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March/april 2007
La Trobe UNIVERSITY
40 years young
La Trobe University
HealtH dividend
from cell make-over
Bulletin
news
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 20072
Forty years ago this March, La Trobe University was officially opened.
F rom a modest initial intake of 552 students in 1967, the University has grown into what we know it to be today – one of the country’s
leading and highly regarded universities, home to more than 26,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students including approximately 3,000 international students from more than 90 countries.
Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roger Parish said: ‘The 40th Anniversary is a distinct milestone for the University and we can marvel at the vision of our founders and the achievements of our staff and students over that short timeframe, creating a University that is recognised internationally for the quality of its graduates and the excellence of its research.
‘La Trobe has attained a world-class research reputation in numerous fields. The University consistently translates its research achievements into addressing social, economic and environmental issues, working in close collaboration with industry and community. The University has many joint research activities, including significant international collaboration.
‘These past 40 years, 117,278 students have graduated from La Trobe University. Many of these graduates have chosen to work overseas in more than 100 countries and are making a significant impact in local, national and international communities.
‘Amongst other things, our graduates run Australia’s top banks and publishing houses, have made internationally-hailed
breakthroughs in science and become leading writers, composers and environmentalists.
‘We have much to be proud of at La Trobe University,’ Professor Parish concluded. ‘Building on our reputation and tradition of excellence, La Trobe is well positioned for future success.’ •
La Trobe University – 40 years young
La Trobe - The Man and The InsTITUTIon As part of its 40th Anniversary Year the University honoured the life of its namesake in a public lecture, La Trobe the Man – La Trobe the Institution: Two Histories.
Chaired by historian, Professor Marilyn Lake, the guest speakers were Dr Dianne Reilly, La Trobe Librarian at the State Library of Victoria and author of Charles Joseph La Trobe: The Making of a Governor; and two former La Trobe historians, Dr William Breen and Professor John Salmond – see reports pages 12-16.
Other activities for staff and students during the anniversary week included a ‘Short Flicks Retrospective’ on student theatre and film, a historical photo exhibition, ‘Reflections on La Trobe’, a debate between staff and students and a trivia night: ‘Blast from the Past –1967 Onwards’.
Plans are also underway for other staff and student activities on each campus throughout the Anniversary year. Details will be posted on the 40th anniversary web page. •
IN THIS ISSUE
La Trobe University – 40 years young 2report into credit disputes 3Global Finance Conference 3Corporate sustainability planning 4help for horticultural industries 5Communication link with Mildura 5re-building tsunami-affected communities 6Women’s honour roll 6
Research in actionshould I eat the fish I catch? 7Understanding cell make-over 8&9First trial of caseload midwifery 10new director of health sciences at bendigo 11abortion link with partner violence 11
40th anniversaryLa Trobe – a genial gentleman 12Changing roles for changing times 13Master Plan has served well 14The arT of turning forty 16
La Trobe University –
40 years young, see
stories pages 12-16.
Cover background:
La Trobe University’s
Bundoora campus
during construction in
the late 1960s.
Design Greg Nelson.
The La Trobe University Bulletin is published ten times a year by Marketing & Promotions, La Trobe University.articles may be reproduced with acknowledgement.enquiries and submissions to the editor, ernest raetz, La Trobe University, Victoria. 3086 australia Tel: (03) 9479 2315, Fax (03) 9479 1387 email: [email protected]: ernest raetz, rhonda dredge, adrienne Jones Photos: La Trobe University PdI design: Campus Graphics, 77100 La Trobe University. Printed by Work & Turner.Website: www.latrobe.edu.au/bulletin
BulletinLa Trobe UNIVERSITY
news
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 2007 �
Call for better education, regulation and support
a La Trobe University study has recommended education campaigns
targeted at credit providers to help them handle complaints, and at vulnerable consumers to increase their awareness of services that can assist with credit problems.
The study – Dispute Resolution for Credit Consumers – calls for consideration of additional regulation, both for the credit industry’s internal handling of complaints and for external dispute resolution. It also recommends consideration be given to industry-based external dispute resolution schemes.
The report was prepared by a team headed by La Trobe University Law Professor, Tania Sourdin, a specialist in alternative dispute resolution. It was launched in March by the Victorian Minister for Consumer Affairs, Mr Daniel Andrews.
Apart from speeding up and streamlining current processes, the report also suggests re-establishing the consumer credit ‘hotline’ for debt counselling and advice about disputes, and the funding of legal aid representation through VCAT, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Professor Sourdin said the study analysed the effectiveness, accessibility and procedural fairness of dispute resolution processes offered through VCAT and Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV). It was designed to assist policy makers, the Department of Justice, CAV, VCAT and credit consumers to ensure processes function as effectively as possible.
The La Trobe study reviewed VCAT and CAV credit dispute files and surveyed consumers for their impressions about matters such as fairness of process and outcome, timeliness, accessibility, cost and effectiveness. It said user satisfaction was a criterion in determining whether or not a process was effective.
Professor Sourdin said VCAT was generally perceived as fair and that outcomes had met expectations: 60 per cent of the sample was ‘very’ or
‘fairly’ satisfied. Of the 40 per cent who were dissatisfied, 30 per cent were ‘very dissatisfied’. Some consumers considered it an impersonal environment and said at times its processes were confusing.
CAV was mostly perceived as friendly and helpful. For example, the majority of the interviewees felt that CAV got at the facts (77.6 per cent), was impartial (83.7 per cent), and produced a fair outcome (73.2 per cent). The report
also considered benchmarks for dispute resolution and complaints handling, and made recommendations based on best practice standards.
It concludes that additional research is needed into credit disputes involving ‘vulnerable consumers in vulnerable regions’. The way in which consumer credit matters are handled in Magistrate courts also required further examination. •
Report into credit disputes
T he President of China’s Economic Cooperation Center,
Mr Cao Baijun, and former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, La Trobe University Adjunct Professor Mike Moore, were the keynote speakers at the 14th Annual Global Finance Conference in early April.
