Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael J. I. Brown, Associate professor in astronomy, Monash University

A 100-metre-wide asteroid passed just 70,000km from Earth on Thursday, Australian time. It was discovered by the Brazilian SONEAR survey just days ago, and its presence was announced mere hours before it zoomed past our planet. The lack of warning shows how quickly potentially dangerous asteroids can sneak up on us.

Read more: Why dangerous asteroids heading to Earth are so hard to detect

The asteroid, reassuringly designated 2019 OK, is not a threat to Earth right now. However, 2019 OK and other near-Earth asteroids do pose a genuine risk. The Tunguska explosion in 1908 and the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 were equivalent to large nuclear explosions, and under the wrong circumstances a meteor impact could devastate a city.

Searching for danger

Astronomers are well aware of the risks posed by asteroids hitting Earth. Meteor craters can be found around the globe, and some relatively fresh examples include Wolfe Creek in northern Australia and the imaginatively named Meteor Crater in Arizona. A huge asteroid impact 65 million years ago near Chicxulub in modern-day Mexico initiated the fall of the dinosaurs.

Consequently, astronomers across the globe have devoted considerable effort to determining the level of threat posed by near-Earth asteroids, and to identifying individual asteroids that could pose a significant threat. Asteroid surveys include Pan-STARRS, ATLAS, SONEAR (which spotted 2019 OK), and the Catalina Sky Survey.

Asteroids are typically so far from Earth that they resemble stars, rather than the craggy rocks they are. However, because asteroids travel around the Solar System, they move relative to the distant stars. Thus astronomers can discover asteroids by taking sequences of images and looking for objects that move from image to image.

Using this approach to survey large swathes of sky, astronomers have discovered thousands of near-Earth asteroids, including more than 2,000 during 2017 alone.

And yet, some asteroids still manage to sneak up on us. Why?

Astronomers are good at discovering asteroids that are visible at night, but less good at spotting asteroids during the daytime. Asteroids also are fainter the further they get from Earth.

At closest approach and with dark skies, 2019 OK would have been visible with a pair of binoculars as point of light drifting slowly across the sky. But three days before that it was 1,000 times fainter, and thus harder to spot. What’s more, for the past month it has been relatively close to the Sun in the sky, so it has only been visible around twilight.

Read more: How to find a meteorite that’s fallen to Earth

2019 OK was finally tracked down by the SONEAR survey on Wednesday, and soon after that it was independently detected by the ASAS-SN telescope network. Both of these surveys use relatively small telescopes with sensitive cameras to search large areas of sky, rather than using large telescopes to study small patches of sky.

Close calls

Before its discovery as a near-Earth asteroid, 2019 OK was imaged by other telescopes, but its significance wasn’t recognised. But these earlier images did help astronomers nail down the asteroid’s orbit.

2019 OK has a very elliptical orbit, taking it from the asteroid belt beyond Mars to within the orbits of both Earth and Venus. As each orbit takes 2.7 years, it isn’t always going to pass as close to Earth as it did this time. It will make close approaches in the future, but hopefully not quite this close.

Other near-Earth asteroids are also on track to make close approaches to our planet. The 400m-wide Apophis will pass roughly 30,000km from Earth on Friday April 13, 2029, which will only come as bad news if you’re particularly superstitious.

Both 2019 OK and Apophis are far larger than the Chelyabinsk meteor, which was just 20m across. The risk of them hitting Earth may be small, but they would be devastating if they did.

Avoiding Armageddon

If we find an asteroid on an actual collision course with Earth, is there anything we can do? With just a day or week’s notice we would be in real trouble, but with more notice there are options.

We are already sending spacecraft to near-Earth asteroids, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx currently visiting Bennu and Japan’s Hayabusa2 currently visiting Ryugu.

However, these are missions of discovery rather than destruction. Indeed, destroying a near-Earth asteroid may be counterproductive, potentially creating multiple destructive asteroids.

So how can we stop catastrophe? The solution may be to give dangerous asteroids a gentle nudge rather than a vicious kick. If an asteroid’s velocity can be changed by just 1km per hour, over years that adds up to thousands of kilometres’ difference in position. Given that the pale blue dot of Earth is just 12,750km across, a small nudge to a big rock may be enough to avoid annihilation.

