Welcome to the AgLaw Centre
The Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law at the University of New England is a law and policy research and consulting centre with a research program focused on transactions, rules and institutions that govern natural resource use, primary production and rural communities.
The AgLaw Centre is supported by the substantial intellectual resources of the Faculty of Economics, Business and Law and the Faculty of the Sciences, These faculties provide access to economists, lawyers, management experts, soil scientists, production sciences, mathematicians, biologists and many other specialists. In addition, the Centre has an extensive network of local and international academic and commercial collaborators and can draw on other UNE knowledge centres from the arts, to indigenous issues, and health and welfare. The AgLaw Centre also works closely with a number of Cooperative Research Centres hosted at the University in sectors including irrigation, genetics, viticulture, livestock and poultry.
The substantial resource basis of the AgLaw Centre allows it to field skilled, multi-disciplinary teams on issues such as natural resource management, institutions and governance, efficient contracts and agreements, equity for remote and regional communities, indigenous issues, and the integration of regulation with voluntary self-management.
Host Location
The host location for the AgLaw Centre is UNE's Law School, the largest New South Wales Law School outside the Sydney metropolitan area, offering undergraduate law degrees, a Master of Law (by coursework or research) and a Doctoral program. The School's 1800 students study by distance education or on campus, utilising the school's efficient technological approach: All law units feature websites; most courses have supplementary CD-ROM reading materials; and students can take advantage of a state of the art electronic moot court. The School publishes the University of New England Law Journal – a refereed law journal – twice a year.
Tangible Value
The Centre focuses on delivering value to 4 interconnected groups:
- Natural Resource and Catchment Managers: by providing:
- Computerised, plain English support systems that cut the time and complexity for those trying to assess compliance with rules, regulation, policies and management plans
- A training suite to improve skills in natural resource governance. This suite is part of a postgraduate qualification for resource managers
- Resource-dependent communities: The Centre is currently working on:
- The rules that govern access to broadband in rural communities.
- Better ways of transacting with Indigenous knowledge
- The legal and policy issues that arise with new policy instruments, like water rights, clearing rights, and rights to pollute
- Ways of overcoming barriers to innovation in health service
- R&D Bodies: The Centre is providing law, policy and strategy complement to their commercialisation, and advice on using law and other strategies (like incentives) in:
- New approaches to risk management for genetic technologies
- Better strategies for the control of the spread of weeds and pest animals
- Managing the potential adverse side effects from innovations
- Primary Producers: The Centre is working on issues as diverse as reducing the taxation and superannuation impediments to farm and rural business succession, managing issues of bio-contamination and quarantine, reform of the way in which new rules are created, and addressing some of the complexities and social risks associated with the new water trading protocols across Australia.