Held in Australia for the first time, the conference was hosted by the Faculty
of Law and Management for leading finance professionals, educators, and policy makers.
Conference organiser, La Trobe Law School Head Professor Gordon Walker, said it was attended by nearly 200 delegates, and papers were presented by speakers from more than 37 countries.
Mr Cao Baijun, whose centre fosters business co-operation between
China and the rest of the world, spoke on China’s future economic reforms. The theme of Professor Moore’s presentation was the impact of globalisation with reference to the rise of China.
The two other keynote speakers were Dr Geof Stapledon, Managing Director, Institutional Shareholder Services,
China focus for Global Finance Conference
Continued page 4
news
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 20074
a study into corporate responsibility has revealed a lack of knowledge about how ‘sustainability goals’ and ‘best practice’ can be integrated into strategic planning.
Led by La Trobe University Professor of Accounting, Carol Adams, it was carried out over several months in a water company and will be published later this year in the international Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal. The research examined issues companies face in preparing ‘sustainability’ or ‘responsibility’ reports. It was conducted with Dr Patty McNicholas from Monash University.
Professor Adams said the academic-business partnership which made this study possible had a twofold purpose – and achieved a positive outcome for the organisation involved.
Her research team helped the water company develop a sustainability report and integrate those issues into decision making to improve sustainability performance.
‘And we gained insights into how the process of preparing a sustainability report can lead to
improved performance and the hurdles faced by organisations in
doing so.’
Apart from insufficient knowledge about how to integrate sustainability goals and practice into strategic planning, the researchers found other impediments included lack of experience in engaging stakeholders in the reporting process; difficulty in choosing between reporting guidelines; and confusion between financial and economic indicators relating to sustainability.
Professor Adams said pressures for greater corporate responsibility and sustainability in the water company were being driven by the State as owner, the CEO and managers.
‘There is also the role of the water
industry itself in promoting sustainability reporting, the reporting team coordinator’s role on the industry sustainability task force, as well as competition from other water companies.’
Professor Adams carried out a joint study last year into sustainability reporting by 200 UK and Australian firms. It found that more than two thirds of companies in Australia provided no quantified data on performance or identifed specific targets for these areas.
She said the long-term survival and international competitiveness of Australian companies depended on their ability to limit social and environmental risks, attract and retain the best employees and build trust in their relationships with stakeholders.
‘To do this, they need to be aware of their social
and environmental impacts so that they can act on them.’ •
Companies need to know more about sustainability planning
Australia, who spoke on governance and investment issues related to listed infrastructure funds, asking: ‘Do they turn governance on its head?’ and Dr Don Brash, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and Leader of the National Party, who addressed Foreign Direct Investment from the host country perspective.
Professor Walker said conference subjects ranged from banking, insurance, multinational finance, interest rates, corporate governance, financial crises management to currency issues, emerging markets, privatisation, ethics and social responsibility and legal and regulatory issues.
The conference also offered a Mandarin language session, dealt with interest-free
banking and Islamic finance and featured a legal and regulatory stream.
Accredited by the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute for its members world-wide, it was held under the auspices of the Global Finance Association. The Association solicits innovative ideas and research studies in global finance and related disciplines. •
Continued from page 3
Professor Adams
regions
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 2007 �
a s part of its goal of translating achievements in research and scholarship to help the social and economic needs of
communities, La Trobe University is a member of an innovative horticultural research network in the Sunraysia-Riverland region.
Known as Riverlink.PRN – the Riverlink Postgraduate Research Network – it encourages regional postgraduate research in agriculture through assistance with funding and mentoring.
The network was launched in July 2001 by Sir Gustav Nossal, and since then has been involved in seeing to completion the work of three PhD and seven honours students. It currently assists seven doctoral and one honours student.
Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roger Parish said: ‘Riverlink.PRN provides a wonderful opportunity for gifted students to work with distinguished researchers and experience the application of research to the solution of specific problems, and the uptake of these solutions by end-users. Such experience is exceptionally valuable for their future careers.’
Riverlink.PRN recently held its major regional Showcase for community leaders, growers and school students, to coincide with the University’s Mildura graduation ceremony where 78 students were awarded their qualifications.
Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Jim Peacock, who advises the Australian
Government on
research, delivered the occasional address on the importance of scientific research to regional Australia.
He said horticultural growers faced major issues affecting markets, price and production, and he encouraged industry and the community to support further postgraduate research in the region.
‘There’s a pressing need to attract young scientists and researchers to the Sunraysia-Riverland region and to work with Riverlink industries to help solve problems and generate new opportunities, Dr Peacock said.
‘When faced with adversity, we often have no choice but to reconsider the way we do things. Climate change, water scarcity, economics and industry forces are placing unprecedented demands on our horticulture and viticulture industries.
‘Growers are creatively reassessing current practices, but it is likely that new technologies and new varieties will be needed to ensure future success. Close working partnerships between researchers, growers and government agencies will be integral to this process,’ he said.
researCh For FrUIT and WInesAt the Riverlink.PRN Showcase, La Trobe PhD student, Pippa Kay – who is based at CSIRO Plant Industry in Merbein – spoke about her work investigating the function of a gene, known as Houdini, which is involved in
plant reproduction.
‘The aim is to explore manipulation of seed set and fruit size in horticultural plants. This is of great
importance for industries such as citrus cropping where fruit size is dependent on seed set,’ Ms Kay said.
Honours science student, Allison Hogg, spoke about her research on tannin accumulation in the skins of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay grapes. Her project was carried out at the Victorian Department of Primary Industries’ Irymple Research Station and on La Trobe’s Melbourne campus at Bundoora.
