The Australian federal election in 2007 has resulted in the massive victory for the ALP led by the newly-elected leader Kevin Rudd, and ended the eleven-year coalition government. John Howard, former prime minister, lost his seat in inner Sydney suburb and this also ended his political career. The ALP recorded swing of 5.44 and gained 23 seats. The careful analysis of the change of seats and swing shows the similarity with 1996 election, which was the last regime-changing election. Number of seats changed hands and swing was almost the same. This shows that the degree of change of support of voters when the regime change happens, even though minor change of seats and swing enables regime change theoretically, if it brings majority seats. State by state analysis reveals that there were strong change of seats and swing especially in New South Wales and in Queensland. Queensland only delivered the gain of nine seats to the ALP. NSW also delivered seven seats for the ALP. It can be said that these two states were critically important for the overall election result. However, WA delivered no net-gain for the ALP. This shows the importance of closer look to the situation of each state as there are a lot of differences. The seats which changed hands recorded high swing, especially in Queensland. It is true that the change of political party in a particular seat can happen if there is enough swing more than margin to the other party. However, of all twenty seven seats which changed hands, eighteen seats recorded swing more than six, which is above the national average. These seats which directly delivered the Labor government are mainly located in outer suburban area. Also, analysis with 2007 census data shows that many of these seats are "middle class" seats, as individual weekly income is from 401 dollars to 600 dollars in twenty seats of all twenty seven seats. Only one seat is above 601 dollars and only four seats are below 400 dollars. This shows that "middle class", or so-called "Howard battlers" in outer suburban area was the main driving force of the regime change in 2007. The switch of support of these people from the Coalition to the ALP is supposed to be the main reason of the birth of the Rudd Labor government.

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The Australian Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd won the federal election of 2007 and the new Rudd Government came to office in December of the same year. The Australian Labor Party had adopted "working families" as a key phrase of the election campaign, especially in their early anti-WorkChoices advertisements. However, "working families" soon went beyond the original objective and the Rudd government launched a "Working Families Supporting Package," consisting of wide range of programs for families with children, as the centerpiece of the 2008-09 budget. Why did "working families" win the central place in the politics of the current Australian Government and why was it "family" not "working people"? To answer this question, this paper looks at the formation of Australian "family policies" as a process of political intervention into the "family" constructed through the discourse around family and family policies, and analyse that process by textual analysis. In Australia, family has been constructed as an object of political intervention through the discussion of "national family policies" and has legitimated the Commonwealth and its politics. Discussion and discourse on a basic wage (or a "family wage") posited "the family" as a unit consisting of a male breadwinner, his wife (mother) and children. The family was reconstructed through the discussion of the maternity allowance, the child endowment and the family allowance and linked with the "Australian people," which then justified the Commonwealth. Furthermore, especially from the late 1970s, "family policy" developed as a set of broad programs for education, unemployment, childcare, healthcare, and housing. Feminism and neo-liberal critiques of the welfare state gerw, especially from the early and mid-1980s, and led to the construction of "working families" as a family in which both parents work and the phrase "families" as diverse in composition, in contrast to "the family unit" or "the traditional family." Nevertheless, the construction of "working families" resulted in the re-construction of "the traditional family" and political intervention was accordingly divided. It was especially ironic that the former Howard Government assumed "families" as a welfare system and that supported their neo-liberal policies. The Rudd Government's "working families" and its family policies need to be understood as an extension of this developmental process of "family policies" within its discursive space.

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This paper explores current trends in social work theory subjects in Australian social work education at tertiary level. A text analysis of subject or units of study outlines related to social work theory was conducted through 23 Australian universities offering a social work program in 2005. This research aimed to analyze the use of language in teaching materials including reading lists in each school. Findings of this study showed a growing trend of critical social work theories in social work theory related subjects in Australian universities based on language uses. The references used for critical social work theories illustrate that there is extensive authorship of texts in the social work literature by Australian social work scholars. The discussion also covers the importance of critical social work theories, the influence of post-modernism, and social justice discourse in relation to Australian social work education.

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With aging advancing at a globally unprecedented rate in Japan, there is a great need for advanced nursing care techniques for the elderly such as Therapeutic Recreation, or the Japanese equivalent of fukushi (welfare) recreation. Therapeutic Recreation (TR) opportunities, however, have not been fully explored in Japan, due in part to a lack of awareness of the role of qualified fukushi recreation workers. In contrast, TR in the Australian context (locally known as Diversional Therapy), where rapid enhancement of the aged care system was accomplished with the Aged Care Reform Strategy implemented in 1985, has seen Diversional Therapy (DT) services develop to the point of playing a major supporting role in care and health fields. In Australia, an advanced country in the field of nursing care, emphasis is placed on preventative approaches and cognitive rehabilitation with activities offered at nursing care facilities focusing on resident care needs and the promotion of independence. In this research, sleep-wake assessments using actigraph^<TM> were conducted on 2 groups. The subjects consisted of 2 groups of aged persons having different environments; nursing facility residents in Australia where DT is practiced (A), nursing facility residents in Japan where DT is not practiced (J). Nursing facilities were visited to verbally explain the actigraph measurements, research and research prospectus to the respective aged persons. Having acquired the agreement of volunteers and families, a record was complied of daily activities (caregivers were interviewed in the case of dementia) and an actigraph (Ambulatory Monitoring, Inc.) attached to their non-dominant hand for 3 days. The most active time period was the (A) 13-14 slot which was significantly high compared to (J) where (p=0.001). It became clear that Diversional therapy raised the activity of aged persons during the day. The results of these activities as borne out by this research have been revealed. From the authoritative assessment of aged persons' lifestyle evaluations and hobbies et cetera, it is thought that an environment where activities are provided improves the quality of life for aged persons by enhancing independent abilities which is similarly linked to preventative approaches. Individual endeavours in regard to the maintenance and promotion of health differ between the two countries due to different climates and cultures. However, keeping in mind education and awareness of leisure and health, and the disposition of Japanese aged persons, Japan should draw extensively on Australia' s public health initiatives to promote healthy aging.

