MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

ISSUE 2 > 2OO4 Taking tourism to a remote African village

Breastfeeding in public – still controversial
Alcohol, sirens and smoke – cause for alarm?
Birth of a new era – new midwifery training

www.vu.edu.au
2 > Contents

>8 > 11 > 12 > 14

4 VC’s message 8 Taking tourism to Taru

WELCOME
Vice-Chancellor Professor Elizabeth Harman
welcomes readers to the second issue of
Connections, and outlines the values of the
University’s new Strategic Plan.
4 In brief
NEWS
A new institute for sustainability and innovation;
Olympic success; VU gets five stars; new rotunda
brings joy to handicapped adults; providing courses
to the Department of Justice; public art at
Federation Square; plus much more.
7 VU facts
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY STATISTICS
TOURISM
12 Bringing form to the humble chair
BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION
A community-based tourism project in a Milan-based furniture designer Marc Krusin
remote part of Kenya aims to help the believes there is a lack of coherence in the
local tribes improve their living standards. design and manufacture of Australian furniture.
10 When talk is not cheap
LAW
14 Alcohol, sirens and smoke:
cause for alarm?
What protection is there for vulnerable PSYCHOLOGY
consumers who buy mobile phones? Having a few beers or glasses of wine before
bed can increase your risk of becoming a fire
11 Exposing mothers’ breasts
PSYCHOLOGY
fatality – even with a smoke alarm in the house.
Women breastfeeding in public is as
controversial today as it ever was.
16 Firm foundations for a future in science
FOUNDATION STUDIES
An innovative course is offering students an
alternative entry to tertiary studies.

ISSUE TWO
2OO4<connections >
PUBLISHER MANAGING EDITOR GRAPHIC DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES
Marketing and Communications Dept. Phil Kofoed Brett Kiteley of Stroke p/l Phil Kofoed
Victoria University STAFF WRITERS PHOTOGRAPHERS Publications
Australia Vin Maskell Maurice Grant-Drew, Ross Bird, Victoria University
www.vu.edu.au Clare Boyd-Macrae Sharon Jones, Warrick Attwood, PO Box 14428
Niki Koulouris Sharon Walker,Thomas Bauer, Melbourne VIC 8001
© Victoria University of Technology CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Brett Kiteley, Matt Ward Phone: (03) 9919 4956
Glen Dower, Jim Buckell, Email: phil.kofoed@vu.edu.au
CARTOON
CRICOS Provider No: 00124K Paul Mitchell, John McDougall Shelley Miller Design

COVER PHOTO
Staff and graduates from VU’s TAFE Department of Personal Services featured in a spectacular
French fashion parade at the 2004 Victorian Hair and Beauty Industry Association Ball.
PHOTO BY Sharon Walker
 3
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Victoria University connections
>
> 17 > 20 > 24 > 26

17 The city in the palm of her hand

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Hong Kong-born Catherine Ng is one of the
City of Melbourne’s youngest councillors.
18 After years of darkness, the sun shines
on Sunbury
SPORTS ADMINISTRATION
Next year marks the 10th anniversary of Sunbury
Campus, home to VU’s Sports Administration
degree. The Campus is a collection of historic
hilltop buildings with a bleak history.
20 Magnetic attraction
MOLECULAR SCIENCE
23 Interns take on parliament
WORK EDUCATION
30 Twinning makes good business
INTERNATIONAL
Two young students took on the affairs of politics Victoria University celebrates a decade-long
when they were granted State Parliament internships. partnership with Sunway University College
in Kuala Lumpur.
24 Intellectual property–who should own it?
RESEARCH
Dr John McDougall offers a personal view on the
31 Books
VU BOOKS
controversial topic of who should own intellectual The search for one man’s family history; how
property created through university research. thirty-five Australians achieved their dream;
Australian Rules football; psychology in the
26 Birth of a new era
NURSING
physical and manual therapies; and the ins and
outs of international trade are issues explored
Midwifery training undergoes a rebirth at VU. in new books by VU authors.

VU scientists are finding safer methods for

treating birds that are victim to oil spills.
28 Performances that challenge the
ordinary
32 Art
STUDENT ART
PERFORMANCE STUDENT: Yasmine O’Hara
22 Masters of multimedia
MULTIMEDIA
Performance Studies at VU is the antithesis of
conventional acting training.
COURSE: Bachelor of Arts
– Computer Mediated Art (2001)
VU took home a swag of prizes at this year’s TITLE: Desert 2004
ATOM Film, Television and Multimedia Awards. MEDIUM: Acrylic on canvas (91cm x 122cm)
4 > VC’s message > In brief
PHOTO BY Maurice Grant-Drew PHO

New institute for environmental

sustainability
Victoria University’s new Institute for Sustainability and Innovation was

Welcome
launched in July. It will provide a platform to make Melbourne’s western
region environmentally sustainable with emphasis on water use and reuse.
The institute’s strategic priorities are: environmental management and
restoration; business and sustainable development; improving water use
efficiency; and sustainability and social change. Two water-related projects
are already in train.
to our second edition of Connections, which “The institute is looking at water that comes from the Werribee sewage
celebrates the achievements of our University. treatment plant, and how the salt content of that water could be reduced
so the water could be better used for high-value horticulture,” said acting
In October I celebrated my first anniversary as Victoria University director, Professor John Cary. “The other area is sewer mining, where
vice-chancellor. During those first twelve months, University staff valuable components of effluent are removed from sewage at the site where
worked hard on many projects that will underpin the future success the treated waste water is reused.”
of this institution. Among them was the preparation of our 2004-2008 The two projects are in collaboration with the University of New South
Strategic Plan, which was launched on 15 October. Wales and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, which has been
instrumental in making deserts bloom and transforming swamps into fertile
The Plan includes the University’s new values. These values are: agricultural valleys in Israel.
> knowledge and skills, and critical and imaginative inquiry for their
capacity 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
>IN BRIEF>IN BRIEF>IN B
communities;
> integrity, respect and transparency in personal and collaborative action; and
> the pursuit of excellence in everything we do.

The people you read about in Connections are examples of how

Victoria University staff are making these values real.