She said: ‘Everyone can recognise tannin in red wine, from the dry-mouth feeling after drinking. It’s an important component of wine quality. If we can identify when tannin formation occurs in grapes, we can develop strategies to manage tannins in the vineyard.’ •
Joint move to help horticultural industries
Communication link with MilduraLA TROBE UNIVERSITY has launched a new state-of-the-art microwave communication link for voice, data, video-conferencing and streaming video between the main Melbourne campus at Bundoora and its Mildura campus.
Mildura’s remoteness and the lack of competitive ICT infrastructure providers to the region meant the link was built with special assistance of $1.9 million in Commonwealth DEST Capital Development Pool infrastructure funding.
The University contracted ATI (Aust) to erect a network of 11 towers and microwave dishes ranging from .6 to 2.4 m diameter along a 350km path from Bendigo to Mildura to enable connection to the La Trobe backbone network, which already extends from Melbourne to Bendigo, Shepparton, Beechworth and Wodonga.
Mildura Campus Director, Mr Ron Broadhead, said the new link, running at a speed of over 100 megabits per second, now provides the Mildura campus with high speed, reliable communication services to Bundoora and then on to all La Trobe campuses. •
Riverlink.PRN students
Ms Hogg, left, and Ms Kay with
Dr Peacock.
people
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 20076
P andula Gamage may seem like any other postgraduate research student at La Trobe – but his
journey is particularly inspiring.
On Boxing Day 2004, his country, Sri Lanka, was hit by a tsunami, which caused more than 35,000 deaths, displaced about one million people and deprived around 200,000 people of their livelihood.
It was one of the world’s largest natural disasters and La Trobe University quickly established five scholarships for students from affected countries to help with long-term reconstruction.
Mr Gamage was awarded the scholarship for Sri Lanka and is working for his PhD in the School of Business, focusing on the micro and small business development in the tsunami affected districts of Sri Lanka.
‘I hope to use my thesis in a practical way at a policy level. The topic will help the economic development of my country, because small business is the engine for growth,’ says Mr Gamage.
‘By offering this scholarship, La Trobe University has not only shown sympathy to our country, which is home to many of its present and past students and some of its staff members, but has also participated in long-term restructuring efforts.’
At the time of the tsunami, Mr Gamage was a branch manager with the National Development Bank of Sri Lanka. Many of the people he dealt
with died in the tsunami and a lot of businesses were ruined. It took four months for the bank to reopen its doors.
‘Thanks to governments, international donors, NGOs and the community, I think that Sri Lanka has now returned to some sense of normalcy, but there are still the psychological effects to deal with for those who lost loved ones. Some housing and other infrastructure has returned, but we are still dealing with personal issues, such as tsunami-affected children.’
Mr Gamage says Australia is an excellent destination for his research.
‘Considering 96 per cent of all businesses in Australia are small businesses, it makes for a good research base. I would like to do a comparative study in the future.’
Mr Gamage arrived on the main Melbourne campus at Bundoora last August and speaks highly of the quality of teaching and level of encouragement he has received at La Trobe.
He also appreciates the cultural diversity among students and staff.
‘The atmosphere at La Trobe strives to make all students feel comfortable academically, socially and culturally. Australians are very friendly and easy going,’ he said. •
Re-building tsunami-affected communities
Women’s Honour rollLA TROBE UNIVERSITY Professor of Public Health, Pranee Liamputtong, was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women as part of International Women’s Day.
The award recognises Professor Liamputtong’s pioneering work on childbirth issues affecting immigrant women, as well as her leadership in qualitative research methodology in health in Australia.
A medical anthropologist, Professor Liamputtong specialises in studying the health of immigrants and refugees, women’s health, mothers’ and children’s health, the health of older persons, as well as international health, reproductive, sexual and mental health.
She is author of several text books and a member of a range of advisory bodies. These include the Ministerial Advisory Council on Cultural and Linguistic Diversity, Department of Human Services; the Research Evaluation Committee at BreastScreen Victoria; and the National Centre for HIV Social Research at the University of New South Wales.
Previous Honour Roll inductees include Victorian Police Commissioner, Christine Nixon, Olympian, Cathy Freeman, Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, former La Trobe Chancellor, Emeritus Professor Nancy Millis and La Trobe historian, Professor Marilyn Lake. •
aWard For it contRiBUtions Associate Professor in Computer Science and Computer Engineering, Dr Karl Reed, has won the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia Distinguished Service Award.
CORE is the key professional association for academic computer scientists in Australia and New Zealand. The award, made every two years, recognises academics for long-term excellence and commitment to the IT sector through their public contributions, leadership, academic success and community service. •
Research in action
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 2007 �
The state Government has issued guidelines for Melbourne’s rivers based on a La Trobe University study.
Concern that people who fish regularly along the Lower Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers could be putting themselves at health risk by consuming their catch led to a study by public health researchers at La Trobe University.
The results of the study have provided information to enable the State Department of Human Services to issue recommendations for safe eating of fish caught by recreational fishers.
The survey established that almost fifty recreational anglers had eaten fish from the rivers during a one month period and that meals were shared with potentially high-risk groups – women of child-bearing age and children.
Women of child-bearing age and children should not eat eels and should limit their intake of fish from urban rivers to one serve per month, the Department recommends. Other people could limit their intake to four serves a month.
A brochure Should I Eat the Fish I Catch? gives instructions on how to clean fish of its skin, fat and internal organs where chemicals are likely to concentrate. Smaller,
younger fish are safer because they are likely to have less pollutants than larger fish.
Dr Priscilla Robinson, an epidemiologist with the School of Public Health, says this was the first survey of the habits of recreational fishermen on the Melbourne metropolitan river system.
‘Fish contamination has been an area of public health concern for many years,’ she says. ‘Chisso-Minamata disease in Japan is an extreme example of what can happen. A chemical factory had a big spill into the waterway, the accident was covered up and many children were born with deformities.’
Dr Robinson supervised the study which was undertaken by one of the Victorian Public Health Training Scheme fellows as part of her assessment.
