at South Melbourne Campus has beenconfirmed as one of the best in the country. Two studentsand a teacher of the TAFE course, which incorporates digital video, film, photography, animation, text and sound,scooped up three prizes at this year’s prestigious ATOM(Australian Teachers of Media) Awards.

Student Ilma Jasper won the Best Multimedia Awardfor Tertiary Students for Squaring the Circle, an expositionof her family home, a farming property in southern NSW.Stephen Linquist won the Best Multimedia Learning ReferenceAward for his portrayal of postwar immigration in a piececombining oral histories and images called Our Place.

Sessional teacher Jennie Swain won the BestMultimedia Award in the General Category for her work,Underworld, an educational tool dealing with sexuality andsexual health issues for young people.

The two-year Advanced Diploma is a hands-on coursethat focuses on developing technical and creative skills. Aftercompleting the course, students can take a third-year placein the Bachelor of Arts-Multimedia and gain a university degree.

Program manager Mark O’Rourke says the emphasison practical skills means students in the program quicklygain mastery of multimedia design, allowing them to man-age and produce a major project to complete their course.

After completing his Diploma last year, Linquist, aqualified high school teacher, joined Swain as a teacher in

the course. “I certainly learnt a lot more in the two yearsdoing the course here than I did in four years crammedinto the classroom with hundreds of other teaching studentsat uni,” Linquist says. “Here at VU, we were 20 students ina class, and that provided a lot of opportunity to get hands-on advice from the teachers.”

His award-winning project was inspired by the recentimmigration debate, but takes the story 60 years back intime to reveal the oral histories of postwar migrants. “We canlearn a lot about the current debate from the experiencesof people back then,” he says.

Swain’s work deals with the complex issues and feelingsconfronted by young people when they go through pubertyand learn about their own sexuality. Underworld is basedaround a set of Raymond Chandler-inspired animatedcharacters with names like Sam Sperm and Madame Ovary,who investigate the reproductive organs. With a backgroundin musical theatre, Swain uses music to enhance the story,and each segment contains a song on a different theme.

“It’s a reality of our world that sex education is a verysensitive issue, and we tend to shy away from some of thelanguage that is important in any discussion of it,” she says.Her forensic story-line, coupled with the animated charactersand musical interludes, allows a free-flowing discussion tounfold, which includes interviews with young people. Her workwas assisted by funding from the Australian Film Commissionand is being distributed by Dataworks as an educational

resource in schools and by Family Planning Australia.Of the three awards, Jasper’s stands alone as a work

of art rather than a resource. Still images of the exterior ofher family home, a property at Thyra in the Murray regionof NSW give way to video, super 8 and other photographicimages displayed behind them with accompanying sound-tracks to reveal a multi-layered approach that evokes thefamily history of working and living on the property for morethan 60 years. The sounds of a birdsong specific to a particulartree, a creaking gate or an old tractor engine starting upadd an eerie presence to the images, many of which aredecades old. “For me there was a sense of loss, of movingon, as I haven’t lived there for some time and my family isunlikely to stay on the property much longer,” Jasper says.

Formerly a painter, Jasper worked on the project as apart-time student and now hopes to gain further recognitionas a multimedia artist. “I came into the course as a mature agestudent with an art background, having studied painting as partof a fine arts degree at RMIT,” she says. “But I didn’t have anyreal computer skills, which is what I was seeking from the course.

“It was tough as a part-time student doing the amountof work required to get through the course, but it was alsorewarding,” she says. She is investigating ways to have thework permanently stored, possibly at the Melbourne-basedAustralian Centre for the Moving Image.

The prizewinners were presented with their awardsat a ceremony in Melbourne in July.

MASTERS OFMULTIMEDIAThe ATOM Film, Television and Multimedia Awards recognise the achievementsof Australian and New Zealand professionals, educators and students. This year,Victoria University took home a swag of prizes. JIM BUCKELL reports.

Underworld is based around a set of RaymondChandler-inspired animated characters with names like Sam Sperm and Madame Ovary.

This project was inspired by the recent immigrationdebate, but takes the story 60 years back in time to reveal the oral histories of postwar migrants.

The sounds of a birdsong specific to a particulartree, a creaking gate or an old tractor engine start-ing up add an eerie presence to the images.

Underworld - Jennie Swain Our Place - Stephen Linquist Squaring the Circle - Illma Jasper

>Work Education 23Victoria University connections><

Meeting MPs, doing workshops at Parliament House,carrying out primary research, tabling reports and

working at an electoral office is all part of daily life for

parliamentary interns. This year, Victoria University

took part in the State Government program when

two Faculty of Arts students took on the internships

during first semester.