Nick Athanasiou is imparting his wonderful enthusiasm for the sciences

to young students, and Professor Brian King is working with World
Vision and Kenyan tourism authorities to encourage sustainable tourism
in the African nation. City of Melbourne councillor and Victoria
University graduate Catherine Ng is working for the benefit of
Melbourne residents, and Chris Atmore is seeking to assist marginalised
people through her research into the telecommunications industry.

We also showcase our work with Sunshine Hospital in Melbourne’s

west, Phillip Island in Victoria and our decade-long partnership with
Sunway University College in Malaysia.

The people featured in Connections show how Victoria University

staff are already embracing our mission, which is to transform the
lives of individuals and develop the capacities of industry and
communities within the western Melbourne region and beyond
through the power of vocational and higher education.
catwalk carnivale
Staff and graduates from Victoria University’s TAFE Department of Personal Services
featured in a spectacular parade of French fashion at the Melbourne Town Hall in
I hope you enjoy this edition of Connections. early September. The event was the annual Hair and Beauty Industry Association
Ball, which is also a gala charity night for the Kids Help Line. With the theme of
Professor Elizabeth Harman Paris Carnivale, the make-up artists, models, hairdressers and choreographers
created a visual treat, featuring ornate wigs with masses of tumbling curls, make-up
Vice-Chancellor and President
that created porcelain-like visages, and flowing haute couture gowns.
November 2004
 5
OTO BY Newspix/Colleen Petch <
Victoria University connections
>

Olympic
success
Most people recognise the names Drew Ginn and James
Tomkins as half of Australia’s most famous rowing group
the ‘Awesome Foursome’. In Athens, Drew and James
continued their success in the coxless pairs by clinching
Olympic gold. A little bit of this success may be attributed
to the expert advice and assistance received from Victoria
University sports scientist and physiologist Simon Sostaric.
Other Olympians assisted by Sostaric were marathon
runners Lee Troop, who finished 28th and Nick Harrison
who came 45th. Track cyclist Katie Mactier, who featured
on the cover of the first issue of Connections, won silver in
the individual pursuit.
VU’s Dr Harriet Speed, senior lecturer in sport and
exercise psychology, helped three Australian shooters
prepare for Athens: Lalita Yauhleuskaya, Linda Ryan and
Tim Lowndes. Lalita fared the best, coming tenth in her
event, the 25 metre sports pistol.
VU student Ali Abdo, Australia’s only representative in
freestyle wrestling, was knocked out in the first rounds of
his 74 kg weight category. Ali also works as a gym
instructor at St Albans Campus.
VU wins case for
CLERK OF COURTS
Victoria University TAFE has been appointed the educational
provider to the Courts Portfolio of the Department of Justice
(Victoria), who are replacing the existing Clerk of Courts
Qualification with a nationally accredited professional
qualification in court administration. “The training program will
adopt a vocational approach to learning and will predominantly
entail on-the-job training, self-directed study and online
distance education,” said Margaret Parker, head of VU’s
Department of Administrative and Legal Studies.
The course will be delivered to court employees working
in Melbourne as well as regional centres of Victoria, and will
be built into the existing Certificate IV in Government (Court
Services). It will also articulate into higher-level courses, such
as the Diploma in Government (Court Services). “There has
been an outstanding contribution to this project by the Sir
Zelman Cowen Centre for Continuing Legal Education, the
Judicial Administration and Justice Studies Institute [both
VU bodies] and teaching staff from the TAFE Department
of 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.

N BRIEF>IN BRIEF>IN BRIEF>BRIEF>IN BRIEF>IN PHOTO BY Matt Ward

Greg’s wall
of many colours
The façade of the SBS/ACMI building at Federation Square in the heart of Melbourne was
transformed into a wall of many colours one night in October, thanks to a public art project
created 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 a
mass of triangles in various tones of brown, black, grey and white. The images were created by
visitors 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 and
patterns change each minute.” The project was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
PHOTOS BY Sharon Walker
 6 > In brief
PHOTO BY Warrick Attwood

Graduates give VU
five stars
The 2005 Good Universities Guide, which compares the performances of all
Australian universities, reports that Victoria University graduates have given the
educational experience they received at the University a maximum 5-star rating.
Educational experience rates courses for overall satisfaction, teaching quality
and learning of generic skills. The rating puts VU in the top 20 per cent of
Australian 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 are
doing a good job and now this has been affirmed by the Good Universities
Guide, which is an independent group.”

Back to back School gets a

vocational award
The recent Victorian Training Awards saw Victoria University winning the Victorian Vocational
Student of the Year for the second year in a row. The award was won by Greg Wareham, a
helping hand
Seventy-five students from Werribee Secondary College carried out forensic
student in the Diploma of Meat Processing course offered by the TAFE Department of Science science experiments for their biology studies at Victoria University’s Werribee
and Biotechnology at Werribee Campus. Greg is operations manager at G & K O’Connor, a Campus in June to help them with their science studies. A fire at their school
large beef exporting company in Pakenham. The Diploma of Meat Processing is offered in in May damaged the science wing and completely destroyed other buildings.
The experiments included DNA ‘fingerprinting’ to help them solve a
on- and off-the-job study mode in association with the Meat Industry Training Council
‘crime’. The students were from Year 10 and the Year 9 accelerated learning
(MINTRAC). Last year Victoria University electrical engineering student Vanessa Wood won
program. Students from the school also spent time studying at VU’s Newport
both the state and national training awards for best vocational student. and Sunshine campuses.

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Warm welcome
for overseas visitors
The colour, energy and easy humour of two Aboriginal dancers set the tone for a relaxed
and enthusiastic introductory session for students at the beginning of Victoria University’s
International Orientation Week at Footscray Park Campus in late July. The performance by
Western Creations included the haunting sounds of a didgeridoo and rhythm sticks, accompanied
by dances that imitated the kangaroo, emu and goanna to perfection. Nine hundred inter-
national undergraduate, postgraduate and exchange program students from 47 countries
started their studies at VU in second semester. Welcoming the international students to
VU, 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 with
you for life,” Professor Harman said. “Take up the challenges, enjoy the people around
you, ask the staff for assistance and, as a mother of an international student myself, I
implore you to communicate with those at home!”