‘We needed to know what level of toxins were in the fish and how people caught and used them,’ Dr Robinson says.
She helped research fellow Alex Devine-Thompson design data collection tools and construct a database for the project.
Miss Thompson spent several weekends interviewing people fishing at favourite Melbourne spots, including the Warmies on the Maribyrnong.
She found that two-thirds of her sample of eighty had caught fish over the past month and that three-quarters of these consumed their catch. The species were
bream, snapper, whiting, flathead, salmon, mullet, mulloway, eels and shellfish.
The survey was carried out parallel to an EPA study of contamination of fish from various recreational fishing sites to probe this potential problem in more detail. The EPA study showed that levels were at limits considered generally safe, but the Department took the precaution of issuing advice to people who fish in the area.
A number of chemicals can build up in fish, the main culprits being PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).
PCBs were used from the 1930s to the 1970s in industrial products. They have been phased out, but persist for a long time in the environment. PCBs can build up in the human body and affect the hormonal and immune systems. In the body of a pregnant woman, they can affect the development of the child’s brain.
Dr Robinson says the study was a ‘nice example of proactive public health research which seeks to protect our community from environmental health problems’. •
For more information about eating fish safely, contact the Environmental Heath Unit, Department of Human Services on 1300 761 874. http://www.health.vic.gov.au/environment
Should I eat the fish I catch?
Renovator’s delight Understanding cell ‘make-over’ may yield dividends in fight against degenerative disease.
AAA+ unfoldase peptidaseadaptor target protein
Research in action
over the past couple of decades, as the economic environment
has changed, we’ve become used to the sight of old factories,
warehouses and office blocks being turned into flats or town houses. Often, the outer structure of the building is left intact, but the interior is dismantled and remodelled. Some of the building materials are reused, while the rest are
recycled elsewhere or used as landfill.
Such renovation and recycling happens in living systems too. As cells develop or encounter different environments, they are constantly changing to adapt to the new conditions. Instead of rearranging bricks and mortar,
plasterboard and glass, cells break up old molecules – typically the proteins which regulate cellular activity – and make new and different replacements from the bits and pieces they recover.
It’s a process which demands the biochemical equivalent of a jackhammer and recycling yard.
These exist in the form of proteases, the enzymes which dismantle proteins, and in disassembly machines – structures built from protein subunits which control the access to and flow through the degradation process.
‘Until recently it was thought that the regulation of cellular activities all happened at the level of activating genes and constructing new proteins,’ says Dr Kaye Truscott of the La Trobe University Biochemistry Department. ‘People tended to ignore the possibility that protein remodelling and degradation were important events as well.’
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 20078
Dr Truscott, right, and Dr Dougan.
‘These molecular machines sculpt the cell’s response to its enviroment,’ says her scientific partner, Dr David Dougan. And they also act as a quality control system, able to dispose of proteins which have been damaged, incorrectly put together or are otherwise faulty.
The pair of researchers came back from Germany in 2004 as Queen Elizabeth II Fellows to establish a laboratory at the University supported by a five year Discovery Project Grant from the Australian Research Council to study protein quality control in bacteria. With the help of a second grant from the Australian Research Council, they are now embarking on a significant new line of study into the operation of protein disassembly or proteolytic machines – their role in maintaining the function of the cell’s energy factories known as mitochondria.
In addition to producing the energy to power all cellular activities, mitochondria play an important role in cell suicide, in detoxifying reactive compounds and in making important molecules. So the impact on cells of any disruption to the operation of the mitochondria can be dire. It’s not surprising that dysfunctional mitochondria have been implicated in many serious human diseases often associated with ageing, particularly conditions involving the degeneration of neurons, such as Parkinson’s disease,
Alzheimer’s disease and motor neurone disease. Although the project is purely curiosity driven at this stage, it is not hard to see that it may provide considerable health dividends in the future.
The researchers are well suited to the project through their past experience.
Dr Truscott spent more than five years at the University of Freiburg, Germany, working on the complex machineries that transport proteins into mitochondria. Dr Dougan also worked at Freiburg, on bacteria and how they break down proteins. He then moved to the University of Heidelberg where he became interested in adaptor proteins, which bind to the disassembly machines and help deliver specific proteins to them.
Interestingly, mitochondria themselves are thought to have originated from an ancient free-living bacteria that became trapped inside a host cell. Mitochondria and bacteria share many features in common, and mitochondria even possess their own DNA formed into a typically circular bacterial chromosome. And their proteolytic machines are both formed from proteins belonging to the AAA+ superfamily – ATPases associated with a variety of cell activities.
The heart of a bacterial proteolytic machine is a barrel-shaped protein called a peptidase. Around its internal chamber are ranged two rings, each of which
contains seven active sites which can break apart the links in the chain of amino acids which forms a protein. Sitting on top of the peptidase is another barrel-shaped protein, the central chamber of which leads through a strategically-sized pore into the peptidase chamber.
The protein antechamber is known as an unfoldase. Proteins depend on their shape for their activity. When they are produced, like delicate works of origami, they fold up in a highly specific way. Before they can be chopped up and recycled, they must be unfolded. That’s the job of the unfoldase, which then feeds the unfolded chain into the peptidase.
But even before that, the protein must approach the unfoldase in the correct orientation. Some are recognised directly by the unfoldase and pulled into the machine. Others bind to a designated region of the unfoldase, and by doing so are pointed in the right direction. More typically an adaptor protein binds to the unfoldase and does the job of capturing the right protein and guiding it into the machine at the right time.
Why so complicated? It’s to ensure only those proteins that are defective or unwanted are chopped up and destroyed. Otherwise proteolytic machines could wreak havoc. And the presence of the adaptor proteins means that the machine can be retooled for different proteins when the pressures of development of environment change demand.
In their successful ARC grant application Drs Dougan and Truscott have outlined a program of research to investigate the operation of these machines in mitochondria. It includes checking to see how prevalent they are and identifying the proteins they process and exactly how they handle them. ‘As far as mitochondria go, we are only at the start of the journey to understand the importance of these machines,’ says Dr Dougan.