The program requires undergraduates to

undertake a significant research project under the

guidance of an MP. Isobel Keecher (above right)

worked with MLA for Melton, Don Nardella, and

Laura Thompson (above left) worked with Mary

Gillet, MLA for Tarneit in the Werribee district.

Keecher investigated the feasibility of a botanical

garden in Melton, and Thompson looked at the pos-

sibilities of increasing Victoria University’s partici-

pation in the internship program.

Thompson, 21, is doing a double degree in Arts–

Law, majoring in history and politics. Throughout

first semester she spent at least a day a week at

Gillet’s office in Werribee working on the report. She

also took part in a weekly half-day workshop at

Parliament with other interns, where they learned

about parliamentary process and report writing.

She continues to work for Gillet one day a week in an

attempt to ensure that the recommendations in her

report are carried out and that Victoria University

secures a regular place in the internship.

“I was interested in diplomacy and policy

research before,” Thompson says. “But now I have a

much better idea of what these things involve. The

experience was excellent, though stressful at times.

Now that I’ve finished I can reflect on it and see how

it improved my research skills and gave me contact

with MPs and academics I wouldn’t normally be

exposed to.”

Gillet speaks of Thompson’s inspirational

energy. “Working with constituents and colleagues

all the time, you’re at risk of becoming stale and

jaded,” Gillet says. “Having someone more than 20

years younger around gives you a new vision, new

energy and new insights into old subjects.”

Keecher, 25, is in her second year of an Arts

degree. She says she loved the community development

nature of her project. “I hadn’t considered a career in

politics,” she says. “But as I progressed, I realised I

wouldn’t mind considering it at some point because

of the experience I’ve had and the contacts I’ve made.”

Nardella has been involved with the program

for many years, and has been impatient to get Victoria

University involved. “The best things are watching

the students grow, cope and learn while they’re

with us,” Nardella says. “The research they produce

is extremely important – it’s living work, not just an

academic document.

“My view is that Victoria University is integral to

the western suburbs of Melbourne. Students here are

just as special as those going through Melbourne

and Monash [universities] and should get the same

opportunities of meeting and working with MPs

and researching important issues in our region. It’s

a matter of getting students to work in – and under-

stand – the west, to stay here and work here.”

Victoria University lecturers Dr Russell Wright,

Dr John Tully and Dr Julie Stephens were instrumental

in setting up Keecher and Thompson in the program.

INTERNS TAKEON PARLIAMENTTwo young students took on the affairs of politics when they were granted internships with two members of State Parliament. CLARE BOYD-MACRAE reports.

“Having someone more than 20 years younger around gives youa new vision, new energy and new insights into old subjects.”

PHOTO BY Sharon Walker

Marina BurneskaPHOTO BY Ross Bird

24 >Research

Like motherhood, you only get to have a working knowledge of intellectual property (IP) from experience,

although there are experts who can help you deliver

it, care for it and offer specialist advice about it, and

yet others who are happy to offer the anecdotal and

often incorrect advice of an ‘old wives’ tale’.

Are there particular issues relating to IP in

universities or in other research intensive institutions

that do not apply elsewhere? Clearly, governments

think so. Otherwise the Australian Government,

through its funding agencies, wouldn’t have intro-

duced the National Principles of IP Management for

Publicly Funded Research in 2001, the US Government

wouldn’t have introduced the Bayh-Dohl Act in

1980 and other national governments would not

have similarly implemented legislation or national

codes of practice.

A key feature of the current National Principles

is that they are not prescriptive about how univer-

sities or other research agencies will manage IP.

Rather, they are prescriptive in terms of the policies

and procedures that institutions are required to

have in place. The key issues that are included in

the National Principles are that research institutions

will have IP policies or procedures that:

> are approved by their governing body;

> support researchers to recognise when their

discoveries may have potential commercial

value, and provide a review process to identify IP

that can be protected and/or exploited;

> make clear to staff their responsibilities in relation

to IP protection and provide assistance in fulfilling

these obligations and responsibilities;

> clearly define the ownership and/or assignment of

IP rights for employees and research students;

> guide researchers in assessing the existing IP in

the field;

> provide advice on the options that are available

for commercialising IP;

> recognise the rights and needs of all stakeholders

involved in the research, including policies that will

define the way in which benefits from the develop-

ment and exploitation of the IP will be allocated;

> allow annual reporting on IP management of their

publicly funded research; and

> provide guidance in relation to potential conflicts

of interest concerning ownership, management,

protection and exploitation of IP.

