Professor Peter Best’s leadership in optimising the link between academic study and cutting edge industry insights has secured the Griffith University Discipline Head of Accounting, a prestigious SAP Outstanding Academic Award.
Acknowledged for his long term support of the software giant’s University Alliance Program (UAP), which reaches out to more than a million students worldwide, Professor Best was pleased to be one of four academics awarded worldwide.
“I’ve been teaching, researching and performing industry projects with SAP since 1999, and so was absolutely delighted to hear that I was one of this year’s recipients,” confirmed Professor Best.
“The significance of the award is underpinned by SAP being a global market-leading, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, used by approximately 30% of medium to large private and public organisations throughout the world.”
“Such is the outstanding global reputation of SAP software, it has already been shown to be a great enticement for International students looking to undertake post graduate business studies in Australia.”
“This puts Griffith University in a prime position to facilitate such valuable admissions through the use of best practice technologies in order to maximise students’ employability upon graduation.”
SAP is used by all of the Queensland government plus many federal agencies and is widely used within the private sector through major organisations such as BHP, Australia Post, Telstra and Shell.
Such enterprise systems provide a rich source of research opportunities which has also provided Professor Best a platform from which to pioneer expertise within the field.
“Industry projects have also been completed in the review of SAP security, continuous control monitoring and automated fraud detection methods, so at a personal level it’s great to be involved in the continued evolution of this outstanding software,” added Professor Best.
“And this also provides a distinctive advantage to Commerce students, with Griffith the only Brisbane University to offer such students’ access to the most up-to-date version of the software under SAP’s University Alliance Program.
“With significant investment in research in accounting standards and business best practice, the SAP software integrates well current regulations and optimal business processes with principles taught within accounting and auditing courses.
Local high school students are being given the chance to experience university life through the university’s Experience Griffith program.
Now in its seventh year, the program is designed to provide students with a unique opportunity for academic enrichment and expose them to a wide range of potential study areas.
More than 1200 students and teachers will take part in a full day program that includes an interactive campus tour and two degree-specific sessions. Ten study areas are covered across the five campuses.
“Experience Griffith is a great opportunity for students to get a taste of interesting subjects they may have never known existed,” said Events & Engagement Officer (Future Students) Jodie Twite.
Dates:
Monday 28 April
South Bank campus
Tuesday 29 April
Nathan & Mt Gravatt campuses
Wednesday 30 April
Logancampus
Friday 2 May
Gold Coast campus
US President Barack Obama delivers remarks during an Easter Prayer Breakfast in the East Room of the White House, in Washington DC, USA, 14 April 2014. Michael Reynolds/EPA
U.S. President Barack Obama landed in Tokyo last week to launch an Asian tour dedicated to reinvigorating his policy of “rebalancing” US foreign policy towards a dynamic Asia.
“East Asia is a tumultuous region with a multitude of fractures that the US has done little to mend over the last half-century”, said Christian Wirth, a research fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in an interview with AFP last week.
“Since the establishment of the post-war regime in San Francisco in 1951 and the onset of the Korean War in 1950, (the US has been) directly and deeply involved in East Asian politics”
“Washington’s preference for bilateralism has contributed to the lack of intra-Asian cooperation and historical reconciliation.” That bilateralism began last Wednesday evening with a dinner between Obama and Abe at an exclusive sushi restaurant in the basement of an ageing office building in the glitzy Ginza district of Tokyo.
Dr Donna McDonald from the School of Human Services and Social Work was the lady of the moment when she hosted a book launch for her latest publication The Art of Being Deaf.
Held at the Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane’s West End, the event featured presentations from Dr McDonald, as well as top Aussie writer Kris Olsson and CEO of Deaf Services Queensland, Brett Casey.
The Art of Being Deaf looks at the impact that Dr McDonald’s deafness has had on her life and communicates herexperiences to the parents of deaf children.
Parents’ negative reactions
With deaf community interpreters present and talking candidly to a packed house, she spoke of the trials and challenges she has faced throughout her life and her ongoing concern regarding parents’ often negative reactions on first learning that their child is deaf.
“To this day, I continue to be horrified at the extent of some parents’ grief when they learnthat their child is deaf or hearing impaired. With my book I hope that by sharing mypersonal experiences, I can help parents see the potential for the opportunities that lieahead and realise that deafness is no death sentence.”
Brett Casey told the audience that Dr McDonald’s writing underlines the importance of the deaf community to work together to share challenges and experiences for the greater good.