But the team already has a lead. The group recently identified a protein in mammalian mitochondria which interacts specifically with the mitochondrial unfoldase, mtClpX. This molecule also associates with two proteins known to form part of the mitochondrial chromosome. In fact, it is behaving suspiciously like an adaptor protein. Now it’s just a matter of years of painstaking research to trace just how it fits in with the rest of the machinery to operate the mitochondria’s wrecking yard and recycling works. – Tim Thwaites •
AAA+ unfoldase peptidaseadaptor target protein AAA+ unfoldase peptidaseadaptor target protein
AAA+ unfoldase peptidaseadaptor target protein
Research in action
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 2007 �
First Australian trial ofCaseload Midwifery
Research in action
dr Helen McLachlan, a senior lecturer in
La Trobe’s School of Nursing and
Midwifery, and a team
from the
University’s Mother and Child Health Research Centre, the Royal Women’s Hospital and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, have received a grant of $583,000 from the National Health and Medical Research Council to conduct the first randomised trial of caseload midwifery in Australia.
The trial’s main aim is to evaluate whether caseload midwifery decreases the number of caesarean births compared with ‘standard’ care. The number of instrumental vaginal births, perineal trauma, and induction of labour will also be examined.
It will also compare postnatal depression, maternal satisfaction
with care, and duration of breastfeeding, as well as
costs, and the health outcomes for mothers
and babies.
Dr McLachlan says it is the first trial of its kind in Australia, and only the third in the world. Called COSMOS – COmparing Standard Maternity care with One-on-one midwifery Support – it
will recruit 2,000 women from three
hospitals. They are the Royal Women’s
Hospital, Monash Medical Centre, and
Casey Hospital.
Dr McLachlan explains that in the caseload midwifery model
of maternity care, women are looked after by a primary midwife throughout pregnancy, birth and the early postnatal period to ensure continuity of carer for both
women and midwives.
‘Midwives and women have the opportunity to establish a relationship during pregnancy. The primary midwife is on call for labour and works with one or two other midwives who meet the woman and do an antenatal check during pregnancy.
‘In this way there is back up if needed, for example if the primary midwife is on leave when labour begins.’
a fulltime midwife usually cares for more than forty women a year.
‘However,’ says Dr McLachlan, ‘the model has been subjected to little rigorous evaluation in Australia or internationally, and if a new type of care is to be introduced, it is important that we evaluate the outcomes for mothers and babies as well as the sustainability of the midwifery workforce.’
Half the women in the study will be randomly allocated to receive the caseload model of care during their pregnancy, with the remainder on standard care.
‘It is important to evaluate the model in this way as we do not know at the moment which type of care is better,’ Dr McLachlan says. ‘It should take two years to recruit women for the trial, and three years for the results to be available.
Other members of the team are Dr Della Forster, Ms Mary-Ann Davey, Ms Lisa Gold and Professor Judith Lumley from the La Trobe Mother and Child Health Research Centre; Ms Tanya Farrell and Dr Jeremy Oats from the Royal Women’s Hospital; and Professor Ulla Waldenström from the Karolinska Institute. •
10 La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 2007
health
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 2007 11
dr Amanda Kenny has been appointed inaugural Director of Health Sciences at the Bendigo
campus to help build the skills of the region’s healthcare workforce.
An Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, her role is to strengthen University - community partnerships and increase teaching programs and collaborative research.
Acting Dean of Health Sciences, Professor Hal Swerissen, said the new position was an exciting development for the region and added a new dimension of academic leadership.
Dr Kenny, a registered nurse for 20 years before embarking on an academic career, has a wealth of teaching, research, and clinical expertise. She has been a lecturer at the Bendigo campus since 2000 and was Head of the Bendigo School of Nursing from 2004 to 2007.
She will work with health agencies, local government and community representatives to strengthen health care opportunities and local services.
The new Oral Health degree and introduction of Physiotherapy at the Bendigo campus have been significant achievements for the region. The campus also offers unique programs including an Environmental Health stream in the Public Health and Nursing degrees and a nationally recognised Social Work degree.
dr Kenny said ‘grassroots engagement’ was critical for developing health science programs to meet the needs of regional communities.
‘We need the people on the ground to let us know the issues they are facing.’
She has planned workshops to bring health representatives together to identify key areas where the University may assist healthcare research.
Dr Kenny is passionate about increasing opportunities for access to higher education, particularly for mature-aged people already working in healthcare.
‘I know from my own experience as a mother of four, working full-time and studying, how important it is to have access to strong local health education programs. I could not have achieved what I have, if I had to travel to Melbourne to study.’ •
New Director of Health Sciences at bendigo
P artner violence is the strongest predictive factor of whether young women with unwanted pregnancies
will choose to terminate, a study by La Trobe University has found.
The study of 9,683 young Australian women aged 22 to 27 found that those reporting either teenage abortions or abortions later in their twenties, were more than three times as likely to have been abused by a partner than those who didn’t terminate their pregnancies.
The study also found that young Australian women who terminated pregnancies were more likely to be disadvantaged – from low-income families, less-educated and not
privately insured. The secondary analysis of data from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health, by Angela Taft and Lyndsey Watson, of Mother and Child Health Research, La Trobe University, was published in April in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. It seeks to fill a national gap in abortion statistics, by describing the characteristics of young Australian women who terminate pregnancies.
‘Women experiencing violence and abuse can be subject to coercive sex and unprotected intercourse, leading to a higher rate of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies,’ say the authors.
Dr Taft says that young women
may have little control over sex or contraception in abusive relationships. ‘You could say that young women don’t feel they have the right to say no.
