Beyond the initial euphoria of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), tough choices will be needed for sustainability. Although the spirit of the NDIS is to deliver choice and control, the Australian government's objective is to ensure that rights and aspirations are proportionate to expectations of best practice, aptness of mainstream services and cost effectiveness. The position in this paper is that this test of ‘reasonable and necessary’ when determining funded supports, raises value dilemmas for government and citizens. The objective is to demonstrate this through a critical scrutiny of the reviews and decisions regarding reasonable and necessary funded supports of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). In this paper, a synthesis and critique of 35 appeals to the AAT and one Federal Court Appeal are used to make explicit the decisional ambiguities and contestations in the scheme and the values and priorities that are currently dominant in the allocation of reasonable and necessary support. This in turn is used as a basis for a discussion about the operation of rights in the scheme and what counts as legitimate support. The benefit is for scheme transparency and fairness but also broader debate about core principles and values to inform decisions about scarce resources in society.
Based on over seventy interviews with diplomats and experts from all five MIKTA member countries, we find that MIKTA is used as a value-for-money minilateral mechanism for the world’s lesser powers grappling with the heightened global uncertainty and deepening interdependency. MIKTA foreign ministries have used the group as an ad hoc capacity-building and network-sharing scheme; and as a low-cost toolkit to diversify their traditional diplomatic channels and increase global visibility in various multilateral forums. However, MIKTA’s flexible, but precarious, institutional realities also suggest that minilateral arrangements that share MIKTA’s operational characteristics are likely to be short-lived and suffer from weak member commitment, resource constraints, forum-shopping risks, and a leadership vacuum.
The previous Abbott government had prioritized a general attitude to foreign policy captured by the phrase “Jakarta not Geneva,” which signified a preference for bilateral or minilateral interactions with the region rather than United Nations-based multilateralism. With Julie Bishop MP as Australia’s first female foreign minister, the Coalition also prioritized economic diplomacy, as exemplified by the repeated refrain that Australia is “open for business.” This approach led to a preference for diplomatic venues and processes that focused on continuing investments in regional architecture, new emphasis on minilateral dialogues such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, and Australia (MIKTA), and more effort directed to bilateral and plurilateral processes such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. This approach has been continued under Prime Minister Turnbull, with a renewed focus on innovation. Part 1 considers minilateral and regional investments in the Indo-Pacific region, primarily, IORA, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). I consider MIKTA a unique vehicle for Australian diplomacy. Part 2 considers what issues Australia should be pursuing through these forums, with a focus on the two themes of gender equality (as an example of niche diplomacy) and trade (multilateralism under pressure) as case studies. Beeson and Higgott argue that middle powers have the potential to successfully implement “games of skill,” especially at moments of international transition. How skilful have Australia’s efforts been in these minilateral dialogues, enhanced regionalism, and plurilateral processes, and what more can be achieved in these forums? Are these efforts creating more fragmentation of the rules-based order, or are they a way to overcome global governance stalemates? I set out the arguments for whether Australia, as a pivotal power, should generate more global options, or be more focused on inclusion in the Asia-Pacific region.
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