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The history of Japanese language education at Australian high schools spans 90 years, dating back to 1918 when Fort Street High School, a public school in New South Wales (NSW), began offering Japanese as a subject. Japanese was subsequently introduced as a subject in upper secondary education examinations in NSW during the 1920s. Although Japanese language education at high schools in NSW was suspended following the outbreak of war between Japan and Australia in December 1941, it was reinstated in 1946, just one year after the end of the war. As of 2006, 60 years later, some 25,000 students at public high schools (including lower secondary education) in NSW were studying Japanese. The present study discusses the social position of the Japanese language and its education in postwar NSW, as well as the changes in position over time, based on the number of applicants for upper secondary education examinations in NSW. Until the 1970s, French had been unrivaled as the predominant foreign language in Australia. In contrast, Japanese rapidly emerged as a foreign language from the 1980s. Another difference between French and Japanese is that the former is a European language, while the latter is an Asian language. Despite these differences, Japanese and French presently share a similar position as Languages Other Than English (LOTE) subjects in the Higher School Certificate (HSC) examinations in upper secondary education in NSW. Both languages are LOTE that are characterized as foreign languages rather than heritage or community languages, and have similar types of applicants in terms of the duration and level of language learning. While the rapid increases in the number of Australian students learning Japanese during the 1980s and 1990s may have been fueled by the growth of the Japanese economy and the development of economic and personal exchanges between Japan and Australia, the fact that the number of students selecting Japanese as an HSC subject has not rapidly decreased despite Japan's subsequent economic slump indicates that the position and social recognition of the Japanese language in school education in NSW have become similar to those traditionally associated with French. In other words, Japanese is now positioned and socially recognized as a regular foreign language that is commonly taught at high schools.

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The aim of this paper is to clarify the transformation of the Torres Strait Islander's attitudes to school education since the 1980s to the present analyzing statements on educational policies and articles in the Torres News, a weekly newspaper in the Torres Strait Islands. In the middle of the 1980s, the Torres Strait Islander Regional Education Consultative Committee (TSIREC) was established by representatives of Torres Strait Islanders to submit their educational demands to the government. They insisted that their children needed to receive the same levels of school education as others in Queensland, while maintaining their own culture. This means that Islander people at that time recognized school education was a way of obtaining a ticket for ' social success' in Australia and maintaining traditions. This attitude of Islanders to school education has been changed under the influence of federal/ state education policy which primarily aims at improving educational outcomes of all students, especially indigenous ones. Torres Strait had a new regional education policy which was developed by the coordination between the state education department and the Torres Strait Islands in 2006 and initiated educational reform targeted to improve their students' low educational achievements. This policy encouraged Islanders not only to commit to develop the policy but also to share responsibilities for the results. Islanders should regard school as a place where they attain basic skills needed in mainstream of Australian society. Torres News which is one of the most important information resources for the people in the region has a role to strengthen Islanders' perspective on education and school. With regard to educational reform, the Torres News referred to the obstacles to improve their educational outcomes through schools, and pointed out that school education is not to be against tradition and culture, but rather should maintain it. Here, their attitude to school education seems to have been transformed. There is a common trend in attitudes to school education in the policies and a media. Islanders now recognize school as tool for cultural maintenance as well as improvement of academic skill. Both of them are essential for social success for Torres Strait Islander.

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This paper focuses on two Australian Indigenous writings, Sally Morgan's My Place and Alexis Wright's Plains of Promise. These narratives can be read as examples of the "stolen generations narrative" that explores the systematic removal of Indigenous children from their Indigenous communities under Australian government policy carried out from the 19th century to the late 1960s. The stolen generations narrative plays a significant role in Indigenous Australians' search for and recapture of their Indigenous identity (Aboriginality) and also in making non-Indigenous Australians aware of the issue of separation in order to reconsider the nation's past and the historical relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. In this paper, I investigate how Australian Indigenous writers reconstruct their subjectivity and claim the sovereignty of Indigenous people and how the stolen generations narrative can contribute to Indigenous and non-Indigenous reconciliation. The first section introduces the stolen generations narrative while the second section examines the issues surrounding discussions on Aboriginality in relation to Indigenous literature. Placing Indigenous writing in the context of Fourth world activist texts, I explore the Indigenous epistemology employed by Indigenous writers and demonstrate that the symbolic and metaphorical concept of the blood/land/memory complex functions as a narrative tactic for them to define an enduring Aboriginality. The third and fourth sections are individual case studies of the stolen generations narrative, dealing with Sally Morgan's My Place and Alexis Wright's Plains of Promise. While My Place and Plains of Promise offer a remarkable contrast by depicting different experiences of Indigenous women, Morgan and Wright develop a similar narrative tactic to define an enduring Aboriginality through utilizing the blood/land/memory complex, In each section, I examine the way in which they represent a spiritual relationship to their specific land or landscape as the essence of Indigenous existence. By way of a conclusion, I argue that the stolen generations narrative is a spiritual journey for Indigenous people who, after being taken from their land and culture, reconcile themselves with their ancestral land and construct their Aboriginality. The definition of Aboriginality and the interpretation and representation of the spiritual relationship with the land are crucial concepts in a future reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. In this context, the stolen generations narrative plays a significant role, not only because it evokes the consciousness of non-Indigenous people towards the colonial past, but also because it provides Indigenous perspectives that do not prioritize Western systems of knowledge.

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