‘What can society do about this problem?’ Dr Taft asks. ‘The message is that if we want to reduce the rate of abortion and unwanted pregnancy in Australia, especially among teenagers, we need to reduce violence against women. Also healthcare providers and pregnancy counselling services should ask women seeking terminations about their experiences of partner abuse and, if necessary, refer them to supportive agencies.’ •
Strong abortion link with partner violence
40th anniversary
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 200712
by dianne reilly
a pioneering administrator, Charles Joseph La Trobe, Victoria’s first Lieutenant - Governor came as Superintendent in 1839 to Port
Phillip, a primitive, underdeveloped and underpopulated colony, and left it in 1854 as the then most affluent city in the world.
La Trobe was, and remains, a profoundly controversial figure in Victoria’s history. From the day he set foot on the soil of Port Phillip, there was a distance between him and the colonists due to the fact that they did not understand each other.
Fundamental to his thoughts, words and actions were his spirituality and his evangelicalism. He was certain about his civilising mission in this outpost of empire, while the colonists had one major preoccupation – to improve their material lot in life.
La Trobe was born on 20 March, 1801, in London, of Huguenot origin, the son of an accomplished musician, composer and Moravian missionary active in the anti-slavery movement.
He was a gifted artist and amateur scientist who found topography fascinating. After his schooling, he left England in 1824 for Neuchâtel in Switzerland where he became a tutor, a keen alpinist noted for his skill as a mountaineer and wrote his first book, The Alpenstock.
Unexpectedly, he found himself in the occupation of travel writer, rambling again in the Tyrol, Italy and switzerland where he wrote the book The Pedestrian.
In 1832 he began a tour of North America which resulted in The Rambler in North America. During this tour, he met his cousins, sons of Benjamin Henry La Trobe, the architect responsible for the redesign of the Capitol Building and the White House in Washington.
Next he ventured to Mexico, visited by few Europeans, and recorded this in The Rambler in Mexico. Returning to Switzerland in 1834, he was guest of Frederic de Montmollin, a Councillor of
State, where he met Sophie, one of Montmollin’s thirteen children. They were married in 1835.
Taking advantage of the contacts of his well-connected family, he came to the attention of the Colonial Office in London and was posted to the West Indies, at that time in great turmoil following the emancipation of 700,000 slaves.
His reports to the British Parliament so impressed that, in January 1839, he was offered an appointment in Australia – as Superintendent of the newly settled Port Phillip District of NSW.
Accompanied by Sophie and their two year old daughter, Agnes, La Trobe arrived in Melbourne that year, with none of the training and experience which usually qualified a man for such an administrative role. The typical colonial governor had a
La Trobe – a genial gentleman
Continued page 14
Charles Joseph La Trobe, a gifted artist, amateur scientist and travel writer, shown above in an 1851 engraving, and below, in an official portrait by Sir Frances Grant, 1855.
40th anniversary
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 2007 1�
When La Trobe University started teaching in 1967, there was no particular expectation that our student body would be significantly different in origin or social composition from those of the city’s other institutions, and for the first three years or so that seemed to be the case.
However, from the early 1970s this changed, and it became clear that, without having planned for it, we had come to serve a particular, and important, social purpose: that of providing higher education to first generation Victorians, the children of those waves of post-war European migrants.
By the mid-1970’s, our enrolment statistics clearly reflected this trend. Well over half our students had at least one parent born overseas, and could thus be classified as coming from a migrant background, the highest percentage in the nation, although this has declined since the mid-1980s.
La Trobe opened its doors during a period of considerable social upheaval. It was the ’60s, a time of global generational conflict, of political protest and challenge, and students were in the vanguard. Young people throughout the world were angered by the seemingly futile and brutal war in Vietnam, or intoxicated by the revolutionary ideology of Mao Tse Dung and his assault on Chinese traditions. Australian universities, like those elsewhere, became sites of protest.
La Trobe was no exception. Our first five years were turbulent ones indeed, and there were many demonstrations on campus. It was not a particularly pleasant time, but it was transient. La Trobe, over the last decades, has been such a quiescent place, relatively speaking, that it takes an effort of will to recall these rather turbulent beginnings.
From the start, La Trobe was an innovative institution, open to new ideas – in governance; in modes of teaching, as we tried to get away from the traditional lecture form in favour of small tutorial groups; and in student selection. I can’t discuss all of these, but I do want to give one example, partly because I was heavily involved in it, and it is the contribution to this place that I remain most proud of.
We became the university of the Second Chance – a place to which folk denied
the chance of completing their secondary education could still gain entry. Allan Martin, the Foundation Professor of History and I came up with the notion. We took it to the then Vice-Chancellor, David Myers, who after much thought and pipe-puffing, agreed that if we could get it through Academic Board and Council, 20 places in the School of Humanities could be reserved for students without the HSC, as the VCE was then known, but who had been selected on the basis of written applications and in-depth panel interviews.
The result was extraordinary. We had hundreds of applicants. Four of the first 20 went on to gain PhDs, some now work in the highest reaches of the public and private sectors, all achieved results far above the University average. And so it continued; the Early Leavers Scheme, as it had become known – or variants of it – was adopted by other schools and faculties at La Trobe,
by our sister universities in Victoria, and eventually throughout the nation. Indeed, so successful have they been that just about every Australian institution has subsequently claimed credit for thinking of it first! I chuckle when I hear or read such claims – for I know the truth.
One thing Martin and I did get wrong was our expectation of the gender and social origins of our first applicants, and I think that reflected our own traditional cast of mind. We expected them to be male and working class – ‘horny-handed sons of toil’ seeking to better themselves. They were not. They were overwhelmingly women, usually middle-class, often married with families, who had been denied the chance of completing their secondary education, let alone going to the university, by the prevailing notion
Continued page 14
Changing roles for changing times
by John salmond
40th anniversary
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 200714
that girls did not need to bother with such things. Unwittingly, we gave them a chance to seize what had been denied them – and seize it they did!
