It could be described as CSU’s quiet achiever.

Cooperative agricultural research projects between the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) and Charles Sturt University (CSU) was a feature of the Cambodian Prime Minister’s visit to Wagga Wagga yesterday (Thursday 12 October).

A CSU academic says the carbon tax proposal announced yesterday by The Hon. Julia Gillard, MP, Prime Minister of Australia, is a compromise that will be slow to provide the economy with the price incentives needed to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.

A research project that has spanned eleven years, and across four regional cities, is giving hope to diabetes sufferers internationally.

Earlier this month, a senior federal Labor MP put forward a proposal to make Year 12 compulsory for all Australian students. The proposal attracted widespread opposition, and for good reason, according to vocational education researcher Associate Professor Erica Smith from Charles Sturt University (CSU).

Australia should introduce a national disability insurance scheme as it supports the commitment the nation made when the then Federal government ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability in July 2008, according to a CSU academic in health services.

Earlier this month, the OECD released a report which shows that Australia spends less on early childhood education than any other nation in the industrialised world. It prompted calls from both sides of federal politics for a national approach to early childhood education. Fran Press, Charles Sturt University senior lecturer in early childhood education, says “What we have at the moment is a dog’s breakfast".

"I believe it is a worse health problem than tobacco," says Professor Patrick Ball, from Charles Sturt University’s School of Biomedical Sciences, "for the first time in human history, Type 2 Diabetes is more common than Type 1."

Professor Don Thomson from Charles Sturt University’s School of Social Sciences and Liberal Studies is a Registered Psychologist and a Barrister-at-law. He was recently awarded the Australian Psychological Society (APS) College of Forensic Psychologists inaugural distinguished contributions award. He says the legal system is not loaded against the victim as often claimed. In fact, in trials where there are mulitple defendants, “research shows you are more likely to be convicted with other co-defenders than if you are tried by yourself”.