– ref. An asteroid just buzzed past Earth, and we barely noticed in time – http://theconversation.com/an-asteroid-just-buzzed-past-earth-and-we-barely-noticed-in-time-120972

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By G. Gregory Haff, Professor of Strength and Conditioning, Edith Cowan University

The world swimming championships currently taking place in South Korea have been attracting global attention not so much for the performances in the pool as the protests over alleged doping taking place on the podium.

The target of these protests has been the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang. After Sun won his fourth straight world title in the 400-metre freestyle, his arch-rival, Australian Mack Horton, refused to take the podium to receive his silver medal.

Days later, Britain’s Duncan Scott, who finished third to Sun in the 200-metre freestyle event, also snubbed Sun by refusing to take part in the medal winners’ group photo and shake the Chinese swimmer’s hand.

The protests have again shed light on the problems with the system set up to prevent doping in elite sport.

Many have heaped praise on Horton and Scott for protesting the alleged misdeeds of a suspected drug cheat. But it’s important to look at the facts surrounding Sun’s case before vilifying him in such a public way.

The facts of the case

It is true that Sun has a dubious history when it comes to drug testing. In 2014, he served a three-month suspension after testing positive for the banned stimulant trimetazidine, which he said was used to treat a heart condition.

More recently, one of Sun’s security guards used a hammer to smash a vial of his blood last year to prevent a doping test on the sample. While this action would certainly raise suspicions, digging deeper into the facts of the case reveals there is much more to the story.

Read more: Why is doping wrong anyway?

To make sense of the controversy, one must understand the anti-doping system and the athletes’ rights within the system. Central to an effective anti-doping program is a standard set of procedures designed to protect all athletes from malicious or inappropriate testing processes.

Sun’s sample was collected by three doping control officers, but only one of them had the appropriate accreditation to carry out the test. Acknowledging this fact, a doping tribunal with FINA (the International Swimming Federation) concluded earlier this year that

the blood that was initially collected (and subsequently destroyed) was not collected with proper authorisation and thus was not properly a ‘sample’.

As a result, the tribunal concluded that the sample collection was “invalid and void”.

In addition, one of the doping control officers breached athlete confidentiality by taking photos and videos of Sun during the collection process. This is an important procedural breach. In accordance with World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) procedures, an athlete is guaranteed anonymity until a sanction for a doping violation is handed down.

Read more: Testimony vs testing: anti-doping is an imperfect science

There was also only one male doping control assistant to collect a urine sample, another violation of procedures outline by WADA. The tribunal noted:

Such facts, once established, are a compelling justification for the athlete to refuse to have any further personal and sensitive contact with the DCA [doping control assistant].

Ultimately, the FINA doping tribunal determined that the appropriate procedures for collecting Sun’s samples were not followed, clearing the way for him to compete at the world championships.

A flawed system, but also fair

This isn’t to say that Sun is without fault. There are procedures that athletes must follow to contest a flawed or faulty sample collection – and smashing a vial of blood is clearly not an appropriate response.

While the world swimming governing body accepted the doping tribunal’s findings, WADA has appealed the finding to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). If the CAS verifies the procedural problems with the sample collection, it is very likely that Sun will be exonerated.

Sun’s case highlights the flaws in the anti-droping regime, but it’s also important to remember that the WADA Code and urine and blood sample procedures are designed to ensure all athletes are treated fairly within a standardised process.

Read more: The science of doping and how cheating athletes pass drug tests

This system is designed not only to protect the sport from drug cheats, but also to protect athletes from being falsely accused.

Being called a “doping cheat” is one of the worst accusations an athlete can face. So, while Sun is not blameless, his accusers should consider the possibility that it is the anti-doping system that is actually at fault in this case.

Richard Ings, the former Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) chief, came to Sun’s defence for this reason. Describing himself as “no fan of Sun Yang”, he nonetheless said

I do believe that athletes are treading a very treacherous path if they are making allegations against other individuals that they cannot substantiate.

No matter the sport, be it swimming or any other, the fight against doping will always exist. But only once the doping control process has determined that an athlete has violated the rules can we safely label him or her a “drug cheat”.