A number of Australian commentators and

reports are critical of the National Principles,

suggesting they do not go far enough in protecting and

exploiting the universities’ and hence the nation’s

IP.They believe the implementation of an Australian

equivalent of the Bayh-Dohl Act is imperative.

But is the fact that IP is not appropriately

protected and exploited a consequence of the rules –

or lack thereof – or is the problem more deep-seated

in the psyche and attitudes of researchers? I would

suggest that the latter is more the case in most

Australian universities.

Why is this? Many university researchers

consider themselves the owners of IP generated

from their research, and have the right to do with it

what they will. I have participated in a meeting where

the issue was who owned the IP of a researcher’s

output, when a senior officer from an Australian

university stated: ‘It’s clear. The university owns

the IP.’ To which a senior researcher from the same

university said: ‘Not my bloody IP, you don’t!’

Even the ‘experts’ are divided on whether

universities can lay claim to the IP generated by

university staff, although such ownership can be

made a condition of employment.

From experience, I would suggest there seems

to be less dispute with researchers involved in the

‘hard sciences’ where their output is more likely to

be subject to patent protection, than there is for

researchers in the humanities and social sciences

where the majority of output is the written word

and copyright is the key IP. In my opinion, I think

universities as employers should and do have a

significant claim to the IP generated by staff,

although one can always hypothesize situations

where that may be challengeable.

Should we do anything about it? Again, I would

suggest, yes. With the strategic direction being

MANY HEATED DEBATES HAVE ERUPTED OVER THE ISSUE OF PRIVATE BENEFIT BEING GENERATED FROM PUBLIC INVESTMENT.

WO©INTELLECTUAL

PROPERTY

Dr John McDougall is director of Victoria University’s Officefor Research and Development. He offers a personal viewon the controversial topic of who should own intellectualproperty created through university research.


taken by universities and governments, there will

be increasing emphasis on universities interacting

with a wide range of partners, both to support the

research itself and/or its commercialisation. Many

of these organisations expect – not unreasonably

in my opinion – a share in the IP that is generated

from the collaboration and/or their investment. If

there is no clear path to the ownership of the IP

they will definitely not invest in any development and

many will not even become research collaborators

or linkage partners.

Unfortunately, many university external

potential partners continue to have a rapacious

attitude, demanding not only IP property rights but

also requiring draconian warranties from the

universities for that IP. The conundrum then

becomes, do we risk losing the financial support

that is crucial to support our researchers’ work by

refusing to accept what are often unconscionable

conditions, or do we just roll over and accept them?

Sadly, governments who are encouraging the

universities to collaborate with industry and

profit from our IP are the biggest offenders in

demanding biased contractual conditions.

Many researchers who feel aggrieved by

university processes of contract negotiation appear

not to understand or choose to ignore many of these

issues in their desire to obtain external funding.

However, if a university is the owner of the IP it has

an obligation to itself and to its researchers to not

just sign it away. Further, I would suggest if the

universities and their researchers cannot show

increased exploitation of IP, it is highly likely that a

Bayh-Dohl type of legislation will be implemented.

Another major reason for governments to expect

universities to undertake strong management of

their IP is the huge investment of public funds that

is poured into universities. Many commentators,

including myself, hold the opinion that universities

have an obligation to manage and nurture the output

of that investment. Many heated debates have

erupted over the issue of private benefit being

generated from public investment. It would seem

to me that neither side of the political spectrum

could support such open-ended gain.

One of the quirky issues that is peculiar to

universities is that much of the IP generated with-

in them is done so by non-employees, specifically

students. Universities cannot claim ownership of

the IP generated by its postgraduate students

unless there is a specific assignment of that IP to

the university. In cognisance of the fact that many

students are supported from grants that involve

industry partners, many universities, including

Victoria University, may require students to assign

their IP prior to commencing a project that is

subject to an external agreement. Some universities

require all their postgraduate students to assign

their IP (except thesis copyright), and that would

be administratively the simplest process.

What can we do about it? It would seem to me

that many of the problems could be resolved by

improved education and by researchers becoming

more aware of the issues of IP. To return to the

motherhood analogy, we all need to be participat-

ing in antenatal classes that are both engaging and

stimulating. I don’t think we should be encouraging

the IP equivalent of home births that would leave

too much to chance and leave researchers without

specialist support. Similarly, we need to educate

our industry partners and supporters of the needs

of universities in research and research training

and what are reasonable expectations.

