Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Waling, Research fellow, La Trobe University

Australian Story recently featured a two-part look at Australia’s iconic film and television legend Paul Hogan, documenting Hogan’s rise and fall in Australian culture.

Self-described as a “one-hit wonder”, Hogan’s well-loved persona is attributed to his embodiment of the ordinary, Aussie bloke.

But just who is this mythic Australian bloke?

He is white, straight, able-bodied, and good for a laugh. He is practical and good in a crisis, but generally laid back. He rejects individualism in favour of loyalty to his mates. He is a larrikin and a hater of authority.

He is just your ordinary, average guy.

Hogan’s emergence as an international Australian icon is largely in part due to his embodiment of this idealised Aussie bloke.

The long ocker history

The outback ocker was embedded in white Australian culture through the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Poets such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson, and literary magazines such as The Bulletin, romanticised ocker men and the hardships of bush life. White men who could survive in the rough Australian climate were valued for their mateship, perseverance, and push back against authority.

The significant losses of ANZACs during the first world war marked a shift from focusing on the bush as a site of masculinity, to life on the urban beach. Australia was desperate for heroes, and the image of a strong, white, and healthy male was nurtured.

In the 60s and 70s, there was a cultural push in Australian society to instate a white, collective, homogeneous Australian identity occurring alongside the abolition of the White Australia policy. There was a push towards Australian national pride, encouraging consumption of local goods and entertainment, and the inclusion of white Australian history in the school curriculum.

Read more: Australian politics explainer: the White Australia policy

Simultaneously, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people fought (and continue to fight) for increased recognition for rights, histories, and social justice – standing in contrast to colonial ideas of Australian identity and heritage.

Through the 70s and 80s, films such as The Man From Snowy River, Gallipoli, and Burke & Wills, and television shows such as Ask the Leyland Brothers and The Bush Tucker Man, gave a revival to the image of the white ocker. As Australian life moved further away from idealised bloke, this man was being revived on screen.

It was in this era we met Crocodile Dundee.

A lasting image of Australian culture

In his early career, Hogan had recurring appearances on A Current Affair, and became a household name with The Paul Hogan Show.

But the prevailing image of Hogan is as Mick Dundee, a character which also helped form a global reputation of Australia as a place that is easy-going and unconcerned with material lifestyles – despite Australia being quite the contrary, thanks to post-war prosperity.

Dundee has spurred parodies and a cameo on The Simpsons. Last year, Tourism Australia created a trailer for a fake new instalment of the Crocodile Dundee films to promote Australia tourism.

The success of this advertisement is attributed to the public push for such a film to be produced. But at the same time this posited return of Hogan was celebrated, it was clear that this image of the Aussie bloke has also lost its shine.

Characters like Crocodile Dundee are now critiqued for being sexist, racist, and homophobic, and performing masculinity is regarded as a major form of oppression for men.

The conversation has shifted. The stoicism of the Aussie Bloke can lead to poor mental health, as men are forced to embody a narrow definition of Australian masculinity. There needs to be a change in how men behave and enact masculinity in Australian culture.

Read more: How challenging masculine stereotypes is good for men

Contemporary critiques of the bloke

Hogan’s performance of masculinity is one that is easy-going, ordinary, and down-to-earth. It is relatable because it is not extraordinary.

But after the height of Crocodile Dundee, Hogan experienced major downfalls. Divorce and tax evasion scandals went against the idealised image of the Aussie bloke; not helped by Australia’s Tall Poppy Syndrome.

Hogan’s representation of an everyday, ordinary bloke had been damaged by his accumulation of wealth and break down of his nuclear family structure. The performative masculinity of the Australian bloke is narrow and exacting, forever threatened.

There is much damaging about this legend of the ordinary, Aussie bloke: its exclusion of those who don’t fit the white, able-bodied, hetero norm; its impact on men’s mental health; its ties with colonialism and the subjugation of women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures.

But in watching the recent Australian Story, there is something, too, we can all take to heart from the value of ordinariness in a world where we are increasingly asked to be extraordinary.

Maybe this is the new Australian myth we should all embrace.

– ref. Paul Hogan and the myth of the white Aussie bloke – http://theconversation.com/paul-hogan-and-the-myth-of-the-white-aussie-bloke-124281

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Anyone who thought that with the Reserve Bank’s cash rate now close to zero, its run of interest rate cuts was over, needs only to read the last sentence of Governor Philip Lowe’s announcement after Tuesday’s cut:

The Board will continue to monitor developments, including in the labour market, and is prepared to ease monetary policy further if needed to support sustainable growth in the economy, full employment and the achievement of the inflation target over time.

For the longest time, the run of cuts was over.

Lowe’s immediate predecessor, Glenn Stevens, cut the cash rate to a record low of 1.5% in August 2016 as something of a “parting gift”, allowing Lowe to take over and keep it steady, unchanged for a record 34 months.

For most of those three years he made it clear the rate was unlikely to fall further. Six times he said the next move in rates was likely to be up, “rather than down”, pointing to rate increases overseas and progress on jobs and returning Australia’s unusually low inflation rate to his target band.

By February this year he was backtracking. Although it wasn’t apparent in the published figures, the unemployment rate was about to begin climbing. Wage growth had been far weaker than forecast, inflation showed no sign of returning to the centre of his target band, and forecasts for global growth were falling.

Reserve Bank cash rate

More importantly, consumer spending, which accounts for six in every ten dollars spent in Australia, was extraordinarily weak, growing at less than half the usual rate, as households “responded to this extended period of weaker income growth by progressively downgrading their spending plans”.

The probabilities of next move being up and down had become “more evenly balanced”.

Read more: RBA update: Governor Lowe points to even lower rates

Two weeks after the May election he cut the cash rate, then cut it again, taking it to a new record low of 1%, anticipated by only two of the 19 economists surveyed by The Conversation just six months earlier.

The extra cut announced on Tuesday is because the last two didn’t do enough.

House prices have begun to move up (as would be expected with lower rates) but borrowing is growing only slowly, and home building is weak. The Australian dollar is low (in part because of the lower rates), which should help make Australian businesses competitive, but they are not keen to borrow.

Since the last Reserve Bank board meeting we have learned that economic growth is shockingly low, just 1.4% over the past year, the weakest since the global financial crisis. Household spending is barely keeping pace with population growth.

How the cuts will help

The cash rate is the rate the Reserve Bank pays banks who deposit with it overnight. It drives almost every other rate, including the rates banks pay retail depositors, which help determine their cost of lending.

They don’t have to cut their mortgage and business rates in line with cuts in the Reserve Bank cash rate, but they usually do.

The average so-called standard variable mortgage rate is 5.2%, but few new borrowers pay it.

The typical discounted rate is 3.46%, and some discounted rates are much lower. HSBC Australia charges 3.17%. If it passes on Tuesday’s cut in full it will charge only 2.92%, offering the first mortgage rate beginning with the number “2” in Australia’s history.

There’s every reason to believe that it will help. Even if Australians don’t borrow more to buy houses, they will be able to use the historically cheap credit embodied in their house loans to buy other things, such as solar panels whose payoff period will have shortened dramatically.

Since June many mortgage-holders will have saved A$150 on monthly payments.

Sure, confidence and decent wage growth would help, but given how indebted many Australians are, low mortgage rates will do quite a bit on their own.

Why they’ll continue

Governor Lowe made it clear on Tuesday that they will have to stay low for “an extended period”. A signed agreement with the treasurer requires him to keep them low until unemployment falls and inflation and economic growth return to return to normal levels.

He would like the government to help by boosting spending. He often mentions spending on infrastructure. But his employment contract requires him to use the cards he has been dealt. If the economy is weak, he is required to boost it using the instruments he has.

Read more: Below zero is ‘reverse’. How the Reserve Bank would make quantitative easing work

That’s why he says he is prepared “to ease monetary policy further”.

If needed, he’ll do it as soon as next month, cutting the cash rate to 0.5%. If more is needed beyond that, he will get ready to use so-called unconventional measures of the kind being used overseas, buying government and corporate bonds in order to force even more money into Australian’s hands.

There’s no reason to believe that the tools he has won’t work, and every reason to believe he’ll keep using them.

– ref. 0.75% is a record low, but don’t think for a second the Reserve Bank has finished cutting the cash rate – http://theconversation.com/0-75-is-a-record-low-but-dont-think-for-a-second-the-reserve-bank-has-finished-cutting-the-cash-rate-124499

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The dramatic revelation by the New York Times that Donald Trump pressed Scott Morrison in an early September phone call for help in an exercise of overt presidential politicking does not indicate any Australian government wrongdoing.

But it shows how Morrison’s bromance with the president brings its political embarrassments along with all that glitz and warmth.

Last week the PM got himself caught up in a Trump-created political rally. Now he’s on the spot over this (typical) Trump call, which was about US Attorney-General William Barr’s seeking information for the justice department inquiry that the president hopes will discredit the Mueller probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Australia, inadvertently, was central in the train of events leading to the Mueller inquiry, which has now reported (and found Russian activity).

In May 2016, Alexander Downer, then Australian High Commissioner in London, had drinks with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.

Papadopoulos said Russia had told the Trump campaign it had damaging information on Hillary Clinton and was prepared to release it close to the election.

Downer reported that back to the foreign affairs department, which shared it with the intelligence community. Subsequently, the Americans were alerted to it, and it got to the FBI, becoming a catalyst for the Mueller inquiry.

Downer acted properly. A diplomat’s job is to gather information and inform their government.

(Papadopoulos, who sees Downer as an agent of entrapment, has tweeted in the wake of the NYT article: “I have been right about Downer from the beginning. A wannabe spy and Clinton errand boy who is about to get exposed on the world stage”.)

The issue for the Australian government became more complicated when Trump, who paints himself as the victim of a conspiracy, launched the current investigation into the origins of the FBI’s inquiry. The president said at the time he hoped Barr “looks at the UK, and I hope he looks at Australia, and I hope he looks at Ukraine. I hope he looks at everything because there was a hoax that was perpetrated on our country”.

Australia immediately promised cooperation.

Did it have much alternative? On the downside, this was a highly charged Trumpian exercise. But the inquiry was under the auspices of a US government department. And wouldn’t refusal to co-operate suggest Australia had something to hide, when there is no reason to suppose it did?

Joe Hockey, Australia’s ambassador in Washington, wrote to Barr on May 28 saying: “The Australian government will use its best endeavours to support your efforts in this matter”. He said while Downer was no longer employed by the government, “we stand ready to provide you with all relevant information to support your inquiries.”

Presumably, the government has little to give beyond an account of the Downer discussion and the subsequently passing on of the contents of that conversation.

But Simon Jackman, CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, poses the pertinent question: “If Hockey says, we’re here to help, what was the point of the September phone call?” He suggest it might have had to do with the declassification of documents.

The affair is now politically messy for Morrison on two levels.

The leak of the previously undisclosed telephone call comes immediately after the revelations about the president’s call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he urged him to investigate Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son. That has led to the impeachment inquiry.

There is no parallel between the conversations, but inevitably there will be a conflation.

Further, in the absence of a transcript, there will be questions (already being asked by the opposition) about the content and tone of the Trump-Morrison conversation, which came shortly before the PM’s US trip, on which he was so effusive about the president. Bill Shorten said:“Mr Morrison needs to clean up the perception that perhaps the special reception was returned for special favours done”.

It’s understood that Morrison and Trump didn’t discuss the specifics of the matter. The request was reportedly “polite”, asking for cooperation with Barr and for a point of contact. Trump was aware that the matter was before Morrison’s time, and didn’t expect him to know about the details.

The government insists it has nothing to fear if the transcript of the call becomes public through another leak. If that’s accurate, it should be hoping that leak will occur.

– ref. View from The Hill: Another Australian PM finds a phone call with Trump can land you on the sticky paper – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-another-australian-pm-finds-a-phone-call-with-trump-can-land-you-on-the-sticky-paper-124505

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clinton Fernandes, Professor, International and Political Studies, UNSW

Silicon Valley may now be more popularly associated with software companies such as Google and Facebook but it takes its name from the material most used to make semiconductors.

Semiconductors – or computer chips – power everything from mobile phones to military systems. The semiconductor industry sits at the centre of the modern world.

This point is key to appreciating what’s going on in the US government’s battle with Chinese technology giant Huawei.

The US actions do more than just keep Chinese technology away from critical telecommunications infrastructure – something it has lobbied US allies to emulate.

Read more: Explainer: why Chinese telecoms participating in Australia’s 5G network could be a problem

They also choke off the global supply of semiconductors, and technology to make semiconductors, to Huawei, thereby limiting China’s rate of technological progress, economic development and ability to compete with the US.

Executive ban

In May US president Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking US technology companies dealing with Huawei. The order bans “any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any information and communications technology or service” without special approval.

Among the effects is that Google has stopped licensing its Android mobile operating system to Huawei, limiting the Chinese company’s ambitions in the global phone market.

But arguably the biggest consequence is blocking the sale of US semiconductors, and semiconductor-making equipment and services.

Huawei is not only the world’s third-largest buyer of semiconductors but, through its subsidiary HiSilicon, one of China’s biggest semiconductor makers. Being shut off from US suppliers impedes both the competitiveness of its products and the development of its own chip-making capacity.

A coherent strategy

The US Semiconductor Industry Association has urged the US government to approve exemptions because there are no “national security concerns” in selling semiconductors to Huawei for “non-sensitive” products such as phones. It argues the ban only benefits foreign rivals.

But my research, based on financial data from Bloomberg, points to a coherent strategy to preserve US dominance of the global semiconductor industry.

US corporations dominate the global semiconductor industry. The following chart shows the world’s top 20 manufacturers by company value.

Despite all the hype about the rise of China, Chinese involvement in computer and electronics technologies is still typically restricted to lower-end activities such as making and assembling components. US companies take the lion’s share of profits through controlling the intellectual property in design, branding and marketing of electronic goods.

Apple Corporation, for example, subcontracts Taiwanese company Hon Hai Precision Industry to assemble its products. Hon Hai in turn employs up to a million Chinese workers through subsidiary Foxconn, which makes products for Apple along with other brands. In 2013 Hon Hai’s profit was US$2.6 billion. Apple made US$33 billion – almost 13 times more.

Based on everything Trump has said about China, this is the way he would like to keep things.

China wants to become a global semiconductor player but lags far behind US corporations in size and sophistication. It continues to rely heavily on semiconductor imports. It spends more on importing semiconductors than on oil.

HiSilicon, like other Chinese companies, lacks the manufacturing experience to produce advanced semiconductors at scale. For basic chip design it has relied on British semiconductor design company Arm (owned by Japan’s Softbank). Arm cut ties with Huawei in May to comply with US restrictions.

Finding a replacement for Arm won’t be easy. Most of the other big providers of equipment, software and services for designing and making semiconductors are American – such as Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys, Applied Materials and Lam Research.

Long-term prize

Blacklisting Huawei on national security grounds can therefore be seen as a way to hinder China’s semiconductor industry. It help keeps China in a subordinate position as an assembly area for US corporations.

Trump’s Huawei strategy looks more coherent than many other parts of his international agenda. The ban may also be hurting US companies, but the longer-term prize is maintaining the hegemony of US companies in a vital industry and keeping the American state in front of its geopolitical rival.

It appears we may be at the start of a new cold war that will play out across technology industries – from the global semiconductor industry to 5G networks, exascale computing, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, robotics and gene editing.

Read more: Huawei is a test case for Australia in balancing the risks and rewards of Chinese tech

These are battlefields on which the Trump administration has already signalled it wants its allies to join it.

This potentially complicates the desire of a country like Australia, which wants good relationships with both the US and China, its most significant trading partner. Decisions such as blocking Huawei from tendering for contracts for Australia’s 5G network could well be seen as evidence we are far from neutral, instead being a deeply and willingly integrated part of the US empire.

– ref. What’s at stake in Trump’s war on Huawei: control of the global computer-chip industry – http://theconversation.com/whats-at-stake-in-trumps-war-on-huawei-control-of-the-global-computer-chip-industry-124079

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bright, Senior Lecturer of Addiction, Edith Cowan University

Most of us know somebody who tends to get over involved in certain behaviours, and the saying often goes that they must have an “addictive personality”. But is there such a thing?

The idea of an addictive personality is more pop-psychology than scientific.

What is personality?

To understand why the idea of an addictive personality is flawed, it’s important to first understand what psychologists mean when referring to personality.

Personality is comprised of broad, measurable, stable, individual traits that predict behaviour. So by definition, engaging in excessive behaviours cannot be considered a personality trait.

Read more: Everyone’s different: what parts of the brain make our personalities so unique?

Though, there are personality traits that are associated with addiction.

Neuroticism is one of the “big five” personality dimensions. These are the five core traits that drive behaviour. They include openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion/introversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

People who score high in neuroticism tend to be easily emotionally aroused. They are also more likely to engage in a number of excessive behaviours, including: over-eating, excessive online gaming, social media over-use and substance dependence.

People who are highly neurotic might engage in excessive behaviours to help manage their emotions. Neuroticism has also been associated with a range of mental health conditions, which could lead one to wonder whether addiction is caused by mental illness.

There is evidence of this for some people. In these cases people’s addictive behaviour reduces negative emotions caused by the mental illness. Though it could also be that certain personality factors such as neuroticism predispose a person to both mental illness and addiction separately.

Nature versus nurture

There is some evidence that both personality and addictive behaviours have a genetic component.

Five key genes have been found to appear to predispose people to experience substance dependence and other addictive behaviours.

One of these genes has also been associated with extroversion, another of the big five personality dimensions. Extroversion refers to the degree to which people “search for novel experiences and social connections that allow them to interact with other humans as much as possible”.

These five genes reduce the functioning of the dopamine, or reward, system of the brain. The brains of people with variants of the genes associated with extroversion and addictive behaviours use dopamine less efficiently. It has been proposed that this leads them to seek out pleasure.

Read more: Explainer: what are personality disorders and how are they treated?

