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(2022)ThesisThis thesis is about multi-stakeholder initiatives that seek to regulate the human rights impacts of global apparel supply chains (Apparel MSIs). MSIs have the aim of improving human rights for millions of apparel workers worldwide, but after two decades they show little evidence of such improvement. Civil society critics argue that MSIs are ineffective, unreformable private regulation that is not fit-for-purpose and lacks legitimacy. This thesis argues that Apparel MSIs still perform a valuable regulatory function, however they must adopt new regulatory approaches. These include moving beyond social audit as a regulatory technique, expanding stakeholder participation and better measuring and communicating impact. MSIs must transform to realise their aim of improving apparel workers human rights and consequently preserve their legitimacy. To understand and contribute to this transformation the thesis method incorporates existing literature; it applies theoretical frameworks; and the insights of original empirical research. From the latter the voices of worker advocates, union leaders and academics reveal recent and promising regulatory innovations and changes in MSIs. Along with this empirical research, the original contributions of this thesis are to emphasise the interconnected nature of legitimacy criteria and assess the overall legitimacy of Apparel MSIs in the light of the functional model adopted by each MSI. This legitimacy analysis is supported by the regulatory theory of responsive regulation, which explicitly contemplates self-regulatory forms like MSIs. The original contribution of bringing responsive regulation to bear on Apparel MSIs, provides new insights into how they can bolster their regulatory effectiveness and legitimacy. Interviews undertaken with key stakeholders provide a sociological perspective to this analysis. Interview data also drive the final recommendations for reform which coming from MSI stakeholders point to recent innovations in private regulation as a more promising alternative. Given the opportunity to build a more just world after the Covid-19 pandemic, these recommendations could not come at a more critical juncture.
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(2023)ThesisClimate change poses serious challenges for forests and thus for sustainable forest management (SFM). The concept of resilience has been identified as a useful tool in minimising the impacts of climate change on forests. However, while the utility of the concept has been recognised generally in the literature, and seven principles of ‘Resilience Thinking’ have been designed, application of the concept in the context of SFM has yet to be examined. Under international commitments, Australia is obliged both to account for climate change impacts in SFM and to work to increase forest resilience in order to minimise those impacts and ensure the sustainability of forests into the future. Using the ‘Resilience Thinking’ principles as a framework, this thesis examines SFM legislation and policies in Tasmania and New South Wales (NSW) to ascertain the extent to which they support forest resilience to climate change. In particular, it assesses whether and how each principle is considered in the development and implementation of SFM systems. Four major challenges to the development and implementation of SFM legislation and policies capable of supporting forest resilience are identified: fragmentation of SFM systems; inadequate participation in forest decision-making; the absence of active adaptive management in forest reserves; and SFM legislation and policy mechanisms that fall short in dealing with both the short and long-term uncertainties of climate change impacts on forests. Reflecting on those challenges, the thesis proposes and examines possible solutions including: the application of an integrated landscape approach to SFM; options for improved participation by a more diverse range of actors in periodic goal setting and management actions; the application of active adaptive management aimed specifically at building resilience in reserve areas; and the incorporation of short and long-term goals into decision-making through adequate monitoring, reporting and evaluation systems utilising specific resilience criteria and indicators. In applying the ‘Resilience Thinking’ principles in the SFM context for the first time, the thesis lays the groundwork for further consideration of the challenges and solutions to implementing resilience beyond the case studies.
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(2022)ThesisIndigenous women in Australia have remained one of the most at-risk demographics for sexual violence victimisation since colonisation began. Indigenous women have historically been marginalized and excluded from accessing justice for sexual violence through the legal system. Changes to the justice system, including incorporating some Indigenous-focussed practices in sentencing, have resulted in inadequate access to justice for Indigenous women sexual assault victims. Some women who have not been able to find justice or validation in the legal system have sought other avenues for redress, including social media activism. The MeToo movement is one of the largest social media activist movements to date to address the issue of sexual violence. The MeToo movement has been seen as a means by which victims can take control of the narrative around sexual violence and seek recognition and justice outside the courtroom. Millions of women globally have participated in MeToo, but the movement has also been subject to critiques about its lack of inclusivity and its inability to respond to intersecting forms of oppression and trauma. Through MeToo, women have revealed the legal system has fundamentally failed victims of sexual violence, especially Indigenous women. The thesis asks: What does the MeToo movement in Australia reveal about the differences and similarities in narrative and process between the criminal justice system (CJS) and social media regarding sexual violence allegations and the potential for social media to act as an alternative to the CJS? This thesis responds to this question with a focus on a disenfranchised sector of Australian society, namely Indigenous women. By synthesising theories from the frameworks of decolonisation and critical race feminism, the thesis applies critically analyses the phenomena of spectacle and performativity. The thesis reveals several ways by which social media activism replicates the patterns of exclusion and discrimination present in the legal system, leaving Indigenous women substantially excluded from two major avenues for redress of inaccessibility to justice and related grievances. The thesis identifies the replication of patterns of exclusion and discrimination across three contexts: society, the legal system, and social media activism. The thesis concludes alternative justice seeking methods will struggle to succeed while the foundations of colonisation and patriarchy persist. It also reveals three overarching themes, and four conceptual tensions present at the intersection of sexual violence against Indigenous women and social media activism. The themes are: (1) voice, narrative, and visibility; (2) agency and self-determination, and (3) transnational/transcultural phenomena. The tensions are: (1) law and justice; (2) the criminal justice system and MeToo; (3) platforms and targets; and (4) commodification and resistance.