And the final message? With governments and

research funding agencies and partners focussing

on the improved management and exploitation of

IP in all its forms, if universities and their

researchers and managers don’t collectively

improve the outcomes from the IP generated with-

in the universities, I think it is inevitable that we

will be required to work under more stringent

national policies that will force us all to become

more accountable in this area.

The Business Council of Australia–AVCC Report,

‘Building Effective Systems for the Commercial-

isation of University Research’, released in August

this year provides both an analysis of the current

situation and a set of guidelines to forge a way ahead.

If it is embraced by the sector it will refocus our

procedures as well as our minds on the importance

of IP, its management and exploitation.

DO WE RISK LOSING THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT BY REFUSING TO ACCEPT WHAT ARE OFTEN UNCONSCIONABLE CONDITIONS,

OR DO WE JUST ROLL OVER AND ACCEPT THEM?

WHO SHOULDOWN IT?

LY

PHOTO BY Brett Kiteley

Sadly, governments are the biggest offenders in demanding biased contractual conditions. Dr John McDougall

26 >Nursing

Midwifery training has undergone a rebirth atVictoria University at a time when midwives are expected to be in demand more and more. VIN MASKELL reports.

27

The phone call came in the middle of the night butJen Semple didn’t mind. It was something she would need toget used to, and something she would come to look forwardto. A woman she had known for two months had gone intolabour. Jen arrived to observe not just the birth but also therole of an experienced midwife. A baby boy was born atapproximately seven o’clock.

“I was so excited I just wanted to shout out the news,”recalled Jen, who had just witnessed her first birth, shortly after beginning her Bachelor of Midwifery course atVictoria University.

“I noticed that the mother, who had already had severalchildren, was very much in charge of her pregnancy and herlabour. What sticks out in my mind is how spontaneous thebirth was. The woman had not signed on to a health careprofessional – a doctor or obstetrician – to be there. Shewas more than comfortable having a midwife with her.”

This approach is at the heart of the truly innovativemidwifery course being taught at St Albans Campus. Thetrainee midwives are not nurses, as all midwives had to beuntil now. Once upon a time you became a midwife aftertraining as a nurse. But a nurse’s profession is to care forsick people and women about to give birth are usually ingood, rather than poor health. The philosophy behind thecourse is that birth is the natural act of a well woman andshould be treated as such as much as possible.

“About 75 per cent of womenin Australia have a normal

birth and that’s where midwife-led care can be provided.”

Of course sometimes there are difficulties that requiremedical assistance but according to lecturer Gina Kruger,“about 75 per cent of women in Australia have a normalbirth and that’s where midwife-led care can be provided, asrecommended by the World Health Organisation.”

Not surprisingly, this change has created its own tensionsamong some obstetricians and some midwives who came totheir profession via nursing. But while the approach may benew in Australia, it has been an established practice formany years in New Zealand, Britain and Holland. It has takeneight years for the new course to come into being, including allthe appropriate accreditations – a long labour indeed.

The Victoria University course began in 2002 and wascreated in conjunction with Australian Catholic Universityand Monash University in a partnership known as WernaNaloo, an indigenous term meaning ‘We Us Together’. Thephrase not only describes the work of the three universitiesin creating the new course but also sums up the relationshipof the new-era midwife to the mother and family.‘A midwife is not just there at the birth, but providescare, education and support during the entire childbearing

cycle. The midwife works with women, partners and families during the prenatal period, pregnancy, birth andearly parenting.’

It was words like these that inspired Jen Semple, then23, to enrol in the midwifery course. Jen married in 1999and has been keen to have a baby ever since. Shortly aftermarrying, she says she was “very clucky. I’d go to the locallibrary and take out stacks of books about pregnancy andchildbirth. Everything I read seemed to say, ‘If you’re havinga baby, you have a midwife with you, rather than a doctor’.”

Browsing through a career guide in late 2002 shecame across a description of a new midwifery course andrealised she had found her calling.

Among Jen’s thirty classmates in the inaugural groupof 2002 are a scientist, a hairdresser, an accountant, twomassage therapists, two Division 2 nurses, some small busi-ness owners and an office manager. Many of the students have children of their own.

