Although our Strategic Developments and Vice-Chacellor's Fund for Growth funding does not begin to flow until 2001, RegNet is already up and running. A deep debt is owed to our Executive Officer, Clare Guenther, for this. RegNet now has 72 members, mostly from ANU and Canberra-based regulatory organizations, and an active Board of Management. A number of research positions are under advertisement in the Research School of Social Sciences. In coming months we expect a number of exciting RegNet events to occur, beginning this month with the visit by leading US corporate compliance expert Joseph Murphy.

However, the real work of RegNet will be in its centres. The former Restorative Justice Group has recently been upgraded to the Centre for Restorative Justice, directed by Heather Strang. Nelson Mandela autographed the Centre's new sign to launch it when he received his ANU Honorary Doctorate last month. The Centre has already had great success in raising over $2 million in outside funds for its research program. This month Lawrence Sherman and Heather Strang will release the results of the RISE experiments on the effects of restorative justice conferences on criminal reoffending. An ambition of the Centre for Restorative Justice is to interest scholars beyond criminology in restorative justice as an approach to regulating human conduct. A key idea of restorative justice is to replace a punitive regulation where hurt tends to beget hurt with a restorative approach where healing begets healing.

At its October Meeting the RegNet Board decided to admit the Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI) as a RegNet Centre. We will have a feature on their work in the next newsletter. One of the topics for future work I have been discussing with both the Centre for Democratic Institutions and the new Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics is the regulation of government. In October I spoke on this topic at the launch of the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation in London. I expect we will have a conference in Canberra on this topic in 2001 or 2002.

Bronitt, S and McSherry, B Principles of Criminal Law (Sydney: LBC, 2001).

McKee, M and Healy, J (eds) Hospitals in a Changing Europe (Open University Press, Buckingham, 2001 forthcoming).

Kent, A, "State Monitoring States: The United States, Australia, and China's Human Rights" in Human Rights Quarterly (forthcoming in 2001).

Kent, A, "Australia and the International Human Rights Review" in Australia in World Affairs, James Cottan and John Ravenhill (eds), forthcoming in 2001.

McKee M, Healy J and Falkingham J (eds) Health Care in Central Asia (Open Univeristy Press, Buckingham, 2001 forthcoming).

Saltman R, Busse R, and Mossialos, E (eds) Regulating Entrepreneurial Behaviour in European Health Care Systems (Open University Press, Buckingham, 2001 forthcoming).

Strang, H and Braithwaite, J (eds), Restorative Justice: Philosophy to Practice (Ashgate). This is an edited collection from a conference we held last year. Another book (by the same editors!) will be out probably in March - Restorative Justice and Civil Society (Cambridge University Press).

Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Bigotry, Government and Social Change in Australia, 1949-2000

10-12 November 2000. Humanities Research Centre, ANU

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Public Health and Human Rights. Local and International Perspectives

17 November 2000, John Landy Room, Melbourne Cricket Ground

Historically, the disciplines of public health and human rights have been at odds. While, public health has placed the interests of the community ahead of those of the individual, human rights has given primacy to defined individual concerns.

Over the past ten years, a movement stressing the inextricable linkages between health and human rights has gained increasing influence. This has been demonstrated by resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations and the work of UNAIDS in particular.

This seminar will examine various aspects of the relationship between health and human rights. This will include the impact of human rights considerations on: public health law and policy; international health research and health research during humanitarian crises; and the contribution of health professionals to the investigation and prosecution of war crimes and the re-establishment of infrastructure in countries post war.

Featuring international, national and local speakers, this seminar promises to introduce an Australian audience to a new body of thought and to provoke discussion and debate.

VicHealth, together with Bebe Loff, Senior Lecturer, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University take great pleasure in inviting you to participate in this truly interdisciplinary and important event.

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4-5 December 2000, Centre for Tax System Integrity (CTSI), ANU, Canberra

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Melbourne, 23-24 November 2000

For details phone (02) 9799 7974.

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Washington (DC), 3-8 August 2001

It is not often that academics interested in regulation and compliance get the opportunity to meet and talk with academics in the broader field of management. In August 2001 that opportunity presents itself in the context of the Annual Conference of the US Academy of Management.

As the Academy notes on its website in regard to the Conference, it is "...time for members of the Academy to address what role, if any, governments play in management and organization. We have always been told that governments matter. They establish the legal framework and enforcement regimes that provide the frames of action for managers and their organizations. Yet there is surprisingly little scholarship or discussion among us regarding such a fundamental element of managers' and organizations' environments."

As a member of the Public and Not for Profit Division of the Academy, I am in the early stages of developing a Symposium proposal as described below. If members of the list are interested in taking part in the proposed Symposium or, even better, proposing a paper that fits with the theme listed below, please email me as soon as possible. Ideally, interested persons should provide a brief abstract of their proposed paper.

Proposed symposium: managing regulatory compliance

The primary objective of this proposed symposium will be to examine and compare national systems for encouraging regulatory compliance at the firm level, with a focus on recent developments encouraging industry self-regulation and associated codes of practice.

The specific objectives are:

1) To identify major trends and issues in the development of national systems for encouraging regulatory compliance at the firm level.

2) To examine the impact, or likely impact of the identified trends and issues on firm-level compliance systems and their management.

3) To examine the extent to which cross-national regulatory transfer and convergence have been characteristic of recent developments in national level compliance systems.

4) To examine the role of international organisations in regard to recent developments in compliance systems.

Centre for Restorative Justice (no website)

Centre for Tax System Integrity (CTSI)

Regulatory Institutions Network, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia.

Email regnet@anu.edu.au
Web http://regnet.anu.edu.au
Phone: +61 (0)2 6125 3005.
Fax +61 (0)2 6125 4933.