In this analysis, Andrew Zammit argues that Australians fighting in Iraq and Syria pose a threat to Australia’s security and examines the options for responding to that threat, including through non-coercive means. Key Findings Australian foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq pose a serious national security threat to Australia. The threat requires a wide-ranging counter-terrorist...

STM publishing takes place within the broader system of scholarly communication, which includes both formal and informal elements. Scholarly communication plays different roles at different stages of the research cycle, and (like publishing) is undergoing technology-driven change. Categorising the modes of communication into one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many, and then into oral and written, provides a...

The Abbott Government says its proposed metadata retention laws are critical to fighting crime and terrorism. But similar schemes in Europe have been wound back following legal challenges. This week the District Court of The Hague scrapped the Netherlands’ data retention law, finding that it violated fundamental European Union privacy rights. The country’s government-funded privacy...

The industrial structure of European economies and the types of occupation that they support are changing. This change takes many forms in different national contexts, but there are some common themes. There has been an increase in service-sector employment, both in low-skilled customer service work and in high-skilled ‘knowledge’ occupations, and a corresponding drop in...

Outlines which OECD countries include or exclude food, health, education and financial services from their respective consumption taxes, along with various countries’ general consumption tax rate. Introduction At the time the Goods and Services Tax was introduced, health, education and financial services and some food items (mainly fresh food), amongst other areas, were exempted from...