Dopamine is often misrepresented as the pleasure neurotransmitter. A more accurate description of dopamine is that it is the motivation neurotransmitter. It motivates people to engage in certain behaviours – particularly those behaviours needed for survival such as eating and sex.

It makes sense then that variants of these genes have been found to be associated with “sensation seeking”, another dimension of personality. Sensation seeking is a “trait defined by the seeking of novel sensations, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal and financial risks for the sake of such experiences”. People with addictive behaviours also score high on this personality dimension.

Though to say these are genes for an addictive personality is a bit like saying the genes for height are the basketball genes. While some people who are tall are good at basketball, not all tall people have the opportunity or desire to learn the game.

Similarly, not everybody with variants of the dopamine genes associated with excessive behaviours develops problems with substance dependence or other addictive behaviours. Environment is also important.

It’s likely that some people whose dopamine system is less efficient due to genetic variations get their dopamine fix through other activities such as car racing, snowboarding, surfing, sky diving and so on. And some people who develop a dependence on alcohol and other drugs do not have this genetic predisposition. They might develop problems due to a range of environmental influences such as trauma or social modelling of drug use.

So while there are common factors associated with personality that predict addiction, there is no personality type that will cause someone to partake in excessive behaviours. Addiction has multiple causes and just chalking it up to someone’s personality probably isn’t very helpful in dealing with it.

– ref. Is there such thing as an addictive personality? – http://theconversation.com/is-there-such-thing-as-an-addictive-personality-120988

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Richards, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South Australia

With the launch of Hannah Brontë’s music-driven The Sweet Suits last Tuesday, online cinematheque Prototype’s first season came to a close.

Every Tuesday, a new film was delivered to subscriber emails curated by Lauren Carroll Harris. The 12 films were personal explorations of the experimental form, with a manifesto about bridging the art and film worlds through a new digital terrain:

Prototype is a project of digital utopianism. It’s deeply weird that the internet has made cats and radio famous, but not video art. Digital art and video art are the least attended type of visual arts event with only 17% of [visual arts] attendees – or 7% of all Australians – going to these events a year. A year! And yet video culture is exploding, and the vessel for viewing – the smartphone – is right in our hands.

Prototype seeks to bring this work out of the gallery and film festival and straight to the viewer, with new work from some of Australia’s strongest emerging and established video artists and filmmakers. With Prototype, you can encounter art in your everyday life.

Video art has consistently adapted with changing technology. We are immersed in video now, constantly bombarded with streaming images on our phones. Following on from other sites such as the Whitney Museum’s Artport, Prototype cuts through the online algorithms that are a challenge for emerging video artists.

Deeply personal, sometimes confronting

Like most experimental cinema, the work is deeply personal.

In Sarah Hadley’s Last Night, two women are on a date. Interspersed between shots of the women are scenes from a car wash and a desolate beach. As they watch Douglas Sirk melodramas, Biblical passages are appear on screen. Juxtaposed against the tension between the women, these passages seem erotic.

The curatorial notes themselves are also personal in nature:

I read Last Night as two women who seem awfully unhappy and inhibited, in search of lost time, reconciling their secret selves with their longing for one another. The filmmaker, Sarah Hadley, tells me that the bible verses quoted throughout are deeply seductive, alluring and rooted in a longing to know the unknown – which is precisely the feeling of being forgotten, forbidden and othered.

In New Masc, filmmaker Cloudy Rhodes invites her friends to pose in a male public bathroom, performing what masculinity meant to them.

The result is a challenge to traditional notions of portraiture. The queer subjects vary from being soft and hard: flexing like body builders, kissing their image in the mirror, glaring at the camera. The film quotes Freud as they pose: “unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways”.

It continues: “Every man must find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be saved.”

I found Tiyan Baker’s Hard As You Can the most challenging work in the collection. An exploration into the impact of Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Tyler Durden in David Fincher’s Fight Club, the film is a frightening journey into Sydney’s real-life fight clubs.

From posts in reddit forums to footage from actual fight clubs, the documentary posits Fight Club influenced the growth of Men’s Rights Activists and other alt-right misogynistic collectives. There is an urgency to this film that demonstrates how the experimental form is not in any way frivolous.

Each of these films demonstrate how varied contemporary experimental cinema is.

Conor Bateman’s Run Time looks at the trope in horror movies of characters being slain in the theatre space. Jason Phu uses his mobile phone to capture his Dad’s stories while he cooks. Talia Smith shares stories of her grandmother, and the abuse she faced from her husband in a film that reminded me of being told the hardships of my own maternal grandmother.

James Nguyen explores how architecture is embedded in our national character. Gabriella Hirst juxtaposes traumatic recollections with tranquil imagery. In Tina Havelock Stevens’ Come Together, Right Now we watch others watching music.

Alena Lodkina – whose debut feature Stranger Colours received critical acclaim on the global film festival circuit – gives us Mercury. The film draws on Euripides’ Medea and Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes. The Greek characters of Medea and Jason of the Argonauts are transposed into an inner Melbourne malaise, constantly flitting between spaces and moods.

Art we can hold

Prototype demonstrates a push to break away from conventional spaces where this work is exhibited. This is art we can access through our own portable devices.

While all the films break from a traditional narrative structure, each tells a story. They ask us to move beyond conventional storytelling devices and to think about how filmmaking techniques are pivotal in expressing emotion.

These are deeply personal films, as are Harris’ annotations, that are akin to poetic diary entries. They are open texts inviting our interpretations.

Hopefully, this season of Prototype is the first of many.

– ref. Prototype review: experimental Australian films as poetic diary entries – http://theconversation.com/prototype-review-experimental-australian-films-as-poetic-diary-entries-123921

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amelie Meyer, Research fellow, University of Tasmania

Arctic sea ice is already disappearing rapidly but our research shows winter storms are now further accelerating sea ice loss.

Read more: Arctic breakdown: what climate change in the far north means for the rest of us

The research is based on data we gathered during an expedition on a small Norwegian research vessel, the Lance, that was left to drift in the Arctic sea ice for five months in 2015.

The expedition was intense and felt more like going to the Moon than going on a typical research cruise. What took us by surprise were the many winter storms that battered the ice (and our ship and ice camp).

It has taken us years to collate these data but now we know the winter storms play a key role in the fate of Arctic sea ice, particularly in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic.

On average, about 10 extreme storms will reach all the way to the North Pole each winter. While these winter storms are short (they last on average 6-48 hours), they can be incredibly intense.

During a storm in winter 2015 we saw the air temperature rise from -40℃ (-40℉) to 0℃ (32℉) in just a day, and then fall back to -30℃ (-22℉) the next day, when cold Arctic air returned after the storm.

These storms bring heat, moisture and strong winds into the Arctic, and next we look at how they impact sea ice and its surroundings.

Warming and weakening the ice

The heat from the storms warms up the air, snow and ice, slowing down the growth of the ice. Moisture from the storms falls as snow on the ice. After the storm, the blanket of snow insulates the ice from the cold air, further slowing the growth of the ice for the remainder of winter.

The strong winds during the storms push the ice around and break it into pieces, making it more fragile and deforming it, more like a boulder field.

The strong winds also stir the ocean below the ice, mixing up warmer water from deeper waters to the surface where it melts the ice from below. This melting of the ice in the middle of winter can happen for several days after the storms when the air is already back to well below freezing.

Thinner ice, shelter for life and accelerated melting

The breakup of the ice opens big passages of open water between ice floes, called leads. In winter these passages end up refreezing rapidly, generating new super-thin ice.

These thinner refrozen patches of ice let more light through in the following spring, allowing ocean plants (phytoplankton) to bloom earlier.

The rougher sea ice landscape becomes a shelter for many ice-associated Arctic organisms, including ice algae, becoming biological hot spots in the following spring.

The broken up and deformed ice drifts faster, reaching warmer waters where it melts sooner and faster.

So really, winter storms precondition the ice to a faster melt in the following spring with an impact that continues well into the following season.

Winter sea ice cover in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic has been retreating at a record breaking pace, especially in the Barents Sea off Norway and Russia.

The Arctic is particularly sensitive to human driven climate change. We know the decrease in sea ice is due to both the warming of the Arctic (air and ocean) and changing wind patterns that break up the ice cover.

But there are also amplifying mechanisms or “feedback” mechanisms, in which one natural process reinforces another. Their role in the decrease of sea ice is hard to predict. We now know winter storms in the Arctic contribute to these feedback mechanisms.

Arctic winter storms are increasing in frequency and this is likely due to climate change.

With the thinner Arctic sea ice cover and shallower warmer water in the Arctic Ocean, the mechanisms we observed during the winter storms will likely strengthen and the overall impact of winter storms on Arctic ice is likely to increase in the future.

Two weeks ago, the Arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent for 2019, after another winter of intense winter storms. The minimum ice extent was effectively tied for second lowest since modern record-keeping began in the late 1970s, along with 2007 and 2016, reinforcing the long-term downward trend in Arctic ice extent. Arctic sea ice has been declining for at least 40 years, and amplifying mechanisms such as the winter storms are accelerating this retreat.

As highlighted in the recent IPCC Ocean and Cryopshere report, these changes in September sea ice are likely unprecedented for at least 1,000 years.

Remember also that changes in the Arctic don’t just affect the immediate region: Arctic warming has been linked to the polar vortex, and weather extremes across central Europe and north America.

Read more: Microplastics may affect how Arctic sea ice forms and melts

As we start taking into account feedback mechanisms like the winter storms, our predictions for the first Arctic sea ice free summer are indicating it will likely happen before 2050.

– ref. Winter storms are speeding up the loss of Arctic sea ice – http://theconversation.com/winter-storms-are-speeding-up-the-loss-of-arctic-sea-ice-121105

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Graves, Distinguished Professor of Genetics, La Trobe University

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au.

How do scientists know that evolution is real? – Emily, age 11.

In science, we look at the evidence and try to find the theory that best explains it. And that’s what happened when it came to figuring out evolution.

We can see life evolving all around us. Plants, animals and even bacteria are adapting to different conditions (like climate change), to new predators and diseases.

A young man named Charles Darwin was one of the first to realise how this happens. He lived in England nearly 190 years ago and decided to sail around the world (because he didn’t really know what to do with his life).

Spot the difference

For two years people on the boat mapped the shore and explored South America and Australia. Darwin’s job was to check out the plants and animals they found. Sound fun? Not if you were seasick like poor Darwin.

He began to wonder why animals were so different to those back in England. He had the revolutionary idea that they weren’t always that way. Maybe these species had changed over time in response to their environment, he thought.

He noticed that little brown birds that they called finches, living on a group of islands called the Galápagos, looked similar to each other but had different-shaped beaks on different islands.

Darwin realised that the beaks were good for getting different kinds of food: big heavy beaks for crushing tough nuts that grew on one island; little beaks for eating fruit; sharp beaks for probing cactus; and long beaks for catching insects on other islands.

Darwin twigged that the birds all started off the same, but those on an island with nuts developed heavier beaks, whereas those on an island with cactus developed sharp beaks. How?

He suggested the beaks of individual ancestor birds were all a bit different, and the differences were passed down from parents to chicks. Birds with slightly heavier beaks did better on the island with nuts, and they laid more eggs and had more chicks than other birds. These chicks also had heavier beaks, and did better than other birds, and laid more eggs. He called this “natural selection”.

Darwin suggested animals or plants that survived in different environments would eventually become so different they couldn’t get together to have chicks. This is how one species splits into two.

The evidence piles up

During Darwin’s day, these ideas seemed shocking. Most people believed species of plants and animals had always been the way they were; that they were created that way. But soon, people began to find new evidence that fit Darwin’s theory, or reconsider old evidence in light of what he proposed.

People found dinosaur bones and realised these enormous creatures once roamed the Earth but were now extinct. Now we know, from comparing skeletons, they are related to birds, and we even have fossils of feathered dinosaurs.

One famous example of fossils that showed earlier “versions” of contemporary animals is the “walking whale” – fossils that indicated that earlier versions of whales had legs. People couldn’t believe that natural selection could turn a hippo-like land animal into a whale, that lost its legs as it became a better swimmer. But recently whale fossils with legs were discovered. (Even today, we can see that whale embryos develop four masses of cells called limb buds, but which don’t grow into legs.)

In Darwin’s day nobody knew the Earth’s crust changes dramatically; land under the ocean can buckle upward to form mountains. That’s why cockle shells can be found at the top of huge mountains. All this evidence supports the idea that environments change and animals adapt.

Splitting one species into two takes millions of years, but we can sometimes catch this happening. Little groups of wallabies that live in rocky outcrops in Queensland are a famous example because they show a lot of intermediates (meaning populations that are starting to get so different from each other that they don’t interbreed well and are close to becoming two new species).

A huge new source of evidence for evolution came with the discovery of DNA, which is shared by all life on Earth. DNA changes slowly as mutations accumulate. DNA is similar for species that are closely related (like Darwin’s finches, or like hippos and whales) and more different between species that are distant (like humans and whales, or humans and plants). This is a pretty big clue supporting Darwin’s idea that living things are related and have changed over time.

Scientists have looked at the huge piles of evidence and concluded that evolution is the best explanation we’ve heard so far on how life on Earth came to be as it is today.

Read more: Curious Kids: are humans going to evolve again?

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: how do scientists know evolution is real? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-scientists-know-evolution-is-real-122039

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle H Lim, Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist, Swinburne University of Technology

More than one in three young adults aged 18 to 25 reported problematic levels of loneliness, according to a new report from Swinburne University and VicHealth.

We surveyed 1,520 Victorians aged 12 to 25, and examined their experience of loneliness. We also asked about their symptoms of depression and social anxiety.

Overall, one in four young people (aged 12 to 25) reported feeling lonely for three or more days within the last week.

Read more: Loneliness is a health issue, and needs targeted solutions

Among 18 to 25 year olds, one in three (35%) reported feeling lonely three or more times a week. We also found that higher levels of loneliness increases a young adult’s risk of developing depression by 12% and social anxiety by 10%.

Adolescents aged 12 to 17 reported better outcomes, with one in seven (13%) feeling lonely three or more times a week. Participants in this age group were also less likely to report symptoms of depression and social anxiety than the 18 to 25 year olds.

Young adulthood can be a lonely time

Anyone can experience loneliness and at any point in life but it’s often triggered by significant life events – both positive (such as new parenthood or a new job) and negative (bereavement, separation or health problems).

Young adults are managing new challenges such as moving away from home and starting university, TAFE or work. Almost half (48%) of the young adults in our survey lived away from family and caregivers. Almost 77% were also engaged in some sort of work.

Read more: How ideas of ‘adulthood’, its rights and responsibilities, are changing around the world

Young people at high school may be buffered from loneliness because they’re surrounded by peers, many of whom they have known for years. But once they leave the safety of these familiar environments, they are likely to have to put in extra effort to forge new ties. They may also feel more disconnected from the existing friends they have.

During this transition to independence, young adults may find themselves with evolving social networks, including interactions with colleagues and peers of different ages. Learning to navigate these different relationships requires adjustment, and a fair bit of trial and error.

Is social media use to blame?

The reliance on social media to communicate is often thought to cause loneliness.

No studies I’m aware of have examined the cause-effect between loneliness and social media use.

There is some evidence that those who are lonely are more likely to use the internet for social interactions and spend less time in real life interactions. But it’s unclear whether social media use causes more loneliness.

While social media can be used to replace offline relationships with online ones, it can also be used to both enhance existing relationships and offer new social opportunities.

Further, a recent study found that the relationship between social media use and psychological distress was weak.

Is loneliness a cause or effect of mental ill health?

Loneliness is bad for our physical and mental health. Over a six-month period, people who are lonely are more likely to experience higher rates of depression, social anxiety and paranoia. Being socially anxious can also lead to more loneliness at a later time.

The solution isn’t as simple as joining a group or trying harder to make friends, especially if one also already feels anxious about being with people.

While lonely people are motivated to connect with others they are also more likely to experience social interactions as stressful. Brain imaging studies show lonely people are less rewarded by social interactions and are more attuned to distress of others than less lonely counterparts.

When lonely people do socialise, they are more likely to engage in self-defeating actions, such as being less cooperative, and show more negative emotions and body language. This is done in an (often unconscious) attempt to disengage and protect themselves from rejection.

Lonely people are also more likely to find reasons people cannot be trusted or do not live up to particular social expectations, and to believe others evaluate them more negatively than they actually do.

What can we do about it?

One way to address these invisible forces is to help young people think in more helpful ways about friendship, and to understand how they can influence others through their emotions and behaviours.

Read more: How parents can help their young children develop healthy social skills

Parents, educators and counsellors can play a role in educating children and young people about the dynamics of evolving friendships. This might involve helping the young person to evaluate their own behaviours and thought patterns, understand how they play an active role in building relationships, and to support them to interact differently.

More specific strategies could include:

• challenging unhelpful thinking or negative views about others
• helping young people identify their strengths and learn how they’re important in forging strong, meaningful relationships. If the young person identifies humour as a strength, for instance, this might involve discussing how they can use their humour to establish rapport with others.

Educational programs can do more to address the social health of young people and these discussions can be integrated into health education classes.

Additionally, because young people are already frequent and competent users of technology, carefully crafted digital tools could be developed to target loneliness.

These tools could help young people learn skills to develop and maintain meaningful relationships. And because lonely people are more likely to avoid others, digital tools could also be used as one way to help young people build social confidence and practise new skills within a safe space.

Read more: Many people feel lonely in the city, but perhaps ‘third places’ can help with that

A cornerstone of any solution, however, is to normalise feelings of loneliness, so feeling lonely is seen not as a weakness but rather as an innate human need to connect. Loneliness is likely to negatively impact on health when it is ignored, or not properly addressed, allowing the distress to persist.

Identifying and normalising feelings of loneliness can help lonely people consider different avenues for action.

We don’t yet know the lifelong impact of loneliness on today’s young people, so it’s important we take action now, by increasing awareness and giving young people the tools to develop and maintain meaningful social relationships.

