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Rural welfare is more than addressing problems of ‘poverty’. As we argue here, social policy initiatives are also conceived by governments as solutions to geographical problems about uneven regional development and population distribution. What these problems were, and how welfare provision could solve them, has varied from generation to generation and takes shape in place-specific ways. That welfare provision has operated as de facto geographical development and population policy is particularly the case in Australia, in its context of massive continental size and heterogeneous rural places. In Australia, the ‘rural’ means much more than just the ‘countryside’ surrounding or between networks of cities and towns (in the traditional European sense; see Gorman-Murray, Darian-Smith, & Gibson, 2008). ‘Rural Australia’ is inserted into national politics as a slippery geographical category, coming to encompass all of non-metropolitan Australia (each of Australia's states only having one major city), within which there is great diversity: broadacre farming regions involving the production of cash crops at scales of thousands of squared kilometres; regions producing rice and cotton with state-sponsored irrigation; coastal agricultural zones with smaller and usually older land holdings (often the places of traditional ‘family farming’ communities); single industry regions focused around minerals extraction or defence (many of Australia's major defence bases being located outside state capitals either in sparsely populated regions in Australia's north or in smaller ‘country towns’ in the south, where they dominate local demography); semi-arid rangelands regions dominated by enormous pastoral stations leased on Crown land (single examples of which rival the United Kingdom in size); and remote savannah and desert regions many thousands of kilometres from capital cities, supporting Aboriginal communities living on traditional country mixing subsistence hunting and gathering with government-supported employment and food programmes. In this context, rural welfare performs a social policy function, but also becomes a means for government to comprehend, problematise and manage geographical space.

This chapter examines some key themes raised by the intersection of the urban, the rural and the penal against the backdrop of the Australian ‘rural ideal’. But the chapter also seeks to look critically at that ideal and how it relates (or does not) to the various lifeworlds and patterns of settler development that lie beyond the Australian cityscape. Attention is directed away from the singular focus on the rural/urban divide to stress the importance of North/South in understanding patterns of development and penal practices beyond the cityscape in the Australian context.

This chapter examines narratives and representations of rural Australia deployed by political actors. At both federal and state levels in Australia, political parties tend to focus their attention on metropolitan electorates in their public discussions, particularly during election campaigns. This has led to accusations from minor parties and independents that rural areas are ignored by governments based in capital cities. The Nationals, for example, presents itself as the party whose primary motivation is to protect the interests of rural voters. Rural sites are political spaces shaped by particular types of narrative and rhetoric. Engaging with how the ‘rural’ is represented through rhetoric and image is useful for understanding how crime is positioned. This chapter uses rhetorical political analysis and representation to understand how political ideas about rurality are expressed through language and imagery. The political context outlined in this chapter is one factor that affects the nature and complexities of rural crime and responses to it. Rural Australia is at its own political crossroad, reflected in the emergence of competing narratives for the bush, defined here as a contest between ‘rural centrism’ and ‘rural populism’.

Some of Australia’s most severe and protracted workforce shortages are in public sector community mental health (CMH) services. Research identifying the factors affecting staff turnover of this workforce has been limited. The purpose of this paper is to identify work factors negatively affecting the job satisfaction of early career health professionals working in rural Australia’s public sector CMH services.

In total, 25 health professionals working in rural and remote CMH services in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, for NSW Health participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews.

The study identified five work-related challenges negatively affecting job satisfaction: developing a profession-specific identity; providing quality multidisciplinary care; working in a resource-constrained service environment; working with a demanding client group; and managing personal and professional boundaries.

These findings highlight the need to provide time-critical supports to address the challenges facing rural-based CMH professionals in their early career years in order to maximise job satisfaction and reduce avoidable turnover.

Overall, the study found that the factors negatively affecting the job satisfaction of early career rural-based CMH professionals affects all professionals working in rural CMH, and these negative effects increase with service remoteness. For those in early career, having to simultaneously deal with significant rural health and sector-specific constraints and professional challenges has a negative multiplier effect on their job satisfaction. It is this phenomenon that likely explains the high levels of job dissatisfaction and turnover found among Australia’s rural-based early career CMH professionals. By understanding these multiple and simultaneous pressures on rural-based early career CMH professionals, public health services and governments involved in addressing rural mental health workforce issues will be better able to identify and implement time-critical supports for this cohort of workers. These findings and proposed strategies potentially have relevance beyond Australia’s rural CMH workforce to Australia’s broader early career nursing and allied health rural workforce as well as internationally for other countries that have a similar physical geography and health system.

This paper explores the role of accountants as part of the necessary infrastructure in rural community development providing specialised knowledge and skills to business owners who may lack the expertise required to ensure successful business operations.