Sharon Jones

A measure of
PHOTO BY

happiness
It’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 an
idea. With a $20,000 Arts Victoria grant and support from VU, Federation Square and
Channel 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 about
12 degrees and a drizzly, cloudy day.
In October, the Happiness Post was still in place, with our happiness down to 50
per cent at the last reading. The other 50 per cent must be reading the newspapers.
PHOTO BY Maurice Grant-Drew
 7
Victoria
Victoria University
< >
University connections
connections

Rotunda a dream come true VUFACTS

A new rotunda built by Victoria University
HISTORY
Newport Campus pre-apprentices has Founded in 1916 as Footscray Institute
brought great joy to the clients and staff of of Technology and established as Victoria
Melbourne’s Araluen Centre, a vocational University in 1990.
training centre for handicapped adults.
The centre had been planning to build CAMPUSES
the rotunda for several years but could not City Flinders
afford the labour. When Victoria University City King
City South Melbourne
offered to build the rotunda at cost, the
Footscray Nicholson
centre welcomed the offer with open arms.
Footscray Park
After two weeks of pre-fabricating the Melton
materials at Newport Campus, teachers Newport
Paul Nancarrow and Gary Smithett and a St Albans
dozen Building and Construction pre- Sunbury
apprenticeship students headed to Araluen Sunshine
and got to work making a dream come true. Werribee
After three weeks, the work was done.
“It is a constant financial struggle to FACULTIES
Arts
provide our disabled clients with some of
Business and Law
the extras that add quality to life and too
Human Development
often are taken for granted,” said Araluen’s Science, Engineering and Technology
business and finance manager Jeff Tallon.
“The magnificent rotunda now has pride of TAFE SCHOOLS
place on our property.” Business, Hospitality and Personal Services
Human Services, Science and Technology
PHOTO BY Sharon Walker
Further Education, Arts and Employment Services
Engineering, Construction and Industrial Skills

> BRIEF>IN BRIEF>IN BRIEF>IN AFFILIATIONS

Austin Research Institute
Communications Law Centre
Getting a taste of Melba Memorial Conservatorium of Music

Iramoo
Malthouse Theatre

STUDENT POPULATION
Current population
more than 52,000
Onshore international
approximately 4000
Offshore international
more than 4500
Postgraduate
more than 5600

GENERAL ENQUIRIES
PHONE: (03) 9919 4000

COURSE INFORMATION
Centre for Commencing Students
PHONE: (03) 9919 4110
EMAIL: ccs@vu.edu.au

INTERNATIONAL STUDENT ENQUIRIES

On a sunny Melbourne winter’s day a group of five
Vietnamese women picked and tasted the yellow fruit
from a Kangaroo Apple bush. A larger group of
Indians and Sri Lankans examined a young native
grass called black anther flax lily, a plant that has
edible blue berries. Meanwhile Sudanese toddlers
climbed out of their strollers and wandered about
the plant nursery.
Iramoo – the sustainable living precinct at
Victoria University’s St Albans Campus that includes
a grassland wildlife reserve – once again lived up to
its name. One of the meanings of the Kulin Aboriginal
International Branch
word iramoo is ‘a meeting place between tribes’.
PHONE: 61 3 9919 1164
Iramoo’s community sustainability officer Craig
EMAIL: international@vu.edu.au
Wallace was hosting a group of fifty local residents
originally from such countries as Vietnam, Sudan,
POSTAL ADDRESS
Syria, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India. The visit was
Victoria University of Technology
part of a tour of several local environmental sites
organised by the City of Brimbank and the Migrant
PO Box 14428
Resource Centre North West. Melbourne VIC 8001
Through four interpreters Craig explained the
philosophy of conservation and sustainability behind WEB
Iramoo. “This is a community space – for everybody,” www.vu.edu.au
he said. PHOTO BY Sharon Jones
8 > Tourism
TAKING TOURIS
TO TARU
A community-based tourism
project in a remote part of
Kenya aims to help the local
tribes improve their living
standards by overcoming
malnutrition, water shortages
and malaria, and improving
agriculture and education.
GLEN DOWER reports.
PHOTOS BY Thomas Bauer
The Taru shopping centre was littered with discarded
plastic 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
“They have to ask themselves if
they actually want tourists, and
if so, how many and how often.”
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

ISM
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
9
<
Victoria University connections
>
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.”
10 > Law
WHEN TALK IS NOT CHEAP
What protection is there for vulnerable consumers
when they buy mobile phones? VIN MASKELL reports.
Ann has a significant intellectual disability that makes
learning 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 contracts
offer a form of unregulated
credit that would be unheard
of 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-
<
Victoria University connections
>
PHOTOS BY Brett Kiteley
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 published
several papers on telecommunications contracts
in recent years. Its recent audit of mobile phone
contracts commissioned by Consumer Affairs
Victoria criticised the industry for widespread
unfairness in contract terms. It revealed wide-
spread breaches of the Fair Trading Act by both
major 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 and
in too small type.
“We found examples where the customer was
expected 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 of
equipment,” says Elizabeth Beal, director of the
Melbourne office of the CLC. She says it is now
up to Consumer Affairs whether prosecutions will
result from the audit.
 > Psychology
Women breastfeeding in public is as controversial today
as it ever was. CLARE BOYD-MACRAE looks at new
research that examines male attitudes on the issue.
EXPOSING MOTHERS’ BREASTS
2003 was a good year for breastfeeding publicity in
Melbourne. State MP Kirsty Marshall fed her new baby in
Parliament and was asked to leave. Media personality Kate
Langbroek fed her newborn on the live television show, ‘The
Panel’ and The Herald Sun ran a poll that found most people
supported banning breastfeeding in the workplace.
Meanwhile, second-year Victoria University psycholo-
gy students were deciding on qualitative research projects
for their social research methods subject. Lecturer Wendy
Saunders 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 and
Catherine Clarke. Male colleagues Ben Jackson and Spiro
Ginakis soon joined the group.
After extensive reading of research literature, the
group 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 men
came from the northern and western suburbs of Melbourne,
ranged in age between 25 and 52 and had diverse ethnic
backgrounds. All were employed and their jobs ranged from
the 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 of
their own children being breastfed; and the social setting of
the breastfeeding. Greatest discomfort was reported when
the breastfeeder was either a work colleague or a mate’s wife.
In the words of the report: “Most men were in favour
of breastfeeding, but made reference to the conflict
between the feeding breast and the sexual breast … [the]
thought that breastfeeding is natural and is a source of
nutrition 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. But
I 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 difficult
for 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 about
such a sensitive topic. But I got some very open and
honest answers. I was surprised at the strength of men’s
confusion 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 man
would talk about with his mates. “It’s a very minor part of a
man’s world,” he says. “They think about breasts, but not
about breastfeeding. They were very conscious of the fact
that we were taping the interviews. The men were a lot more
frank after the tape was switched off. There’s such moral
confusion about the breast in western society. And men are
also dealing with shame – wondering, ‘Should I feel this or
shouldn’t I?’ What’s normal is a big thing for men.”
Discretion about breastfeeding is seen as very important.
11
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Victoria University connections
>
PHOTO BY Dez Murad
Greatest discomfort was
reported when the breast-
feeder was either a work
colleague or a mate’s wife.
But this is a two-edged sword, says Goralski. “Invisibility is
seen as something to aspire to, and it’s particularly
important to acquire the skill of feeding without showing the
nipple,” she says. “But this actually adds to the problem.
Social discomfort emerged as a major theme, and many of
the men appeared to place the responsibility of reducing
this discomfort on to the mother.”
One interviewee said: “I’m always very pleased with
the way my wife does it. She does it in such a discreet fashion.
In fact, most people passing close by would have no idea of
what’s going on.” One of the students, Natalie Stead, found
out she was pregnant the day the project was handed in. “I
was surprised that a couple of my participants said a blanket
and emphatic ‘No!” when I asked them if they thought
women should be allowed to breastfeed in public,” she says.
“And one of my male friends said, ‘If you breastfeed in front
of me, Nat, I’ll tell you to put it away!’”
Last June the students received the Faculty of Arts
School of Psychology Special Achievement Award for
their project. And peer review journals have expressed
interest in publishing their results. “It’s most unusual for this
kind of interest to be shown in undergraduate research,”
says Saunders.
12 > Building and Construction