– ref. Snubbing Chinese swimmer Sun Yang ignores the flaws in the anti-doping system – http://theconversation.com/snubbing-chinese-swimmer-sun-yang-ignores-the-flaws-in-the-anti-doping-system-120895

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

Two people in Victoria and New South Wales have died after eating smoked salmon contaminated with listeria, health authorities report. Both were over 70 and had underlying health conditions.

Health authorities are also investigating a non-fatal Queensland case.

Although Australia’s chief medical officer has not confirmed smoked salmon is behind these three cases, he says this is the “likely source”.

So what is listeriosis, who’s at risk and what can we do to prevent getting sick?

Read more: Food safety: are the sniff test, the five-second rule and rare burgers safe?

What is listeria?

Listeriosis is caused by eating food contaminated with a bacterium called Listeria monocytogenes. It’s an uncommon illness but can be deadly if it causes septicaemia (blood poisoning) or meningitis (inflammation of the membranes around the brain).

The elderly are particularly susceptible to listeriosis, as are pregnant women and their fetuses, and those with weakened immune systems.

Past outbreaks have been linked with rockmelon, raw milk, soft cheeses, salads, unwashed raw vegetables, cold diced chicken, pre-cut fruit and fruit salad.

Read more: What is listeria and how does it spread in rockmelons?

How does it spread?

Listeria is found widely in soil, water and vegetation, and can be carried by pets and wild animals. Listeria contamination of food can occur in restaurants and home kitchens, where the bacterium can be found, and spread, in areas where food is handled.

Contamination levels of raw fish, including salmon, tend to be low. Contamination can occur at any point along the food production chain. It can occur at the food processing stage, for instance in machines used in salting, skinning and slicing fish.

Listeria has also been found in smoked fish products. It is not possible to produce cold-smoked fish that is consistently free from listeria. This is because cold smoking does not involve cooking the fish by heat during the smoking process in order to produce the characteristic delicate texture. In contrast, hot smoking, which is carried out a higher temperature but leaves a less moist and firm texture, kills off listeria.

Manufacturers of cold-smoked fish try to ensure levels of listeria are low. They do this by obtaining product from producers that have a history of non-contaminated fish, freezing, restricting shelf-life time or by using preservatives.

But Listeria monocytogenes is quite a hardy bacterium. It can survive at refrigerated temperatures; viable listeria has been found in vacuum-packed smoked salmon at 4℃.

Listeria also has mechanisms to survive acidic environments such as the stomach, and to grow in oxygen-free environments. Temperatures of 74℃ or greater are needed to kill it.

What are the symptoms?

Eating foods that contain listeria won’t necessarily make you sick. It can survive in the body, moving between cells (human phagocytes) for a long time. This is, in part, why there can be a long “incubation period” between ingestion and onset of illness. This can be as long as 70 days but is usually around three weeks.

Symptoms include fever, muscle aches and gastrointestinal problems such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

In severe cases, symptoms can include collapse and shock, particularly if there is septicaemia. If the infection has spread to the central nervous system, more worrying symptoms will occur, such as headache, stiff neck, confusion, seizures and the person may go into a coma. In such cases, the fatality rate is as high as 30%.

Read more: Health Check: what to eat and avoid during pregnancy

In pregnant women, the bacteria are thought to cross the lining of maternal blood vessels and then enter the fetal circulation of the placenta. Infection during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn infections.

Treatment for confirmed infections involves antibiotics and supportive measures such as intravenous fluids for dehydration.

When infection does occur in pregnancy, the early use of antibiotics can often prevent infection of the fetus or newborn.

But even with very prompt treatment, infections can be deadly in high-risk groups.

Why are some groups at higher risk?

Pregnant women are a special group known to be at higher risk for listeriosis. The underlying mechanisms for why pregnant women are susceptible to listeriosis are not well understood but it’s thought an altered immune system is involved.

People with weakened immune systems, such as those on cancer treatment or medications that suppress the immune system, are more susceptible to developing listeriosis because their bodies are less able to fight off the bug.

Newborn babies are also extremely vulnerable as their immune systems have not yet matured, as are the elderly, whose immune systems are declining.

How can you prevent listeriosis?

Remain vigilant for alerts from health regulatory authorities such as Food Standards Australia New Zealand and state public health authorities.

Not everyone needs to stay clear of smoked salmon products but those in a higher risk group should. And once a specific product has been identified as a source of a food-borne illness outbreak such as listeria, then throw it away.

