On 18 September 2007, Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky introduced a Bill to the Legislative Assembly that sought to ban discrimination claims by international overseas students, over public transport fares. [1]   (While the governments of Victoria and the State refer to international students, Ms Kosky’s speech and bill uses the term “overseas students” to refer to the same students.)  The Bill subsequently passed into the Transport Act. [2]   The introduction of the Bill to the Committee and the second reading to the Legislative Assembly were based on convenient errors in her response to Committee and the Legislative Assembly, the latter of which claims compatibility with the Human Rights and Responsibilities Act.

Know who owns ideas. Some research students will find that their ideas are subject to policy on ownership. The Australian Government defines Intellectual Property (IP) as,

“… the property of your mind or intellect. In business terms, this also means your proprietary knowledge.”

The jurisprudence of Intellectual Property is a niche research field and the University specialist centre is the IP Research Institute of Australia (IPRIA), funded by IP Australia. IP will matter more in some research compared to others. Find out what is conventionally practiced in your faculty and how its researchers define scholarly works.

Despite differences of institutional, disciplinary and individual contexts, a positive research student experience depends on a wellspring of motivation to progress towards completion.

In the University of Melbourne, the quality of support structures is not universal across faculties, departments and centres.  Structural inequities mean that financial and social capital will differ across research communities.