As well as classes at St Albans Campus and clinicalplacements at hospitals, students are required to keep a notebook, recording their thoughts on what is called a ‘fol-low-through journey’ with 30 families.

“It’s part of learning about the woman in the context oftheir own life,” explains Jen. “Each woman has had some-thing different to teach me.”

From Nadene Dowsett, Jen learned that “as huge anexperience as having your first child is, it doesn’t mean thatthe woman becomes a completely different person. Nadenenever seemed to ‘lose herself’ in her pregnancy and hasn’tseemed to in parenthood. She was an intelligent personwith a variety of interests before she became pregnant andcontinues to be today.”

The mother-to-be and midwife-to-be first met at a healthcheck fifteen weeks into Nadene’s pregnancy and quicklydeveloped a rapport. They met another three times beforeNadene, ten days overdue, went into a gel-induced labour.

Jen remembers receiving a phone call from Nadene’shusband Hamish at around midnight, about two hours intoNadene’s labour. Nadene gave birth to her son Ashton atSunshine Hospital at 3.31am on 23 September 2003. Thehealthy blue-eyed boy weighed in at 3900 grams (eightpounds and nine ounces).

“I was more aware of Jen’s presence shortly after thebirth rather than at the moment of birth,” recalled Nadenefrom her Taylors Lakes home. “I had Hamish and my mumthere too. Mum was wiping my brow and talking in my ear.Hamish was at the business end of things. It was perfect.”

Jen stayed until 5am, having seen that everything wasgoing smoothly. She returned the next day, and then sawNadene and Ashton six weeks later.

Young Ashton, now an energetic one year old, was thefifteenth of ‘Jen’s babies’. Through clinical placements, thecourse requires students to be involved in the birth of fortybabies over three years’ full-time study.

While the clinical placements are at many metropolitanand some rural hospitals, there is a particularly strong relationship with Sunshine Hospital, where 2600 babies areborn each year. The hospital is located quite literally downthe road from the St Albans Campus.

Beth Collis is the hospital’s clinical co-ordinator inWomen and Children’s Services. She oversees the place-ment of groups of six students at a time. What qualities isshe looking for when first meeting midwifery students?

“Mum was wiping my brow and talking in my ear. Hamish

was at the business end of things.

It was perfect.”“I’m looking for people who are keen to work with

women at a very intimate time of their life, who appreciatethat it’s a privilege to share that time with a woman and herfamily.” As well as this sense of affinity and empathy, andtheir theoretical knowledge, midwives also now need to bewell aware of the politics of their profession.

This is particularly so, given the Victorian Government’srecent shake-up of maternity services. Last June, HealthMinister Bronwyn Pike announced a new blueprint formaternity services that would focus on midwife-managedcare, otherwise known as primary maternity services.

“Overseas and interstate experience has shown that it issafe to offer birthing services, without a doctor in atten-dance, to a significant group of women with uncomplicatedpregnancies – all with a system that provides appropriatemedical back-up,” Pike said. It is this new world that VictoriaUniversity’s first graduates of its Bachelor of Midwiferycourse are set to step into.

Jen Semple and her classmates eagerly await theirchance to become midwives of the modern era. They areready for the phone call that comes in the middle of the night.

Victoria University connections><Happy birth day: Victoria University student Jen Semple (right) with Nadene

Dowsett and one-year-old Ashton. PHOTOS BY Sharon Jones

28 >Performance

A young woman stands under a massive electricitypylon in the Yarra Valley. All is quiet. She begins to

dance. Later, beside the upper reaches of a clear,

flowing Yarra River, the woman dances again, a

physical response to what it feels like to have lived

in this area, to know it as home. Some time later she

stands on the red, sandy shore of a lake in New South

Wales. Again she dances in response to the landscape.

The woman is Gretel Taylor and her performance

is part of her PhD in Performance Studies at

Victoria University’s School of Human Movement,

Recreation and Performance. After completing her

under-graduate degree and spending time away from

study, Taylor returned last year to do honours. She

subsequently won a Vice-Chancellor’s scholarship

to do her doctorate.

“There aren’t many places you can do performance

as research,” Taylor says. “We’re encouraged to

explore what each and every one of us has – our

unique imagination. The course at VU allows us to

experiment with it, not to judge, just to play.”

Associate Professor Mark Minchinton is head of

the Performance Studies program. He says most

performance courses train people for ‘the industry’.

“In general they draw on the mainstream and

more populist understandings of performance –

dance and drama,” Minchinton says. “There is little

critical study of the relationship of performance to

larger cultural forces. At Victoria University we

draw on drama, theatre and dance traditions, but

with a much wider sense of what dance can be.