– ref. 1 in 3 young adults is lonely – and it affects their mental health – http://theconversation.com/1-in-3-young-adults-is-lonely-and-it-affects-their-mental-health-124267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joe Scutt Phillips, Senior Fisheries Scientists (Tuna Behavioural Ecology), Secretariat of the Pacific Community

Tropical tuna are one of the few wild animals we still hunt in large numbers, but finding them in the vast Pacific ocean can be tremendously difficult. However, fishers have long known that tuna are attracted to, and will aggregate around, floating objects such as logs.

In the past, people used bamboo rafts to attract tuna, fishing them while they were gathered underneath. Today, the modern equivalent – called fish aggregating devices, or FADs – usually contain high-tech equipment that tell fishers where they are and how many fish have accumulated nearby.

Read more: Sustainable shopping: how to buy tuna without biting a chunk out of the oceans

It’s estimated that between 30,000 and 65,000 man-made FADs are deployed annually and drift through the Western and Central Pacific Ocean to be fished on by industrial fishers. Pacific island countries are reporting a growing number of FADs washing up on their beaches, damaging coral reefs and potentially altering the distribution of tuna.

Our research in two papers, one of which was published today in Scientific Reports, looks for the first time at where ocean currents take these FADs and where they wash up on coastlines in the Pacific.

Attracting fish and funds

We do not fully understand why some fish and other marine creatures aggregate around floating objects, but they are a source of attraction for many species. FADs are commonly made of a raft with 30-80m of old ropes or nets hanging below. Modern FADs are attached to high-tech buoys with solar-powered electronics.

The buoys record a FAD’s position as it drifts slowly across the Pacific, scanning the water below to measure tuna numbers with echo-sounders and transmitting this valuable information to fishing vessels by satellite.

Throughout their lifetimes FADs may be exchanged between vessels, recovered and redeployed, or fished and simply left to drift with their buoy to further aggregate tuna. Fishers may then abandon them and remotely deactivate the buoys’ satellite transmission when the FAD leaves the fishing area.

The Western and Pacific Ocean provides around 55% of the worlds’ 5 million tonne catch of tropical tuna, and is the main source of skipjack, yellowfin and bigeye tuna worth some US$6 billion annually.

Fishing licence fees can provide up to 98% of government revenue for some Pacific Island countries and territories. These countries balance the need to sustainably manage and harvest one of the only renewable resources they have, while often having a limited capacity to fish at an industrial scale themselves.

FADs help stabilise catch rates and make fishing fleets more profitable, which in turn generate revenue for these nations.

However, they are not without problems. Catches around FADs tend to include more bycatch species, such as sharks and turtles, as well as smaller immature tuna.

The abandonment or loss of FADs adds to the growing mass of marine debris floating in the ocean, and they increasingly damage coral as they are dragged and get caught on reefs.

Perhaps most importantly, we don’t know how the distribution of FADs affects fishing effort in the region. Given that each fleet and fishing company has their own strategy for using FADs, understanding how the total number of FADs drifting in one area increases the catch of tuna is crucial for sustainably managing these valuable species.

Where do FADs end up?

Our research, published in Environmental Research Communications and Scientific Reports, used a regional FAD tracking program and fishing data submitted by Pacific countries, in combination with numerical ocean models and simulations of virtual FADs, to work out how FADs travel on ocean currents during and after their use.

In general, FADs are first deployed by fishers in the eastern and central Pacific. They then drift west with the prevailing currents into the core industrial tropical tuna fishing zones along the equator.

We found equatorial countries such as Kiribati have a high number of FADs moving through their waters, with a significant amount washing up on their shores. Our research showed these high numbers are primarily due to the locations in which FADs are deployed by fishing companies.

In contrast, Tuvalu, which is situated on the edge of the equatorial current divergence zone, also sees a high density of FADs and beaching. But this appears to be an area that generally aggregates FADs regardless of where they are deployed.

Unsurprisingly, many FADs end up beaching in countries at the western edge of the core fishing grounds, having drifted from different areas of the Pacific as far away as Ecuador. This concentration in the west means reefs along the edge of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea are particularly vulnerable, with currents apparently forcing FADs towards these coasts more than other countries in the region.

Overall, our studies estimate that between 1,500 and 2,200 FADs drifting through the Western and Central Pacific Ocean wash up on beaches each year. This is likely to be an underestimate, as the tracking devices on many FADs are remotely deactivated as they leave fishing zones.

Using computer simulations, we also found that a significant number of FADs are deployed in the eastern Pacific Ocean, left to drift so they have time to aggregate tuna, and subsequently fished on in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. This complicates matters as the eastern Pacific is managed by an entirely different fishery Commission with its own set of fisheries management strategies and programmes.

Growing human populations and climate change are increasing pressure on small island nations. FAD fishing is very important to their economic and food security, allowing access to the wealth of the ocean’s abundance.

Read more: How blockchain is strengthening tuna traceability to combat illegal fishing

We need to safeguard these resources, with effective management around the number and location of FAD deployments, more research on their impact on tuna and bycatch populations, the use of biodegradable FADs, or effective recovery programs to remove old FADs from the ocean at the end of their slow journeys across the Pacific.

– ref. Tens of thousands of tuna-attracting devices are drifting around the Pacific – http://theconversation.com/tens-of-thousands-of-tuna-attracting-devices-are-drifting-around-the-pacific-124414

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Tattersall, Postdoc in Urban Geography and Research Lead at Sydney Policy Lab. Host of ChangeMakers Podcast., University of Sydney

Today is the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and protesters in Hong Kong intend to upstage Beijing’s celebrations. They will build on the global solidarity protests from the past weekend, staged in 60 cities across the world, including in Australia.

On Sunday in Hong Kong, tens of thousands took to the streets even though no protest permits were granted by the police. Riot control weapons were deployed against the protesters and those near the protests were subject to random searches.

While it might look like these are the same kind of protests that have dominated global headlines for months, Hong Kong is changing. It is moving closer towards crisis. The local government’s previous strategy of “wait them out” is failing, and advised by mainland Chinese officials, the government is exploring legal tools – like the state of emergency provisions – as a response.

Over the past 100 days, the violence between police and students has escalated. Always an asymmetric war, students initially responded in self-defence – using umbrellas, helmets and masks to hold their position on the streets.

As the police’s weapons have become more excessive – tear gas fired in train stations, rubber bullets shot into faces, sponge grenades, water cannons – the students’ responses have become increasingly indignant. They have engaged in targeted actions like street fires, petrol bombs and vandalism to public infrastructure and government sites, like the city’s mass transit system.

Two weeks ago, police representatives argued that live ammunition was justified in response to Molotov cocktails. About the same time, the protesters collectively decided to fight back against police, and not just use self-defence.

It is spiralling. So, where does this end?

Read more: Hong Kong is one of the most unequal cities in the world. So why aren’t the protesters angry at the rich and powerful?

Maintaining local support

The Hong Kong police have tried to turn off the tap of mass support to the young protesters, who are called the Braves. Initially they used images of property damage or acts of aggression on television and social media to try to sway public opinion against the younger members of the movement.

More recently, they’ve shut down the right to mass protest. The police have been increasingly denying permits to protest, limiting the space where people can protest, or revoking permission within hours of a march starting.

None of these tactics has worked. Most Hong Kongers continue to support the “five demands” and the protest movement, while disapproving of Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s handling of the situation. (Her approval rating now sits at just 24.9%).

Most older residents feel they have let the young generation down. They not only support the Braves, many are also part of growing support networks providing them with assistance. For example, drivers pick up stranded protesters around the city and volunteers set up makeshift underground hospitals for students afraid to use state-run services.

The perils of self-righteousness

But there is a problem. The rest of the world is turning away from the weekly battles. The thing that made the protests initially so captivating was their novelty and bravery. But what began as original is now predictable. And this brings danger.

The first danger is increasing violence. The need to hold the world’s attention brings the risk of spiralling into greater violence. There is also a dark recognition that if lethal violence was to occur during a protest – if a protester was shot by live ammunition, for instance, or a brick killed a police officer – it would utterly change the dynamics.

Read more: New research shows vast majority of Hong Kong protesters support more radical tactics

The second, less obvious danger lies in self-righteousness. For most protest movements, there is an inherent tension between the ideals and commitment to the ambitious goals that brought people to the streets en masse and the capacity to negotiate with the powerful to achieve them.

This tension is a universal frustration. Protesters are loathe to be considered “sell outs,” but not making a deal risks not winning anything.

The social movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. in the US, for instance, didn’t achieve civil rights in a single boycott. Waves of different movements over decades, using varied protest tactics, and the art of compromise, brought change incrementally. Push, negotiate, make a deal – repeated as a pattern for victory.

Every night, Hong Kong protesters shout their motto, “Five demands, not one less”, referring to the five concessions they are demanding from the government.

But this righteous ritual conceals a growing fear. Hong Kongers, including leaders I interviewed, worry that all they could win from this movement is the permanent withdrawal of the controversial extradition bill that sparked the unrest, which they’ve already achieved.

With the end of “one country, two systems” model in sight in 2047, the stakes are high. Locals are terrified they might not get closer to universal suffrage and that Beijing will continue to encroach on their political freedoms.

That said, this isn’t a simple battle – and winning a “deal” that doesn’t provide a pathway to democracy won’t be good enough. It’s all well and good for distant observers to casually comment that Hong Kongers need to do a deal, but the “five demands” are not an ambit. This was a “joint consensus.”

Read more: Trust Me, I’m An Expert: Why the Hong Kong protesters feel they have nothing to lose

In contrast to the authoritarianism in China (not to mention elsewhere), Hong Kongers hope they can be a beacon for democracy and enlightenment. Taiwan, for one, is certainly seeing Hong Kong as a source of inspiration in their its battle against Beijing’s push for reunification.

The Braves see it as nothing short of a life or death battle for their identity, and unless they believe they are moving towards a more independent future, they plan to keep fighting.

What Hong Kongers can learn from the French Revolution

So how do you push and negotiate in this context?

Perhaps history can provide some inspiration. In the battle to win democracy in the French Revolution, for example, two important strategies were prosecuted simultaneously.

In Paris, the protesters fought street battles and built barricades, but the leaders also built for themselves the kind of state they envisioned living in. They constructed their own National Assembly, which advanced the idea of universal male suffrage.

This idea of crafting what is known as a “pre-figurative form” might be useful for Hong Kong. Imagine if Hong Kongers, crippled with an undemocratic Legislative Council, created their own Legislative Assembly – a model for their goal of a parliament elected by everyone. The idea has been tried in Hong Kong before; the Occupy Trio who helped lead the Umbrella movement held a people’s referendum calling for universal suffrage in 2014.

The natural inertia of any movement means that a continuation of street battles is likely, which ultimately leads to an escalation of violence. However, if the protesters can channel their energy in a more lasting, organised way, they may be able to achieve even more than the “five demands”.

As well as singing their protest anthem, “Do you hear the people sing?”, the protesters should borrow more ideas from successful democracy movements of the past. This may provide new energy to surprise Beijing and sustain the momentum of frustrated Hong Kongers.

Author Amanda Tattersall hosts the ChangeMakers podcast series which explores the long history of Hong Kong and its protests. The first episode is available here:

– ref. With no end in sight and the world losing interest, the Hong Kong protesters need a new script – http://theconversation.com/with-no-end-in-sight-and-the-world-losing-interest-the-hong-kong-protesters-need-a-new-script-124007

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle H Lim, Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist, Swinburne University of Technology

More than one in three young adults aged 18 to 25 reported problematic levels of loneliness, according to a new report from Swinburne University and VicHealth.

We surveyed 1,520 Victorians aged 12 to 25, and examined their experience of loneliness. We also asked about their symptoms of depression and social anxiety.

Overall, one in four young people (aged 12 to 25) reported feeling lonely for three or more days within the last week.

Read more: Loneliness is a health issue, and needs targeted solutions

Among 18 to 25 year olds, one in three (35%) reported feeling lonely three or more times a week. We also found that higher levels of loneliness increases a young adult’s risk of developing depression by 12% and social anxiety by 10%.

Adolescents aged 12 to 17 reported better outcomes, with one in seven (13%) feeling lonely three or more times a week. Participants in this age group were also less likely to report symptoms of depression and social anxiety than the 18 to 25 year olds.

Young adulthood can be a lonely time

Anyone can experience loneliness and at any point in life but it’s often triggered by significant life events – both positive (such as new parenthood or a new job) and negative (bereavement, separation or health problems).

Young adults are managing new challenges such as moving away from home and starting university, TAFE or work. Almost half (48%) of the young adults in our survey lived away from family and caregivers. Almost 77% were also engaged in some sort of work.

Read more: How ideas of ‘adulthood’, its rights and responsibilities, are changing around the world

Young people at high school may be buffered from loneliness because they’re surrounded by peers, many of whom they have known for years. But once they leave the safety of these familiar environments, they are likely to have to put in extra effort to forge new ties. They may also feel more disconnected from the existing friends they have.

During this transition to independence, young adults may find themselves with evolving social networks, including interactions with colleagues and peers of different ages. Learning to navigate these different relationships requires adjustment, and a fair bit of trial and error.

Is social media use to blame?

The reliance on social media to communicate is often thought to cause loneliness.

No studies I’m aware of have examined the cause-effect between loneliness and social media use.

There is some evidence that those who are lonely are more likely to use the internet for social interactions and spend less time in real life interactions. But it’s unclear whether social media use causes more loneliness.

While social media can be used to replace offline relationships with online ones, it can also be used to both enhance existing relationships and offer new social opportunities.

Further, a recent study found that the relationship between social media use and psychological distress was weak.

Is loneliness a cause or effect of mental ill health?

Loneliness is bad for our physical and mental health. Over a six-month period, people who are lonely are more likely to experience higher rates of depression, social anxiety and paranoia. Being socially anxious can also lead to more loneliness at a later time.

The solution isn’t as simple as joining a group or trying harder to make friends, especially if one also already feels anxious about being with people.

While lonely people are motivated to connect with others they are also more likely to experience social interactions as stressful. Brain imaging studies show lonely people are less rewarded by social interactions and are more attuned to distress of others than less lonely counterparts.

When lonely people do socialise, they are more likely to engage in self-defeating actions, such as being less cooperative, and show more negative emotions and body language. This is done in an (often unconscious) attempt to disengage and protect themselves from rejection.

Lonely people are also more likely to find reasons people cannot be trusted or do not live up to particular social expectations, and to believe others evaluate them more negatively than they actually do.

What can we do about it?

One way to address these invisible forces is to help young people think in more helpful ways about friendship, and to understand how they can influence others through their emotions and behaviours.

Read more: How parents can help their young children develop healthy social skills

Parents, educators and counsellors can play a role in educating children and young people about the dynamics of evolving friendships. This might involve helping the young person to evaluate their own behaviours and thought patterns, understand how they play an active role in building relationships, and to support them to interact differently.

More specific strategies could include:

• challenging unhelpful thinking or negative views about others
• helping young people identify their strengths and learn how they’re important in forging strong, meaningful relationships. If the young person identifies humour as a strength, for instance, this might involve discussing how they can use their humour to establish rapport with others.

Educational programs can do more to address the social health of young people and these discussions can be integrated into health education classes.

Additionally, because young people are already frequent and competent users of technology, carefully crafted digital tools could be developed to target loneliness.

These tools could help young people learn skills to develop and maintain meaningful relationships. And because lonely people are more likely to avoid others, digital tools could also be used as one way to help young people build social confidence and practise new skills within a safe space.

Read more: Many people feel lonely in the city, but perhaps ‘third places’ can help with that

A cornerstone of any solution, however, is to normalise feelings of loneliness, so feeling lonely is seen not as a weakness but rather as an innate human need to connect. Loneliness is likely to negatively impact on health when it is ignored, or not properly addressed, allowing the distress to persist.

Identifying and normalising feelings of loneliness can help lonely people consider different avenues for action.

We don’t yet know the lifelong impact of loneliness on today’s young people, so it’s important we take action now, by increasing awareness and giving young people the tools to develop and maintain meaningful social relationships.

– ref. 1 in 3 young adults are lonely – and it affects their mental health – http://theconversation.com/1-in-3-young-adults-are-lonely-and-it-affects-their-mental-health-124267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Reid, Professor Emeritus of Education, University of South Australia

The education debate in Australia becomes tangled when the same key concepts are used by various groups and individuals to mean very different things.

Take the concept of “personalised learning”. It can describe a flexible approach to learning which starts with each student’s individual strengths and capabilities, and encourages a wide range of learning activities. Or it can be used to justify a program of rigid and scripted individual learning progressions.

In the past few years the idea of “learning progressions” has garnered a lot of attention in curriculum debates and reviews. Invariably it is argued learning progressions promote “personalised learning”.

It is important therefore to subject this claim to some scrutiny and try to understand the version of “personalised learning” being promoted in policy circles.

From year levels to learning progressions

In 2017 the then Turnbull government appointed David Gonski to lead a review into how to improve Australian schools. The idea was that if the amount of Commonwealth money going to schools was to be increased – as recommended by the earlier Gonski review in 2011 – then we needed guidance as to what the money should be spent on.

A central proposal in the subsequent 2018 report, dubbed as Gonski 2.0, relates to “personalised learning”. Using the well-rehearsed argument that all students should be able to demonstrate a year’s learning growth every year, the report’s first recommendation is that schools move from a year-based curriculum to a curriculum expressed as learning progressions independent of year or age.

It claims this move will enable schools to better meet the individual learning needs of students than does the organisation of schools by year levels. The latter, the report says, is a remnant of the industrial era and must change if schools are to come into the 21st century.

Read more: Gonski review reveals another grand plan to overhaul education: but do we really need it?

Certainly, the idea of scrapping year levels potentially creates greater flexibility for students and teachers. Rather than aiming curriculum at the average of a cohort of students at a particular age, teachers can “personalise” the curriculum by making an individual student’s readiness for learning the key criterion for curriculum planning.

