Academic Research Videos

Speaker 1:

Penny, your work crosses lots of boundaries. You're particularly focused on criminal responsibility in particular, blame worthiness. What are you currently focusing on? What are the hot-button questions that you're really thinking about at the moment?

Penny:

I've got the big, general theme, looking at legal constructions of culpability, drawing on classic legal theory but also philosophies of wickedness. I'm focusing on the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child abuse. I'm framing ... At the moment I'm trying to use case studies to show the actual difficulties and the obstacles to holding organizations responsible for systemic failure. So that's one of my big projects.

I'm also looking at illegal dumping and focusing on court responses to people who are charged with illegal dumping. That's kind of interesting because a lot of that legislation has been set up in terms of rich ... Assuming it's a really rich, large corporation but a lot of the time they're not.

Speaker 1:

So are they small businesses or individuals?

Penny:

Small businesses or individuals or local councils.

Speaker 1:

Dumping material illegally?

Penny:

Dumping material and then the problem is, how do you punish them? How do you punish them effectively? Then I'm also doing some law and horror stuff, so I've just done a paper on the exorcist and looking at models of involuntariness. How would the law handle possession, in criminal law?

Speaker 1:

Penny, what are some of the impacts you're really aiming for in the long term in this work?

Penny:

I think in relation to the theorizing about wickedness in relation to systemic failures, but also in terms of criminal law doctrine, with the law and horror stuff, is I'm really trying to unpack current models of wickedness and say, this is the model of wickedness that we have. Is this what we want? These are the costs associated with it. I think, particularly in relation to the royal commission, I hope that I'll be offering some kind of conceptual alternative to what we've got as the current dominant models.

Then in relation to the illegal dumping area, there hasn't actually been that much legal academic research on this area and I think it's really important to actually turn criminal logical analysis here and look at issues of prosecution and conviction, and even issues within the law as well. I think that there is that possibility of very practical impact as well as providing more of a theoretical framework.

Speaker 1:

Beth, thanks for speaking with me. Your work is around themes of gender equity, international law, poverty, inequality, human rights, these are really big themes involved. What is it specifically that drives you towards that? What is it that excites you about those themes?

Beth:

They are big themes in the sense that I was up to say in a nutshell what I do it's about using law to address poverty in the world, and specifically women's poverty. Of course that's a huge task that I composedly hope to achieve. I have an interest in how the law can contribute in some small way to that broader objective. That's taken me in various ways to law at the lowest level where for example women are receiving social security payments, and where there's a role for law in ensuring that that's done fairly and equitably. To more macro questions around how constitutions are shaped and framed. To even broader levels of the international law, and how that law works in addressing then the poverty.

Speaker 1:

Those themes are huge because they just cut straight across the kind of macro levels of law right up to constitution international law. You mentioned the social security law, in some ways it sounds very technical and maybe sometimes people think, "What does that actually mean?" This is core though particularly to women, addressing women's poverty and inequality as well.

Beth:

I think often when people think about working on gender equality issues, the first things that come to mind are either women having the equal rights as men to have the same jobs or be represented in parliament, and violence and issues like that. Actually fundamental to women's equality, is the basic social and economic level. It's the fundamentals that allow us to participate equally in society and have an equal share in the resources of the society.

Speaker 1:

I suppose what struck me in reading your work is this comes out in a range of different ways, it's not about the social security payment alone. Actually it can be about pension and retirement, what's the story there around the inequality between say men and women?

Beth:

A lot of it rarely at a fundamental level gets down to the way the division of labor is structured in society. The fact that our society and every society in the world sees men and women having different functions in society, different jobs to do. Puts most of the caring work of society and that's not just the caring for children, but caring for people who are ill, the elderly and so on, as the key responsibility of women. That then shapes women's life experience in the employment sphere, in all forms of work and therefore into other areas like pensions and so on, for the rest of their lives.

Speaker 1:

Essentially I suppose if you're doing forms of work to say I am remunerated, at least in a traditional way with money, then your pension perhaps might be predicated on having collected amount of money throughout life, is that the kind of impact you're talking about?

Beth:

Absolutely. In developing countries there can be half of the women in the country not accessing formal employment of any sort. In countries such as Australia where that's obviously different there's still a huge pay gap between men and women. That still often relates to women caring functions, time taken out of the workplace to look after children. That women never recover from, there's much evidence around how women superannuation amounts and the rest of their resources for their lives is shaped by that caring experience.

Speaker 1:

In relation to your work specifically, starting at the highest level, what can law and what does law do about this at that kind of upper constitution and even international sphere?

Beth:

Well, I think one must acknowledge, I suppose that law has its limits, obviously this isn't something that can be solved by law alone. There are broader issues of policy and participation by the community in resolving these issues. Law has one part to play in that but certainly rights become the basis on which we can shape claims for change in some of these terrains. Whether that's at the national constitution level, at the international level, or on the more ground level where it can actually be used to contest unfair laws that keep women out of those resources to which they are entitled.