We also draw on visual arts and on cultural and

critical theory.”

A Bachelor of Arts – Performance Studies was

first offered in 1990, followed by a Masters by

Research and a Doctorate of Philosophy in 1995.

In 2002, a Bachelor of Arts – Performance and

Multimedia was also introduced.

Applicants for the two undergraduate Bachelor

of Arts courses are selected by ENTER score and

inter-view. “We look for openness, inventiveness

and commitment to change in themselves and the

world,” Minchinton says. “We make it quite clear

that this is not an acting or dance course.” Some

students decide the course is not for them. “But

many take it on and are released from all that

restrictive schooling stuff,” he says.

Taylor agrees. “I’d heard about the course from

a friend, but I wasn’t sure what to expect,” she

says. “As lots of people do, I found it quite con-

fronting. It confronts our selves, our fears of what

we might be becoming, our fears of our powers.”

Students work on their own performances from

the first day of the course, and Minchinton says the

In many ways, Performance Studies at Victoria University is the antithesis of conventional acting training. It’s about responding to and changing the world around you. CLARE BOYD-MACRAE reports.

29

results can be extraordinary. “When it’s working

well, it’s the unexpectedness of what can turn up

that is the most exciting thing,” he says. “It’s just

fantastic when you see students ‘get it’ – discover

that there is so much more ‘out there’ and that we

can really explore the world and ourselves. The

sheer audacity of what people do is incredible,

especially in this era of caution, ‘bottom line’ and

lack of imagination.”

Ena Shanahan studied the Performance Studies

undergraduate course and is about to complete

her honours year, for which she wrote a 10,000-

word exegesis and put on a performance called

Heart-core/ Mani Dvipa – ‘mani dvipa’ is Sanskrit

for ‘abode of the goddess’ – which looks at aspects

of femininity.

“I’m interested in the body, in psychotherapy

and in the transformative aspect of performance,”

Shanahan says. “The connection for me was

between the theory and the body – learning the

theory and going back to the body and the

physicality of performance. I loved the course.”

Graduates have been outstandingly successful.

Those who completed the Bachelor of Arts –

Performance Studies have gone on to work at

places such as La Mama and Dance House, have

formed their own companies, become gallery

curators, toured youth festivals or progressed to

further study. As part of their studies, post-

graduate students have published or presented

art works in seasons or festivals in Melbourne,

Sydney, the Glasgow and Tokyo festivals, the

Liverpool Biennale and the Venice Carnevale.

Of the twenty-two non-staff students who

have participated in the postgraduate program,

fourteen have been recipients of an Australian

Postgraduate Research Award or Victoria

University Research Award. This is possibly the

highest strike rate of scholarship holders of all

courses at the University.

“The connection for me wasbetween the theory and thebody – learning the theory andgoing back to the body and thephysicality of performance.”

“We make it quite clear thatthis is not an acting or dance

course. But many take it onand are released from all that

restrictive schooling stuff.”

The long walk homeOne of the distinctive aspects about VictoriaUniversity’s Performance Studies program is thatthe teaching staff are practicing performance artists,including Mark Minchinton.

In October 2003, while a visiting post-doctoral fellow and artist in residence at Edith Cowan University’sSchool of Contemporary Art, Minchinton undertook asolo 600-kilometre walk across southwest WesternAustralia. This feat, a combination of research and personal journey was, according to Minchinton, “principally a performance in which I explored notions of race, country and shame”.

His great-grandfather was a Wardandi man whomarried a white woman in 1891. During the course ofher life, his grandmother “lost, disavowed or forgot”her Aboriginal identity. Mark grew up unaware of hisAboriginal descent. “But as a teenager I started to know,” he says. “And once I knew for certain I realized I had always known”.

“Before this country can progress,this guilt and shame has to beacknowledged and dealt with.”

The walk took him from Busselton to Perth, and from Wyalkatchem to Kellerberrin – land that was part of his family story, land he would have known had hishistory been different. “A deep sense of shame ranthrough my family history, largely due to our hiddenAboriginality,” he says. “And I believe it’s a shame felt by this country in relation to its treatment of Aboriginalpeople. At some level, all Australians live with the know-ledge that this land was conquered and stolen, and thatthere are other people living in unjust conditions as aresult of this. Before this country can progress, this guilt and shame has to be acknowledged and dealt with.”