Here are some practical things you can do to prevent the spread of listeria:

• thoroughly cook raw food from animal sources, such as beef, lamb, pork and poultry
• wash raw vegetables and fruit thoroughly before eating
• use separate cutting boards for raw meat and foods that are ready to eat
• wash your hands with soapy water before and after preparing food
• wash knives and cutting boards after handling uncooked foods
• wash your hands after handling animals.

Read more: Do we really have to wash fruit and vegetables?

If you are at greater risk for listeriosis, consider avoiding:

• raw and uncooked smoked seafood such as smoked salmon
• pre-cut melons such as rockmelon or watermelon
• pre-packed cold salads including coleslaw and fresh fruit salad
• pre-cooked cold chicken, cold delicatessen meats, pâté
• unpasteurised milk or milk products, soft cheeses (such as brie, camembert, ricotta or blue-vein)
• sprouted seeds
• raw mushrooms.

– ref. What is listeria and how does it spread in smoked salmon? – http://theconversation.com/what-is-listeria-and-how-does-it-spread-in-smoked-salmon-120967

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mathew Leonardi, Gynaecologist and PhD candidate, Nepean Clinical School, University of Sydney

Headlines over the past week have given false hope to the roughly 8–10% of women of reproductive age with endometriosis:

Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus (called the endometrium) is found outside the uterus, causing pelvic pain and/or infertility.

We don’t know what causes endometriosis and, while surgery and medical management can help many women manage their symptoms, the condition negatively impacts women’s lives in almost every area, from work to intimate relationships.

Read more: Considering surgery for endometriosis? Here’s what you need to know

The new paper comes from a UK team studying the mechanisms behind pain in endometriosis, mostly in mice artificially induced to have endometriosis.

They found mice with endometriosis had higher levels of a type of white blood cell (called a macrophage) than healthy mice. This led to increased production of a growth hormone known as insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1.

When the levels of macrophages and IGF-1 were lowered, the mice behaved in ways that implied they had less pain.

While this was a very well-designed study and these insights might help us get closer to understanding why the pain in endometriosis seems to persist despite medical or surgical treatment, the researchers haven’t found the cause of the disease, let alone a cure.

How was the research conducted?

There were three main parts to the study: one in live mice, one looking at how mice cells responded in a lab environment, and a component that focused on human women.

Mice experiments

The researchers performed two experiments on two groups of mice: one group had endometriosis, the other didn’t.

The first experiments compared levels of macrophages – a specific type of white blood cell involved in the immune system – in mice with and without endometriosis, then monitored mice behaviours that reflect pain.

The researchers then attempted to reduce the level of macrophages and IGF-1 release in some of the mice with endometriosis. They wanted to assess whether pain levels would be reduced or return to the same levels as the mice without endometriosis.

The second experiment identified that the hormone IGF-1, produced by macrophages, is higher in mice with endometrosis.

The researchers exposed half of the mice with endometriosis to a drug that would block IGF-1 and again assessed their pain-related behaviour.

Lab studies of mice cells

Another two aspects of the study took place in mice cells.

One looked at the changes in markers of inflammation in the brain and spine of mice with and without endometriosis.

The second looked at nerve growth and sensitivity to pain in the presence of IGF-1.

Testing the theory in women

The researchers attempted to demonstrate that IGF-1 was higher in endometriosis tissue and the peritoneal (abdominal cavity) fluid of women with endometriosis compared to women without.

To do this, they recruited women with chronic pelvic pain who were undergoing laparoscopy (a procedure where a camera and surgical tools are used via small cuts in the abdomen) for diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis.

What were the results?

The researchers found mice with endometriosis had higher concentrations of macrophages than those without endometriosis. These macrophages had increased production of IGF-1.

In women with endometriosis, the researchers detected macrophages that produced IGF-1 within endometriosis tissue specifically.

Women with endometriosis also had a greater concentration of IGF-1 in their peritoneal (abdominal cavity) fluid than women without endometriosis. Their pain scores increased as their IGF-1 levels increased.

When the researchers tried to reduce the concentration of macrophages in mice, the animals seemed to exhibit fewer pain-related behaviours. But not all behaviours changed with the reduction of macrophages.

Similarly, when mice were given a drug that prevented IGF-1 from having its normal effect, mice seemed to experience less pain.