Perceptions of seven rural development officers from separate Rural Development Boards and two local governments in South Australia are canvassed through a set of interviews.

Findings challenge the notion that use of modern communication technology, which allows for accountants and their accountancy practices to be located anywhere in the world, is sufficient to fulfil their role in rural communities. Instead, a critical dual role for accountants is identified which includes a community development function.

The research is limited by the geographic area from which the participants were selected. While this controlled for any possible jurisdictional differences between states in Australia, the participants targeted comprise only a relatively small group.

The paper identifies an important role for accountants in rural communities hitherto unidentified. Accountant contributions to rural development and the sustainability of rural communities is highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the establishment of area schools from two vantage points. The first vantage point is those who were legislatively responsible for public education in South Australia from the mid 1930s through to the end of World War 2. The second is the local community, with references to Karoonda (and districts) in particular.

The paper locates the evolution of area schools in the comprehensive public secondary schooling movement and the practice of borrowing policy initiatives from overseas and other education jurisdictions. Primary source documents have been used extensively throughout the article.

Initial resistance to the closure of small schools to form area schools was overcome by the provision of free bus transport, and the wider availability of secondary education, locally. Originally intended to provide instruction to students who would remain for most of their lives in rural communities, within ten years of opening, area schools became the means of mobility for many.

The continuing exodus of youth from rural areas in search of “greener pastures” has become one of the main issues confronting rural communities as they search for ways to maintain viability in a competitive, market driven economy.

The paper is a rigorously documented historical contribution towards debate and discussion about how governments, and others, may ensure access to secondary education in rural areas in light of demographic and economic factors.

In the decades since World War II, Australia has moved from a vibrant, universalist welfare system, based on the rights of citizens to receive income support, to a residualist system that is highly targeted, based on harsh and increasingly punitive eligibility requirements and which re-defines recipients as ‘clients’. These developments have happened slowly, some would say insidiously, as Australia moved from a supportive environment where the notion of collective responsibility for the vulnerable was accepted and, indeed, embraced. More recently collectivism has been replaced by the notion of individualism in what McDonald (2006, p. 10) refers to as ‘a silent surrender of public responsibility’. Individuals and/or their families are expected to absorb their own welfare needs as much as possible, while those that fall to the public purse are treated with some suspicion, particularly if they fall into categories of the ‘undeserving’ poor. In Australia the ranks of the ‘undeserving’ appear to be widening beyond single parents and the unemployed to include those with disabilities and young people.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of the MobiCert project, which utilises mobile commerce technology to enhance information access and provision for organic primary producers, so as to improve their integration into the grocery supply chain. This paper is a precursor to developing a mobile solution for both conventional and organic primary producers across Australia and potentially other countries.

The rapid appraisal research approach is selected for this research paper as it is particularly suited for gathering fast, rich and deep data in rural and remote areas.

This paper discusses the development of a mobile information community prototype for organic primary producers in rural South Australia which provides information access and data gathering functionalities through the use of a PDA/Smart phone. The Rural Area Technology Acceptance and Diffusion of Innovation Model is developed to investigate acceptance of mobile technology and the likely diffusion of this innovation in rural areas. It offers a theoretical underpinning for the project, and illustrates how this paper contributes to the management/marketing literature.

This research project is of considerable value for primary producers in rural and remote areas, because it enables and enhances their access to and provision of information – a critical factor for timely and effective access to the grocery supply chain.

‘Crossroads’ serves as a metaphor for networks and intersections, overlaps and trajectories, and is used throughout this book to denote how criminal transgressions and the representations of crime circulate in and out of rural spaces in the Australian countryside. This chapter provides an introduction and overview of key concepts and approaches to rural criminology informed by a ‘crossroads’ metaphor. It discusses the complexities of rurality and how these, in turn, point to significant turning points and strategic directions – not only for research and scholarship but also for understanding, communicating and responding to rural crime and deviance as it presently manifests in countries such as Australia. Along this journey, a number of issues are identified, and practical concerns signalled.

The way crystal methamphetamine or ‘ice’ use in rural Australia has been represented for national television audiences provides rich evidence of the intersections between media, crime and rurality. This chapter explores these connections through a framing analysis of three Australian television news and current affairs features about this topic. It investigates how concepts such as ‘fluidity’ and ‘boundedness’ operate in relation to the representation of ice use and drug-related crime in rural and regional communities. This raises questions about how certain images and associations come to circulate through media as well as their potential to evolve and change over time or to even be contested – sometimes by the very individuals and communities who serve as the subjects of stories about such problems in society.