Of course, a number of schools already do this, and in many other schools where year levels are still used, teachers use adaptive or differentiated teaching to cater for individual interests.

There is always a danger removing year levels will result in a return to streaming if teachers group students according to perceived ability levels rather than age, but this is not an automatic outcome and can be guarded against.

However, the question of removing year-level structures can’t be separated from the issue of what is taught and how. And it is here that it seems the report has taken a progressive idea like personalisation and colonised it with an instrumental purpose.

Gonski’s version of personalised learning

There are different approaches to personalising learning. Some enable teachers and students to negotiate learning programs based on students’ interests and learning needs.

For instance, in the Big Picture schools in Australia and the US, students investigate topics or issues individually or in groups and report on their findings.​The key to this kind of learning is skilled teachers helping students make connections across the curriculum, because key concepts are understood through negotiation and collaboration.

This approach prizes student agency and group as well as individual activities. It recognises learning is not a linear and scripted activity.

But that is not the version of personalised learning proposed in the 2018 Gonski report. This report recommends an approach where content and skills across every area of the curriculum are atomised into bite-sized chunks of knowledge, and then sequenced into progression levels.

Students work on their own and, at regular points, use online assessment tools to test their readiness for the next chunk of knowledge. Once one level is mastered, they move onto the next.

The report recommends that, over the next five years, the recently developed and implemented Australian Curriculum should be rewritten so every learning area and general capability is written up as a number of progression levels.

It offers an example of “spelling” being broken into a 16-level progression, with students mastering each step before moving lock-step onto the next level.

The Gonski version of personalised learning bears an uncanny resemblance to the model of direct instruction​ developed in the US in the 1960s. This is a tightly scripted, step-by-step approach that follows a predetermined sequence through packaged resource materials.

Assessment follows each instruction phase with tests aligned to the behavioural goals of the program. The results are fed back to the teacher and student, and the stage is then set for the next phase.

Read more: Explainer: what is explicit instruction and how does it help children learn?

Similarly, Gonski suggests students advance incrementally through progression levels. At regular intervals they should be assessed by an online assessment tool against the learning progressions that measure student attainment and growth in attainment levels over time.

The tool could also suggest, for consideration by the teacher, potential interventions to build further progress.

Although there is an apparent nod in the direction of teacher decision making, it is inevitable the tightly scripted nature of the process will result in a reliance on the use of online resources.

Online assessment tools make students automatons

The National Education Policy Centre in the United States recently reviewed a number of personalised learning programs in the country that have adopted similar characteristics to those Gonski prescribes. The report concludes that they reflect

[…] a hyper-rational approach to curriculum and pedagogy that limits students’ agency, narrows what they can learn in school, and limits schools’ ability to respond effectively to a diverse student body.

The manifestation of this model in the US has been a financial bonanza for private technology companies such as Summit, owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. These companies have developed online tests and learning resources capable of tracking the progress of, and devising programs for, individual students.

With such programs, students become individual automatons moving through standardised progression levels. Creativity and critical thinking are stifled as students are steered down an already determined path. And teachers are increasingly excluded from the process, as planning and decision-making is done by algorithms.

Read more: It’s back to school for Facebook, and it’s personal

The result is a narrow and highly individualised learning experience that is unlikely to prepare students adequately for the challenges of the 21st century.

The point is that “personalised learning” can take many forms. Some approaches will liberate learners, some will tightly constrain them. The model proposed by Gonski is more likely to do the latter. Far from moving schools away from an industrial model, Gonski’s model would entrench it.

Rather than immediately adopting a model such as “progression levels”, surely it would be better to clarify our understanding about personalised learning, including the theories and assumptions on which various versions are based.

Then, if personalised learning is the goal, why not evaluate a number of different models of personalised learning?

The version of personalised learning Australia promotes should be one that nurtures a love and a passion for learning, not one that reduces it to a checklist.

This is an edited extract from Alan Reid’s book, Changing Australian Education: How policy is taking us backwards and what can be done about it, (Allen and Unwin: Sydney), available from October 1, 2019.

– ref. Gonski’s vision of ‘personalised learning’ will stifle creativity and lead to a generation of automatons – http://theconversation.com/gonskis-vision-of-personalised-learning-will-stifle-creativity-and-lead-to-a-generation-of-automatons-124000

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Neustein, Associate, School of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney

There’s a lack of new cemetery space in parts of Australia but we could solve that problem by burying the dead among newly planted vegetation belts near our towns and cities.

Burial Belt is a proposal we’ve been working on for reinventing the Australian cemetery landscape by creating near-limitless land for burial. Our idea is currently on exhibition at the Oslo Architecture Triennale, in Norway.

This new approach to burial would feature native trees rather than rows of headstones.

Read more: Housing the dead: what happens when a city runs out of space?

It would reforest cleared land and provide an alternative to high-emissions livestock grazing. It could even prevent suburban sprawl by safeguarding green space in perpetuity.

All it requires is a new way of thinking about what happens to our bodies when we die.

After life

Traditional burial in a local cemetery was the norm for most Australians until late in the 20th century. Today an increasing proportion of Australians choose cremation.

Unlike burial, cremation seems clean, efficient and free of the emotional weight of a sombre headstone in a grid of other graves. Cremation doesn’t have to take up space and ashes can be stored in a special place or dispersed into a favourite landscape.

Cremation now accounts for more than 70% of all Australian interments. That is not surprising when you consider that the average cost of cremation is less than half that of burial.

Soaring land costs and dwindling reserves of existing cemetery space have also contributed to the high cost of burial.

Australian burial plots are among the most valuable real estate in the country.

What else goes up in smoke?

Most people we speak to are surprised to learn that cremation is an energy-intensive and toxic process.

The energy consumed by a single cremation is equal to about one person’s average monthly domestic use.

Each cremation releases on average about 50kg of CO₂ and other toxins.

When you consider both the economic and environmental costs of cremation, the obvious solution is to provide more affordable burial space.

But with scarce land available for this purpose close to our city centres, any solution is contingent on persuading large numbers of people to not only return to burial, but to reconsider the entire cemetery experience.

A more natural burial

The Burial Belt proposal relies on a societal shift from traditional burial and cremation to natural burial. Natural burial does away with embalming, wooden coffins, concrete shafts and expanses of tarmac.

Bodies are placed in direct contact with the soil and buried within reach of microbes, where they can then truly return to the earth.

Natural burial is also much cheaper to implement than traditional burial.

Where would this take place? That’s where the Burial Belt proposal comes in.

Our future burial parkland already exists, just beyond the outermost suburban lots that ring Australian cities. This border land is currently occupied by sheep and cattle pastures but is increasingly being rezoned and amalgamated into an ever-expanding urban footprint.

Converting this territory into burial parkland, rather than housing subdivision, would protect whatever wildlife and vegetation remains in this cleared and denuded landscape, while curtailing urban sprawl.

Preserved forever

The key element of this proposed transformation is that, while natural burial land quickly becomes indistinguishable from bushland, current legislation provides for preservation of cemetery spaces in perpetuity.

Incorporating burial within the forest establishes a covenant over the revegetated grazing land that cannot be reversed. No more urban sprawl.

Fields and allotments would be individually acquired by public or private entities and converted into burial forest. Adjoining sections of forest would be gradually amalgamated into a single Burial Belt, a linear green swathe that halts further development and protects agricultural land and remnant habitat on the other side.

From an architectural point of view, there are many ways this general idea could be implemented to suit different site conditions and communities.

Read more: Increasing tree cover may be like a ‘superfood’ for community mental health

In the current proposal, large clearings are carved out of the immensity of the forest, with smaller hollows containing intimately-scaled burial spaces dispersed around the edges of these clearings.

Access could be provided via boardwalks and other temporary facilities similar to those found in national parks. The proposed forest cemetery requires little upkeep. Rather than returning periodically to sweep away leaves or lay flowers on a loved one’s traditional grave, visitors are free to let nature do its work.

There is no reason why the Burial Belt idea could not be widely implemented by local operators and councils as an effective method of funding habitat regeneration while providing for the community’s long term burial needs.

This article draws on UTS Master of Architecture design studios conducted by David Neustein and Grace Mortlock, and specific research contributions from UTS students Rowan Lear and Sora Graham.

– ref. Buried beneath the trees: a plan to solve our shortage of cemetery space – http://theconversation.com/buried-beneath-the-trees-a-plan-to-solve-our-shortage-of-cemetery-space-124259

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick D. Nunn, Professor of Geography, School of Social Sciences, University of the Sunshine Coast

Far away from Fiji’s golden beaches and turquoise seas lies what might appear to many people – visitors and Fijian alike – another reality. One that is hidden, almost forgotten, yet one that recent research is helping bring out from the shadows.

Fiji is not known for its hill forts, but it was not so long ago that they were almost ubiquitous. Consider the comment of colonial official Basil Thomson in 1908 who noted that “almost every important hilltop in western Viti Levu [the largest island in Fiji] is crowned with an entrenchment of some kind”.

The evidence for people having once occupied mountain tops in Fiji is plentiful yet today barely known and hardly studied. This evidence hits you the first time you see it. You are on a perspiring, muscle-aching uphill walk along one of the steep-sided volcanic ridge lines when suddenly the ground in front of you unexpectedly drops away.

There is a deep ditch artificially cut across the ridge, an impediment to your progress today but doubly so 400 years ago when its base would have been lined with sharpened sticks to impale unwanted visitors. On the upslope side of the ditch you find a stone platform – on which a guard house would have been built – and above, a series of cross-ridge stone walls.

In the case of the hill fort of Vatutaqiri on the Vatia Peninsula (northern Viti Levu), we mapped a series of five concentric stone walls built from hundreds of rocks that must have been rolled uphill from the base of the mountain. Like many such hill forts, the Vatutaqiri summit comprises an artificial mound, in this case some 12 metres high, with a flat top, likely to have been a symbolic refuge and/or a lookout post.

Researching and dating the hill forts

A three-year research project, just concluded, in collaboration with the Fiji Museum sought to understand the hill forts of Bua (northern Fiji). At the outset, we knew only that such places existed here because written accounts described them.

These include that of Commodore Wilkes of the US Navy who described in 1845 “a high and insulated peak […] which has a town perched on its very top.” We identified this peak as Seseleka, 420 metres above sea level, and mapped and excavated it as part of this project.

As shown in our map, the flat-topped summit of Seseleka comprises an ocean-facing terrace with the remains of residence platforms (yavu) slightly below a series of three artificial mounds used as lookouts.

Pot shards and edible shellfish remains are scattered around, the latter well suited to radiocarbon dating. There is also an artificial pool (toevu) on top of Seseleka from the mud in the bottom of which we extracted carbon samples for dating.

The results show that people were living on top of Seseleka as early as AD 1670, probably earlier, utilising earthenware for cooking and storage, periodically going down to the coast to collect shellfish that were brought back for less-mobile inhabitants to consume.

In total, we re-discovered 16 hill forts in Bua and, through a range of techniques from radiocarbon dating to the collection and analysis of oral traditions, have helped fill in some details of this poorly-known period of Fiji history.

A plausible explanation is that some 700 years ago, when sea levels in Fiji fell slightly, a food crisis resulted, which led to warfare and the abandonment of coastal sites for mountain-top ones.

Read more: Rise and fall: social collapse linked to sea level in the Pacific

A few weeks ago, we returned from a reconnaissance trip looking for hill forts in the high volcanic islands of the Kadavu group (southern Fiji). On the pristine stellate island of Ono, we visited and mapped five hill forts, including ones on the summits of Qilai and Uluisolo, the latter reputed to be the place where the god Tanovu who battled the recalcitrant god of distant Nabukelevu island once lived.

But the least expected find was on top of the mountain named Madre where numerous large rocks have been rolled up onto its summit and arranged, it seems, in ways consistent with megalithic structures elsewhere in the world.

In a first for Fiji, there seems to be the remains of a dolmen (a stone tomb) on the summit of Madre.

The Fijian word for village is “koro”, used today to refer to any nucleated settlement, mostly along the islands’ coasts. But up until about the 1830s, the word koro was used only to refer to a mountain-top village, thus the name Korolevu means “big village”, Korovatu means “rocky village” and Koronivalu means “war town”. The study of place names can help illuminate history in countries like Fiji where written history is incomplete.

On Ono Island in Kadavu, the researchers stayed in the villages of Vabea and Waisomo and made several ascents of the formidable mountain behind them. This mountain – and the impressive hill fort that sprawls across it – is named Korovou, meaning “new village”, in this sense a new hill fort built, presumably, after another was abandoned. Where its predecessor was, no one is sure … yet.

The author would like to acknowledge his co-researchers in the three-year study of Buan hill forts – Elia Nakoro and Niko Tokainavatu (Fiji Museum), Michelle McKeown (Landcare New Zealand), Paul Geraghty and Frank Thomas (University of the South Pacific), and Piérick Martin, Brandon Hourigan and Roselyn Kumar (University of the Sunshine Coast).

– ref. Forgotten citadels: Fiji’s ancient hill forts and what we can learn from them – http://theconversation.com/forgotten-citadels-fijis-ancient-hill-forts-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them-121103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

As the battle between the government and media organisations over press freedom continues, Attorney-General Christian Porter has ordered that any prosecution of a journalist for an offence relating to national security must have his approval.

He has issued a direction under the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions Act that where the CDPP considers there is a public interest in prosecuting a journalist, “the consent of the attorney-general will also be required as a separate and additional safeguard”.

The media freedom issue burst into prominence with the police raids into the home of News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst (over a story about a proposal to change the remit of the Australian Signals Directorate) and the ABC (over alleged bad behaviour by Australian special forces in Afghanistan).

Both media organisations have launched legal challenges over the raids. The Australian Federal Police have not ruled out charging the journalists involved.

Porter did not refer to the current investigations, but his direction effectively indicates the journalists will be protected from prosecution. It also sends a message to the AFP (although it does not come under his ministerial authority) not to push for prosecutions.

He said it was appropriate to issue the direction “given the significance of a free press as a principle of democracy”.

Read more: Media raids raise questions about AFP’s power and weak protection for journalists and whistleblowers

The new provision “will allow the most detailed and cautious consideration of how an allegation of a serious offence should be balanced with our commitment to freedom of the press,” Porter said.

“I have previously said that I would be seriously disinclined to approve prosecutions of journalists except in the most exceptional circumstances and would pay particular attention to whether a journalist was simply operating according to the generally accepted principles of public interest journalism.

“If such a request came before me, I would, as first law officer consider the evidence, and it would be inappropriate to form a view before this time.”

The direction refers to specific sections of various relevant acts – the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act, the Crimes Act, the Criminal Code, and the Defence Act.

In August Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton gave a direction to the AFP – which comes under his ministerial umbrella – to prevent repeats of the media raids when leaks are being investigated.

Dutton said his direction did not constrain police investigation of a leak. But “where consistent with operational imperatives, I expect the AFP to exhaust alternative investigative actions prior to considering whether involving a professional journalist or news media organisation is necessary.”

Read more: Morrison and Albanese to discuss inquiry into press freedom

The Law Council of Australia was immediately critical of the Porter move, saying it would not improve press freedom.

Council president Arthur Moses said he had “grave concerns that this sort of direction undermines the independence of the CDPP by requiring her to obtain the consent of the attorney-general before prosecuting an offence.

“What will enhance press freedoms in this country is a proper review of our laws to ensure that the actions of journalists doing their job as a watchdog of government are not criminalised and put at risk of prosecution.”

Moses said the new requirement was not only inconsistent with principles of the separation of powers and press freedom but put both an attorney-general and the media in a very difficult position.

“It puts the attorney-general – a politician – in the position of authorising prosecutions of journalists in situations where they may have written stories critical of his government.

“It creates an apprehension on the part of journalists that they will need to curry favour with the government in order to avoid prosecution. The media must be able to lawfully report on matters of public interest without fear or favour.”

The Law Council has urged improved safeguards for warrants authorising investigative action and a Public Interest Advocate to provide greater transparency and accountability for search warrants relating to journalists.

– ref. Any prosecution of journalists for national security offences to require attorney-general’s approval – http://theconversation.com/any-prosecution-of-journalists-for-national-security-offences-to-require-attorney-generals-approval-124446

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Klugman, Research Fellow, Institute for Health & Sport, Victoria University

A heart-warming ad kept playing on TV screens across Australia as Richmond kicked goal after goal against Greater Western Sydney on Saturday in the grand final of the Australian Football League’s men’s competition.

Kids awoke to find that they had been transformed into childhood versions of their footy heroes – Bachar Houli, Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, Richelle “Rocky” Cranston, Justin Westhoff and Tayla Harris.

It was a vision of the AFL as the league, and their corporate sponsors, would like to be seen. A celebration of difference and meritocracy. That footy gives everyone an equal chance to succeed and be adored.

But 2019 also showed how far the AFL has go before its deeds match the stories that it tells about itself.

Responding to the shameful treatment of Goodes

Much of the AFL(M) season was overshadowed by the shame of the recent past – the way one of the greatest Indigenous players of all time was booed out of the game in 2015. The very public vilification directed at Adam Goodes was the focus of two powerful documentaries released during the year: The Final Quarter, and The Australian Dream.

To its credit, the AFL not only formally apologised to Goodes, it endeavoured to use The Final Quarter documentary to raise consciousness throughout the league of the racist hatred directed at Goodes, and of the need to respond better in the future.

The players, leaders and key administrative staff at each AFL club attended screenings of the documentary. There was a Q&A session at the conclusion of each one, with those in attendance invited to ask questions that held the AFL to account.

Hopefully, this process will help the AFL – and those in the football industry more generally – understand the need to intervene when someone is made to feel unsafe in their workplace. And to realise that they need to be proactive rather than reactive when similar situations arise in the future.

To understand, in other words, that it is an unfair double-burden for the person being vilified to have to be in charge of managing the response to that vilification.

But consciousness-raising needs to lead to strong actions, not just words.

