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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the engagement of Australian consumers when buying and drinking Champagne.

The paper identified seven variables a priori that were expected to influence consumers' decisions and then used exploratory interviews to investigate how Champagne consumers were influenced by these. The authors interviewed Champagne marketers, sellers, educators, connoisseurs and aspirational consumers. The interview protocol allowed respondents to identify other variables.

The paper identified two new variables that, inter alia, influence Australian consumers in their Champagne selection. These were the kudos that comes from the people they serve or give it to and their sentimentality about previous experiences of Champagne consumption. The two new variables are the focus of this paper.

The exploratory nature of this research means larger studies are needed to confirm the preliminary findings, particularly in other, non Anglo‐Saxon cultures.

Champagne houses could place greater emphasis on kudos and sentimentality in their marketing campaigns; additionally cultural issues could affect how the two factors operate in different markets.

Kudos and sentimentality have not been previously emphasised in the wine consumer behaviour literature.

David Bawden is professor of information science at City University London, UK. He has a first degree in organic chemistry (Liverpool University) and masters and doctoral degrees in information science (Sheffield University). He worked in research information services in the pharmaceutical industry before joining City University in 1990. His academic interests include the history and philosophy of the information sciences, information-related behaviour, knowledge organisation, scientific information, digital literacy and academic-practitioner research collaboration. He is editor of the Journal of Documentation, the leading European journal of library/information science, and is a member of the board of EUCLID, the European Association for Library and Information Teaching and Research. His interests in individual differences in information behaviour stem from studies of ‘information for creativity’ in the 1980s, and he has a particularly interest in ways of understanding individual attitudes and preferences as a way of improving information provision. His email address is db@soi.city.ac.uk.

The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: first, what contracts, instruments and accounting activities constitute Australia’s offshore asylum seeker processing policy in practice? Second, how are notions of legitimacy and accountability mediated through the network constituted by this policy?

The paper is located in the critical interpretivist approach to accounting research. It is based on an exhaustive documentary analysis. Policy documents, contract documents, records of parliamentary inquiries (Hansard) and legislation were analysed drawing on a network policy perspective.

The paper finds that the Australian Government has sought to escape its accountability obligations by employing a range of approaches. The first of these approaches is the construction of a network involving foreign states, private corporations and non-government organizations. The second is through a watered down accountability regime and refusal to be accountable for the day-to-day life of asylum seekers in offshore processing centres through a play with the meaning of “effective control”. Yet while the policy network seems designed to create accountability gaps, the requirement within the network to remain financially accountable undermines the governments claims not to be responsible for the conditions in the detention camps.

The paper focuses largely on the period starting from when Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister to the death in Papua New Guinea of asylum seeker Reza Barati on 17 February 2014. Earlier periods are beyond the scope of this paper.

The paper will result in the identification of deficiencies inhuman rights accountability for extra-territorialized and privatised immigration detention and may contribute towards the formulation of effective policy recommendations to overcome such deficiencies. The paper also provides empirical data on, and academic understanding of, immigration detention outsourcing and offshoring.

The paper will inform debate regarding treatment of unauthorized maritime arrivals and asylum seekers generally.

The paper provides the first detailed and full understanding of the way Australia’s offshore asylum seeker processing policy is practiced. The paper also provides an empirical analysis of the way national policy and its associated accountability mechanisms emerge in response to the competing legitimacy claims of the international community and national electorate.

A Crown Court hearing of a charge of applying a false A description under S.2, Trade Descriptions Act, 1968, is given in some detail under Legal Proceedings in this issue of BFJ. It concerns using the word “ham”, ie., the natural leg of a single pig, to various pieces from several pigs, deboned, defatted, “tumbled, massaged and cooked” in a mould shaped to a leg of ham, from which the average purchaser would find it impossible to distinguish. As the defence rightly claimed, this process has been used for at least a couple of decades, and the product forms a sizeable section of the bacon trade. Evidence by prosecution witnesses, experienced shop managers, believed the product to be the genuine “ham”. There is nothing detrimental about the meat, save that it tends to contain an excess of added water, but this applies to many meat products today; or that the manufacturers are setting out to cheat the consumer. What offends is the description given to the product. Manufacture was described in detail—a county trading standards officer inspected the process at the defendant company's Wiltshire factory, witness to the extent of their co‐operation—and was questioned at great length by defending counsel. Specimens of the product were exhibited and the jury were treated to a tasting test—presumably designed to refute prosecution's claim that the meat was of “poor value”. The trial judge said the jury had no doubt been enlightened as to the methods of manufacturing ham. The marketing of the product was also a subject of examination.