Marc Krusin
The Herald & Weekly Times Photographic Collection

bringing form
to the humble chair
Students took on the challenge of constructing
a chair that was not to look like a chair.

“The key word is inspiration — whether

done through education or other
means, it is the only route to change.”

>
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.
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.”
>
Victoria University’s Department of Building and Construction
offers apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship training in carpentry,
cabinet making, boat building, bricklaying and joinery. There are
also diplomas in Building, Building Design and Drafting, Built
Environment and Building Surveying.
PHOTOS BY Maurice Grant-Drew
13
< >
Victoria University connections
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’.
Attitudes must change or Australia will languish
in the distant background of design.
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.”
Building B (the aptly-named ‘Building Barn’) of the Newport Campus
is a hangar-sized structure that shelters half a dozen timber houses
ranging in size from 5 to 19 squares. In an adjacent space during
second semester, there were more than 20 boats under construction
– a ski boat, a speedboat, dinghies, kayaks and canoes.
14 > Psychology

Most people know that smoking in bed is a fire hazard. But not
many know that having a few beers or glasses of wine before
bed can increase their risk of becoming a fire fatality – even with
a smoke alarm in the house. NIKI KOULOURIS reports.

Danger, danger there is a fire! Get up now! Danger, danger there is a fire! Get up now! …
You must get up and investigate, there is a 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
fire! Get up now! … the dining room of a suburban home, separated from the young man’s bed-
Danger, danger there is a fire! Get up now! room by a hallway and two sets of closed doors. He is still fast asleep.
You must get up and investigate, there is a
Danger, danger there is a fire! Get up now! …
fire! Get up now! …
When I first hear a woman’s voice reiterating this urgent message, the hairs It is the early hours of the morning and I am observing research being
on the back of my neck rise. What I find even more disturbing is that a young undertaken by Victoria University that is examining how alcohol affects
man is soundly sleeping nearby, despite the fact that her cry is coming from one’s ability to wake up to alarms. A world first, the research is being carried
speakers just a metre away from his head. out by PhD candidate Michelle Ball, who is working under the supervision of
Professor Dorothy Bruck, head of the University’s School of Psychology.
Lower-pitched signals were
significantly more successful
than the high-pitched signals
of Australian smoke detectors
found in homes.

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
15
<
Victoria University connections
>
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?
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.
PHOTOS BY Warrick Attwood
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.
16 > Foundation Studies
FIRM
FOUNDATIONS
FOR A FUTURE
IN SCIENCE
An innovative course is offering
students an alternative
entry to tertiary studies.
CLARE BOYD-MACRAE reports.
There aren’t many tertiary courses that promise a
helicopter 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 get
pancakes 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
<
Victoria University connections
>
>
Nick Athanasiou demonstrates the magic of science.
PHOTO BY Maurice Grant-Drew
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
>
Looking for the next Reference Race clue at Federation Square.
PHOTO BY Sharon Walker
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 around
Melbourne with nothing but a
MET ticket, finding clues that
led 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
>
Students take to the skies as part of the Reference Race.
who’d never done physics, chemistry or maths.” PHOTO BY Maurice Grant-Drew
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.”
>
It was all smiles at the National Gallery of Victoria when the next clue
was uncovered.
PHOTO BY Sharon Walker
 > Business Administration
THE CITY
IN THE
PALM OF
HER HAND
Hong Kong-born
Catherine Ng
is one of the City of
Melbourne’s youngest
councillors. She spoke
to PAUL MITCHELL about
life in local government
at the hub of Australia’s
second largest city.
Catherine Ng is the City of Melbourne’s first Chinese
female 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
17
<
Victoria University connections
>
PHOTO BY Ross Bird
“I know the city, I love the city,
and I think there are a lot of
things that need to be done.”
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.”
18 > Sports Administration
After years of darkness,
the sun shines on Sunbury
A nineteenth century Dickensian children’s home became a grim lunatic asylum
before being transformed into Victoria University’s heritage-listed Sunbury Campus.
CLARE BOYD-MACRAE reports.
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 Bob Stewart has been
old dormitories, and solitary cells – complete with a spy hole in at Sunbury Campus
the door – have been transformed into staff offices. since day one.
PHOTO BY Sharon Walker