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(2023)ThesisA key feature of the material infrastructure of hate speech online on Facebook is virality – the rapid transmission of content over large distances through key nodes and actors on the platform. Virality is enabled by the bringing together of collectivities (crowds and publics) and connectivity provided by Facebook, which is accessed widely through Internet-enabled mobile phones. In contemporary India, increased connectivity provided by the material infrastructure of Facebook has reconfigured the relationship between crowds, publics and media, facilitated virality, and led to deadly illocutionary and perlocutionary effects such as inter-group violence and the subordination of minority groups. This thesis investigates how Facebook, through its content moderation policies and related institutional mechanisms and infrastructures, regulates the virality of hate speech online on the platform. Drawing on contemporary developments in India and the historical development of Indian hate speech doctrine, this thesis identifies emerging tensions between the global scale of hate speech regulation on Facebook and local context. These emerging tensions are visible in Facebook’s framing of its community standards on hate speech, and in the relationship between Facebook and national and subnational actors in India. These tensions are also visible in differences and contradictions in how actors who are part of Facebook’s governance model, including the Oversight Board, have approached the question of the regulation of hate speech online. This thesis employs mixed methods including a law-in-context reading of doctrine, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews conducted with members of the Facebook Oversight Board, employees of Facebook and lawyers, academics and policy experts in the field. This thesis is part of a growing body of scholarship that examines the regulation of hate speech online and virality on Facebook through a non-United States and non-European lens.
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(2024)ThesisThis thesis addresses a research gap on migrant domestic work from an Australian perspective and problematizes the conventional account that sets the country apart as an outlier in the global care chains literature. In order to address this research gap, the thesis moves between and across ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ scales, drawing upon both critical and socio-legal methods to reveal the constitutive role of law across households, states and transnational legal orders. The historical argument shows how despite pronouncing reproductive labour as ‘non-industrial’ upon Federation, law has played an ongoing constitutive role in shaping the organization, divisions and transfers of reproductive labour across the family, market, state and society. The thesis then considers au pairing as a contemporary case study drawing upon comparative and transnational legal analysis to show how au pairing has been carved out of reforms to recognize domestic work as work. Connecting these ‘macro’ historical and transnational dimensions to the ‘micro’, the thesis then draws upon in-depth qualitative interviews with temporary migrants working as au pairs and families who have employed them in Australia. The thesis shows how au pairing has emerged as a strategy for managing work-care conflict in ways that reinscribe the gendered nature of care. It documents migrants’ diverse pathways into au pairing and their roles and experiences as well as how the COVID-19 pandemic upended the background rules governing the market. The thesis then examines au pairs’ workplace grievances and their ambivalent subjectivities as workers. In addition, the thesis considers the ‘future’ of au pairing by situating it within the emerging critical literature on the platformization of care and domestic work. Finally, the thesis makes a wider theoretical contribution by revisiting what the interdisciplinary literature on social reproduction brings to feminist legal scholarship and also re-examining the place and function of law within social reproduction theory. Attention to law is important because when we focus on law’s distributional and disciplinary outcomes we can begin to imagine how different legal rules might shape them otherwise.
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(2023)ThesisThis thesis examines the challenges cross-border data presents to Australian and other national laws seeking to protect domestic data and access transnational data interests while maintaining international confidence in the integrity of global networks. Existing laws, which predominantly assume that data has a specific location, should instead approach network data as a tangible form of electronic information capable of remote collection, long-term multi-location storage, and ongoing analysis. The research explains why these attributes of data, as tangible information, undermine conventional territorial-based jurisdictional frameworks. A nationality-based approach provides a better basis for jurisdiction over data, alongside increased transparency to provide greater agency for international data stakeholders. This jurisdictional shift would provide a foundation for a new domestic law framework, consistent with policy goals and network technology, that supports international engagement and cooperation. In particular, the research provides a framework for reform of Australian law to address cross-border data protection and access objectives protecting domestic interests and supporting international stakeholder concerns. The research methodology incorporates elements of socio-legal, doctrinal, case study, and academic theory approaches. Information and data science sources demonstrate the evolving nature of data as tangible electronic information and the increasing capacity for large-scale data collection, storage, and analysis processes. Case law analysis is drawn on to demonstrate how these characteristics of data as tangible electronic information present challenges for governments seeking to secure access to cross-border data while protecting domestic data pools from foreign access overreach. This methodology provides fresh insights into the jurisdictional challenges of cross-border data. Understanding the characteristics of data as a network-generated persistent information resource bridges an existing gap in how law and policy approach jurisdiction over cross-border data. The research provides an alternative approach to the jurisdictional challenges of cross-border data that emphasises freedom of global data flows while supporting transparency, international cooperation and increased individual agency in personal information privacy protections.