“Heartbreakingly sad but at times also very funny,” was the way the book was described by Walkley Award-winning writer Melissa Lucashenko. “Deaf people – as do others – all need guides and teachers in our lives. In this book, Donna has described the negative consequences of not having deaf role models in her life, but now Donna herself has become a deaf elder. In doing so, she is thankfully, providing a pathway for young and not-so-young deaf people. ”
An enthusiastic team of runners, supporters and Griffith Health students represented Griffith University at the Gold Coast Bulletin Fun Run on Sunday (April 27).
The Griffith contingent was among more than 2200 competitors who arrived at Robina’s CBus Stadium just after dawn to compete in events including the Griffith University 21.1km Half-Marathon, Mudd Rush 10km, Brooks 5km, Hip to Toe 2.5km and Rebel 1km Kids Dash.
The highlight of the morning was the performance of Griffith Business graduate Michael Shelley, who established his lead early in the 10km event and won in a time of 28 minutes and 24 seconds, an astonishing four minutes ahead of the second-placed competitor.
Shelley, who won a silver medal in the marathon at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, is hoping for another national call-up and a spot in Australia’s team for the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games later this year.
Other Griffith runners may not have been as fast as Shelley as he was storming to victory, but all were equally determined to perform well in their events.
This commitment extended to the work by Griffith Health physiotherapy students kept busy as a steady stream of runners sought post-race treatment for various pains, strains and sprains.
The next big participation event for Griffith University will be the 2014 Gold Coast Marathon in July.Last year Griffith won both the Largest Corporate Team and Most Kilometres Travelled awards and this year the University is again offering staff, students and alumni the opportunity to receive a discount off their registration fee (for the race of your choice) and a free Griffith singlet.
The deadline for registrations is before 5pm on May 21, 2014. For more details, go to Griffith Marathon
For more images of the 2014 Gold Coast Bulletin Fun Run, go toGCB Fun Run
More than 2200 competitors took part in the 2014 Gold Coast Bulletin Fun Run, including a strong team from Griffith University.
A series of powerful portraits depicting the realities of war is stirring emotions Brisbane-wide.
Ben Quilty: after Afghanistan is bringing to life the raw emotional turmoil and psychological journey of military service — and is fast becoming the most visited exhibition for the Griffith University Art Gallery (GUAG) in recent years.
With almost 1,000 people through the doors since the show opened less than two weeks ago, the haunting faces on canvas are inciting extraordinary responses from viewers ranging from school children through to returned servicemen.
Seeing how the magnetic portraits are resonating with all who visit the show is in itself an incredibly rewarding experience says Naomi Evans, Acting Director at GUAG.
“Our visitors are telling us how moving the paintings are and it has been an opportunity to listen to so many individuals who are generously sharing their own stories,” she reveals.
“Many past and present servicemen and women, their friends and families have attended the exhibition already.
“These are the people who understand on a very real and personal level just what is at stake in going to war, acting in service, and the after effects it can have.
“At the Gallery, we all can’t help but recall the profound words of Air Commodore John Oddie who spoke at our opening event.
“He explained that the gift of servicemen and women who chose to act on their drive to help others, are also gifts from their families – each mother, father, sibling, and friend.
“Ben Quilty became such a passionate supporter and friend to many of his sitters, and this is so clearly apparent in his work.
“It is no surprise that visitors of all ages and backgrounds are feeling the effects of such powerful and richly emotive pieces – it really is an exhibition everyone must see,” she says.
Quilty has since worked with the Australian War Memorial to create a limited edition print now on sale at GUAG, with all proceeds to go to Soldier On, an organisation dedicated to helping wounded soldiers.
Ben Quilty will join with special guest speakers Troopers Luke Korman and Daniel Spain this month to discuss his collection of portraits and experience in Afghanistan in a free public event, from 11.00am on Saturday 10 May.
A Children’s Portraiture Workshop will also run from 10am — 12 noon, Saturday 24 May. Here children will view the paintings and discuss the role of a War Artist and approach activities using the idea of capturing a story or emotion in an image (cost $15).
Ben Quilty: after Afghanistanwill run until Saturday 7 June, from 10am — 4pm, Tuesday to Saturday at the Griffith University Art Gallery, 226 Grey Street, South Bank.
Griffith University Professor Michael Drew’s reputation as a worldwide authority on superannuation will see the academic present at a highly prestigious global retirement symposium in New York from April 29-30.
Leading international experts and decision makers from across a broad range of disciplines will address the 2014 J.P. Morgan Retirement Symposium, engaging in critical thinking and dialogue on the multi-faceted, global forces that are shaping what retirement will mean in the decades to come.