The AFL needs to begin redressing the structural barriers that Indigenous players and other minorities face in the football industry. The diversity reflected in the Mini Legends advert is sorely lacking in the upper echelons of the sport, from coaches, to recruiters, to those who commentate on the game, and of course the senior leadership of the AFL.

Read more: Our national anthem is non-inclusive: Indigenous Australians shouldn’t have to sing it

Some needed changes are symbolic, others more practical. Why does the AFL not at least have a version of the US National Football League’s (NFL) Rooney Rule, where a minimum of one minority person needs to be interviewed for every senior coaching and administrative vacancy?

And why is Sir Doug Nicholls not yet in the Australian Football Hall of Fame when he contributed to the game (and Australia more broadly) like few others have?

Sexist abuse of AFLW players online

Any consciousness-raising also needs to also apply to women’s football. The biggest story of the 2019 AFLW story was the sexist trolling directed at Tayla Harris after a superb picture of her kicking was posted online.

The AFL and its media partners failed to keep Harris safe, with the initial response being to take the photo off the internet rather than to support and celebrate Harris and the image of her.

Read more: Three years in, is the AFLW kicking goals?

The lack of social media moderation with women’s football remains an issue. Both female players and female commentators are much more likely to be abused online than their male counterparts.

Like Goodes, Harris was vilified as part of ongoing cultural battles around the past, present and future of Australia. In order to protect Indigenous and female players, the AFL has to proactively enter battles. But will it?

AFLW players still struggling for equal treatment

The AFL had launched its 2018 season with another heartwarming ad, this one about a Muslim girl playing footy for a team in Sydney’s south-western suburbs.

In the preceding months, however, the AFL spent most of its time promoting its latest glittery object, AFLX – a version of Australian Rules football played on a rectangular ground that the league hoped might appeal more to those more familiar with football (soccer), American football and the rugby codes.

Conducted as part of the AFL(M) pre-season, AFLX games were scheduled at the same time as the second (2018) and third (2019) AFLW seasons. The AFL therefore managed to undermine its marquee female product with another competition of its own creation.

And in 2019, male players were paid more than triple to captain the four AFLX teams in a one-day tournament than what most AFLW players received for the whole season. (The captains received $50,000, whereas most AFLW players received just $13,400 for the season.)

The AFL has since abandoned the AFLX competition for 2020, claiming that this would help it focus more on AFLW.

Yet despite investing tens of millions of dollars in its AFLM expansion teams – Greater Western Sydney and Gold Coast – the AFL continues to pay AFLW players less than a living wage, and is resisting calls from AFLW players for a longer season.

When it comes to women’s Australian Rules football, the meritocracy of the Mini Legends advert remains aspirational at best. If the AFL wants to pay more than lip service to women’s footy, it needs to listen to its female players, make the AFLW a priority for the present and future, and invest financially like it has done with Greater Western Sydney and Gold Coast.

Read more: More than a kick: sporting statues can enshrine players and also capture pivotal cultural moments

Steps forward and back

Meanwhile, the more toxic elements of the game’s masculine culture reemerged during the AFLM finals series, with controversy over repeated eye-gouging the biggest story line. (Unsurprisingly there was no “unsociable football” in the Mini Legends advert – no eye gouging, jumper punches or late hits to make opponents “earn it”.)

However, this season did show some encouraging signs of change for the AFL.

Despite the initial defensiveness of the league and its media partners, the Tayla Harris photo has already become an iconic image. AFLW sponsor NAB also capitalised on it, unveiling a statue of the image at Melbourne’s Federation Square.

Another statue dedicated to an iconic photo – the moment in 1993 when Noongar footballer Nicky Winmar declared he was “black and proud” in the face of racist abuse – was also unveiled in Perth on Noongar land.

But these images highlight both the enduring legacy – and present reality – of racism and sexism that the AFL (and the nation) is yet to adequately redress.

– ref. The AFL sells an inclusive image of itself. But when it comes to race and gender, it still has a way to go – http://theconversation.com/the-afl-sells-an-inclusive-image-of-itself-but-when-it-comes-to-race-and-gender-it-still-has-a-way-to-go-124351

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerstin Bilgmann, Lecturer in Biological Sciences, Macquarie University

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au.

Which is smarter: blue whales or orcas? – Prasaad, age 6.

There’s no simple answer. We don’t know for sure which one is smarter, because not everyone agrees on what “intelligence” means.

It’s true that blue whales and orcas (also called killer whales) are both smart. They both have very large brains. Orcas have particularly large brains compared to their overall body size.

But it’s not just about brain size. When it comes to measuring intelligence, we might also consider things like:

• the number of nerve cells in the brain;
• ability to navigate the deep, wide oceans;
• solving difficult problems;
• communicating;
• working in teams.

Let’s look at which animal is good at which skill.

Read more: Curious Kids: What sea creature can attack and win over a blue whale?

What can a blue whale do?

There’s no doubt a blue whale is a very intelligent animal.

Blue whales eat krill, which are very tiny prawn-shaped animals that gather in huge swarms that are often far away from where blue whales give birth to their children. Despite the distance, blue whales are masters of finding krill. They are very good at navigating along coasts and across the deep, wide oceans.

In fact, blue whales are so smart they can work out if a swarm of krill is worth chasing. Blue whales are very good at finding krill that are fat and in big swarms so they do not waste their energy catching smaller swarms. Blue whales catch krill by rolling on their side and opening their mouths. It is a lot of work and they have to use a lot of energy to do it.

Blue whales also have excellent systems for communicating with each other.

What can an orca do?

Orcas are a kind of large dolphin and they have different strengths.

They are very good at working together. They form groups and hunt together for fish or other sea mammals – including whales. This is why they are called “killer whales”.

They are also expert communicators and have their own language – even certain noises that are used by a particular group of orcas to show they are in the group.

They both are very intelligent in their own way

Some scientists have wondered if you could measure intelligence by looking at how well animals teach their children how to behave – for example, how to find food, fight or stay safe.

Orcas are masters at teaching their children exactly what to do. This involves things like hunting in groups or sneaking up on a seal and grabbing it before sliding back into the water.

However, blue whales are also good at teaching their offspring skills such as long-distance navigation – in other words, finding their way around the vast oceans.

Both blue whales and killer whales have their own special behaviours and skills. We really can’t say which one is more intelligent because both are very intelligent in their own way.

Read more: Curious Kids: how do creatures living in the deep sea stay alive given the pressure?

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: which is smarter – a blue whale or an orca? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-which-is-smarter-a-blue-whale-or-an-orca-122789

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bryoni Trezise, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies, UNSW

The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes, directed by Bruce Gladwin, Back to Back Theatre

In 2009 I wrote an email to the artistic director of Back to Back Theatre, Bruce Gladwin, gushing about what I could only describe as a painful form of spectatorship. Food Court – the theatrical work I had just experienced – was profoundly, spectacularly unsettling.

The work was sumptuously visual and sonically relentless. It re-coded the audience’s gaze by focusing on theatre’s role in the brutal subjugation of neuro-diverse people. It pummelled right into the sticky classification of disabilities and their other.

Ten years on and public discourse, disability theatre scholarship, and the Back to Back ensemble have intensified their reach.

Read more: How Back to Back challenges the way we see actors with disabilities

The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes is the third of the company’s works to present at Sydney’s Carriageworks. A town hall meeting offers a sparse anti-aesthetic. It is decidedly unspectacular.

An unexplained gathering

At the centre of a cavernous space, five humble chairs are being set up. The performers are discussing masturbation. And the rules of public versus private touching. And the rules of being touched appropriately by another. Or not.

On the distant back wall, spoken dialogue is live captioned. Through the space sounds an alien whistling which evolves to become a lazy, rolling jazz. The audience lights remain on. We will not be relaxing in the comfort of anonymity this evening.

Why have we gathered in this form of assembly? Why have we been gathered as a public?

When theatre disguises itself as civic action, or when civic action disguises itself as theatre, spectators sit in the thorny tension of being – as Judith Butler described – either “the people” or “the people who are not ‘the people’.”

What kind of people are we?

Michael Chan, in a suit and thongs, enters to open the meeting. The beginning might have begun. Yet Chan’s Acknowledgement of Country is sharply upended by Scott Price who takes issue with his pronunciation and tells Michael to – as the surtitles render it – “far king step up.”

Simon Laherty slides off his chair to speak. He might be speaker to begin the beginning. But suddenly, he falters. The words have evacuated. He’s out.

The drama of misfire is central to Back to Back’s work. With each apparent failure, spectators reckon with the theatrical frame: do we consider these failures more real than in other performances, because these actors have been traditionally perceived as nonprofessional?

Back to Back seamlessly, ruthlessly, challenge and unsettle the ways audiences read the veracity – or virtuosity – of the performers. These actors are seasoned at playing a version of themselves. Slippages between authenticity and fabrication are masterfully delivered. The performers work the text to precision timing. Beats are rarely missed – except when that is the point.

Who decides who we are?

The performers out themselves as activists whose mission is to give everyone a voice – but on whose terms? For one performer, “disability” is an offensive term, another finds it useful. One finds “neuro-diverse” an effort in language avoidance. Sarah Mainwaring finds the surtitles patronising, a point re-laboured as the screens flicker these very words in temporal catch up.

The dialogue ducks and weaves. The performers continuously upend each other and the audience from landing anywhere comfortable.

In front of Mark Deans, they debate the merits of “taking advantage of Mark.” He is “probably quite vague […] like he’s not in the room,” they say.

“Mark,” they ask, “are you following this?”

“No”, comes the rehearsed reply.

The play begins again.

A lectern is raised and Scott delivers a feverish account of the atrocities committed against people with perceived disabilities. Perhaps the audience has been summoned to witness this history, to learn from this past?

Read more: Finally, people with disabilities will have a chance to tell their stories – and be believed

When we might feel the build of momentum, the list of atrocities is followed by a list of board games, descending the bleakly historical into farce. Apple’s Siri is called upon to verify facts and to receive confessions. The meeting spirals downhill.

It is a frustrated call to arms. We are a failed audience. We are “not getting it,” our “comprehension is mild.”

What kind of people are we, sitting and watching the theatre being played before us? What is our role? What are the limits of our understanding?

We face a future, we are told, in which we will all be outstripped by AI. In this world where artificial intelligence leaves behind human intelligence, we will all have intellectual disabilities. So where will this leave us?

This is the purpose of the meeting: to consider what kind of public we ought to be.

Back to Back Theatre give us no answers. Just encounters with ourselves.

The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes was reviewed at Carriageworks, Sydney. Season closed. Tour continues to Geelong Arts Centre, Oct 3-6; Melbourne International Arts Festival, Oct 9-20; and the USA in 2020.

– ref. The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes review: Back to Back Theatre’s exciting reframing of disability – http://theconversation.com/the-shadow-whose-prey-the-hunter-becomes-review-back-to-back-theatres-exciting-reframing-of-disability-124003

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carl Douglas, Lecturer in Spatial Design, Auckland University of Technology

There’s a difference between a road and a street. Roads take you from one place to another, but streets are more than functional channels. They are public spaces.

The streets of downtown Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, are about to be transformed. A masterplan for the city centre was approved back in 2012, and now a proposed design is open for feedback.

The idea behind this masterplan is to design the central city as a cohesive public space rather than simply the sum of a thousand independent decisions.

The design will include further changes in support of walking, cycling and public transport, and less space for cars. Significantly, sections of Queen Street, which runs through the centre to the waterfront, may be closed to cars completely.

We can expect to see outraged responses from those wedded to their cars, those who see the project as an expensive beautification scheme, and those who resent the idea of Auckland’s population intensifying.

Read more: Don’t forget the footpath – it’s vital public space

A shared world

This is a good time to reflect on what we mean by “public space” and what we need it for.

Streets are some of our most important public spaces, but are often managed as if they were mainly pipes for cars (or, if we’re lucky, bicycles and pedestrians). Roadways, water pipes, optical fibres and pedestrian walkways are “bundled” together.

Because it is relatively easy to assign metrics to these flows, it is easy to think of streets as technological problems. The implicit ideal is for a city to be a “sleek, efficient machine” with a “rationalised circulatory network”, as architectural historian Spiro Kostof put it. The idea is at least as old as Baron Haussmann’s 19th century rebuilding of Paris.

Today’s smart cities are just the latest corporate version of the perfectly rationalised city. The automated city sounds great, but uncritical reliance on metrics locks in technological assumptions and biases. Airy promises and overhyped technological solutions divert from the more mundane but ultimately critical job of making public space.

How to define public space

Philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote of public space as a “space of appearance”, a place where we can become meaningfully visible to one another, and where we can present ourselves on our own terms, not as data points, customers, stereotypes or debating partners.

As social theorist Michael Warner put it, “a public is a relation among strangers”. To be in public, I have to negotiate my relationship with strangers, and recognise that I am also a stranger.

Arendt believed that democracy itself could be understood as a project for public space, the creation of a shared world. Māori, New Zealand’s first people, have also long thought of our shared world as a place of connections.

In other words, there is more at stake with the council’s plan than pleasant streetscapes or well-engineered infrastructure. To make Auckland’s streets good public space, I offer five suggestions:

1) Good public space is meaningful and enabling

It helps us make sense of our relationships, and supports our self-determination. It should be a platform on which we can all build, something like the old concept of the commons. Public space is filled with people pursuing various goals, individually and collectively, according to various value systems and ways of living. To imagine new kinds of public space is to imagine new ways to enable people.

2) Public space needs to accommodate informal uses

Streets, unlike roads, are not just spaces to move through, but places to do things. The famous American urban activist Jane Jacobs famously pointed to the significance of children playing in the street, and the importance of minor interactions like holding a neighbour’s mail, or leaving a key for someone at the corner store.

Similarly, the iconoclastic theorist of human-centred design Christopher Alexander even suggested that a marker of healthy public space is people feeling comfortable enough to take naps there. Informal uses of space like this should be maximised. Public space should be a bit of a mess, not a perfectly optimised machine.

3) Public space allows for discontent

Streets are places for people to gather. The Arab Spring uprisings of 2010-11, the subsequent Occupy movement, ongoing protests in Hong Kong, and Auckland’s own land occupation at Ihūmatao, may have been coordinated on social media, but were ultimately powered by the physical presence of people in public space.

Read more: How New York’s Union Square helped shape free speech in the US

Public spaces are stages where collective identities can be expressed. If we want places where people can appear authentically as themselves, we also need to recognise public space hosts difference, disagreement and potentially conflict.

4) Good public spaces requires joined-up, human-centred thinking

It might seem efficient to treat roads, plumbing, architecture, gardens, community events, public art, planning rules, maintenance, commerce and so on as separate domains best handled by experts in each area. Detailed expertise is essential, but to design good public space we need to join the dots. This isn’t easy.

In recent years, Auckland Transport, nominally a council-controlled organisation, has asserted its independence, proposing its own plans that are in conflict with the council’s aims. We need to dissolve silos, get more people around the table, and maintain a clear focus on who and what our public spaces are for.

5) Public space needs public involvement

Public space doesn’t just happen. Arendt told us to see it as an ongoing labour, something to achieve together, not something that exists by default. Auckland’s masterplan is a step in the right direction but good public space needs public involvement.

Public consultation can be a fraught process. Typically, only a few people respond, and they are disproportionately older, wealthier and white. The council has a duty to seek public input. We as the public have a responsibility to make ourselves heard.

– ref. How to turn Auckland’s inner city streets into public spaces people can enjoy – http://theconversation.com/how-to-turn-aucklands-inner-city-streets-into-public-spaces-people-can-enjoy-122396

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Green, Principal Fellow, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Daylight saving will begin this weekend across most of Australia, signalling warmer weather, longer days and new opportunities for children to make the most of time outside.

It can also mark the start of a rough patch in the sleep department. Children’s body clocks can struggle to adjust as the hour shift forwards means they aren’t tired until later.

There are things parents can do to ease the transition to daylight saving and planning ahead is key. And if things get wobbly, there are also strategies to get them back on track.

But first, let’s look at where the problem starts.

Read more: Spring forward, fall back: how daylight saving affects our sleep

Children’s body clocks

The body clock – also known as our circadian rhythm – controls when we sleep and wake.

Several environmental cues affect our body clock, the most common of which is the light-dark cycle. When it’s dark, our bodies produce more of the hormone melatonin, which helps bring on sleep. And when it’s light, our bodies produce less, so we feel more awake.

When daylight saving begins, children’s bodies aren’t getting the usual environmental signals to sleep at their regular time.

But a later bedtime means getting less sleep overall, which can impact on their concentration, memory, behaviour and ability to learn.

So, how do you plan for the daylight saving switchover?

1. Take a sleep health check

This is a good opportunity to look at how your child is sleeping and whether they’re getting enough sleep overall. Individual needs will vary but as a guide, here’s what you should aim for:

Most children wake themselves in the morning, or wake easily with a gentle prompt, if they’re getting enough good-quality sleep.

But sleep problems such as trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep are common and persistent. Around 50% of problems that begin before a child starts school continue into the early school years. So, early intervention makes a difference.

Read more: Sleep problems that persist could affect children’s emotional development

2. Review the bedtime routine

As well as the light-dark cycle, children’s circadian rhythms are synchronised with other environmental cues, such as timing around bath and dinner. A positive routine in the hour before bed creates consistency the body recognises, helping children wind down in preparation for sleep.

Bedtime routines work best when the atmosphere is calm and positive. They include a bath, brushing teeth and quiet play – like reading with you – some quiet chat time, and relaxing music.

Keeping quiet time consistent makes it easier to say goodnight and lights out. Doing a quick check on whether they’ve had a drink, been to the toilet and so on can help address things they might call out for later.

Gently reminding children what you expect and quiet praise for staying in bed helps too.

3. Keep regular sleep and wake times

Sticking to similar daily bedtimes and wake times keeps children’s circadian rhythms in a regular pattern.

Read more: Regular bed times as important for kids as getting enough sleep

It’s best to keep this routine during weekends and holidays – even though these are times when older children in particular are eager for later nights. This is worth remembering to avoid a double whammy of sleep disruption as daylight saving and the school holidays coincide.

