The Mapping Social Services Provision for Diverse Communities Report is the product of research conducted in close partnership with the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights (AMWCHR), the Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC) and the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria (ECCV).

This project idea was developed many years ago through discussions with our partner organisations, to address concerns about the perceived decline in funding for multicultural service providers. The idea was further refined through numerous consultations, which provided the theoretical and empirical grounds for the successful Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP190100459).

The project aimed to investigate the perceived impact and the ideological and political drivers motivating a shift in service delivery from community specific to mainstream organisations, as informed by Australian state and federal government policies.

The Intercultural Dialogue Index (ICDI) Report is the first time a composite index has been created and implemented to measure the extent to which Intercultural Dialogue is being pursued and implemented as a diversity management strategy within different countries.

A large body of research has discussed intercultural dialogue (ICD) and its potential value for fostering social cohesion and peaceful coexistence across difference. However, a lack of robust benchmark data has made it difficult for researchers and practitioners to empirically test assumptions and hypotheses pertaining to ICD.

With support from UNESCO and funded by Deakin University, the ICDI uses publicly available data to measure indicators of intercultural dialogue across 52 countries. The index combines ten components across three dimensions: the legislative/policy contexts, structural foundations and intercultural opportunities that support and promote intercultural dialogue.

Around the world, governments in liberal democracies are increasingly worried by the decline of public trust. The question that is often asked is why individuals and communities have declining trust in government institutions. However, the reverse question – whether governments trust communities, and if not, why not – is far less frequently explored. A relationship of trust involves one party trusting another, and that trust being returned. One key quality of trust is therefore reciprocity. For a successful trust relationship to be created and maintained it must be reciprocal. Trust must flow both ways – not just from communities to government but from government to communities.

This Report examines trust relationships between government and communities that play a role in developing resilience to social harms. The particular focus is on the areas of disaster recovery, emergency response and dealing with violent extremism, and the ways in which government officials implement related programs and policies. The aim of the project is to support government officials and community leaders and members in creating and sustaining the trusting relationships that are needed to deliver these types of resilience building programs.

Fresh water is essential to life. Due to its increasing scarcity relative to use it is often identified as the ‘new oil’ or ‘blue gold’. Its theft is, therefore, a profitable enterprise. Water theft is the unauthorized use and consumption of water before it reaches the intended end-user. It constitutes between 30-50 per cent of the global water distribution and commercialisation. Australia is not immune from such illegal activity. Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent and with few exceptions water security is seriously threatened throughout. While some threats are undoubtedly climate induced, the theft of water is playing an increasingly significant role in undermining and compromising Australia’s water security. Yet relatively little is known of the historical and contemporary context of water theft in Australia, and the parameters of the phenomenon remain under-researched. This is the first of a series of briefing papers on the Water Theft Project focussing on the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), Australia. This paper outlines the overall research endeavour. It introduces the project aims, the project methodology and methods, and its intended outcomes. Future papers in this series will provide detailed and substantive discussions of key concepts (‘water theft’), policies (‘laws and regulations’ and the ‘water market’) and government and community responses to water theft issues (breaches of regulation, perceptions of water taking as ‘folk crime’, serious criminal offences).

This paper introduces an interesting aspect or variant of populism which we call ‘fluctuating populism’ through a case study of Prabowo Subianto Joyohadikusumo, the winner of the 2024 Indonesian presidential election, and a career politician for over three decades in the country. We define ‘fluctuating’ quality of populism as the strategic adjustments made by populist leaders to their rhetoric and ideological messaging across different political campaigns in pursuit of electoral victory. Based on the Indonesian presidential elections of 2009, 2014, 2019, and 2024, the paper demonstrates the dynamic nature of populism. It reveals that over just a decade, Prabowo has undergone shifts in ideological stances, rhetorical appeals, and electoral strategies in each election cycle. He has evolved from an ultra-nationalist, chauvinist, and Islamist populist to a technocratic figure with a much softer side. We also find that within these election periods, he never fully prescribed an ideology or rhetoric, but instead fluctuated according to the political landscape. Prabowo’s success in the 2024 election underscores the effectiveness of ‘fluctuating populism’ in navigating Indonesia’s political landscape. This case study shows that this concept offers a framework for understanding the strategic adjustments made by populist leaders and warrants further examination in comparative studies of political leadership.

The upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in Indonesia on 14 February 2024 are poised to involve over 200 million citizens out of a total population of 285 million. Among these eligible voters, approximately 115 million belong to the millennial or Gen Z demographic. Within this electoral landscape, the presidential race features a diverse array of candidates, where populism plays a significant, albeit not the dominant, role in shaping the campaigns and agendas of three key contenders. This study aims to explore the relationship between various forms of competing populisms and their utilization of digital technologies. It examines how these dynamics intersect with the digital divide, democracy, pluralism, and social cohesion within Indonesia’s electoral framework. Additionally, the paper outlines potential areas for further research in this domain.

The comprehensive report Inquiry into extremism in Victoria, tabled by the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee of the Victorian state parliament in August 2022, dedicates significant attention to the role of mainstream media within the chapter ‘Risk factors for far‐right extremism in Victoria’.

This report presents findings from a national consultation undertaken in 2023 on knowledge gaps and areas for future research on trauma and alcohol and other drug (AOD)-related problems in Australia. Drawing on interviews with Australian stakeholders working in the fields of trauma-informed or AOD policy, research and treatment, the report aims to inform research that can improve policy and practice responses.

This report is based on a unique collaborative study with Reconciliation Australia documenting grassroots community truth-telling in Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have long called for truth-telling about the colonial past, most recently in the 2017 Uluru Statement. Numerous community projects have emerged to engage with these historical truths. However, few of these initiatives have been documented. The report seeks to highlight this important community work as it provides crucial lessons for how the vision of truth-telling can be realised.

This project examined ACIAR research projects in relation to the processes of Lao policymaking to identify policy impact and distil the factors that determine the place of evidence-derived recommendations in policy formation and implementation in Laos.

This report on the role of religious populism in digital space as a catalyst for undemocratic politics investigates the digital toolkits of authoritarians and shows how religious populist forces co-opt political actors in their control of cyberspace.

The Gandel Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness in Australia Survey is the first national, large-scale survey of Australians’ knowledge of the Holocaust, their attitudes to Holocaust education and commemoration, their feelings towards Jews and their perspectives on the regulation of antisemitism and hate speech.

The findings set out in this report improve our understanding of the short-, medium- and long-term challenges MPs face after their parliamentary career has ended. These findings have informed the recommendations to implement a set of programs and strategies to better support former MPs in the future.

Australian Muslims feel they are under constant surveillance by law enforcement agencies. Most Australian Muslims feel watched. They feel they are over-policed and treated as a suspect community. This has strained community relationships with law enforcement agencies and presented new challenges for community outreach programs by the police.

Invasive tools of surveillance known as ‘spyware’ are readily available to general consumers and can be used for many abusive and malicious purposes. This report on the findings of research into the consumer spyware industry unpacks the threats that exist from commercially available spyware.

This report seeks to explore the meaning and impact of violent extremism as understood by staff members from the Plan country teams in Myanmar, Indonesia and the Phillipines, to consider potential responses in the programming and work of plan.

This project set out to explore the issue of what roles are being played by Australian women who radicalise to violence or who oppose violent extremism. Internationally, there is strong evidence of increasing women’s involvement in radicalised violent social movements, spurred in particular by the rise of Islamic State (IS) in 2014 and its specific agenda of creating a caliphate in territory straddling Iraq and Syria.

This new UK research project has built on the initial Australian study in order to develop a new, localised and contextually- sensitive understanding of and approaches to community reporting issues in the UK context.

This project investigates how participation in Islamic religious practices strengthens attachments to the western cities where Muslims have chosen to live. It will contribute to global, national and local policy outcomes that focus on the challenges of accommodating minority religions in diverse western cities.

The primary aim of this project was to investigate the nature, and consumption, of news, information, and audience reaction to news available on various media platforms/sources, with a focus on cultural diversity in Australia.