The effect of reducing macrophages in mice also seemed to have a positive effect on reducing inflammatory markers at the level of the brain and spine.

What does it all mean?

The researchers found evidence that IGF-1 was higher in both women and mice with endometriosis, and this rise was due to increased production by macrophages, which are associated with endometriosis.

These increased levels of IGF-1 seem to contribute to the pain experienced by mice with endometriosis. This is likely to occur because IGF-1 encourages nerve development, which makes that tissue more sensitive to pain.

It’s important to remember that mice are not just small, furry humans, so we need further studies to determine if these high levels of IGF-1 have the same contribution to pain in humans as in mice, and if reducing them has the same effect on pain that was observed in the mice experiments.

We also need to keep in mind that these mice had endometriosis for a relatively short time compared to the many years that women with endometriosis have the disease. There may be other changes occurring over the longer term that can’t be explored in these mice models.

The study gets us one step closer to understanding why endometriosis causes pain and offers a cautiously optimistic hope for future therapies to treat women experiencing endometriosis-related pain.

But it does not explain the cause (or causes) of endometriosis, which remains evasive.

– Mathew Leonardi, Mike Armour and George Condous. Cecilia Ng, Clinical Trials Network Manager of the National Endometriosis Clinical and Scientific Trials (NECST) at Jean Hailes for Women’s Health, also contributed to this article.

Blind peer review

This Research Check is a good summary and interpretation of the research paper on the association between IGF-1-related pain and endometriosis.

This study is published by a respected research team and they are careful not to overstate their findings. By contrast, the newspaper article in The Sun is a major misrepresentation of the study and one that would unnecessarily raise hope of an imminent cure for endometriosis in the minds of the many women suffering from this disease.

Endometriosis is a complex disorder that has both genetic and environmental risk factors. It is unlikely that any single issue will be found that is solely responsible. This is reflected in the several different approaches to treatment that are currently in use. – Peter Rogers

Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.

– ref. Research Check: have scientists found the cause of endometriosis? – http://theconversation.com/research-check-have-scientists-found-the-cause-of-endometriosis-120665

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin Moodie, Adjunct professor, RMIT University

Reports of research misconduct have been prominent recently and probably reflect wider problems of relying on dated integrity protections.

The recent reports are from Retraction Watch, which is a blog that reports on the withdrawal of articles by academic journals. The site’s database reports that journals have withdrawn a total of 247 papers with an Australian author going back to the 1980s.

This compares with 324 papers withdrawn with Canadian authors, 582 from the UK and 24 from New Zealand. Australian retractions are 0.01% of all retractions reported on the site, a fraction of Australia’s 4% share of all research publications.

Read more: Science isn’t broken, but we can do better: here’s how

Australian retractions have fallen from around 25 a year when Retraction Watch was launched in 2010 to an average of 11 in each of 2018 and 2017. This is in line with all retractions falling from 5,108 in 2010 to an average of 660 in the last two years.

Scratching the surface

But this is not a good indication of trends in research cheating. Probably only a modest proportion of all flawed publications are identified and retracted. There can be a delay of several years before research problems are found, reported and verified.

Common reasons for retracting articles include duplicating results, errors in results or analysis, and plagiarism. Other reasons include falsification or fabrication of data, research misconduct and unreliable research.

But not all retractions are for nefarious reasons. One publisher retracted a paper because it had through misunderstanding published the wrong version of the paper on its website. It promptly published the right version once its mistake had been noticed.

Research misconduct is a long-standing problem. The Piltdown Man hoax in which the hoaxer claimed to have discovered the “missing link” between apes and humans was perpetrated back in 1912.

And research misconduct can have serious consequences. Opposition to vaccination is bolstered by a fraudulent paper claiming a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism and bowel disease, which was published in 1998.

It is hard to argue for evidence-based policy and practice if there are serious doubts about the quality of the evidence. Even where there is no cheating, confidence in all research is undermined by the replication crisis in which researchers can’t repeat earlier findings.

Misconduct undermines science

Reports of research misconduct strengthen the denial of science and undermine the argument for taking concerted action to manage climate change and other problems.

Reports of research misconduct are coinciding with reports of student academic misconduct, mostly plagiarism and contract cheating where a student pays another to complete their assessment.