Minchinton was alone for most of his walk, averaging25 kilometres a day. As well as basic supplies, water andhammock, he carried a Palm Pilot, camera and GlobalPositioning System (GPS). Twice a day he stopped, tooka GPS reading and five photographs, and wrote abouthis experiences. These were posted on a websitewww.soca.ecu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/void for publicviewing and presented as part of the National Review of Live Art, Midland.


Performance Studies students put on a show at a venue in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. PHOTOS BY Sharon Walker

PHOTOS BY Mark Minchinton

Mark Minchinton at the end of his epic walk.

30 > InternationalVictoria University connections><

In the early nineties, Victoria University’s Faculty ofBusiness and Law began offering business degreesthrough a partnership with Malaysia’s Sunway UniversityCollege. From a modest beginning, the partnershipquickly grew and today, 700 students are studying theUniversity’s undergraduate business courses through theVictoria University– Sunway College Twinning Program.

“In 1998, we had just 60 Sunway-enrolled studentsfor the Bachelor of Business degree,” says program co-ordinator Lindsay Smyrk. “In 2004, enrollments exceed700, with more than 200 coming from the June enroll-ment. Kuala Lumpur is a highly competitive location foroverseas universities, so these numbers are a good indi-cation of our reputation in the region.”

Accredited as a university last August, SunwayUniversity College is located in the Sunway LagoonResort, which has its own medical centre, the famousPyramid shopping mall, a theme park, hotel and mono-rail. The resort forms part of the multibillion dollar BandarSunway development, which 30 years ago was a hugemining pond belonging to the Sungei Way tin mine.

The evolution from tin mine to spectacular develop-ment is the work of Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Dr Jeffrey Cheah.Born in 1945 in what was the British colony of Malaya, hegraduated from Footscray Institute of Technology – aVictoria University predecessor institution – in 1970 witha Diploma in Business Studies. In 1974, Tan Sri JeffreyCheah formed Sungei Way, which diversified and grewinto one of Malaysia’s largest enterprises. The SunwayGroup of Companies, founded by Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheahand his wife in 1999, now has an annual turnover inexcess of 1 billion ringgits ($A375 million).

Sunway College was founded in 1987, and six yearslater the 120 million ringgit (A$45 million) purpose-builtSunway College campus opened. Victoria University’sfirst honourary degree – Doctor of the University honoriscausa – was conferred on Jeffrey Cheah in 1993. In1999 he received the title Tan Sri Dato Seri from theSultan of Selangor.

Last February, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah’s wife, Puan SriDatin Seri Susan Cheah was also awarded a Doctor of theUniversity honoris causa by Victoria University in recognitionof her exceptional contribution to Malaysian society as aleading businesswoman, her wide-ranging service to thecommunity, and her support and service to Victoria Universityin Malaysia. Puan Sri Susan Cheah is director of SunwayUniversity College and like her husband, a VictoriaUniversity graduate, completing commerce and accountingstudies at Footscray Institute of Technology in 1970.

Even the examinations are heldat the same time – a 9am start inMelbourne is a 7am start atSunway in Kuala Lumpur.

The Bachelor of Business course taught at Sunwayis identical to the course taught at Victoria University inMelbourne. Even the examinations are held at the sametime – a 9am start in Melbourne is a 7am start atSunway in Kuala Lumpur. The examination papers arethen sent to Melbourne for marking.

Students usually spend the first two years atSunway and complete their degree at Victoria Universityin Melbourne.

Another option is to complete the first year atSunway and then attend a Victoria University campus topursue another field of study, such as applied economics,computing, transport and logistics, music industry, or one ofseveral managerial disciplines. According to Smyrk, beingable to ‘mix ‘n’ match’ subjects is popular with students.

“It is very flexible, and they are free to take any combination they like,” he says. “A young person headingback home with a law/music industry degree wouldn’t haveany trouble establishing a career path.” Victoria Universitystaff teach part of the course at Sunway. In the first year,they teach one week of the 12-week curriculum; in thesecond and third year, they teach two weeks.

It has been an eventful year for the partnership. InApril, the first lectures in Victoria University’s Master ofBusiness Administration course were held at Sunway.Now that it has been upgraded to a university, SunwayUniversity College can award its own degrees. But TanSri Jeffrey Cheah says the upgrade will not affect therelationship with Victoria University.

“We continue to hold our beliefthat an overseas stint for the students would be good.”

