The Italian Job

When it comes to improving dispute resolution systems pertaining to the emergency and essential services, there’s always something to be learned from other jurisdictions.

While we haven’t really given this much thought in Australia, the move away from arbitration at the federal level means we need to come up with an alternative model. This thinking formed the backdrop to my recent visit to our good friends at the University of Bologna in Italy where I was able to discuss my own comparative work on collective bargaining and dispute resolution systems. While Italy obviously has a very different legal system, political structure, and socio-cultural mores, I believe there are still lessons to be drawn from the contemporary experiences of both countries.

Interestingly, both Italy and Australia allow some sort of collective bargaining where their police are concerned. The key difference is this: while our police can go to arbitration and are prevented from striking (thus minimising the chances of civic disruption), the civil (but not the military) police in Italy can strike, with their bargaining disputes tending to be resolved, I’m told, politically and in the absence of any real arbitration. So, while our move away from federal level arbitration is necessitating the need for an alternative, I don’t know that looking to Europe for inspiration is the answer. While drawing lessons from other territories can certainly be highly beneficial, the political environment for police labour relations in Europe makes it probably less instructive for Australia than other (common law) examples.

On the flipside, our Italian friends were very interested in the dispute resolution lessons they could draw from both our experiences as well as other dispute-resolution models I’m looking at. Considering Australia’s serious history and knowledge of arbitration, there were some audience members very interested in hearing about different models as well as their potential application to other spheres, such as commercial banking. On a closing note, I was going to mention the amazing food, wine, fashion and cars I encountered on my trip, but that would just be boasting.

Author: Giuseppe Carabetta – Senior Lecturer  at the University of Sydney Business School

The Next Big Step

Having completed my Honors in Government and International Relations last year, the next step in my academic career was always going to be a crucial one.

As someone who’s interested in politics and how government works, I’d been primarily focused on bureaucrat policy creation, looking at why bureaucracies operate the way they do, as well as why some policies get suggested at certain points in time and not at others. But I still felt I was lacking a fairly large piece of the puzzle. That’s why I signed up for the Master of Management degree.

There are a lot of people working in government who have political science or policy degrees. They’re very much aware of how the science behind decision-making works. But there aren’t many people within the government sector who have an idea of how to actually implement what they’ve researched. I think that zone of intersection between the public and private sectors is an extremely important area, and I believe that combining my interest in policy creation with a strong understanding of business will prove to be highly beneficial.

I’m currently halfway through the degree and I feel it’s definitely providing me with the tools I’ll need to apply my policy knowledge in a practical sense. For example, I’ve really enjoyed learning how financial markets and businesses operate, and think that a project we worked on with accounting and consultancy firm Deloitte (we had to come up with an innovative business model idea and sell it to them) has been a definite highlight.

When it’s all over, ideally I’d love to get into some sort of lobbying position, which would be a great example of that intersection between public and private. I’m also interested in the management consultancy side of things, or possibly approaching my career path from the governmental side via a ministerial advisory role. I really can’t wait to see how it all plays out.