Of particular significance will be the impact such forces will have on individuals, businesses, and governments.
The cornerstone issue of Professor Drew’s session entitled, “Shifts and risks: Optimising our Savings Systems,” will consider whether retirement savings systems around the world are well-positioned to address the financial and behavioural realities of today.
The discussion will consider the implications of the global responsibility shift from defined benefit (DB) plans to individuals in defined contribution (DC) plans, as well as related behavioural and structural learnings.
“Australia’s superannuation system is one of the leading retirement savings systems in the world,” confirmed Professor Drew.
“However, like many countries around the world, the ageing of the population is seeing the system move from the savings/accumulation phase to the critical retirement income/distribution phase.
“Increases in life expectancy around the globe create elevated pressure on households and governments alike, to maintain a sustainable level of retirement income for an extended period of time.
“The 2014 J.P. Morgan Retirement Symposium will consider topics from behavioural finance and the changing labour market, to the dynamic nature of risk through different life stages and retirement income strategies.
“The Australian experience of these matters provides important insights into the challenges faced by today’s retirees.”
Professor Michael Drew is the Foundation Director of the Griffith Centre for Personal Finance and Superannuation, which will be officially launched on Tuesday 17th June 2014 with Mr Jeremy Cooper (Chairman – Retirement Income, Challenger) and Ms Danielle Press (Chief Executive Officer, Equipsuper).
By Adjunct Associate Professor Richard Hill, School of Human Services and Social Work
You might assume that social work, as one of Australia’s oldest and well-established caring professions, needn’t worry about its future. You’d be wrong. Far-reaching changes to organisational culture and workplace practices in recent years have left many social workers deeply concerned about the direction of the profession.
They fear that the Abbott government’s commitment to privatising services and eradicating“waste and inefficiency” will further undermine professional values that are pivotal to social work’s identity.
Social workers are a varied professional group but most would probably agree with this value statement by the Australian Association of Social Workers:
We have a strong voice on matters of social inclusion, social justice, human rights and issues that impact upon the quality of life of all Australians. We seek a close and collaborative relationship with educational institutions, industry, government, client associations and the community.
Since its inception through philanthropic reform and social activism in the 19th century the contribution of social work to the betterment of people’s lives has been incalculable. And yet it is a profession that has always had to defend its values. It has often been seriously misunderstood and is even seen in some quarters as an obstacle to progress.
After all, argue apologists for Dickensian social order, why opt for state-funded intervention when self-responsibility will do?
End of entitlement declared
Treasurer Joe Hockey recently announced:The age of entitlement is over, the age of personal responsibility has begun.
That comment sent shivers down the spine of the social services sector. Comparisons have been drawn with the 1980s Thatcher government, which fulminated against the “nanny state” and advocated self-reliance and a new spirit of enterprise and competition.
Interestingly, at the time of his statement, Hockey had been reading Margaret Thatcher’s authorised biography, Not for Turning. His admiration for the Iron Lady’s free-market economics has found its way into a carefully crafted narrative which pits entitlement against self-responsibility, state regulation against enterprise, and unions and current workplace arrangements against global competitiveness and profitability.
In May, Hockey will hand down a budget that is likely to accelerate government cost cutting. Significantly, he has already called on state governments to sell off public assets to help pay for infrastructure projects, a move that will undoubtedly impact social services.
Social services minister Kevin Andrews has also signalled his government’s intention to rein in welfare spending. He maintains that the nation can no longer afford to pay benefits to more than five million Australians.
Yet the real reason for the impending cuts and privatisations is that the Coalition dislikes the idea of comprehensive state welfare provision. It’s not in their ideological DNA.
No ‘we’ in fundamentalist liberalism
Traditionally, while liberalism advocated small government, trade liberalisation, the free market and so forth, it recognised the critical role of government in providing targeted, publicly funded welfare services.
Neoliberal governments on the other hand see a very limited role for public welfare funding, as evidenced in “contracting out”, “recommissioning” and “contestability” exercises in Queensland and New South Wales. Quite simply, they prefer to privatise services whenever possible.
Also, instead of traditional client—service relations, we are now urged to think of service as a commercial encounter between providers and customers, subject to the laws of supply and demand. The customer is no longer part of a collective or integral to the social, nor a citizen with rights. He or she is a creature of the market.
As Thatcher put it, “there is no such thing as society”, only individuals locked in a neo-Darwinian struggle over resources.