We were innovative in all sorts of other ways. For example, we were determined that every part of the campus would be accessible to students with physical disabilities. La Trobe was in the vanguard of much of what are now routine equality of opportunity requirements.
Then came what I term ‘The Period of Repositioning’. This began in the late1980s, and often derived from the higher education reforms of the Minister for Education in the Hawke Labor Government, John Dawkins. Universities and other institutes
of higher education were strongly encouraged to merge institutions, faculties and facilities, and this dramatically affected us in two main ways. First, we gained regional campuses.
Second, through our amalgamation with the Lincoln Institute, now the School of Health Sciences, we gained an important vocational component, and this both reflected and encouraged the trend to repositioning within the established schools; the development of vocational courses within all of them, but particularly in Business and Economics; the consequent diminution of the vast Humanities and Social Science faculties, and their eventual merging.
Repositioning was inevitably unsettling and painful, but it did result in both an expanded institution and a
more balanced one.
The last decade has been that of La Trobe’s internationalisation. We have developed programs in North America, in Europe and in Asia. We are part of a global network of universities facilitating the exchange of staff, students and subjects. We hold graduation ceremonies all over the globe. Above all, we are Australia’s leading provider of tertiary education in China. Certainly, a stroll around the University’s central Agora at Bundoora, or even a look around a lecture hall, provides dramatic testimony to this world-wide engagement. •Emeritus Professor John Salmond is a foundation professor of History at La Trobe and former Acting Vice-Chancellor and Chair of the Academic Board at the University.
naval or military background. La Trobe was radically different: refined, sensitive, cultured and learned.
On arrival, he found that Collins Street was the only road worthy of the name. Elizabeth Street followed a frequently-flooded creek bed, and Flinders Street was little better than a bog. The water supply was inadequate and polluted. There was no town council; no development could take place without revenue from the government in far-off Sydney. The only building of note was the gaol.
Melbourne in 1839 was only four years old, with a population of less than two thousand free settlers.
La Trobe’s slowness to act on the question of separation from New South Wales – he believed timing was all-important – was misunderstood by those clamouring for it. Separation was a great achievement for La Trobe and cause for universal celebration in the new colony of Victoria when it arrived.
No sooner had the advance news of separation been received, than the single most revolutionary and momentous event in the history of the colony occurred. Gold was discovered, creating
the dominant and most far-reaching issue of La Trobe’s 15 years in Victoria.
La Trobe was described by the Geelong Advertiser as ‘Our Victorian Czar’, a dictator imposing an unrealistic and impossible tax when no goldfield in 1851 had yet proven its wealth.
A meeting in August 1853 over a petition demanding civil rights for miners and signed by 5,000 miners was eventually followed by the tragedy of Eureka. The historian Geoffrey Serle concluded that, when faced with the appalling difficulties of the times, La Trobe had tried to ‘govern chaos on a scale to which there are few or no parallels in British colonial history’. He had, in fact, managed to keep the colony for which he was responsible operating in circumstances ‘in which the archangel Gabriel might have been found wanting’.
In the years he spent as administrator of the colony, La Trobe made 94 major journeys through country Victoria. He charted routes, notably to Gippsland to investigate a report of coal deposits, and to Cape Otway where, after two abortive attempts, he personally blazed the trail to, and was responsible for the erection of the light house on that dangerous rocky promontory.
La Trobe also made a significant contribution to the cultural development of the infant city of Melbourne, and education was one of his major concerns.
In 1853 under La Trobe’s aegis, the foundation stones for both the University of Melbourne and the Public Library of Victoria were laid.
La Trobe was a patron, and often the instigator, of such cultural and learned bodies as the Philosophical Society, now the Royal Society, the Mechanics’ Institute, now Melbourne Athenaeum, the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society and the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Aware of his increasing unpopularity, despite his considerable successes, La Trobe submitted his resignation on 31 December, 1852. He was eventually relieved of his post in May 1854 and returned to Britain.
La Trobe died aged 74 in 1875 in the village of Litlington near Eastbourne in Sussex. A chapel, the Chapelle de l’Ermitage, was built to his memory in Neuchâtel.
While streets, towns, rivers and an electorate bear his name, how fitting it is that this fine University is named for him – and that a full-scale bronze statue was recently erected to his memory on the forecourt of the State Library. •
Dr Reilly is La Trobe Librarian at the State Library of Victoria and author of Charles Joseph La Trobe: the Making of a Governor and Charles Joseph La Trobe: Landscapes and Sketches. This is an edited text of her La Trobe University 40th Anniversary Lecture.
a GenIaL GenTLeMancontinued from page 12
Continued from page 13
Master plan has served well
La Trobe University started with a very ambitious vision of what it wanted to become. That original vision has been reshaped over the past forty years and is reflected in its physical development.
In the 1950s there was increasing recognition of the need to expand higher education. In Australia, the Federal Government began to provide matching funds to the States to build new universities. This was a new initiative as, up till that time, universities had been regarded solely as a State responsibility.
One of the first decisions of the committee appointed by the State Government to establish Victoria’s third university was the choice of site. Fifty seven potential sites were considered and 27 were inspected. In December 1964, the Bundoora site was chosen – a dairy farm attached to the Mont Park Mental Hospital which was rather bleak, swampy in the lower areas, and mostly treeless.
Roy Simpson, a partner in the firm of Yuncken Freeman Architects, was appointed Master Planner in December 1964. La Trobe was expected to start teaching its first class of around 500 students in 1967 and to have 10,000 students within a decade.
Simpson had two years to plan the overall development of the University, oversee the design of the initial campus buildings and get them constructed for those first students in early 1967.
The Bundoora site was re-imagined and re-created in a number of ways that remain clearly visible today. One is the use of water: the excavation of the ornamental lakes and the moat system through the central campus was one of the first projects. Designed for flood control, irrigation, and aesthetic pleasure, it has been a wonderful success and identifying campus feature.
