This chapter examines an implied limitation on the legislative powers of the Commonwealth and the States known as the ‘intergovernmental immunities doctrine’. The doctrine arises from the fact that the Australian Constitution establishes a Commonwealth government and a series of separately organised State governments and requires their continued existence as independent or separate entities. The intergovernmental immunities doctrine does not create a general immunity of the Commonwealth from State laws or a general immunity of the States from federal laws. Rather, the intergovernmental immunities doctrines gives rise to (1) State immunity from federal laws which operate to destroy or curtail the continued existence of the States or their capacity to function as governments and (2) Commonwealth immunity from State laws which operate to destroy or curtail the continued existence of the Commonwealth or its capacity to function as a government. Whether a law contravenes the intergovernmental immunities doctrine requires an evaluative assessment of a range of factors.

This chapter examines the corporations power. Section 51(xx) of the Australian Constitution grants the Commonwealth Parliament power to make laws with respect to three types of corporations: foreign corporations, Australian trading corporations and Australian financial corporations. The umbrella term ‘constitutional corporations’ is sometimes used to refer to all three types of corporation.

This chapter examines the way in which the Australian Constitution resolves inconsistencies between federal and State laws. The Constitution enables the Commonwealth to legislate concurrently with the States on many subject-matters. This means that both federal and State laws may apply to the same situation. Section 109 of the Constitution has the effect that where such federal and State laws are inconsistent the federal law prevails and the State law is inoperative to the extent of the inconsistency. Inconsistency arises where a State law would alter, impair or detract from the operation of a federal law. Inconsistency may arise where it is impossible to obey both the federal and State laws, where the State law prohibits the exercise of a right granted by federal law, or where a State law purports to operate on a subject-matter on which a federal law has evinced an intention to cover exclusively. To the extent of any such inconsistency, State laws are inoperative.

This chapter examines the constitutional parameters concerning the scope and operation of the federal franchise. The Australian Constitution contains a provision expressly guaranteeing a right to vote, which has been interpreted in such a way that it has no ongoing operation. However, the Constitution also demands that parliamentarians be ‘chosen by the people’. The High Court has interpreted this requirement to ensure a minimum level of democracy, in that the result of any method of choosing parliamentarians must meet the description ‘chosen by the people’. The High Court has also interpreted the requirement that parliamentarians be ‘chosen by the people’ to impose a restriction on the ability of Parliament to take away an existing right to vote or to take away an existing opportunity to exercise a right to vote. The Constitution also prescribes minimum standards governing the method of voting.

In this chapter we identify some aspects of Indigenous epistemologies (ways of knowing) and ontologies (ways of being) and apply them to the re-imagining of social work, grounded in contributions, experiences and knowledges shared by Indigenous scholars in the field. Social work has too often been part of the colonial project rather than the decolonising project, though in the twenty-first century the decolonisation of social work has emerged as a more important agenda. This chapter is concerned with Indigenous ways of knowing and being as representing important alternatives to Western modernity. We argue that to achieve re-imagining of social work requires social workers to adopt an epistemological shift that centres and values Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies as core, consciously and intentionally removing them from the margins that they have occupied in social work education and practice. We start the chapter with some notes on its authorship. We then briefly describe colonialism’s stifling of Indigenous epistemologies, after which we explore Indigenous ways of knowing and being and how they inform the re-imagining of social work.

A business model is a framework for creating value by organizing available resources and activities to address a user need. As such, each product or service requires a business model in order to be commercialized. A business model can be embedded in a hierarchical or inverted firm. We start analyzing business models by exploring value configurations, an overall model of the value creation logic of the firm. A business model is a more detailed description of the structure of activities and transactions that enables the firm to deliver its products and services. It includes the description of the value created in the form of a value proposition, whom the firm targets to offer the value – the target market – and how it creates value – the implementation of the delivery in terms of key assets, activities, and partnerships. The value proposition and the target market together inform the company’s revenue mechanism that defines who is willing to pay for what aspects of the service under the current or expected competitive conditions. The key assets, activities, and partnerships inform the company’s cost structure, and, in particular, how much it costs to deliver the value proposition to the target market. Finally, these analyses allow the firm to assess whether and how to scale the business.

This chapter investigates how digitization changes the internal organization of firms. Gig economy platforms and freelancing agencies are rapidly taking over market share changing our very definition of a “firm,” whereas those who still work for traditional firms increasingly rely on virtual tools and external digital platforms to coordinate and communicate. Similarly, many of the firm’s other production activities may be outsourced to external providers, including inputs, manufacturing, assembly, logistics, marketing, and even R&D. We explore the emerging nature of the firm if much of its activities are carried out by other organizations, and pinpoint the key characteristics that determine what activities firms may want to continue in-house and which activities they can conveniently use digital markets and platforms to pursue.

This case study investigates the structure and perfomance of Spotifys music streaming platform. Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify in 2006 in Stockholm. The platform grew as a response to rampant online piracy afflicting the music industry. After Napster, LimeWire, and other file-sharing services “disrupted” the traditional music model, Spotify entered in Pandora’s footsteps by offering a free service funded through advertising. However, Spotify’s goal was to funnel users towards an ad-free subscription service. Although Pandora remained the US market leader, globally Spotify’s main rival was Apple Music. Apple cornered a market by securing exclusive deals with popular artists such as Drake, Frank Ocean, and Taylor Swift. Music streaming services operated by licensing content from record labels and independent artists and then paying the artists, songwriters, and labels royalties depending on how often the music was streamed. Some superstars objected to this model, however. As of 2022, this business model remained contentious and unprofitable.

This chapter argues that to practise social work in the Anthropocene it is crucial to decentre the human. This decentring does not involve devaluing the human but embedding their experience in the non-human world. We begin with a discussion of the Anthropocene along with the ecological crises and the growth in population, production and consumption as issues that underpin it. We highlight the importance of moving from anthropocentrism to Gaia in the way we understand the relationship between the human and the non-human world. This shift will enable social workers to rethink the social, the community and human rights in more ecocentric ways and will have implications in the ways social workers engage in activism and practice to affect social change.

Chapter 11 provides an overview of the terms for talking about grammar instruction and learning, including implicit learning vs. explicit learning and implicit knowledge vs. explicit knowledge. With these common terms defined, the chapter then describes several instructional approaches that researchers have utilized to better understand how language learners build their understanding of the target language. Particular attention is paid to focus-on-form and form-focused instructional strategies.