This chapter explores how important it is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in particular to have access to studying their own languages across all jurisdictions in Australian education. It also explores the increasing options available to teachers to provide these opportunities for students from Foundation to Year 12. The value is not limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; all students in Australian schools can benefit from the deeper understanding of Indigenous peoples, cultures and histories that develops through the study of Indigenous languages. Language is the vehicle of cultural expression, and when a language is no longer spoken by its people all humanity is diminished by the loss of cultural transmission that occurs when a language ‘goes to sleep’. Teachers are very well positioned to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to help wake up the sleeping Australian languages and to maintain those that are still languages of everyday communication.

In Chapter 1, I introduce and scrutinise the conception of hope that dominates contemporary philosophy: that of a desire for a future outcome held in conditions of epistemic uncertainty. I argue that – despite their ostensible technical disagreements – analytic philosophers are committed to a shared framework that generates an ultimately depoliticised understanding of hope. Through discussion of Adrienne Martin’s How We Hope, and other relevant works, I show that contemporary philosophy understands hope as an everyday psychological phenomenon and an amoral/non-normative concept with merely contingent value. I suggest that the dominant philosophical understanding is incapable of distinguishing between hope and optimism. It therefore cannot acknowledge that the experience of hope can be sparked by commitment to the mere possibility of a specific future rather than the predictive calculation of forecastable outcomes. I discuss the theological account developed by Gabriel Marcel – as well as the political experience of Nelson Mandela – to indicate the importance of understanding hope in terms of the merely possible rather than probable.

Chapter 3 presents a comparative analysis of the healthcare reforms in Chile, Mexico, and Peru during the 2000s. It focuses on whether political parties or technocrats shaped the legislative and implementation process. The core argument is that reforms closely aligned with political parties’ core values (programmatic commitment) resulted in higher-quality policy, better funding, and more effective, sustainable access to healthcare. Chile’s AUGE (Acceso Universal con Garantías Explícitas; Universal Access with Explicit Guarantees) reform exemplifies a programmatic path: parties were directly engaged in agenda-setting, debate, and implementation, leading to policy endurance and real improvements in coverage, funding, and infrastructure. In contrast, Mexico’s Seguro Popular (Popular Insurance) and Peru’s AUS (Aseguramiento Universal en Salud; Universal Health Insurance) followed a technocratic path, with disengaged parties and reforms dominated by technocrats. These reforms achieved expanded formal coverage but suffered from unstable funding, inadequate infrastructure, and an inability to deliver on the promise of effective access. The study finds that other factors – such as economic growth, state capacity, clientelism, or federalism – do not, by themselves, explain the variation in reform quality. Only genuine party commitment to the reform’s core values ensured its success and longevity. The chapter underscores the importance of aligning party values with social policy to achieve meaningful, lasting reform outcomes in Latin America.

The parties themselves can release each other from all remaining obligations under a subsisting contract, thus bringing about the discharge of that contract.

• • Discharge can be by agreement, and this is provided for in Section 62 of the Contract Act. Under Section 62, discharge can take the form of a simple mutual termination or, alternatively, the parties may agree to substitute new contractual obligations in place of their old contract.

• • Discharge can also be unilateral(in circumstances where performance is outstanding from only one party). In this situation, Section 63 provides that the party which has rights to receive performance may wholly dispense with performance (by the party that has outstanding obligations).

This chapter discusses these two modes of discharge. Contractual variations short of complete discharge are not addressed in this chapter (but have been addressed in Chapter 14).

SECTION 62: DISCHARGE BY AGREEMENT

Section 62 states that ‘if the parties to a contract agree to substitute a new contract for it, or to rescind or alter it, the original contract need not be performed’. The key feature underpinning the application of Section 62 in discharge situations is the agreement of the parties to terminate the original contract. Referring to Section 62, the Supreme Court has observed1 that ‘one of the modes by which a contract can be discharged is by the same process which created it, i.e. by mutual agreement’.

This chapter discusses the ways in which I implement Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing into my process as a First Nations performing arts practitioner, working to create resources for Australian schools to support all educators in approaching First Nations content in Indigenous ways. Examining the design of two projects as case studies, the Kings, Brothers and Heroes exploration (a verbatim performance ceremony intended as a resource for secondary school students and teachers) and the Totems program (an immersive creative arts program for students from Foundation to Year 6), I discuss the ways in which I related ways of Indigenous knowing, being and doing to the work. This includes connecting to First Nations oral traditions, creating a space of free creative expression, discussion and engagement for students around story, history and culture that maintains, supports and preserves community ownership while recognising the importance of the Outsider relationship into which practitioners enter when working with community.