If your child is not tiring until later, try making bedtime 15 minutes earlier each day until you reach your bedtime target.

4. Control the sleep environment

Darkening the room is an important cue to stimulate melatonin production. This can be challenging during daylight saving, depending on your home. Trying to block out light – say, with thicker curtains – is a good strategy. Keeping the amount of light in the room consistent will also make for better sleep.

Research suggests the blue light emitted by screens from digital devices might suppress melatonin and delay sleepiness. It’s advisable to turn screens off at least an hour before bed and to keep them out of the bedroom at night.

Read more: Wired and tired: why parents should take technology out of their kid’s bedroom

Temperature plays a role in priming children for sleep, as core body temperature decreases in sync with the body clock. So, check the room, bedding or clothing aren’t too hot. Between 18℃ and 21℃ is the ideal temperature range for a child’s bedroom.

5. Consider what happens during the day

Making sure your child gets plenty of natural daylight, especially in the morning, keeps them alert during the day and sleepy in the evening.

Daytime physical activity also makes children tired and ready for a good night’s sleep.

For children over five, keep naps early and short (20 minutes or less) because longer and later naps make night sleep harder.

For younger children, too little daytime sleep can make them overtired and therefore harder to settle into bed.

6. Focus on food and drink

Think about dinner timing because feeling hungry or full before bedtime can delay sleep by making children too alert or uncomfortable.

It’s also important to avoid caffeine in the late afternoon and evening. Caffeine is in chocolate, energy drinks, coffee, tea and cola.

Read more: Kids’ diets and screen time: to set up good habits, make healthy choices the default at home

In the morning, a healthy breakfast helps kick-start your child’s body clock at the right time.

Finally, worries, anxiety, and common illnesses can also cause sleep problems. If problems last beyond two to four weeks, or you’re worried, see your GP.

– ref. 6 ways to stop daylight saving derailing your child’s sleep – http://theconversation.com/6-ways-to-stop-daylight-saving-derailing-your-childs-sleep-123871

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Ann Cobb-Clark, Professor of Economics, University of Sydney

Australians like to think we live in a country of the fair go, where anyone with the talent and willingness to work hard can succeed.

But the evidence show success is still partly inherited. Children with poor parents are more likely to grow up and be poor as adults.

Read more: Here’s why it’s so hard to say whether inequality is going up or down

The latest biennial report of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare highlights the ways in which social and economic position is transmitted between generations.

Research points to several key factors in inherited disadvantage — notably parental disability, family structure and unemployment.

Gender patterns

Understanding the nature and extent of inherited disadvantaged in Australia has been aided by five significant research studies in the past five years. Four of them use data from the comprehensive Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The fifth used tax records to estimate the intergenerational mobility of people born between 1978 and 1982.

Among the results to come from these studies are estimates of the degree to which a 10% increase in fathers’ earnings affect their sons’ earnings. The studies offer a range of 1% to 3.5% – with a higher percentage meaning less social mobility.

One study highlights some interesting gender variations. It found a 10% increase in a father’s earnings associated with a 2% increase in sons’ earnings, but only a 0.8% increase in daughters’ earnings. A 10% increase in mothers’ earnings was linked to a 1.6% increase in sons’ earnings and a 1.5% increase in daughters’ earnings. This suggests girls’ earning trajectories are slightly less determined by their parents’ experience.

Other findings, however, point to certain types of disadvantage being most inherited by women. For example, those raised by a single parent receiving parenting payments are 2.2 times more likely to become a single-parent payment recipient themselves – and women make up more than 80% of single-parent payment recipients.

Patterns of transmission

The single-parenthood pattern was among those identified in research published in 2017 by myself, Sarah Dahmann, Nicolas Salamanc and Anna Zhu. The importance of family structure is underlined by the fact young adults are more likely to receive a range of welfare payments if they grow up in single-parent families.

The following graph shows the results of our research.

Overall, we found young Australians aged 18-26 were 1.8 times more likely to receive welfare if their parents ever received welfare. That is, 58% of young people whose parents ever received welfare were also on welfare, compared with 31.8% of those whose parent were not.

Young people whose parents received unemployment payments while they were growing up were 1.6 times more likely to receive unemployment payments before age 22, and 1.3 times after age 22.

Intergenerational disability

But the strongest relationship in intergenerational disadvantage involves parental disability.

Our results showed young people whose parents received disability support payments were 2.8 times more likely to receive disability support payments.

Young people whose parents received the Disability Support Pension for mental health reasons were almost three times as likely to be receiving the mental health-related disability benefits as other young people. They were also more likely to need other social assistance payments

The intergenerational relationship between youth unemployment and parental disability, for example, and was just as strong as that with parental unemployment.

These findings do not imply that poor children would have been better off had their parents not received social assistance — only that poor children are more likely to need assistance than non-poor children.

Stretching the rungs

Social mobility is higher in Australia than many other developed countries (most notably the United States). But it remains lower than the Scandinavian countries, and is threatened by any increase in inequality.

Read more: What the Bureau of Statistics didn’t highlight: our continuing upward redistribution of wealth

A growing gap between richest and poorest grows pulls the the rungs of the socioeconomic ladder further apart, making it harder for disadvantaged Australian children to avoid becoming disadvantaged adults.

– ref. Disability and single parenthood still loom large in inherited poverty – http://theconversation.com/disability-and-single-parenthood-still-loom-large-in-inherited-poverty-123086

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Swan, Assistant Research Fellow, University of Otago

The relentless supply of movies about superheroes and supervillains is difficult to ignore. Some people can’t get enough. Others hope to avoid them. But psychological researchers see a cultural phenomenon worthy of study.

Fictional characters with supernatural powers are often based on mythical gods and goddesses, fighting an ancient battle between good and evil with abilities that violate our intuitive expectations about the world.

In our recently published research, we asked 300 study participants to describe features of fictional supernatural beings and we compared them with features of the gods people worship. We found some striking differences that provide clues as to why some beings attract religious devotion, while others do not.

Read more: Avengers Endgame: how the Marvel Universe helps children (and adults) understand the world around them

What makes religious beings special

The question of why religious beings are special is more puzzling than it first appears. Initially, it seems obvious that an ancestral spirit that, for example, reads minds and walks through walls, could be an object of worship. We expect minds to be private, living things to die, and solid objects to be impermeable. Entities that defy such expectations – which researchers call “folk theories” – are remarkable and memorable.

The problem is, many other entities violate our folk theories in the same way. Some superheroes can read minds and walk through walls as well, and yet these characters rarely elicit belief. Still other entities with superhuman powers, such as Bigfoot, vampires or werewolves, are occasionally believed in, but not prayed to.

Why don’t people worship such entities, which defy our expectations just as well as Jesus, Allah and Zeus do?

Our work points to an answer that has been proposed by philosophers and psychologists for centuries, from David Hume to Sigmund Freud. We believe in gods because it is comforting.

When we asked participants about the traits they ascribe to supernatural religious figures, we found that, on average, they rated them as more beneficent than fictional beings that people do not worship. In other words, religious beings are better equipped to improve people’s lives in significant ways than fictional characters with superhuman abilities.

The comfort theory

Religious beings were also found to routinely defy folk theories about psychology in particular – possessing abilities such as omniscience, mind-control, telepathy and precognition – rather than defying folk theories about biology (such as regeneration) or physics (flight).

In our current research, we found people believe that beings with such psychological abilities are better equipped to help us. This may be because threats to our species have become increasingly social over evolutionary time. Detecting deception, maintaining one’s reputation and avoiding social exclusion have become more significant concerns than avoiding predators and finding shelter. Religious beings with the ability to mitigate these social threats should be particularly appealing.

Other features pointed to the comfort theory in less obvious ways. We found that abilities attributed to religious beings were more ambiguous than those attributed to fictional characters. For example, omnipotence and weather control certainly defy expectations, but which ones, and how many? Is god manipulating a storm with his mind, or physically pulling it into position? This ambiguity may best be described with the phrase “God works in mysterious ways.”

Research has shown that when we want to believe in something, such as personally possessing a positive trait, it helps if the trait is ambiguous (e.g. sophisticated) rather than precise (e.g. punctual). This gives us latitude to interpret a variety of evidence in its favour.

The same argument can apply to gods we want to believe in. One person may prefer the god that pulls storms into position. Another may prefer the telekinetic god. If both interpretations are allowed, the god can be made to fit what each person finds plausible. Ambiguous features therefore make it easier to believe in comforting gods.

Read more: Friday essay: is this the Endgame – and did we win or did we lose?

Gods are neither heroes nor villains

The final feature of religious beings we discovered is that they do not easily fit into the superhero or supervillain categories that often distinguish fictional beings. Gods are more beneficent, but they are also more ambivalent, than fictional characters.

They have the ability to reward, but also to threaten and punish. While a mix of carrots and sticks undoubtedly helps gods enforce religious and moral rules, we suggest that ambivalence is also crucial for eliciting religious rituals and prayers, which in turn reinforce belief.

Indeed, there is little point in beseeching a purely benevolent or malevolent god: the former will always grant your request, and the latter never will. Only an ambivalent god can be swayed by an act of faith or a faithfully performed ritual.

A similar account might help explain why polytheistic religions typically contain a mix of positive and negative gods, the latter of which provide little comfort on their own.

In summary, gods are more beneficent, ambivalent, ambiguous and psychologically astonishing than fictional characters and, notably, these are precisely the traits that encourage belief. So even if you shudder at the thought of yet another Marvel movie, the fictional universe has taught us quite a bit about what makes gods special and what motivates some of us to believe in them.

– ref. What fictional superheroes can tell us about devotion and why we believe in gods – http://theconversation.com/what-fictional-superheroes-can-tell-us-about-devotion-and-why-we-believe-in-gods-123860

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danilo Ignacio de Urzedo, PhD candidate, University of Sydney

This week’s United Nations climate summit may go down in history – but not for the reasons intended. It was not the tipping point for action on global warming that organisers hoped it would be. It will instead probably be remembered for the powerful address by Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, who castigated world leaders on behalf of the generation set to bear the brunt of inaction.

Young people are not sitting back and waiting for older generations to act on the climate crisis. Days before the summit, school students led a climate strike attended by millions around the world. And at the first ever UN youth climate summit, more than 500 young people from 60 countries, including myself, explored how to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement.

This group of activists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and change-makers aged between 18 and 30 showcased potential solutions and put global political leaders on notice: they must fight off the climate crisis at the scale and pace required.

Youth voices matter

Youth aged 15 to 24 years represent 16% of the world population and will reach 1.3 billion people by 2030. Obviously the action (or otherwise) of today’s decision makers on climate change and other environmental threats will affect generations to come – a principle known as intergenerational equity.

Millions of young people around the world are already affected by climate change. Speaking at the youth summit, Fijian climate action advocate Komal Kumar said her nation was at the frontline of a crisis and worldwide, young people were “living in constant fear and climate anxiety … fearing the future”.

Read more: Highly touted UN climate summit failed to deliver – and Scott Morrison failed to show up

“Stop hindering the work [towards a sustainable future] for short term profits. Engage young people in the design of adaptation plans,” she said. “We will hold you accountable. And if you do not remember, we will mobilise to vote you out.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres attended the event and his deputy Amina Mohammed took part in a “town hall” with the attendees, alongside senior representatives from government and civil society.

Young people are not sitting idly by

Technological solutions presented by youth summit participants included 3D printing using plastic waste, data storage in plant DNA, a weather app for farmers and an accountability platform for sustainable fashion.

Participants learnt how to amplify their voices using Instagram and how to create engaging videos with their mobile phones. An art workshop taught youth how creativity can help solve the climate emergency, and a networking session showed ways that youth leaders to stay connected and support each other.

Elsewhere, you don’t have to look far to see examples of young climate warriors, including in the developing world.

Programs funded by the UN development program include in Kazakhstan where youth are helping implement an energy efficiency project in schools, and in Namibia where young people are being trained as tour guides in national parks and nature reserves. In Nepal, young people cultivate wild Himalayan cherry trees as a natural solution to land degradation.

Harness the power of nature

Kenyan environmental activist Wanjuhi Njoroge told the youth summit of her nation’s progress in restoring the country’s forest cover.

Nature-based solutions to the climate crisis – such as conserving and restoring forests, grasslands and wetlands – were a key focus at the summit. Efforts to meet the Paris climate goals often focus on cutting fossil fuel use. But nature has a huge ability to store carbon as plants grow. Avoiding deforestation keeps this carbon from entering the atmosphere.

Thunberg and British writer George Monbiot released a film ahead on the New York summit calling on world leaders protect, restore and fund natural climate solutions.

To date, such solutions have received little by way of investments and funding support. For example in 2015, agriculture, forestry and land-use received just 3% of global climate change finance.

Appearing at the youth summit, the global Youth4Nature network told how it mobilises young people to advocate for nature-based solutions. Their strategy has included collecting and sharing youth stories in natural resources management in more than 35 countries.

Youth ‘will be watching’ their leaders

When it comes to climate change, young people have specific demands that must be acknowledged – and offer solutions that other generations cannot.

But globally there is a lack of youth representation in politics, and by extension, they are largely absent from climate change decision-making.

Read more: The rise of ‘eco-anxiety’: climate change affects our mental health, too

Some youth summit participants reportedly questioned whether it achieved its aims – including the value of some workshops, why celebrities were involved and whether anything tangible was produced.

Certainly, there was little evidence that world leaders at the climate summit were listening to the demands of young people. This was reflected in the failure of the world’s biggest-polluting countries to offer credible emissions reduction commitments.

But the youth summit went some way to granting young people space and visibility in the formal decision-making process.

Pressure from young people for climate action will not subside. Thunberg said it best when she warned world leaders that youth “will be watching you”.

“The eyes of all future generations are upon you,” she said. “If you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you”.

– ref. ‘We will never forgive you’: youth is not wasted on the young who fight for climate justice – http://theconversation.com/we-will-never-forgive-you-youth-is-not-wasted-on-the-young-who-fight-for-climate-justice-123985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bridget Harris, Senior Lecturer, School of Justice; Crime, Justice and Social Democracy Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

Crime prevention initiatives targeting sexual violence are by no means new. But as technology advances and costs decrease, we are seeing an abundance of digital and technological strategies emerge.

Last month, an invisible anti-groping stamp sold out within an hour of its launch in Japan.

The stamp can be used by victims to mark someone who gropes them on public transport. This mark can only be seen when a black light (that comes with the device) is cast over it.

But we need to ask: are apps, wearables and virtual reality programs really reducing incidents, improving safety or transforming responses to harm?

Ultimately, there can be benefits to using technology to prevent sexual violence, but we must also encourage social shifts that tackle the heart of the problem.

Wearables and devices

Anti-rape wear, promoted as “wearable protection for when things go wrong”, was introduced to the market around 2013.

Designed to be worn by women, anti-rape underwear and shorts are resistant to attempts at cutting, tearing and pulling. Some designs have a coded padlock and siren which sounds if someone tries to forcibly remove the clothing. Sirens can also be activated on demand.

Read more: How women are harmed by calling sexual assault ‘locker room talk’

Anti-vaginal penetration devices have also been designed. Rape-aXe, introduced in 2010, is a “female latex condom” with rows of serrated “teeth” that latch onto a penis during penetration.

In 2014, undergraduate students at North Carolina University began promoting the Undercover Colors nail polish. The polish supposedly changes colour when dipped into a drink laced with date-rape drugs such as GHB, Rohypnol or Xanax.

The team now involved with the company has since launched SipChip, a “coin-sized drug test” on a key fob that can be slipped into a pocket or fixed onto a phone cover.

Ideally, these tests can be carried out discretely.

Fundamental flaws

Overwhelmingly, these digital devices are targeted at possible victims (typically women), asking them to assume responsibility for own their safety and management of risk. But as critics have noted, they can reinforce misconceptions about sexual violence instead of challenging them.

Victim-blaming of those who have experienced sexual assault is unfortunately common. It occurs in a variety of domains, including in the media, community, and criminal justice settings.

All too often, victim/survivors are asked what they might have done to facilitate or provoke an attack. In expecting women to control their bodies and environments with the help of anti-rape devices, the question of “what were you wearing” could be reframed as “what anti-rape devices were you wearing?”.

“How much did you drink” could turn into “did you check the drink was drugged?”.

The constant vigilance expected of women cannot be overlooked.

Anti-rape apps and devices are specifically designed to intervene in risky situations. They can potentially be valuable in preventing particular incidents.

But such measures may only deter perpetrators from harming one person, not necessarily from harming others, or attacking the target at another time.

Problematic perspectives

Assaults on public transport and in public spaces are undoubtedly an issue. But focusing on the “unknown” danger from strangers can take away focus from the higher level of sexual violence enacted by acquaintances, friends, dates, and intimate partners – often in private places.

The most recent National Community Attitudes toward Violence against Women Survey documented alarming attitudes about violence against women among young people.

Read more: Rape myths like ‘stranger danger’ challenged by global drug survey

About one in seven young Australians reported a man would be justified in using force if a woman initiated sex but subsequently changed her mind about continuing. Almost one in four young men also believed women find it flattering to be persistently pursued, even if they are not interested.

Such “problematic attitudes to violence against women” were said to be common among young people with mainly male friends.

When it comes to technological responses to sexual violence, perpetrators and bystanders are rarely the focus. This is an oversight that warrants attention.

Digital support solutions

Technology can offer support for women in the aftermath of an incident.

Victim/survivors use digital channels to call out sexual hostilities, aggression or unfavourable experiences on dating apps. Examples include public Instagram accounts such as tindernightmares.

Bye Felipe also features posts “calling out dudes who turn hostile when rejected or ignored”.

Advocates have created apps that provide victim/survivors with ways to report violence and seek assistance. For instance, Sunny helps survivors with disabilities share their stories and locate information about their rights and support.

Read more: Cyber justice: how technology is supporting victim-survivors of rape

Apps such as SmartSafe+ and Arc, developed by the Domestic Violence Research Centre Victoria, can help in evidence collection.