“The twinning relationship and programs shouldevolve over the years to reflect the enhanced relationshipof both institutions,” Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah says. “We con-tinue to hold our belief that an overseas stint for the stu-dents would be good, and we will continue to encourageand facilitate the exchange of students from Sunway toVictoria University. We do not believe that education isstatic, but continuous and life long.”

The Twinning Program offers a highly regardeddegree backgrounded by a dynamic and colourful regionthat is preparing its place for the future. Lindsay Smyrkhas no doubts about that future. “The Twinning Programis in the vanguard, and other universities use it as a modelof how it should be done,” Smyrk says. “The partnershipand the Twinning Program have passed the test of time.”

TWINNING MAKESGOOD BUSINESSIn 1993, Victoria University embarked on one of its first major international relationships – with SunwayUniversity College in Kuala Lumpur. That partnershipcontinues to grow. GLEN DOWER reports.

Puan Sri Susan Cheah.Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah.

Sunway University College in Kuala Lumpur.

VUBO

OKS

>Books 31Victoria University connections><

The RemarkableResurrection ofLazaros X

By Les TerryPublished by Simon &Schuster

A room full of abandoned familyrelics holds the key to Les Terry’ssearch for his family history. Thisis memoir crossed with intrigue,autobiography spiked with farce,and romance grounded in povertyand struggle. Terry is a lecturer inVU’s Faculty of Arts at St AlbansCampus. The book was launchedat the Malthouse Theatre,Southbank in October.

Football Fever:Grassroots

Edited by Bob Stewart, RobHess, Matthew NicholsonPublished by Maribyrnong Press

Australian Rules football isbecoming an increasingly popularfield for academic discourse, withup to 20 PhDs across Australiaexploring what is now a multimil-lion dollar industry. This bookarose from a one-day conferenceon football studies at VU in July2003 and features eight papers,four by VU researchers and fourby academics from otherAustralian universities. The VUcontributions include a look at thesounds of the game, its littleknown Chinese and female play-ers, organisational culture and thepush into the northern market.The editors are all VU lecturers.

The Book of Success (Volume 1)

By Ben CollinsPublished by Geoff Slattery Publishing

As it boldly declares, The Book ofSuccess is about the process ofachieving success: having a dream,planning and toiling towards it,and ultimately achieving it. AuthorBen Collins, a graduate of VU’sTAFE course in ProfessionalWriting and Editing, interviewed35 significant Australians, includ-ing America’s Cup skipper JohnBertrand, Oscar winner andHarvie Krumpet creator AdamElliot, NASA astronaut AndyThomas, Mt Everest climber TimMacartney-Snape, musical theatrestar Marina Prior, scientist SirGustav Nossal, former consumerwatchdog Allan Fels, eccentricmedia personality Rex Hunt, Jim’sMowing founder Jim Penman andHungry Jack’s boss Jack Cowin.

Psychology in thePhysical andManual Therapies

Edited by Mark Andersen and Gregory KoltPublished by ChurchillLivingstone

This is a comprehensive text onpsychology as related to thephysical and manual therapies(e.g. physiotherapy, osteopathy,massage therapy), but is writtenin a style that is understandableto those who do not have a spe-cialist psychology background.The text is aimed specifically atthose working in the field ofphysical and manual therapies,including sports medicine practi-tioners. Mark Andersen lecturesat VU, while Gregory Kolt isProfessor of Health Science atAuckland University ofTechnology.

InternationalTrade: A PracticalIntroduction

By Roberto BergamiPublished by EruditionsPublishing

Essential reading for learningabout international trade in goodsfrom an Australian trader’s per-spective. VU’s Roberto Bergami isone of the most experiencedpractitioners and expert acade-mics in this complex and con-stantly changing field. The bookassumes no prior knowledge ofinternational trade and covers allthe basic processes, includingdocuments, regulations, paymentsystems, customs, quarantine, val-uation of goods, cargo insuranceand much more.

< <

The search for one man’s family history; how thirty-fiveAustralians achieved their dream; Australian Rulesfootball; psychology in the physical and manual therapies; and the ins and outs of international trade are issues explored in new books by VU authors.

Author Les Terry.PHOTO BY Bernie Phelan

Author Ben Collins.

32 >ArtVictoria University connections><

STUDENT: Yasmine O’HaraCOURSE: Bachelor of Arts – Computer Mediated Art (2001)TITLE: Desert 2004DATE: 2004MEDIUM: Acrylic on canvas (91cm x 122cm)

www.vu.edu.au

Documents

Connections Issue 2