This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings originating from the Second Australian Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, held in Cairns, QLD, Australia, in August 1996, as a satellite meeting of PRICAI'96.The 13 revised full papers presented have been selected for inclusion in the book during a very careful and iterated process of reviewing and improvement. Among these papers are three invited ones, by leading scientists, solicited in order to round off the overall presentation and coverage of relevant topics. A wide range of multi-agent systems issues is covered including methodologies, cooperation, conflict resolution, applications, mobility, adaptation, negotiation, and implementations.