SUNBURY
Next year marks the 10th anniversary
< of the Campus and the University’s
Sports Administration degree.
The first TAFE and higher education courses at Sunbury Campus
started 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
19
< >
Victoria University connections
Sports Administration graduate Andrew Holmes
is race day co-ordinator at Caulfield Racecourse
and a consultant at Flemington Racecourse.
PHOTO BY Brett Kiteley
Knowing the history of Jackson’s
Hill, it is not surprising that there
have been many ‘sightings’ of
ghosts in and around the buildings.
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.
20 > Molecular Science
1 2
Lateral thinking by Victoria University
scientists may lead to increasingly
efficient and safer methods of treating
birds that are victim to oil spills.
magnetic
VIN MASKELL reports.
attraction
<
It’s not a pretty sight. Every year thousands of marine birds across
the 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.
Photos 1–5: an oil-polluted feather
3 undergoes the magnetic powder
cleaning process. Photo 5 shows
the cleaned feather (at right)
beside a non-polluted feather.
PHOTOS BY Ross Bird
4
5
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.”
 21
< >
Victoria University connections

Researcher Hien Dao Van holds a

feather that has been cleaned several
times through the magnetic attraction
of oil and iron powder.

<
What was the impetus for a group of Victoria University chemists
to 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

“The iron powder technique of cleaning could make an incredible

difference. This research has implications across the world.”
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.
A jackass penguin covered in “In the past, this problem of ‘weathered’ contamination
oil from an oil spill off Robben
has been particularly intractable,” Professor Orbell says.
Island, South Africa.
PHOTO BY Martin Harvey/ANTPhoto.com 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
Professor Orbell (front left) and colleagues Ali Abdirahman,
success rate” at rehabilitating oiled wildlife using conventional
Sally Ryan, Hien Dao Van, Dr Lawrence Ngeh and Associate
Professor Stephen Bigger (front right). detergent cleansing methods, it sees great potential in the
VU research.
22 > Multimedia
MASTERS OF
MULTIMEDIA
The ATOM Film, Television and Multimedia Awards recognise the achievements
of Australian and New Zealand professionals, educators and students. This year,
Victoria University took home a swag of prizes. JIM BUCKELL reports.
Victoria University’s Advanced Diploma in Multimedia
(Design) course at South Melbourne Campus has been
confirmed as one of the best in the country. Two students
and 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 Award
for Tertiary Students for Squaring the Circle, an exposition
of her family home, a farming property in southern NSW.
Stephen Linquist won the Best Multimedia Learning Reference
Award for his portrayal of postwar immigration in a piece
combining oral histories and images called Our Place.
Sessional teacher Jennie Swain won the Best
Multimedia Award in the General Category for her work,
Underworld, an educational tool dealing with sexuality and
sexual health issues for young people.
The two-year Advanced Diploma is a hands-on course
that focuses on developing technical and creative skills. After
completing the course, students can take a third-year place
in the Bachelor of Arts-Multimedia and gain a university degree.
Program manager Mark O’Rourke says the emphasis
on practical skills means students in the program quickly
gain 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, a
qualified high school teacher, joined Swain as a teacher in
Underworld is based around a set of Raymond
Chandler-inspired animated characters with
names like Sam Sperm and Madame Ovary.
Underworld - Jennie Swain
the course. “I certainly learnt a lot more in the two years
doing the course here than I did in four years crammed
into the classroom with hundreds of other teaching students
at uni,” Linquist says. “Here at VU, we were 20 students in
a class, and that provided a lot of opportunity to get hands-
on advice from the teachers.”
His award-winning project was inspired by the recent
immigration debate, but takes the story 60 years back in
time to reveal the oral histories of postwar migrants. “We can
learn a lot about the current debate from the experiences
of people back then,” he says.
Swain’s work deals with the complex issues and feelings
confronted by young people when they go through puberty
and learn about their own sexuality. Underworld is based
around a set of Raymond Chandler-inspired animated
characters with names like Sam Sperm and Madame Ovary,
who investigate the reproductive organs. With a background
in 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 very
sensitive issue, and we tend to shy away from some of the
language that is important in any discussion of it,” she says.
Her forensic story-line, coupled with the animated characters
and musical interludes, allows a free-flowing discussion to
unfold, which includes interviews with young people. Her work
was assisted by funding from the Australian Film Commission
and is being distributed by Dataworks as an educational
This project was inspired by the recent immigration
debate, but takes the story 60 years back in time
to reveal the oral histories of postwar migrants.
Our Place - Stephen Linquist
<
Victoria University connections
>
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 of
her family home, a property at Thyra in the Murray region
of NSW give way to video, super 8 and other photographic
images displayed behind them with accompanying sound-
tracks to reveal a multi-layered approach that evokes the
family history of working and living on the property for more
than 60 years. The sounds of a birdsong specific to a particular
tree, a creaking gate or an old tractor engine starting up
add an eerie presence to the images, many of which are
decades old. “For me there was a sense of loss, of moving
on, as I haven’t lived there for some time and my family is
unlikely to stay on the property much longer,” Jasper says.
Formerly a painter, Jasper worked on the project as a
part-time student and now hopes to gain further recognition
as a multimedia artist. “I came into the course as a mature age
student with an art background, having studied painting as part
of a fine arts degree at RMIT,” she says. “But I didn’t have any
real computer skills, which is what I was seeking from the course.
“It was tough as a part-time student doing the amount
of work required to get through the course, but it was also
rewarding,” she says. She is investigating ways to have the
work permanently stored, possibly at the Melbourne-based
Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
The prizewinners were presented with their awards
at a ceremony in Melbourne in July.
The sounds of a birdsong specific to a particular
tree, a creaking gate or an old tractor engine start-
ing up add an eerie presence to the images.
Squaring the Circle - Illma Jasper
 > Work Education
INTERNS TAKE
ON PARLIAMENT
Two young students took on the affairs of
politics when they were granted internships
with two members of State Parliament.
CLARE BOYD-MACRAE reports.
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
“Having someone more than 20 years younger around gives you
a new vision, new energy and new insights into old subjects.”
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
23
<
Victoria University connections
>
PHOTO BY Sharon Walker
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.
24 > Research

©
Dr John McDougall is director of Victoria University’s Office
for Research and Development. He offers a personal view
on the controversial topic of who should own intellectual
property created through university research.