Speaker 1:

Even your rights specifically, I think about the human rights kind of sphere, and the rights through social security which is, I suppose in some ways is not one of the rights where you're always kind of it becomes immediately divine. This is a right, some of it enshrined in particular international documents.

Beth:

That's right. I think it's quite a forgotten right but it's there in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it's there in treaties, a number of them. It needs to be seen in relation to other more well-known rights like rights to non-discrimination against women. When you look at those rights together and other social and economic rights like the right to health, the right to housing and so on. One can start building a package of rights that women are entitled to equally with men.

Speaker 1:

Where are we at with that, it's a broad question but it seems like your work is trying to, on one hand make us aware of this, as you said forgotten right. What's the current conversation about this?

Beth:

I think there's a growing recognition of this need to develop the social and economic rights and use them lawfully internationally. They are becoming a bigger part of the conversation, technically post financial crisis and the recognition that the huge inequality and poverty that faces our world needs to be addressed to some extent through a human rights response.

Speaker 1:

That human rights response on a domestic level, is your work advocating for a particular approach or simply it's about making people aware of the contours of challenges?

Beth:

It's certainly more than just raising awareness about those rights, it's also about developing how we understand those rights. What I'm trying to do is a conceptual project around giving content to and developing the meaning of those rights. I've particularly worked on the right to social security from a gender perspective. I haven't interested all of the social and economic rights, and how those can be reshaped and re-understood so that they work for women.

Speaker 1:

This is really, I suppose about a conversation around what they are as rights and what their impact is.

Beth:

Yeah, conversation and it's about pushing limits. It's also about saying, "We can't accept blithe or empty statements about what those rights mean. We have to actually explore them, push their boundaries and ensure that they are given the full content to the people that most need them in the broadest way possible."

Speaker 1:

If we fill those rights with some content, what are you advocating that content might be, say in our domestic kind of context here in Australia?

Beth:

In the domestic context I suppose the difficulty here is that we don't have a bill of rights in our constitution. We rely in terms of rights arguments on the international law level which is often somewhat ignored or not taken as seriously as it ought to be by the government in Australia. They are commitments nonetheless, giving content to those rights in the domestic context means reminding our law makers that they need to judge and shape all laws that are made in terms of their obligations in the international law.

Speaker 1:

Just going a little deeper then, in relation to the judicial treatment internationally as well as domestic. What's the kind of shape at the jurisprudence that you might name some bodies might be courts here, it might be the international tribunals or even opinion. What's the shape of that at the moment?

Beth:

At the international level, the treaty body committees that are dealing with social and economic rights and particularly focusing on women's social and economic rights, and making some very important pronouncements on an ongoing basis in assessing different countries performances. That is happening worldwide, at the local domestic level there are a number of courts around the world who are deciding cases around social and economic rights. Australia is actually in a minority, in terms of the countries in the world that don't have social and economic rights built into their constitutions. It's a growing area of jurisprudence.

Speaker 1:

In a situation where the right to social securities, not really being sort of vocally and fully integrated into a policy and domestic legal systems. What's really at stake for women particularly who experience obviously inequality but also poverty?

Beth:

The lack of that right and the enforcement of that right means that the women can contest unfairness, they can contest the inequality that shapes their experience of welfare, social services, social provision in their countries.

Speaker 1:

Essentially then the inequality continues, the results of that inequality continue.

Beth:

Exactly. Women face ongoing inequalities in their lives that could be better addressed had they accessed to more fully formed rights at their disposal.

Speaker 1:

What's the next step for your research?

Beth:

I like to be looking more broadly at other women social and economic rights, be on just the right to social security. I have done work in other areas but also look at the relationship between the right to social security and other social and economic rights. I have an interest in the relationship between the social and economic rights, and violence against women. How is access to those rights shaped by the threat of violence and violence that women face in their lives.

Speaker 1:

What kind of violence, at the domestic level, kind of systematic, kind of abuses, what kind of violence?

Beth:

I'm thinking particularly around domestic sexual violence which is ever present part of millions of women lives in the world. Which has a direct impact on the ability to function as full citizens in society in that it enters into the economic arena as well. It affects girls ability to walk to school and safety. It affects women's ability to access employment. It affects women's citizenship rights in terms of their ability to participate fully in society. The close connections between the violence issues that women face, the power inequalities, and the economic circumstances as well.

Speaker 1:

By integrating access to social services and social support, and social security on a kind of a more legitimate and more consistent basis, this then hopefully is going to lead us to ways out of that violence of women.

Beth:

Clearly providing adequate services can actually make a difference to women's safety in society and the other way around if women feel safe they are better able to then access the resources that society provides for them as well.

Speaker 1:

Thanks Beth.

Speaker 1:

Both of your work together and separately really crosses a whole lot of boundaries. Essentially there is science, there is questions about science. There is questions about law and responsibility. What kind of conversation are you both having, and what does the conversation really mean for law?

