Australia is largely self-sufficient in its supply of safe, fresh blood products because of the goodwill of non-remunerated, volunteer donors, plus rigorous testing and processing standards. Australia, under the National Blood Agreement, has a policy of “self-sufficiency” in fresh blood and plasma products. The policy refers to effort rather than outcome, with self-sufficiency defined as “striving to meet clinical demands using local product”. In recent years, increasing amounts of plasma- derived and recombinant products have been imported (with limited policy debate). However, for the most part, plasma products continue to be derived from Australian donations and processed in Australia.

Whole blood, plasma and platelets from non-remunerated, volunteer donors are collected by the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, and tested for HIV, hepatitis B and C, HTLV-1 and -2, syphilis, and for cytomegalovirus (to protect recipients with immune deficiencies).

On 1 January 2005, the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into force.4 A side letter to this agreement opens the way for the importation of blood and plasma-derived products to increase considerably above current levels.

In this article, we raise several specific concerns relating to AUSFTA and the safety, quality, and security of supply of Australia’s blood and plasma products. We also argue that AUSFTA creates additional uncertainties by increasing the potential for policy lobbying based on the threat of so-called “non-violation nullification of benefits” disputes, although we maintain these must be restricted to unambiguous textual obligations. Off-shore fractionation could compromise the safety of Australia’s blood supply through delays in processing and transportation, issues related to quality control, and even the siphoning of stock to overseas markets.

An Australian federal government committee recently proposed, as a cost-saving measure, the introduction of sealed-bid competitive tendering to exclusively supply the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) with specific generic medicines. A similar plan involved an open tender to supply generic products below a government set price, also linked with a reduced patient co-payment as an incentive. These proposals represented an opportunity to encourage the price of generic pharmaceuticals to move closer to the marginal cost of production - a process that could be subsequently applied to innovative (or brand-name) patented medicines in a therapeutic class with many competitors. This article examines these tendering proposals, particularly in relation to the potential for increased involvement of generic pharmaceutical manufacturers in the Australian market. Centralised purchasing through tendering for specific generic products has many potential advantages for the PBS;

It would: • allow the PBS system to use cost-effectiveness evaluation linked with their power as largely the sole buyer of medicines in Australia to leverage lower prices; • make prices paid to manufacturers (and other suppliers) more transparent; • give manufacturers (and other suppliers) enhanced certainty over demand than current fluctuating arrangements with wholesalers; • create a negotiating lever to facilitate entry of new generic manufacturers into a more competitive market; • reduce the likelihood of “actual” and “artificial” (“speculative”) supply shortages and facilitate longer and more efficient production runs; • reduce price fluctuations; and • open the door to tendering for innovative products where numerous competitors exist in a therapeutic class. A key benefit of the tendering mechanism is that it will provide a good means for the government and its cost-effectiveness evaluators to gain an understanding of the marginal cost of production for specific PBS-listed medicines. This would be especially true if PBS tenders were in the form of first-price sealed-bid auctions, in which bidders provide a secret bid.

Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler, we develop a detailed ethnography of a social space in a major law school, and explore its socialization of the students there. ‘Coffee House’ is a weekly social event sponsored by Canadian law firms offering free drink and food to the students present. We argue that this event and the actors involved profoundly change student identities and alter educational aspirations. Although the students themselves insist that ‘nothing is going on,’ our ethnography suggests that in ‘Coffee House’ identity is developed through performances, and in the accumulation of symbolic capital, until ultimately students come to feel their future career path is not a matter of choice, but destiny. We explore the important work of Bourdieu through this setting, but ultimately we resist his determinism, and suggest instead that, following the work of Butler, identity is a more complicated and fluid dynamic between space, repetition, and performance. It appears that a personal unconscious transformation amongst law students attending Coffee House is underway; yet opportunities to change the meaning of this space and these performances remain.

Starting from St Thomas Aquinas, the best known of the medieval commentators on the Seven Deadly Sins, the sin of gluttony has suffered from certain ambiguities. This chapter attempts to clarify the nature and the problematic of glutton, with particular reference to an aspect of contemporary significance: the treatment and consumption of animals. The author finds this treatment both scandalous, secretive, and emblematic of a much broader problem of the modern world – commodification. This, too, is a form of modern gluttony from which neither law nor philosophy is immune. In order to draw forth these connections between our approach to law, to knowledge, and to food, the author draws on recent fiction by Nobel laureate J M Coetzee, and the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. He argues for a restructuring of how we think about ‘the lives of animals’ which will respond to the idea of gluttony in both its immediate sense and in its metaphorical extension. Perhaps our gluttonous appetites can be tamed, not by knowledge and not by justice, but by ethics.