The stresses on researcher and student malefactors are probably similar. They are the pressures to succeed in an increasing competitive environment. As societies become more unequal there are much higher rewards for apparent success and bigger penalties for failure.

Academic misconduct also likely reflects the contemporary conditions of universities, which are increasingly expected to be businesslike in managing their greatly increased resources.

Much higher student-to-staff ratios make it much harder to develop the close and supportive relations between teachers and students that discourage cheating.

Tackling the problem

Universities are responding by increasing their regulation and oversight of academic activities. They are using software to detect cheating, but this is not a full solution.

The Australian government established the Australian Research Integrity Committee in 2011, but it has limitations. It reviews institutions’ responses to allegations of research misconduct, which in turn integrate institutions’ academic integrity policies, employees’ contracts and institutions’ disciplinary policies and enterprise agreements.

The fundamental problem is that the traditional systems for ensuring researcher and student integrity are based on the trust that is built from personal interactions within a much smaller system. They are also based on the volunteerism of the less formal traditional scholarly community for refereeing grant applications and journal submissions.

More systematic and rigorous processes will probably be needed as higher education transitions to universal access and wholesale research. As processes are formalised the costs of refereeing submissions may no longer be hidden in experts’ voluntary contributions to their community of scholars. They are likely to be professionalised, and costed and paid for explicitly.

Read more: Dependent and vulnerable: the experiences of academics on casual and insecure contracts

Academics’ relations with most undergraduate students and with most researchers will become more formal. Sadly, academics will likely have to trust less their students and other researchers. Even collaborating researchers have been caught by the failures of co-authors in the parts of the research and writing they were responsible for.

Conversely, much of what students and researchers have done on trust will have to be checked by new systems introduced by institutions, research granting bodies and publishers. Most students and researchers will experience far more bureaucracy.

The failures of academic integrity of students and researchers may be only a fraction of all work by scholars. But they so corrode trust in academic qualifications and publications that stringent measures will be needed to protect academic integrity. Hopefully those measures will be more preventive than punitive.

– ref. Fudged research results erode people’s trust in experts – http://theconversation.com/fudged-research-results-erode-peoples-trust-in-experts-120881

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

Scott Morrison has appointed his one-time chief of staff Phil Gaetjens to head the prime minister’s department. He replaces Martin Parkinson, who finds himself out of a top public service job for the second time under the Coalition government.

Gaetjens has most recently been secretary of the Treasury, a position to which he was appointed when Morrison was treasurer.

Morrison told a news conference: “Following the election, the secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet and I have agreed that it is an opportune time for new leadership of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet”.

Parkinson, a highly respected career public servant, was sacked as Treasury secretary by the Abbott government, and brought back to the public service as head of the prime minister’s department by Malcolm Turnbull. His current contract ran until early 2021.

He said in a statement to departmental staff on Thursday: “This timing works for me personally and allows the PM to make a transition to a secretary who will be able to support him through the full parliamentary term”.

He was quoted in Thursday’s The Australian as saying, “Absolutely I would not want anyone to think there was anything about my relationship with the Prime Minister that was leading me to leave”.

Although prime ministerial sources dispute that Parkinson was displaced, it had been rumoured since the election that Morrison wanted a change at the top of his department.

Gaetjens’ public service career appeared doomed only months ago when a Labor government seemed likely. Then-shadow treasurer Chris Bowen had criticised his appointment as political and made it clear he would be removed under a Shorten government.

The new head of Treasury will be Steven Kennedy, who is now secretary of the infrastructure department.

Earlier Kennedy was a deputy secretary in the prime minister’s department. In that position, he was in charge of innovation and transformation, as well as leading work on cities, regulatory reform, public data and digital innovation. He also served in the office of Julia Gillard when she was prime minister, seconded as the director of cabinet and government business and senior economic adviser.

Morrison pointed out both Gaetjens – who was also Peter Costello’s chief of staff – and Kennedy had had experience in the political realm, noting that while Gaetjens had worked on the Coalition side Kennedy had worked on the Labor side.

The PM was ready for a question suggesting the choice of Gaetjens would be seen as politicisation of the public service, reeling off appointments Labor had made of people who had worked in the political arena.

Morrison left the way open for further shake ups at the top of the service. “I will always reserve that right to make further changes where I believe they are necessary. I think these are the ones that are necessary right now”. There will be an acting secretary in the Infrastructure department for the time being.