A related success was the landscaping. Extensive tree plantings, mainly eucalypts, were undertaken. All who work here, study or visit are beneficiaries of
that early vision.
To complement this new and very Australian environment, Simpson decided buildings would be relatively low, of uniform colour and aim to fit into the landscape. Cabling and wiring would go underground.
As originally conceived, the campus comprised a series of concentric rings, the inner ring with the library at its centre. The first buildings constructed on the campus were the library, Glenn College and the Thomas Cherry science building.
The two-level Agora in front of the library was designed as a meeting place, a ‘clustered Bohemia’ with coffee shops, food shops, banks, and other outlets.
The middle ring of the Master Plan was to consist of the colleges. The college concept was a key feature of the early University – unique in terms of Australian university experience, where colleges are purely residential.
At La Trobe, the colleges, as originally conceived, were to be much more than that: small communities of academic staff and students to break down what was felt to be the impersonal nature of the very large, older Australian universities. Students and staff were to be attached to a college; most teaching was to be done in the colleges.
What happened to this original vision?
The inner core of the original plan has worked well. The library remains the focus of the life of the University and the Agora, as a ‘clustered Bohemia’ has succeeded fairly well.
The middle ring of the Master Plan has not fared so well. The ambitious college concept died early. La Trobe students wanted a single union like students at other Australian universities. Academic staff also wanted to replicate what they were used to, namely academic departments built around specific disciplines. By the early
1970s the college concept had little support. The opening of the Student Union in 1973 serves as a physical manifestation of the demise of the college concept.
In the past two decades, there have been a number of developments that were not envisioned in the Master Plan.
One has been the growth of the University beyond its original outer perimeter. The closure of the Mont Park and the Larundel mental hospitals north of the campus was a growth opportunity seized by the University. One of the hospital buildings now houses the Michael J. Osborne Institute of Advanced Studies and a cluster of others has created virtually a second campus. This houses the Graduate School of Management and various research institutes and centres.
The other major change not envisioned in the original Master Plan was the development of regional campuses. Neither the five across northern Victoria, nor the downtown Melbourne campus – which will move into the refurbished Argus building – were envisioned in 1965. These are major developments that are changing the University in quite fundamental ways.
Yet, in all this change and development, the original
Master Plan has served the University
well. It proved flexible enough to cope with most of these developments. Roy Simpson, who died in 1997, would not be displeased
with the way in which his
original Master Plan has served the
institution. •Dr William Breen, a specialist in US labour history, is an Emeritus Scholar at La Trobe and editor of Building La Trobe University, published in 1989.
La Trobe University BUlletin March/April 2007 1�
40th anniversary
by William breen
Dr Simpson on campus.
The art ofturning forty
La Trobe University has launched a new sculpture Park on its main Melbourne campus as part of this year’s 40th anniversary Celebrations.
It is also touring major works in regional Victoria from its contemporary and 20th Century art collection as part of the Anniversary.
The Sculpture Park provides a permanent public display of works collected since the University’s inception. It features 17 major sculptures by leading artists including Leonard French, Inge King, Robert Klippel, Jock Clutterbuck, Herman Hohaus and Bart Sanciolo and is the first fully integrated sculpture park of its kind in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
The touring art exhibition brings together important works from the University collection that have not been seen publicly for many years. They will be shown in communities throughout Victoria where La Trobe has a presence. The exhibition opened in Mildura in March and from there travels to Bundoora, Bendigo and Shepparton. It includes works by Charles Blackman, John Coburn, Petrina Hicks, Frank Hodgkinson and Roger Kemp.
Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roger Parish, said that with strong support from the University as part of its educational and cultural mission, art has been an important part of the University since its inception – and artworks were incorporated in the original Master Plan.
‘One of the first buildings, the University library included in its design Allen David’s magnificent glass screen, the artist’s only large-scale glass sculpture in Australia,’ he said.
While thousands of students see this work as they enter and leave the library, the forecourt of the more recently built Health Sciences Complex now features the University’s latest sculptural acquisition – the controversial upside down Charles Joseph
La Trobe, Landmark by Charles Robb.
At its opening – by Robert Lindsay, Director of the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park – La Trobe Chancellor, Sylvia Walton, said the statue’s ‘unique take’ on Victoria’s first Lieutenant Governor and this University’s namesake could be regarded as fitting in with our own perceptions of doing things: the University had begun collecting artworks before it was even built – by far-sighted people operating from planning headquarters in St Kilda Rd in the mid 1960s.
Sculptor Charles Robb – who donated the work to La Trobe – said he was pleased it had found a home at a university. ‘Universities are places for testing new ideas, where we sometimes turn things on their head so we can gain a new perspective.’
He said monuments were about remembering: so it was fitting that his controversial likeness of C J La Trobe was unveiled on the very day the University remembered its opening 40 years ago, on 8 March 1967.
Already a quirky part of Melbourne’s public art history, Robb’s Landmark now looks down on Science Drive – reminding La Trobe students there’s more than one way of looking at things. While standing on his head on a University campus may not have been an epitaph La Trobe would have sought for himself, Charles Robb says he meant it as a compliment.
‘I wanted to set up a dialogue around this notion of the Antipodean, and the more I read about La Trobe the more I realised he was very much the enlightened gentleman (and) became fascinated with his vision.’
While the confronting work seeks to invert the concept of civic monuments – ‘I’m not sure civic memorials have any real function any more, I don’t know if we even believe in heroes in the same way,’ says Robb – the University sees it as a good fit.
Landmark’s new home here is an obvious choice,’ says the Sculpture Park
catalogue. ‘The University is named after La Trobe. The work is challenging, complex,
contemporary, and encourages dialogue: all qualities synonymous with a university.
‘La Trobe seeks to teach its students in all disciplines to discover, question and continue an active and productive dialogue, not only while they are here, but long after they have gone.’ •
From left, Professor Parish, Chancellor Walton, Art Curator Vince Alessi and artist, Charles Robb.