Over the past hundred years, the law of negligence has transformed itself, and in the process transformed our sense of the obligations we all owe to everybody around us – local governments for the services they provide, banks and professionals for the advice they give, drivers on the road, doctors in the surgery, homeowners for their guests or visitors, and even for the trespassers who might pay them a call. Yet what is now compendiously described as ‘the duty of care’ is in some ways an unusual obligation. It is not the outcome of an agreement founded on self-interest, like a contract. It is not a duty owed to the community as a whole and acted on by the State, like criminal law. It describes a personal responsibility we owe to others which has been placed upon us without our consent. It is a kind of debt that each of us owes to others although we never consciously accrued it. Thus it raises in a distinctly personal way one of the oldest questions of law itself: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ What does it mean to be responsible? This is not a question that is easier to answer for us than for Cain. In this article I argue that the idea of responsibility articulated in the law of negligence comes from what might be termed our literal response-ability: it implies a duty to respond to others stemming not from our abstract sameness to others, but rather from our particular difference from them. Responsibility is not a quid pro quo — it is asymmetrical, a duty to listen to the breath of others just in so far as their interests diverge from our own. The duty of care emerges not because we have a will (which the law of contract respects) or a body (which the criminal law protects) but because we have a soul.

I find myself in an ironic position this afternoon. This morning I was supposed to be a commentator on the keynote address, but pretty much gave my own independent perspective on legal knowledge and lawyers’ responsibilities. This afternoon I am supposed to give my own independent perspective on building a successful career as a legal academic, yet I find myself so stimulated by Ros Croucher’s paper that I can’t resist falling into the role of being a commentator on it. You might think that this is another example of the tensions and dilemmas I spoke about this morning. I rather think it is an example of my perverse streak, which actually launched me on my academic career, when, 35 years ago, against all advice, I forsook the US and the UK and took off to India for postgraduate study. But perhaps more of that later. I say perhaps because, despite Paul Moyle’s dangerous invitation to Ros and me to reflect on our personal experiences, I don’t want to cross the line into total self-indulgence.

It matters how we conjugate the world. The grammar in which one frames an area of law indicates what is seen to be important about it and why. How did law arise and to what end? These questions have generated a variety of powerful myths surrounding the origin of law. Over the past several years, I have been working on a project which has attempted to articulate the insights of Levinas to a legal audience, with particular reference to the distinct idea of responsibility in tort law. Above all, as I hope this essay will go on to illustrate, Levinas offers a point of departure in trying to understand why we ought to be responsible for others that is radically unlike the standard grammars and philosophical reference points which have to date governed our understanding of this responsibility. Levinas suggests that we can understand responsibility in quite a different way, and in a manner that both captures something central to the legal discourse, and - just as relevantly - central to our own experience. Law is, after all, not just a structure of arbitrary rules of co-ordination. It is a story as to the way in which our society re-attaches commitments to their proper authors. Responsibility is not a judicial auto-da-fe but an influential narrative about who we are.

The article considers the legal regulation of religious giving in nineteenth century England. Three leading cases, decided between 1871 and 1887, are discussed. Each case involves a woman of Roman Catholic, or Roman Catholic-like persuasion, making a substantial testamentary or inter vivos gift to the religious body with which she is associated. It is argued that whether the gift was construed as an outright gift or a trust for purposes was crucial to its enforceability. Two key themes are considered: autonomy concerns in relation to religious giving (including reasons why these concerns were more pressing with respect to inter vivos gifts) and the different levels of legal recognition of religious giving. The law during this period took an active role both in managing the relationship of religious groups with the state and in controlling the activities of religious groups; conversely, suppressed religious groups managed to operate around, and outside, the law.

An Australian federal government committee recently proposed, as a cost-saving measure, the introduction of sealed-bid competitive tendering to exclusively supply the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) with specific generic medicines. A similar plan involved an open tender to supply generic products below a government set price, also linked with a reduced patient co-payment as an incentive. These proposals represented an opportunity to encourage the price of generic pharmaceuticals to move closer to the marginal cost of production - a process that could be subsequently applied to innovative (or brand-name) patented medicines in a therapeutic class with many competitors. This article examines these tendering proposals, particularly in relation to the potential for increased involvement of generic pharmaceutical manufacturers in the Australian market. Centralised purchasing through tendering for specific generic products has many potential advantages for the PBS;

It would: • allow the PBS system to use cost-effectiveness evaluation linked with their power as largely the sole buyer of medicines in Australia to leverage lower prices; • make prices paid to manufacturers (and other suppliers) more transparent; • give manufacturers (and other suppliers) enhanced certainty over demand than current fluctuating arrangements with wholesalers; • create a negotiating lever to facilitate entry of new generic manufacturers into a more competitive market; • reduce the likelihood of “actual” and “artificial” (“speculative”) supply shortages and facilitate longer and more efficient production runs; • reduce price fluctuations; and • open the door to tendering for innovative products where numerous competitors exist in a therapeutic class. A key benefit of the tendering mechanism is that it will provide a good means for the government and its cost-effectiveness evaluators to gain an understanding of the marginal cost of production for specific PBS-listed medicines. This would be especially true if PBS tenders were in the form of first-price sealed-bid auctions, in which bidders provide a secret bid.