Dr. Karen:

We started thinking about the way that scientific understandings of identity would change in law. Both of the areas that we work in, disability discrimination law, and reproductive technology law, both are concerned with identity and how you think about disability in particular. That was our starting point really for the start of this conversation in this research project.

Speaker 1:

The conversation that you both want to pursue is kind of asking questions about people's bodies and brains and laws. What's that conversation that you are now pursuing in your joint project?

Prof. Isabel:

Right. We're interested in the legal regulation of behavior as a disability. That's a new kind of field, where previously behavior has been kind of policed according to individual responsibility. We're interested in the way in which behavior is becoming more and more a subject of scientific inquiry and pathology, and how that's going to affect kind of legal responses to behavior. There is already, for instance, an autism [activity 00:01:18] in the U.K. There are legal responses to these new kind of, well not new but kind of increasing proliferating behavioral concerns. That's something that we're focusing on.

Speaker 1:

Grace your work covers a range of areas. Corporate governance, corporate law companies, company activities as well as telecoms. What is it that you focus on really?

Speaker 2:

My real focus, if you ask me in the past 3 years, and in the coming 2 years, in this 5 years period of time, I would say, I would focus on telecom consumer production, telecom consumer dispute resolution.

Speaker 1:

Why is that so important? I mean we sort of think about a range of other court based dispute resolution per say, just may think of police and alert kinds of things. Why is it that telecommunications consumer protection is such a hot topic now?

Speaker 2:

One, it's because of the development of technologies. Everyone has phone, pad, computer, even television can use at the phone nowadays so it has such a close link to your day to day life, it's a very important issue.

Secondly I believe the TIO system in Australia is such a unique system. As a country we are the first country in the world to have the telecom industry dispute redress scheme, the TIO. We are the first one but many other countries in the world, they don't have such scheme at all, they use the general consumer affair system instead of having an industry based dispute resolution system and they are doing okay. The study I did last year in Japan and Korea, they had no complaint to their current system, however I have got an email recently from IMIC, the Japanese telecommunications regulator and they were asking if I can attend an interview with the study group to do something similar with what we do here in TIO.

To me it's such an interesting thing, interesting saying and not so many people have done so much study on it.

Speaker 1:

Telecommunications though, it touches us in our lives in so many different ways, we own multiple devices. Your research then, the impact is about on the one hand redress for consumer complaints but really it's about the functioning of both business and social life.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, exactly, that's right. That's the consequence of this redress scheme provide a security, a safeguard for consumer to get on with new equipment and get on with new services.

Speaker 1:

Grace, in your work on telecommunications consumer protection there is some really interesting findings about the structure of how we deal with complaints. What are the kind of complaints that consumers are coming up against? What is it that they are actually bringing to the various mechanism?

Speaker 2:

A common one would be bill shock, when they receive the bill it's a lot more than what they expected. It could be drop off, it could be out of service, it could be many other reasons that they are not happy with the service. As being individual consumers sometimes it's very difficult for them to fight with big companies such as Telstra or Optus, but one thing I find is very interesting.

In many Asian countries such as in Korea and Tokyo, when I ask a question to them, "How do you guarantee one single person can fight with a giant company?" Their answer is, "Why do they need to fight? A company is looking after the single person very well on all the aspects. Why does this person need to fight with them?"

In Australia and in many other common law system we are taking it differently. We don't want to see the unbalanced bargaining power, that's why we are having [inaudible 00:04:06], that's why we are having that redress scheme available in Australia, in The UK and in Canada, but you will find it surprised to see nothing similar in Asian countries.

Speaker 1:

Not every consumer of course has a complain that has to do all the way to the ombudsman, but what are some of the things that your research I suppose is pushing forward as the outcomes for the individual consumer of telecommunications services?

Speaker 2:

The TIO has improved quite a lot in the past 3 years I would say. The service to the individual consumers has become more and more convenient for the consumers to access, for example they require all the company to send out messages once they have reached certain level of data usage. The other example would be, they would advice the consumers, the telecommunications company would have the obligation to put at the bottom of their bill saying, "If you have any queries or any saying you would like to discuss you will contact us, if we can't solve it you are entitled to go to the TIO." Consumers nowadays are more informed than in the past.

Speaker 1:

That's then really taking the lessons of what the TIO is finding and sort of turning it into preventative action. Your research and what the TIO is doing for consumers and that actually making some change.

Speaker 2:

I would hope so.

Speaker 1:

Jenni, your current project's an ARC project around cross boarder uses of ART. Do you want to tell me a little about that?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so the project is called Regulating Relations. It's a four year grant to explore the empirical experience of Australians moving into and out of regulated treatment, including cross boarder treatment, domestically and abroad. That's with my colleagues Anita Stuhmcke and Isabel Karpin.

Speaker 1:

The aim there is, obviously, to understand what's happening. There's this huge need, but also, I suppose, to influence the conversation that happens both here and maybe even internationally.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so our stated aim in the project is to understand people's motivations and experiences in that trouble so that we can make domestic regulated treatment more responsive and more inclusive to Australian patients' needs.