Prevention before reaction

Virtual reality is another innovative channel we can use to promote and practice bystander intervention in a simulated environment.

Users can see and experience how bystanders – which could be any of us – might intervene to prevent sexual violence.

Ideally, this would be trialled alongside discussions about ideologies and behaviours that foster perpetration, and how consent can be understood and respected.

In many ways, technology can provide tools that help prevent sexual violence and offer support to victim/survivors. But we must develop digital initiatives that seek to promote real world, social shifts.

Technologies should seek to engage with and prevent perpetration, promote bystander intervention and challenge the myths, attitudes and underlying structures that facilitate sexual violence.

In other words, we need to prevent sexual violence at its source.

– ref. Anti-rape devices may have their uses, but they don’t address the ultimate problem – http://theconversation.com/anti-rape-devices-may-have-their-uses-but-they-dont-address-the-ultimate-problem-123011

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee-Fay Low, Associate Professor in Ageing and Health, University of Sydney

If you’ve read the headlines about poor standards in Australia’s nursing homes, it’s only natural to be concerned about your own family or friends in residential aged care.

For instance, there was news in recent weeks that 45 of 72 Bupa nursing homes in Australia had failed to meet all health and safety standards, with 22 putting residents at “serious risk”.

Then there are the harrowing stories of neglect and abuse coming from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which is due to release an interim report by the end of October.

So, how do you check if your loved one’s nursing home is really up to scratch? How do you interpret audit reports about residents’ health and safety? And how else could you find out if your mum or dad’s nursing home lives up to the promise of its marketing brochures?

Read more: Bupa’s nursing home scandal is more evidence of a deep crisis in regulation

Who keeps an eye on nursing home standards?

Every nursing home in Australia receiving government funding is assessed and accredited by the Australian Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. Assessments are conducted every three years or more often if there are concerns.

Commission staff check if each nursing home meets eight minimum standards. These include whether residents are treated with respect, the nursing home is providing safe and effective clinical care, and staff have adequate qualifications and training to do their jobs.

Read more: What is ‘quality’ in aged care? Here’s what studies (and our readers) say

Commission auditors interview residents, families and staff; observe care; and review the facility’s documentation. Visits can be unannounced to get a better picture of what regular care is like. Auditors then use that information to write a site audit.

It takes about a month after a site audit for the commission to decide on the quality of care. Then there’s up to another month for the audit report to be posted online.

Posting the decision publicly can be delayed further if a nursing home asks for the decision to be reconsidered. We understand this often happens if a home receives a poor report.

What is a bad report?

When a home is judged as not meeting standards, the commission will decide how serious it believes these deficiencies are. In increasing order of seriousness, the report says if a home is:

1. Not meeting standards. Nursing homes can be judged as not meeting one or more of the eight minimum aged care standards. Each standard has three to seven individual requirements. Nursing homes don’t have to meet all the individual requirements to meet the overall standard. The more standards or requirements a nursing home fails to meet, the poorer the care.

2. Serious risk. If a nursing home is given a “serious risk” judgement, the quality of care has placed or may place the safety, health or well-being of a resident at serious risk. An example might be a home not having enough skilled staff, leading to clinical mistakes, such as the wrong medication administered often.

3. Sanctions. Sanctions are imposed on homes when care places an immediate and severe risk to residents’ health, safety or well-being. This might be for multiple organisational problems (such as with clinical care, staffing, wounds not being cared for), leading to multiple poor outcomes (such as assault, avoidable illness, and the dangerous administration of medication). Homes can also be sanctioned if they do not fix continued non-compliance.

Families are notified in writing, and facilities must hold a meeting for residents and families to tell everyone what the problems are and how they will fix them by a certain date.

When a nursing home is sanctioned, it is penalised in several ways, depending on what was poor about the care:

• the home is not allowed to receive Commonwealth subsidies for any new resident for a set time (usually six months)

and

• an adviser and/or administrator is appointed to the home to help it comply with its responsibilities

and/or

• the home provides specified training to staff within a set time.

Read more: Nearly 2 out of 3 nursing homes are understaffed. These 10 charts explain why aged care is in crisis

A home’s history of non-compliance, serious risk decisions and sanctions are archived online (see below for details). So it might be worth taking a look when choosing a nursing home, as well as checking on an existing one.

4. Revoking accreditation status. If sanctions are imposed and there is no improvement, the commission can revoke a home’s accreditation status. This means a home cannot take new residents or receive government subsidies. Some of these homes reapply for accreditation, others shut down.

How do I find out? Looking online

The most up-to-date information on nursing homes not meeting standards (non-compliance) and sanctions is through myagedcare’s non-compliance checker. This allows you to see if an individual home has not met standards, is sanctioned currently or has been in the past. Some archived sanctions on the website go back to 2002.

However, the myagedcare website doesn’t list “serious risk” reports. For those, you have to go to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s website.

You can also search the commission’s website for audit and consumer experience reports, which provide more detail on the quality of care.

Audit reports can be difficult to understand because their intended audience is aged care professionals, not the general public. Reports before July 2019 are on the 44 old aged care standards. Reports from July 2019 are on the new eight standards.

Consumer experience reports show what residents said about their care. That’s from whether staff followed-up when they raised an issue, to what they thought about the food. These reports are easier to follow.

How do I find out? Other ways

It can be hard for family to know if their expectations for care are reasonable, particularly when feelings of sadness and guilt colour those expectations.

So, it can help to consider the aged care standards when making your own decisions about whether the quality of care is good enough.

You can do this by observing what happens day to day. Do residents wait too long for attention, for instance, to be taken to the toilet? Do staff speak respectfully and kindly to residents? Are meals appetising and healthy? What happens when residents are distressed? Is there high staff turnover?

Does the nurse on duty know the detail of your loved one’s clinical needs, for instance, diet, illnesses or medications? Is the manager responsive when you raise issues?

You can also talk to other families about their experiences of care.

What should I do next?

If you find that your loved one’s home doesn’t meet standards or is sanctioned, here’s what to expect.

The commission gives the home a set period of time (usually three or six months) to improve care. Commission staff keep visiting the home until they are confident the home is meeting standards.

You will probably want to visit regularly and keep an even more careful eye on your mum or dad’s care. Speak to the home or commission about any concerns.

You can ask your home’s management:

• about its plan to improve care

• about staff changes and staff ratios — staff often leave or are asked to leave when there are sanctions and lots of new and agency staff are a challenge to providing quality care

• for regular written updates and meetings including actions taken and the outcomes. This could be data on the home’s use of antipsychotic medications, and how often residents have falls, critical incidents or pressure ulcers.

As a resident or nominated family member, you have a right to information and to complain about your loved one’s aged care.

Read more: So you’re thinking of going into a nursing home? Here’s what you’ll have to pay for

When should I consider switching to another home?

The issue of whether to move a loved one to a new nursing home is a difficult one. It’s a personal decision involving weighing up the negative impacts you think the care is having with your own energy levels, funds and whether you can find a suitable new home.

Government reforms presume market forces will drive up the quality of aged care. In the meantime, we hope the resources in this article will help you make a more informed decision about your loved one’s care.

– ref. How to check if your mum or dad’s nursing home is up to scratch – http://theconversation.com/how-to-check-if-your-mum-or-dads-nursing-home-is-up-to-scratch-123449

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ly Tran, ARC Future Fellow, Deakin University

The number of international students who stay in Australia after graduating on the temporary graduate visa – often referred to as the 485 visa – is growing fast. There were nearly 92,000 temporary graduate visa holders in Australia as of June, 2019. That’s up from from around 71,000 in June 2018 – a 29% increase.

The 485 visa was introduced in 2008 and updated in 2013, taking on recommendations from the 2011 Knight Review, which recognised post-study work rights for international students as crucial for Australia to remain competitive in the education export market.

Under the visa, international recent graduates of a degree or qualification from an Australian institution can stay in Australia for two to four years, depending on the qualification. The government points to the visa as providing an opportunity for international students to remain in Australia for a limited period of time and gain international work experience.

Read more: 457 visa changes won’t impact on wider temporary education workforce. And maybe that’s deliberate

In our recent study, we examined the effects of the 485 visa policy on international students in Australia and on the labour market.

Out of the visa holders we surveyed, 76% said access to the visa was an important factor in their decision to study in Australia. And the majority of past (89%) and current (79%) 485 visa holders in Australia participated in the labour force. (Past holders of the visa refer to either those who have returned to their country or remained in Australia but moved on to another visa).

But many graduates did not work full-time, and they did not necessarily work in their field of study. A considerable number of graduates were employed in retail, hospitality or as cleaners.

The numbers

We collected data through an online survey from 1,156 international graduates, some of whom are in Australia and others back in their home countries. We also conducted in-depth interviews with students and other key stakeholders such as employers.

Our analysis included that of government figures and policy.

The top five citizenship countries of 485 visa holders in Australia (India, China, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam) have also been the top five source countries of international enrolments in Masters by coursework (China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam) programs since 2013.

Up to 56% of current visa holders either worked outside their field of study (35%) or were unemployed (21%), which puts these groups at risk of financial stress and vulnerability.

Australian government data shows occupations such as “sales assistants and salespersons” as well and “cleaners and laundry workers” are in the top three for 485 visa holders across all occupations.

Were visa holders satisfied?

We asked participants to rate how satisfied they were (on a five point scale form extremely dissatisfied to extremely satisfied) with their employment experience while on visa 485. There was an overall satisfaction rate of 66%.

Those who reported being dissatisfied did so for five main reasons:

1. the two-year time limit was too short to give employers confidence, to help graduates gain membership with a professional body, and to build work experience and secure employment
2. employers prefer applicants with permanent residency (PR) and lack understanding of the 485 visa
3. there’s a lack of flexibility in extending or renewing the visa
4. there’s a lack of support from related stakeholders (including continuing access to institutional career support services) and lack of advice around temporary graduate visa and post-graduation pathways
5. the temporary graduate visa isn’t an easy pathway to permanent residency, even though many think it is.

One international graduate told us:

Most of the employers don’t know what post study work visa is […] when I was applying for a job […] the recruiter liked my profile but in the last stage, when I told them I am on temporary graduate visa, they don’t know what exactly is it and they don’t care for the explanation you give about the same […] 50% of the good jobs out there ask for PR and citizenship when the term they offer employment for only one year.

Stereotyping about international students such as that they are “mere PR hunters” is also a barrier to job seeking. The importance attached to being a good “cultural fit” or “best fit” in recruitment is a form for racism, disadvantaging international students and graduates in the Australian labour market.

It’s important to note, however, that the education department’s Graduate Outcomes Survey also indicates that since the Global Financial Crisis, domestic graduates have also taken longer to gain employment, especially in their area of expertise.

Some positives

Many international graduates identified a number of benefits to the 485 visa. Some saw the visa as a way to buy time in Australia to enhance their English language proficiency, acquire different forms of work experience and develop professional and social networks.

In other cases, international graduates were able to repay their study loans while working in jobs unrelated to their field of study.

Working in odd jobs also helped some international graduates improve their communication and soft skills. These are necessary for them to get their foot in the door and gain employment that’s more appropriate to their qualifications.

Read more: Are international students passing university courses at the same rate as domestic students?

Our study also found 52% and 49% of those who graduated in 2015 and 2016 respectively reported they secured full-time jobs in their field of study in 2019. This indicates securing a full-time job in their field of study improved over time and specifically for those who were able to secure permanent residency.

It’s important to raise local businesses’ awareness of the temporary graduate visa, its purpose and scope to decrease stereotyping and give international graduates more of a chance to gain skills in their field.

It’s crucial for the international education sector, universities and related stakeholders to have specific campaigns, as well as flexible and practical approaches to align employers’ needs and international graduates’ strengths.

It’s important for the government to include an option to extend or renew the 485 visa for an additional one or two years for those who have been employed full or part-time in their field of study for at least six months, or those who have started their own business in or outside their field of study with a certain level of income.

Read more: Australia should try to keep more international students who are trained in our universities

Importantly, this option needs to be communicated clearly to employers to address their concerns and hesitations about the short-term nature of the temporary graduate visa.

It’s in Australia’s interest to ensure temporary graduates on 485 visas gain employment in their field. This will deliver benefits to local businesses, community and the economy. Positive employment outcomes will also enhance Australia’s reputation for international education globally.

– ref. Australia’s temporary graduate visa attracts international students, but many find it hard to get work in their field – http://theconversation.com/australias-temporary-graduate-visa-attracts-international-students-but-many-find-it-hard-to-get-work-in-their-field-123997

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Hilferty, Senior Research Fellow, Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW

The number of homeless defence veterans in Australia is far bigger than previously thought, according to a new study.

Our research puts the figure at almost 5,800 veterans experiencing homelessness in a 12 month period.

Veterans are also more likely to be homeless than other people in the Australian community.

Read more: ‘We all slept in the car, five of us’. Young refugees talk about being homeless in Australia

We found the homelessness rate for veterans who recently left the ADF was 5.3% – significantly higher than the 1.9% for the general population.

A lack of data

Before the release of this estimate, an accurate number of homeless veterans in Australia was not known, and estimates varied widely. That is because there is limited national data available to count homeless veterans.

Prevalence rates are typically calculated by dividing the number of people with a specific characteristic (such as not having a secure home) by the total number of people in the population of interest (such as veterans).

This method is not possible in Australia as there is no data set that defines the veteran population. We do not even know how many veterans there are in Australia, because reliable data of serving personnel is only available from 2001.

One previous attempt at determining prevalence of homelessness among veterans was the Veterans at Risk report in 2009, funded by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA). This relied on census data (which does not identify veterans) and produced an estimate of around 3,000 homeless veterans.

Another attempt was made by DVA in 2016. No information was provided on how it estimated there to be around 200-300 homeless veterans throughout Australia.

This knowledge gap was a concern for government policymakers as well as veteran advocates who have been calling for further research and an increased service response for years.

Without a baseline count, they are unable to determine whether veteran homelessness is increasing, plan an appropriate service and policy response, or assess the effectiveness of any interventions.

It is therefore vital to establish a more robust estimate.

How we came up with our estimate

Our estimate is obtained from survey data representative of all veterans who left regular Australian Defence Force (ADF) service between 2010 and 2014.

The survey was done as part of the DVA and Defence Department-funded Transition and Wellbeing Research Programme. This is the most comprehensive study in Australia that examines the impact of military service on the mental, physical and social health of serving and ex-serving personnel.

The survey was completed by 4,326 men and women who left the ADF in the five-year time period. The results were weighted to represent the entire population of Australian Defence Force personnel that left between 2010 and 2014.

We used the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ definition of homelessness. This classifies as homeless anyone who is sleeping rough, couch-surfing, or living in emergency or temporary accommodation such as shelters.

We found around 5.3% of these veterans reported they had been homeless within the past 12 months.

To calculate the prevalence of homelessness we extrapolated this proportion to the total population of veterans who enlisted after January 1, 2001, and were discharged sometime between 2001 and 2018.

The veteran population total is 108,825, so taking 5.3% of this figure gives us an estimate of 5,767 of veterans who were homeless within a 12-month period.

This extrapolation reasonably assumes the homelessness rate is similar between veterans who transitioned from Regular ADF service between 2010 and 2014 and the total population of veterans (2001-18).

Both groups fall within the cohort described as contemporary veterans by the DVA. These veterans have seen military operations from 1999 onward and often share features of recent service, such as the impact of multiple deployments in smaller contingents and the use of new technologies.

While the 12-month homelessness rate for veterans (5.3%) and the general Australian population aged over 15 (1.9%) were calculated using different techniques, the comparison shows veterans are overrepresented in the Australian homeless population.

The best estimate, so far

We believe our method provides the best estimate to date of homelessness among veterans in Australia, but it is still likely to be an underest.

Homeless veterans are an extremely hard group to reach. It is likely that many potential survey participants who were homeless at the time the survey was conducted, did not complete the survey.

Our estimate also excludes all those who served in the ADF prior to January 1, 2001. Older veterans such as those who served in Vietnam do experience homelessness in Australia, but the prevalence among this group is unknown.

As part of our research, eight of the 29 homeless veterans we interviewed were aged over 55, with the oldest being 74. US research says there is often a long time lag between transition from military service and becoming homeless.

Lest we forget

Our research puts a new number on the problem. We still do not know whether veteran homelessness is increasing over time, but the broader context of homelessness increasing throughout Australia suggests this may be the case.

Read more: Homelessness soars in our biggest cities, driven by rising inequality since 2001

As Remembrance Day approaches, and Australians prepare to thank our military men and women for their service, we suggest that attention should also turn to addressing this national shame.

Our research also identifies ways that service responses can be improved. It will require a great deal of will and significant funding to address what has until now been an underestimated problem.

– ref. 5,800 defence veterans homeless in Australia, that’s more than we thought – http://theconversation.com/5-800-defence-veterans-homeless-in-australia-thats-more-than-we-thought-123695

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The government’s new retirement incomes review will need to work quickly.

On Friday Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said he expected a final report by June, just seven months after the issues paper he wants it to deliver by November.

The deadline is tight for a reason. In recommending the inquiry in its report on the (in)effeciency of Australia’s superannuation system this year, the Productivity Commission said it should be completed “in advance of any increase in the superannuation guarantee rate”.

In other words, in advance of the next leglislated increase in compulsory superannuation contributions, which is on July 1, 2121.

Read more: Government retirement incomes inquiry puts superannuation in the frame

The next increase (actually, the next five increases) will hurt.

The last two, on July 1 2013 and July 1 2014, took place when wage growth was stronger. In 2013 wages growth was 3% per year.

And they were small – an extra 0.25 per cent of salary each.

The next five, to be imposed annually from July 1 2021, are twice the size: 0.5% of salary each.

If taken out of wage growth, they’ve the potential to cut it from its present usually low 2.3% per annum to something with a “1” in front of it, pushing it below the rate of inflation, for five consecutive years.