INTELLECTUALW
PROPERTYO
Like motherhood, you only get to have a working > recognise the rights and needs of all stakeholders
knowledge of intellectual property (IP) from experience,Marina Burneska
although there are experts who can help you deliver
it, care for it and offer specialist advice about it, and
involved in the research, including policies that will
PHOTO BY Ross Bird
define the way in which benefits from the develop-
ment and exploitation of the IP will be allocated;
yet others who are happy to offer the anecdotal and > allow annual reporting on IP management of their
often incorrect advice of an ‘old wives’ tale’. publicly funded research; and
Are there particular issues relating to IP in > provide guidance in relation to potential conflicts
universities or in other research intensive institutions of interest concerning ownership, management,
that do not apply elsewhere? Clearly, governments protection and exploitation of IP.
think so. Otherwise the Australian Government, A number of Australian commentators and
through its funding agencies, wouldn’t have intro- reports are critical of the National Principles,
duced the National Principles of IP Management for suggesting they do not go far enough in protecting and
Publicly Funded Research in 2001, the US Government exploiting the universities’ and hence the nation’s
wouldn’t have introduced the Bayh-Dohl Act in IP. They believe the implementation of an Australian
1980 and other national governments would not equivalent of the Bayh-Dohl Act is imperative.
have similarly implemented legislation or national But is the fact that IP is not appropriately
codes of practice. protected and exploited a consequence of the rules –
A key feature of the current National Principles or lack thereof – or is the problem more deep-seated
is that they are not prescriptive about how univer- in the psyche and attitudes of researchers? I would
sities or other research agencies will manage IP. suggest that the latter is more the case in most
Rather, they are prescriptive in terms of the policies Australian universities.
and procedures that institutions are required to
have in place. The key issues that are included in
the National Principles are that research institutions MANY HEATED DEBATES HAVE ERUPTED OVER THE ISSUE OF
will have IP policies or procedures that: PRIVATE BENEFIT BEING GENERATED FROM PUBLIC INVESTMENT.
> are approved by their governing body;

> support researchers to recognise when their Why is this? Many university researchers From experience, I would suggest there seems
discoveries may have potential commercial consider themselves the owners of IP generated to be less dispute with researchers involved in the
value, and provide a review process to identify IP from their research, and have the right to do with it ‘hard sciences’ where their output is more likely to
that can be protected and/or exploited; what they will. I have participated in a meeting where be subject to patent protection, than there is for
> make clear to staff their responsibilities in relation the issue was who owned the IP of a researcher’s researchers in the humanities and social sciences
to IP protection and provide assistance in fulfilling output, when a senior officer from an Australian where the majority of output is the written word
these obligations and responsibilities; university stated: ‘It’s clear. The university owns and copyright is the key IP. In my opinion, I think
> clearly define the ownership and/or assignment of the IP.’ To which a senior researcher from the same universities as employers should and do have a
IP rights for employees and research students; university said: ‘Not my bloody IP, you don’t!’ significant claim to the IP generated by staff,
> guide researchers in assessing the existing IP in Even the ‘experts’ are divided on whether although one can always hypothesize situations
the field; universities can lay claim to the IP generated by where that may be challengeable.
> provide advice on the options that are available university staff, although such ownership can be Should we do anything about it? Again, I would
for commercialising IP; made a condition of employment. suggest, yes. With the strategic direction being

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?
LWHO SHOULD
YOWN IT?
Sadly, governments are the biggest
offenders in demanding biased
contractual conditions.
Dr John McDougall
PHOTO BY Brett Kiteley
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
25
<
Victoria University connections
>
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.
26 > Nursing

Midwifery training has undergone a rebirth at

Victoria University at a time when midwives
are expected to be in demand more and more.
VIN MASKELL reports.