Institutions are considered as ‘rules of the game’ in this chapter, which is informed by two approaches taken to the analysis of institutions in natural resource governance. The first approach centres on viewing co-management itself as an institution. This section draws on common property theory and Ostrom’s design principles for sustainable common property regimes. The section also considers insights from literature on ‘institutional fit’ as a response to scale mismatch to identify lessons for co-management. The second approach is concerned with investigating which institutions shape co-management and how, from formal, bureaucratic institutions of policy and legislation to informal, socially embedded institutions, such as customary systems, kinship ties and gender norms. Critical institutionalism suggests that bureaucratic and socially-embedded institutions may interact through processes referred to ‘institutional bricolage’, with implications for how co-management evolves and performs.

This introductory chapter provides a rationale for the book, presents definitions of co-management and considers its theoretical foundations, identified as common property theory and decentralisation. These informed the identification of concepts reviewed, which are set out in a section explaining the content and structure of the book. Reflections are also included on related approaches and terminology to co-management, noting that even community-based natural resource management approaches involve collaboration between communities and government and so the term ‘co-management’ is used in a broad sense, referring to multiple forms of collaborative natural resource governance. The chapter also includes a section on what concepts are understood to be and the processes suggested for forming, reconstructing and analysing concepts. These processes informed the method undertaken in reviewing the meaning and use of concepts, and in generating insights into co-management from concept definitions and applications presented in the subsequent chapters.

Government is inevitably a key actor in the co-management of renewable natural resources. However, government is not monolith and many parts of government and the state may be involved in co-management, including multiple government ministries, local as well as central government, the judiciary and police. This chapter considers the roles of government in co-management and how these are influenced by political ideology on the size and remit of government. The chapter examines how the concepts of state and bureaucracy have been defined and how bureaucrats, referred to as ‘street-level bureaucrats’, involved in policy implementation have been associated with interpreting and adjusting policy and legislation. The chapter introduces the related concept of ‘interface bureaucrats’, referring to officials at the level of decentralized government navigating the government–citizen interface. Implications of insights on the role and nature of central and local government for the practice and outcomes of co-management are identified.

This chapter explores a number of key principles and concepts dealt with in the Commonwealth government’s National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. The chapter’s central focus is the impact and continuing effects that past ‘assimilation’ policies have had on the contemporary circumstance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It also explores the Inquiry’s observations regarding the meaning and intent of genocide, the notion of self-determination and the vexed question of Aboriginal ‘identity’.

In certain circumstances, parties are relieved from performance of their contractual obligations on account of supervening events. Where such circumstances exist, performance stands frustrated, and the contract is automatically discharged. Section 56 of the Contract Act is the relevant statutory provision. It defines such supervening events as those that render performance impossible or unlawful. As we shall see, Section 56 has been interpreted more widely to also cover events which render performance impracticable in the sense of being radically different from what was originally contemplated.

The law on frustration of contract is one area where Indian courts have professed to steer clear of the nuances of English law, and have instead asserted that

However, by interpreting the statute to include cases of impracticability (and not just impossibility and illegality), the Indian courts have effectively aligned Indian law with English law.

Indian courts have set a high threshold for when such supervening events would frustrate a contract. But most cases are decided on their individual facts, with little attempt to develop doctrine in a consistent manner. The development of doctrine is further inhibited by the fact that modern commercial contracts usually contain elaborate force majeure clauses. Those clauses specify qualifying force majeure events and the effect of such events on performance.

In addition to the general rule on illegality set out in Section 23, the Contract Act also specifically proscribes four categories of agreements, namely, (a) agreements in restraint of marriage, (b) agreements in restraint of trade, (c) agreements in restraint of legal proceedings and (d) wagering agreements. It provides that each of these four categories of agreement are ‘void’. In the remainder of this chapter, we describe the scope of these four prohibitions and the issues which have arisen when applying these prohibitions in practice.

AGREEMENTS IN RESTRAINT OF MARRIAGE

An agreement in restraint of marriage is declared to be void under Section 26 of the Contract Act.

The case law on this provision is sparse and has revolved around three questions. First, does Section 26 only apply to restraints that emanate from agreements, and not, for example, from bequests? Second, to what extent must Section 26 be limited to ‘total’ restraints or can it also contemplate ‘partial’ restraints? And third, does Section 26 apply to restraints on remarriage or is it confined to restraints on a first marriage?

We discuss each of these matters in what follows.

Source of restraint

In Khorsed Maneck v. The Official Trustee Bombay, a Parsi gentleman had executed a will making certain bequests. The will contained a condition, a defeasance clause that if any of the beneficiaries married someone outside the Zoroastrian faith, the interest bequeathed to such person would be deemed to have lapsed and would go to such next person as if the person marrying outside the faith had died prior to the testator.