If we were going to do that (even if we thought the economy and wage growth could afford it) it would be a good idea to have a good reason why. After all, compulsory superannuation is the compulsory locking away of income that could otherwise be spent or used to pay down debt or saved through another vehicle, regardless of the wishes of the person whose income it is.

Question 1. What’s it for?

Fortunately, the new inquiry doesn’t need to do much work on this one.

For most of its life compulsory super hasn’t had an agreed purpose. At times it has been justified as a means of restraining wage growth, at times as means of restraining government spending on the pension, at times as means of boosting national savings.

In 2014, more than 20 years after compulsory super began, the Murray Financial System Review asked the government to set a clear objective for it, and two years later the government came up with one, enshrined in a bill entitled the Superannuation (Objective) Bill 2016.

The bill lapsed, but the objective at its centre lives on as the best description we’ve come up with yet of what compulsory super is for:

to provide income in retirement to substitute or supplement the age pension

Which raises the question of how much we need. For compulsory super, the answer is probably none. People who want more than the pension and their other savings can save more through voluntary super. People who don’t want more (or can’t afford to save more) shouldn’t.

Question 2. How much do people need?

Assuming for the moment that how much people need in retirement is relevant for determining how much compulsory super they need, the inquiry will need to examine what people need to live on in retirement.

The “standards” prepared by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia are loose. The more generous of the two allows for overseas travel every two or so years, A$163 per couple per fortnight on dining out, $81 on alcohol “or equivalent spent with charity or church”.

Read more: Why we should worry less about retirement – and leave super at 9.5%

It isn’t a reasonable guide to how much people need to live on, and certainly isn’t a reasonable guide for how much the government should intervene to make sure they have to live on. They are standards it doesn’t intervene to support while people are working.

And there’s something else. Super isn’t what will fund it. Most retirement living is funded outside of super, either through the age pension, private savings, or the family home (which saves on rent). Most 65 year olds have more saved outside of super than in it, and a lot more than that saved in the family home.

It’s a slight of hand to say that retirees need a certain proportion of their final wage to live on and then to say that that’s how much super should provide.

Question 3: Does it come out of wages?

The best guess is that, although paid by employers in addition to wages, compulsory super comes out of what would otherwise have been their wage bill.

Treasury puts it this way:

Though compulsory superannuation guarantee contributions are paid by employers, wage setting generally takes into account all labour costs. As such, it is widely accepted that employees bear the cost of higher superannuation guarantees in the form of lower take home pay.

The inquiry will probably make its own determination. If it finds that extra contributions do indeed come out of what would have been pay rises, it will have to consider the tradeoff between lower pay rises (and they are already very low) and the compulsory provision of more superannuation in retirement.

Question 4: Does it boost private saving?

It’d be tempting to think that the compulsory nature of compulsory superannuation meant that each extra dollar funnelled into it increased retirement savings by an extra dollar. But it doesn’t, in part because wealthy Australians who are already saving a lot have the option of offsetting it by saving less in other ways.

For them, the increase in saving isn’t compulsory.

For financially stretched Australians unable to afford to save (or for Australians at times in times life when they can’t afford to save) the compulsion is real, and unwelcome.

The inquiry will have to make its own assessment, updating Reserve Bank research which found in 2007 that each extra dollar in compulsory accounts added between 70 and 90 cents to household wealth.

Question 5: Does it boost national saving?

Boosting private saving (at the expense of people who are unable to escape) is one thing. Boosting national savings (private and government) is another. The tax concessions the government hands out to support compulsory super are expensive. The concession on contributions alone is set to cost $19 billion this year and $23 billion in 2022-23, notwithstanding some tightening up. It predominately benefits high earners, the kind of people who don’t need assistance to save.

Read more: Myth busted. Boosting super would cost the budget more than it saved on age pensions

On balance it is likely that the system does little for national savings, cutting government savings by as much as it boosts private savings. But because the question hasn’t been asked, not since the Fitzgerald report on national saving in 1993 shortly after compulsory super was introduced, we don’t know.

It’ll be up to the inquiry to bring us up to date.

– ref. Five questions about superannuation the government’s new inquiry will need to ask – http://theconversation.com/five-questions-about-superannuation-the-governments-new-inquiry-will-need-to-ask-124400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Eltham, Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University

The Australian cultural sector has rarely lacked for innovation or creativity, but it has consistently failed to properly lobby for itself. Culture in Australia employs around 400,000 workers and represents A$112 billion of economic activity. But it has negligible political clout compared to industries like agriculture, mining or gambling.

Enter The New Approach, a newish think-tank in Canberra with lofty goals of improving the public perception of Australian culture.

A New Approach is funded by wealthy philanthropists from the Myer, Fairfax and Keir families, and managed by the Australian Academy of the Humanities. After an initial burst of publicity, it has spent several years getting itself set up, appointing a director, and generally getting its act together.

So it’s fair to say its very first report was awaited by Australia’s arts community with some interest. Australian culture could do with a pep up just now.

Read more: A new approach to culture

The election of the Morrison government was a huge disappointment for many in the sector. While Bill Shorten and Labor put forward a proper arts policy with more than A$300 million in funding promises, the Coalition didn’t bother with a cultural policy at all (although some small promises were made to the music industry).

The New Approach’s first report is a topic of perennial interest to the cultural sector: government funding. The report collates available public data on cultural funding across the three levels of government, giving us an overall picture in an easily digestible form for the first time.

A high point for funding?

The report’s number one finding will surprise many: cultural funding “reached its highest point ever” in 2017-18. The big picture findings show that cultural funding has been increasing in recent years. All up, across federal, state, territory and local governments, cultural spending by governments was A$6.86 billion last fiscal year, up from A$6.31 billion in 2007-08.

There is a hole in the time series throughout the report, with data for several years after 2013 missing. That’s because Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey cut funding to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2014. The ABS then had to discontinue the data collection.

Rather diplomatically, A New Approach’s Kate Fielding told The Conversation this was “very disappointing.”

While funding is up overall, in per capita terms the picture is less rosy: funding per person has been trending down for a decade, from $289 per person in 2007-08 to $275 last year – a 4.9% fall in 11 years.

Actually, that “highest ever” line is a bit misleading. The report has adjusted figures to 2018 dollars, by indexing them to the wage price index. But wages have been growing very slowly in Australia over the past decade. By the more conventional inflation measure of the consumer price index, cultural funding is well down on 2007-08 figures.

Decomposing the figures across the three levels of government shows why. The Commonwealth has embarked on a swingeing austerity drive in cultural spending, particularly since the Coalition was elected in 2013.

As anyone in the arts sector could tell you, the past six years have been a bumpy ride. The report refers to the “volatility” of funding, and that’s evident from the data series.

Cultural funding fell dramatically in the Abbott years, but has risen by around 11% since. And the culprit does appear to be the federal government: according to The New Approach, Commonwealth funding has fallen by 19% per person since 2007-08.

But there is some good news. Local government in particular has picked up its game, increasing funding per capita by 11% since 2007-08.

A stark story

“The most interesting element is that local governments are clearly playing a bigger role in public support for arts and culture,” Fielding wrote in an email.

“Across the 11 years reviewed, the balance shifts from the federal government being a major supporter to a far more even split between the three levels of government,” she wrote.

Read more: With support for arts funding declining, Australia must get better at valuing culture

Fielding is also concerned about falling per capita funding.

“As with other areas of government expenditure that don’t keep up with population growth, we risk a decline in the relevance and accessibility of cultural opportunities for people right across the country.” She argues there is a “pressing need” for more cooperation between the three levels of government.

There’s been a fair degree of skepticism in the cultural sector about The New Approach, and whether it will deliver anything tangible. This new report should start to allay some of those concerns. Pulling together the available statistics on public funding of culture in this country is a worthy task. The picture, now painted, tells a stark story.

Australia’s artists and cultural leaders now have a very simple question they can put to Scott Morrison’s new arts minister, Paul Fletcher: when will the austerity end?

– ref. Federal arts funding in Australia is falling, and local governments are picking up the slack – http://theconversation.com/federal-arts-funding-in-australia-is-falling-and-local-governments-are-picking-up-the-slack-124160

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The government has announced very broad terms of reference for its inquiry into Australia’s retirement income system, which will trigger fresh debate about the planned future rises in the superannuation guarantee rate.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Assistant Minister for Superannuation Jane Hume said in a statement the review “will cover the current state of the system and how it will perform in the future as Australians live longer and the population ages”.

It would “establish a fact base of the current retirement income system that will improve understanding of its operation and the outcomes it is delivering for Australians.”

It is understood the government is not looking for the review to make recommendations.

The terms of reference say:

It is important that the system allows Australians to achieve adequate retirement incomes, is fiscally sustainable and provides appropriate incentives for self-provision in retirement.

They refer to the retirement income system’s three pillars: a means-tested age pension; compulsory superannuation; and voluntary savings, including home ownership.

The review is asked to identify:

•how the retirement income system supports Australians in retirement;

•the role of each pillar in supporting Australians through retirement;

•distributional impacts across the population and over time; and

•the impact of current policy settings on public finances.

Michael Callaghan, a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund and a former senior Treasury official, will chair the review.

The other panellists will be Carolyn Kay, who has long experience in the finance sector in Australia and abroad, including on the Future Fund Board of Guardians, and Deborah Ralston, a professorial fellow in banking and finance at Monash University, a member of the RBA’s Payments System Board, and most recently chair of the Alliance for a Fairer retirement, a group set up in response to Labor’s proposal to disallow refunds of excess franking credits.

There will be a consultation paper released in November and the report will be done by June next year.

A review was recommended by the Productivity Commission, which said there should be an “independent public inquiry into the role of compulsory superannuation in the broader retirement incomes system, including the net impact of compulsory super on private and public savings, distributional impacts across the population and over time, interactions between superannuation and other sources of retirement income, the impact of superannuation on public finances, and the economic and distributional impacts of the non-indexed $450 a month contributions threshold.”

The PC said this inquiry should be done before there was any rise in the superannuation guarantee rate.

The superannuation guarantee – increases in which have been pause – is due to start rising again from mid-2021.

Under the law in place, the increases would take the rate gradually from the current 9.5% to 12% by 2025.

The review’s broad terms of reference will reactivate a vocal group of government backbenchers who want to stop any further rise in the guarantee rate.

This is regardless of the government’s commitment to the legislated rise and Frydenberg’s answer, when asked on Friday whether that position still stood. “The government’s policy on the superannuation guarantee has not changed,” he said.

Frydenberg also reaffirmed, in relation to the family home,“As I said in parliament in July, including the family home in the pension assets test is not our policy and never will be.”

The retirement incomes issue is highly charged politically, so the government is potentially opening a can of worms.

Industry Super Australia chief executive Bernie Dean welcomed the “government’s acknowledgement of compulsory superannuation as one of the key pillars of Australia’s retirement income system.

“With the superannuation guarantee legislated to increase to 12% by 2025, ISA agrees with the government that sensible and evidence-based reform is needed to improve the efficiency of the compulsory savings system and ensure that members get even more out of every dollar they’ve been promised,” he said.

“In particular, ISA welcomes the review’s intention to examine the distributional impacts … This is an opportunity to address some of the inadequacies in our current system, where we see lower income and vulnerable workers, those with interrupted work patterns and in particular women, retire with significantly less super than other Australians.”

– ref. Government retirement incomes inquiry puts superannuation in the frame – http://theconversation.com/government-retirement-incomes-inquiry-puts-superannuation-in-the-frame-124373

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini discusses Scott Morrison’s trip to Washington – including the state dinner thrown in his honour, his speech at the UN General Assembly, and his message to China – with Michelle Grattan. They also talk about possible Commonwealth intervention after the ACT passed a bill legalising marijuana for personal use.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on Morrison’s US trip – and the ACT’s marijuana legislation – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-morrisons-us-trip-and-the-acts-marijuana-legislation-124359

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Caldwell, Lecturer in Language and Linguistics, University of South Australia

The AFL Grand Final is more than a physical contest between professional athletes.

It is a culture unto itself, crafted through a distinct set of social practices enacted by players, coaches, supporters, and the media, realised by a set of shared meaning making and communicative practices.

“Meaning making” is a term used in disciplines like linguistics and semiotics to refer to the human processes of production (speaking, writing, creating) and reception (listening, reading and viewing) and their role in shaping culture. We can understand the culture of an AFL grand final as it is realised through these meaning making practices.

As linguists with an interest in sports discourse, we present six significant moments of meaning making for supporters on AFL Grand Final Day.

1. The roar of the crowd

The crowd is cheering!

They’re yelling and jeering; booing and grunting.

They’re mumbling: softness, a slow rhythm, a lax voice quality, a low pitch.

They’re screaming: loudness, speed, tension, and high pitch.

This is spoken language at its most emotive, the way supporters participate in the play: at the oval, at the pub, or at the BBQ.

Language in this form is a physical response to tension – or a release from tension – brought about by the game. Think about the way your body reacts when a player on your team is about to be tackled. You tense your body, clasp your hands, lean forward into the action.

The seconds seem like hours.

This tension is released as sound and language: “kick it, kick it, kick it… Arghhh!”

This physical expression of language is heightened during a grand final. As the tension reaches its peak for the season on the field, the tension reaches its peak in your body.

For the 2015 AFL Grand Final between Hawthorn and West Coast, the AFL produced a video capturing the sound of the crowd at important moments in the game.

Listen to this video without viewing the footage. The sound from the crowd of over 90,000 people is a unified soundscape, never silent, shifting from cheers to boos, with crescendos and decrescendos throughout the game.

As the game comes to its conclusion, the variation in the soundscape expands to include a “bronx” cheer (a sarcastic cheer), chanting, and then a final siren cheer that surpasses all others in volume.

2. High-stakes commentary

Commentary has multiple functions: it describes the real-time sporting event; provides context and statistical; and it can include emotive language from the commentators with the aim to keep an audience interested.

Read more: Why AFL commentary works the same way as Iron Age epic poetry

An AFL grand final is especially high-stakes for commentators: they need to perfectly capture through language iconic moments, as their commentary becomes part of the history of the game.

Mike Williamson’s “Jesaulenko, you beauty” from the 1970 VFL Grand Final is noteworthy for its timing, simplicity and use of Australian vernacular. It has become an Aussie classic with a life of its own.

Ted Whitton’s “Hit the boundary line!” in the final minutes of the 1966 Grand Final as St Kilda led Collingwood by one point wonderfully captures the tension felt at that moment in the game.

Stephen Quartermain’s “Leo Barry, you star!” from 2005 has become iconic, as the Sydney Swans defender took a high-flying mark to secure victory.

Supporters not only remember the iconic physical on-field acts, but also the words that accompanied their viewing.

3. The Record

The beloved Footy Record. The title says it all. The official written artefact of the game.

On the one hand, it functions as a record of the game. Possession of it signifies in-person attendance.

Supporters read the text, analyse the numbers, and view the images. They record scores and make notes.

They are active producers of the meaning making: they mark the artefact and help share in its production.

4. Showing allegiances

Meaning making is not exclusively words on a page or sounds from vocal tracts.

Supporters make meaning through the clothes they wear and the objects they possess.

This is especially the case on AFL Grand Final Day, as supporters go to extremes to show their allegiances through scarves, hats, socks, jumpers, face painting – even underwear.

They do the same with objects: balloons, flags, footballs, teddy bears and the icing on the cake is, well, icing on a cake.

From a meaning making perspective, two factors are particularly important: colour and symbols.

Here, Collingwood supporters at the 2018 Grand Final deployed the colours black and white through a range of dress and paraphernalia.

The symbol of the magpie shows their allegiance: to their team, and to each other.
You don’t need to tell the world through language you are aligned with one team or another: your paraphernalia says it all.

5. The post-match interview

Post-match interviews are critical moments of meaning making in sport.

Supporters listen to player’s responses to journalist’s questions, hoping to get insight into the mindset of their respective teams; a glimpse of their favourite player’s character; and a better understanding of what happened on the field.

Typically, these interviews are cliched events. Linguistic analysis of AFL post-match interviews has shown players follow a strict pattern: they avoid being overly positive, because this is perceived as arrogant; they avoid being overly negative, because this is perceived as weak.

The result is a predictable language pattern of low commitment, and countering positivity with negativity (and vice versa).

In this video, Dayne Beams is asked about Collingwood beating the Brisbane Lions, 123 points to 61.

“It was a really even team performance tonight. Everyone played their role and chipped in. Um. Yeah. We came away pretty comfortable.”

Post-match interviews on AFL Grand Final Day present a deviation from this norm.

Players express heightened emotional language, they swear and they boast. They are less formal, less predictable, and less cliched.

They don’t reference “next week.” They reference loved ones and support networks. They scream and they cry.

A grand final post-match interview is worth observing for what it is not, as much as for what it is. This is illustrated wonderfully in the following exchange, after Richmond ended its grand final drought in 2017:

“Dusty, are you happy to stay at Tigerland?”

“Oh fucking oath! Richmond fans! It’s awesome! Come on!”

6. Songs to bond

The team song. A meaning making act exclusively for the victorious team. This is the ultimate moment of bonding between players, coaches and staff.

At the 2012 Grand Final, the Sydney Swans refused to begin the song until all players were linked together in a circle.

For supporters, the team song is also significant vocal ritual. Unlike the game itself, supporters don’t have to watch the players sing. They actively participate. They sing in chorus, in physical and semiotic unison with their heroes.

Passion play

To participate in AFL Grand Final Day is to make meaning.

Supporters speak, they listen, they create and they consume. They reveal identities and allegiances. The game and its culture is much more than players on the field – it is also about us in the stands or at home, barracking along, feeling every bit a part of the game as the professionals.

When you watch the game this weekend, try and step back for a moment and look at the range of shared systems of meaning making which bond us as a culture.

In this case: a culture with a serious passion for sport.

– ref. Want to really understand football culture? Here are 6 things to watch out for on Grand Final Day – http://theconversation.com/want-to-really-understand-football-culture-here-are-6-things-to-watch-out-for-on-grand-final-day-124088