Happy birth day: Victoria University
student Jen Semple (right) with Nadene
Dowsett and one-year-old Ashton.
PHOTOS BY Sharon Jones
The phone call came in the middle of the night but
Jen Semple didn’t mind. It was something she would need to
get used to, and something she would come to look forward
to. A woman she had known for two months had gone into
labour. Jen arrived to observe not just the birth but also the
role of an experienced midwife. A baby boy was born at
approximately 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 at
Victoria University.
“I noticed that the mother, who had already had several
children, was very much in charge of her pregnancy and her
labour. What sticks out in my mind is how spontaneous the
birth was. The woman had not signed on to a health care
professional – a doctor or obstetrician – to be there. She
was more than comfortable having a midwife with her.”
This approach is at the heart of the truly innovative
midwifery course being taught at St Albans Campus. The
trainee midwives are not nurses, as all midwives had to be
until now. Once upon a time you became a midwife after
training as a nurse. But a nurse’s profession is to care for
sick people and women about to give birth are usually in
good, rather than poor health. The philosophy behind the
course is that birth is the natural act of a well woman and
should be treated as such as much as possible.
“About 75 per cent of women
in Australia have a normal
birth and that’s where midwife-
led care can be provided.”
Of course sometimes there are difficulties that require
medical assistance but according to lecturer Gina Kruger,
“about 75 per cent of women in Australia have a normal
birth and that’s where midwife-led care can be provided, as
recommended by the World Health Organisation.”
Not surprisingly, this change has created its own tensions
among some obstetricians and some midwives who came to
their profession via nursing. But while the approach may be
new in Australia, it has been an established practice for
many years in New Zealand, Britain and Holland. It has taken
eight years for the new course to come into being, including all
the appropriate accreditations – a long labour indeed.
The Victoria University course began in 2002 and was
created in conjunction with Australian Catholic University
and Monash University in a partnership known as Werna
Naloo, an indigenous term meaning ‘We Us Together’. The
phrase not only describes the work of the three universities
in creating the new course but also sums up the relationship
of the new-era midwife to the mother and family.
‘A midwife is not just there at the birth, but provides
care, education and support during the entire childbearing
cycle. The midwife works with women, partners and
families during the prenatal period, pregnancy, birth and
early parenting.’
It was words like these that inspired Jen Semple, then
23, to enrol in the midwifery course. Jen married in 1999
and has been keen to have a baby ever since. Shortly after
marrying, she says she was “very clucky. I’d go to the local
library and take out stacks of books about pregnancy and
childbirth. Everything I read seemed to say, ‘If you’re having
a baby, you have a midwife with you, rather than a doctor’.”
Browsing through a career guide in late 2002 she
came across a description of a new midwifery course and
realised she had found her calling.
Among Jen’s thirty classmates in the inaugural group
of 2002 are a scientist, a hairdresser, an accountant, two
massage 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 clinical
placements 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 of
their own life,” explains Jen. “Each woman has had some-
thing different to teach me.”
From Nadene Dowsett, Jen learned that “as huge an
experience as having your first child is, it doesn’t mean that
the woman becomes a completely different person. Nadene
never seemed to ‘lose herself’ in her pregnancy and hasn’t
seemed to in parenthood. She was an intelligent person
with a variety of interests before she became pregnant and
continues to be today.”
The mother-to-be and midwife-to-be first met at a health
check fifteen weeks into Nadene’s pregnancy and quickly
developed a rapport. They met another three times before
Nadene, ten days overdue, went into a gel-induced labour.
Jen remembers receiving a phone call from Nadene’s
husband Hamish at around midnight, about two hours into
Nadene’s labour. Nadene gave birth to her son Ashton at
Sunshine Hospital at 3.31am on 23 September 2003. The
healthy blue-eyed boy weighed in at 3900 grams (eight
pounds and nine ounces).
“I was more aware of Jen’s presence shortly after the
birth rather than at the moment of birth,” recalled Nadene
from her Taylors Lakes home. “I had Hamish and my mum
there too. Mum was wiping my brow and talking in my ear.
Hamish was at the business end of things. It was perfect.”
27
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Victoria University connections
>
Jen stayed until 5am, having seen that everything was
going smoothly. She returned the next day, and then saw
Nadene and Ashton six weeks later.
Young Ashton, now an energetic one year old, was the
fifteenth of ‘Jen’s babies’. Through clinical placements, the
course requires students to be involved in the birth of forty
babies over three years’ full-time study.
While the clinical placements are at many metropolitan
and some rural hospitals, there is a particularly strong
relationship with Sunshine Hospital, where 2600 babies are
born each year. The hospital is located quite literally down
the road from the St Albans Campus.
Beth Collis is the hospital’s clinical co-ordinator in
Women and Children’s Services. She oversees the place-
ment of groups of six students at a time. What qualities is
she 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 appreciate
that it’s a privilege to share that time with a woman and her
family.” As well as this sense of affinity and empathy, and
their theoretical knowledge, midwives also now need to be
well aware of the politics of their profession.
This is particularly so, given the Victorian Government’s
recent shake-up of maternity services. Last June, Health
Minister Bronwyn Pike announced a new blueprint for
maternity services that would focus on midwife-managed
care, otherwise known as primary maternity services.
“Overseas and interstate experience has shown that it is
safe to offer birthing services, without a doctor in atten-
dance, to a significant group of women with uncomplicated
pregnancies – all with a system that provides appropriate
medical back-up,” Pike said. It is this new world that Victoria
University’s first graduates of its Bachelor of Midwifery
course are set to step into.
Jen Semple and her classmates eagerly await their
chance to become midwives of the modern era. They are
ready for the phone call that comes in the middle of the night.
28 > Performance
A young woman stands under a massive electricity
pylon 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
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.
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

Performance Studies students put on a show at a venue in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy.
“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.”
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
PHOTOS BY
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.
“We make it quite clear that
this is not an acting or dance
course. But many take it on
and are released from all that
restrictive schooling stuff.”
Mark Minchinton at the end of his epic walk.
PHOTOS BY Mark Minchinton
29
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Victoria University connections
>
The long walk home
One of the distinctive aspects about Victoria
University’s Performance Studies program is that
the 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’s
School of Contemporary Art, Minchinton undertook a
solo 600-kilometre walk across southwest Western
Australia. 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 who
married a white woman in 1891. During the course of
her life, his grandmother “lost, disavowed or forgot”
her Aboriginal identity. Mark grew up unaware of his
Aboriginal 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 be
acknowledged and dealt with.”
The walk took him from Busselton to Perth, and
Sharon Walker
from Wyalkatchem to Kellerberrin – land that was part
of his family story, land he would have known had his
history been different. “A deep sense of shame ran
through my family history, largely due to our hidden
Aboriginality,” he says. “And I believe it’s a shame felt
by this country in relation to its treatment of Aboriginal
people. At some level, all Australians live with the know-
ledge that this land was conquered and stolen, and that
there are other people living in unjust conditions as a
result 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, averaging
25 kilometres a day. As well as basic supplies, water and
hammock, he carried a Palm Pilot, camera and Global
Positioning System (GPS). Twice a day he stopped, took
a GPS reading and five photographs, and wrote about
his experiences. These were posted on a website
www.soca.ecu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/void for public
viewing and presented as part of the National Review
of Live Art, Midland.
30 > International
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Victoria University connections
>
TWINNING MAKES
GOOD BUSINESS
In 1993, Victoria University embarked on one of its
first major international relationships – with Sunway
University College in Kuala Lumpur. That partnership
continues to grow. GLEN DOWER reports.