Neoliberalism, of course, involves much more than rugged individualism. Its advocacy of Hayekian “spontaneous order” means the erosion of state institutions and less public spending, as well as privileging market competition over moral considerations.
Reducing social work to business
At an organisational level, neo-liberal ideology also requires a complementary administrative culture; this is where economic rationalism and managerialism come in. Each has contributed to a stifling culture of managerial audit in which everything is measured in inputs, outputs, cost-effectiveness, efficiency and other rationalities of transparency and accountability — the bean-counters version of “service delivery”.
Social policy researchers John Wallace and Bob Peasehave catalogued the impacts of this culture on social work. They note the:
…strong evidence of dismantling, restructuring and fiscal strangling as part of neoliberal ideas and practices.
According to Wallace and Pease, this has been accompanied, among other things, by:
Loss of institutional legitimacy and the denial of the need for welfare, leaving social workers on the defensive.
Replacement of the social by individualism so the immediate and practical demands of “the case”, “case management” and “service delivery” override structural issues.
Less emphasis on social theorising and the political nature of social work.
Increased talk of cost containment, efficiencies, dividends, incentives etc.
More intensive practices including line management reviews, performance targets and output measures linked to complex accounting systems that focus on cost-effectiveness.
Wallace and Pease further note that a more functional emphasis on service delivery, tightened client eligibility criteria, talk of defraying costs to customers, the exclusion of social workers from policy deliberations, and the undermining of advocacy have significantly impacted the client-worker relationship.
Privatisation looms as a constant threat. Some areas of child protection servicesin Queensland and other states have been deemed suitable for contracting out. This despite evidence in Australia and overseas,that privatisation shifts social services to a cost-conscious, profit-based system that frequently fails to deliver the promised economic benefits. The result is “streamlined” services and cost shifting to “consumers”.
Among social workers, there is growing demoralisation, alienation and anger at what has been dubbed “business social work”. While Wallace and Pease suggest ways in which social workers might resist neoliberalism, the profession’s identity and future is uncertain.
Hope for change might lie in aligning with opposition to the idea that productivity takes precedence over the well-being, creativity and contentment of all human beings. It might also rest in reaffirming that the most important aspect of social work is not in pursuing measurable outputs, but in developing meaningful and empowering human relationships. Social work is so much more than a business.
Treasurer Joe Hockey is a believer in small government and has welfare spending in his sights. AAP/Daniel Munoz
Reducing social work to business
At an organisational level, neoliberal ideology also requires a complementary administrative culture; this is where economic rationalism and managerialism come in. Each has contributed to a stifling culture of managerial audit in which everything is measured in inputs, outputs, cost-effectiveness, efficiency and other rationalities of transparency and accountability — the bean-counters version of “service delivery”.
Social policy researchers John Wallace and Bob Pease have catalogued the impacts of this culture on social work. They note the:
…strong evidence of dismantling, restructuring and fiscal strangling as part of neoliberal ideas and practices.
According to Wallace and Pease, this has been accompanied, among other things, by:Loss of institutional legitimacy and the denial of the need for welfare, leaving social workers on the defensive.
Replacement of the social by individualism so the immediate and practical demands of “the case”, “case management” and “service delivery” override structural issues.
Less emphasis on social theorising and the political nature of social work.
Increased talk of cost containment, efficiencies, dividends, incentives etc.
More intensive practices including line management reviews, performance targets and output measures linked to complex accounting systems that focus on cost-effectiveness.
Wallace and Pease further note that a more functional emphasis on service delivery, tightened client eligibility criteria, talk of defraying costs to customers, the exclusion of social workers from policy deliberations, and the undermining of advocacy have significantly impacted the client-worker relationship.
Privatisation looms as a constant threat. Some areas of child protection services in Queensland and other states have been deemed suitable for contracting out. This despiteevidence in Australia and overseas that privatisation shifts social services to a cost-conscious, profit-based system that frequently fails to deliver the promised economic benefits. The result is “streamlined” services and cost shifting to “consumers”.
Among social workers, there is growing demoralisation, alienation and anger at what has been dubbed “business social work”. While Wallace and Pease suggest ways in which social workers might resist neoliberalism, the profession’s identity and future is uncertain.
Hope for change might lie in aligning with opposition to the idea that productivity takes precedence over the well-being, creativity and contentment of all human beings. It might also rest in reaffirming that the most important aspect of social work is not in pursuing measurable outputs, but in developing meaningful and empowering human relationships. Social work is so much more than a business.
