College of Law

The first Hungarian arrived in Australia as a convict in the 1820s. The first political refugees were the soldiers of 1848, who arrived in gold-fevered Victoria hoping for a new life. The first humanitarian refugees from Hungary landed in Sydney and Melbourne before the start of World War II. They quickly integrated into Australian society, but they were few in number and did not form separate groups. The two largest waves of Hungarian refugees – cc. 15,000 people each – arrived in the country in the late 1940s and after 1956. There were many of them, and they tried to stay together and establish their own Hungarian communities and institutions in every major city. Some Australians did not look kindly on this, and it took a long time for both sides to accept each other. This presentation, linked to the anniversary of the 1956 revolution, shows the integration process of the 1956 refugees, based on contemporary press articles.

The Probation of Offenders Act, 1958 (POA) was the first Act which started to shift the Indian penal system from punitive to rehabilitative. This Act had an objective to combat prison overcrowding, staving off the criminal socialization process, and giving offenders the chance at social reintegration. However, the Probation remains underused and the system viciously bypasses all the implementers. This paper approaches the study of probation from a doctrinal constitutional and international perspective, the case for which is built on comparative jurisprudence, institutional analysis, and comparative analysis. The paper posits that the system of probation in the country will necessitate synergistic reform across the spectrum of judicial education, standardized PSRs, the professionalization of probation officers, and the use of tech in judicial processes. This paper seeks to argue that probation, when viewed socially and philosophically through the lens of the constitution, is a constitutional right to not be jailed, and should be coupled with international legislation, the Tokyo Rules, which should call for reformative probation instead of punitive incarceration.

Balanced mutual funds are hybrid funds that invest in a portfolio of stocks and bonds. Balanced funds have a specific allocation of stocks and bonds. Fund managers will try to stick to this allocation. These funds have also been offered as the default investment choices in several different pensions, 401(k), 403(b), and IRA plans. Therefore, an analysis of these funds is extremely important. This study looks at the absolute and risk-adjusted performance of 1,266 balanced mutual funds in four different categories (30% to 50% equity allocation, 50% to 70% equity allocation, 70% to 85% equity allocation, and >85% equity allocation) from January 1990 through December 2021. It compares them to the passively managed Vanguard S&P 500 fund, Vanguard total bond fund, and three different index fund portfolios. Balanced mutual funds have underperformed index funds with lower risk-adjusted performance. Balanced mutual funds have also generated lower returns and less wealth compared to index funds. The five-factor alpha is also significantly negative for all fund categories, indicating that these funds have not created any value for their investors. Overall, balanced mutual funds have underperformed plain vanilla index funds, and investors would have been better off constructing portfolios using index funds based on their risk tolerance.