In the early nineties, Victoria University’s Faculty of

Business and Law began offering business degrees
through a partnership with Malaysia’s Sunway University
College. From a modest beginning, the partnership
quickly grew and today, 700 students are studying the
University’s undergraduate business courses through the
Victoria University– Sunway College Twinning Program.
“In 1998, we had just 60 Sunway-enrolled students
for the Bachelor of Business degree,” says program co-
ordinator Lindsay Smyrk. “In 2004, enrollments exceed
700, with more than 200 coming from the June enroll-
ment. Kuala Lumpur is a highly competitive location for
overseas universities, so these numbers are a good indi-
cation of our reputation in the region.”
Accredited as a university last August, Sunway
University College is located in the Sunway Lagoon
Resort, which has its own medical centre, the famous
Pyramid shopping mall, a theme park, hotel and mono-
rail. The resort forms part of the multibillion dollar Bandar
Sunway development, which 30 years ago was a huge
mining 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, he
graduated from Footscray Institute of Technology – a Sunway University College in Kuala Lumpur.
Victoria University predecessor institution – in 1970 with The Bachelor of Business course taught at Sunway
a Diploma in Business Studies. In 1974, Tan Sri Jeffrey is identical to the course taught at Victoria University in
Cheah formed Sungei Way, which diversified and grew Melbourne. Even the examinations are held at the same
into one of Malaysia’s largest enterprises. The Sunway time – a 9am start in Melbourne is a 7am start at
Group of Companies, founded by Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Sunway in Kuala Lumpur. The examination papers are
and his wife in 1999, now has an annual turnover in then sent to Melbourne for marking.
excess of 1 billion ringgits ($A375 million). Students usually spend the first two years at
Sunway College was founded in 1987, and six years Sunway and complete their degree at Victoria University
later the 120 million ringgit (A$45 million) purpose-built
in Melbourne. Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah. Puan Sri Susan Cheah.
Sunway College campus opened. Victoria University’s
Another option is to complete the first year at
first honourary degree – Doctor of the University honoris “We continue to hold our belief
Sunway and then attend a Victoria University campus to
causa – was conferred on Jeffrey Cheah in 1993. In
pursue another field of study, such as applied economics, that an overseas stint for the
1999 he received the title Tan Sri Dato Seri from the
Sultan of Selangor.
computing, transport and logistics, music industry, or one of students would be good.”
several managerial disciplines. According to Smyrk, being
Last February, Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah’s wife, Puan Sri
able to ‘mix ‘n’ match’ subjects is popular with students. “The twinning relationship and programs should
Datin Seri Susan Cheah was also awarded a Doctor of the
“It is very flexible, and they are free to take any evolve over the years to reflect the enhanced relationship
University honoris causa by Victoria University in recognition
combination they like,” he says. “A young person heading of both institutions,” Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah says. “We con-
of her exceptional contribution to Malaysian society as a
back home with a law/music industry degree wouldn’t have tinue to hold our belief that an overseas stint for the stu-
leading businesswoman, her wide-ranging service to the
any trouble establishing a career path.” Victoria University dents would be good, and we will continue to encourage
community, and her support and service to Victoria University
staff teach part of the course at Sunway. In the first year, and facilitate the exchange of students from Sunway to
in Malaysia. Puan Sri Susan Cheah is director of Sunway
they teach one week of the 12-week curriculum; in the Victoria University. We do not believe that education is
University College and like her husband, a Victoria
second and third year, they teach two weeks. static, but continuous and life long.”
University graduate, completing commerce and accounting
studies at Footscray Institute of Technology in 1970. It has been an eventful year for the partnership. In The Twinning Program offers a highly regarded
April, the first lectures in Victoria University’s Master of degree backgrounded by a dynamic and colourful region
Business Administration course were held at Sunway. that is preparing its place for the future. Lindsay Smyrk
Even the examinations are held Now that it has been upgraded to a university, Sunway has no doubts about that future. “The Twinning Program
at the same time – a 9am start in University College can award its own degrees. But Tan is in the vanguard, and other universities use it as a model
Melbourne is a 7am start at Sri Jeffrey Cheah says the upgrade will not affect the of how it should be done,” Smyrk says. “The partnership
Sunway in Kuala Lumpur. relationship with Victoria University. and the Twinning Program have passed the test of time.”
 > Books 31
<
Victoria University connections
>

VUBOOKS
The 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 and outs of international trade
are issues explored in new books by VU authors.
<

<
Author Les Terry. Author Ben Collins.
PHOTO BY Bernie Phelan

The Remarkable Football Fever: The Book Psychology in the International

Resurrection of Grassroots of Success Physical and Trade: A Practical
Lazaros X (Volume 1) Manual Therapies Introduction
By Les Terry Edited by Bob Stewart, Rob By Ben Collins Edited by Mark Andersen By Roberto Bergami
Published by Simon & Hess, Matthew Nicholson Published by Geoff and Gregory Kolt Published by Eruditions
Schuster Published by Maribyrnong Press Slattery Publishing Published by Churchill Publishing
Livingstone

A room full of abandoned family
relics holds the key to Les Terry’s
search for his family history. This
is memoir crossed with intrigue,
autobiography spiked with farce,
and romance grounded in poverty
and struggle. Terry is a lecturer in
VU’s Faculty of Arts at St Albans
Campus. The book was launched
at the Malthouse Theatre,
Southbank in October.
Australian Rules football is
becoming an increasingly popular
field for academic discourse, with
up to 20 PhDs across Australia
exploring what is now a multimil-
lion dollar industry. This book
arose from a one-day conference
on football studies at VU in July
2003 and features eight papers,
four by VU researchers and four
by academics from other
Australian universities. The VU
contributions include a look at the
sounds of the game, its little
known Chinese and female play-
ers, organisational culture and the
push into the northern market.
The editors are all VU lecturers.
As it boldly declares, The Book of
Success is about the process of
achieving success: having a dream,
planning and toiling towards it,
and ultimately achieving it. Author
Ben Collins, a graduate of VU’s
TAFE course in Professional
Writing and Editing, interviewed
35 significant Australians, includ-
ing America’s Cup skipper John
Bertrand, Oscar winner and
Harvie Krumpet creator Adam
Elliot, NASA astronaut Andy
Thomas, Mt Everest climber Tim
Macartney-Snape, musical theatre
star Marina Prior, scientist Sir
Gustav Nossal, former consumer
watchdog Allan Fels, eccentric
media personality Rex Hunt, Jim’s
Mowing founder Jim Penman and
Hungry Jack’s boss Jack Cowin.
This is a comprehensive text on
psychology as related to the
physical and manual therapies
(e.g. physiotherapy, osteopathy,
massage therapy), but is written
in a style that is understandable
to those who do not have a spe-
cialist psychology background.
The text is aimed specifically at
those working in the field of
physical and manual therapies,
including sports medicine practi-
tioners. Mark Andersen lectures
at VU, while Gregory Kolt is
Professor of Health Science at
Auckland University of
Technology.
Essential reading for learning
about international trade in goods
from an Australian trader’s per-
spective. VU’s Roberto Bergami is
one of the most experienced
practitioners and expert acade-
mics in this complex and con-
stantly changing field. The book
assumes no prior knowledge of
international trade and covers all
the basic processes, including
documents, regulations, payment
systems, customs, quarantine, val-
uation of goods, cargo insurance
and much more.
32 > Art www.vu.edu.au
< >
Victoria University connections

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