Morrison is Minister for the Public Service and has strong ideas on how it should operate. At his news conference he once again stressed the emphasis he is placing on its responsibility for efficient implementation.

He summed up his attitude: “When it comes to the public service, my view is to respect and expect”.

Asked about the service’s role in giving advice, he said, “It is the job of the public service to advise you of the challenges that may present to a government in implementing its agenda. That is the advisory role of the public service. […] But the government sets policy. The government is the one that goes to the people and sets out an agenda, as we have”.

Parkinson in his statement to his departmental staff told them: “I want to continue to encourage you to have a view, be curious, understand what is happening at the forefront of policy and policy-related research, engage widely with stakeholders from all parts of the community, and be resolutely committed to advocating for truly evidence-based policy”.

– ref. Morrison brings his own man in to head the Prime Minister’s department – http://theconversation.com/morrison-brings-his-own-man-in-to-head-the-prime-ministers-department-120973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ann Morrison, Honorary Associate Professor, School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, University of Southern Queensland

As I watched my hunting dog standing off the lead and lined up with all the other Kleiner Münsterländers, awaiting her turn to swim out and bring back the dead duck (an important training item) thrown into the deep water, I felt a sense of pride.

It dawned on me that people may not always be the best teachers for dogs. Her desire to fit in was evident as she echoed the behaviour of the dogs around her. Unfortunately, that echoing had also become evident on daily walks with a crew of less well-trained dogs.

Let me be clear: I am not a hunter. While living in Denmark, under advice from locals and looking for a dog that was smart and a little challenging, I stumbled upon the Kleiner Münsterländer breed, originally bred in Münster in western Germany as a medium-sized hunting and family dog.

Read more: Is your dog happy? Ten common misconceptions about dog behaviour

They are smart and fast, and the one I ended up with, Clara, was described as “hard-headed” and a natural leader. But that somewhat euphemistic description left me completely unprepared for the challenges ahead.

This dog was not like the loyal, steadfast, obedient Labradors I knew. This one was wilful, always looking to take the reins, always challenging me to think up new ways to interact, new games to play, new things to learn, new ways to do things. For example, I gave her a reward so she would drop the rubbish she had picked up. Her response was then to deliberately retrieve more rubbish to get more rewards.

Meanwhile, my research involved designing a set of vibrating and tactile vests that people could wear to help them relax, and that inactive people could use to become energised. The vests were part of a larger European Union-funded project, CultAR, involving various technologies designed to help tourists to navigate around cultural sites in Padua, Italy. As such the vests signalled when and which way to turn, and when to stop on arrival.

I wondered whether similar research could be used to help dogs who were ageing, deaf or blind to continue exercising, but still be safe. Or even my dog, who understood Danish commands but not English ones when we were about to move to an English-speaking country. We set up a series of experiments to see whether dogs would easily receive and process commands if they were presented as vibrations, rather than as verbal commands.

We tried testing “vibrotactile” commands on dogs, but the already trained ones has little use for yet another system of commands, and my dog was too sensitive to bear the vibrating sensations.

Tough training

The Kleiner Münsterländer hunters were far tougher when training their dogs than I wanted to be with mine. At the extreme end, they used archaic methods such as shock collars or isolating their dogs in cold rooms. In dog training, as in parenting, I believe punitive measures to enforce obedience should give way to more modern ideas about ensuring well-being and creating a bond of affection and enjoyment with the handler, owner or trainer.

In addition, as a researcher, I was just as interested in what my dog could teach me. She was undeniably smart and I could learn a lot from her navigation skills alone. So I began looking at how to incorporate her intelligence into her learning and training program in a way that would enrich both of our qualities of life.

We tried a socialisation school. With it came a whole new set of leads, commands and ceremonies. Clara adjusted, although I could see she loved to be with her own breed. Kleiner Münsterländers are all a variation of each other; they become slightly mesmerised in each other’s company.

At a family Christmas in New Zealand, I bumped into Mark Vette, who trains animals for film and television, has worked with the celebrated animal behaviour researcher Marc Bekoff and even ran a program to teach rescue dogs to drive – yes, really. I was inspired to find other ways.

We moved to Australia in early 2017, and there was a lot to adjust to. Summers were far hotter than Denmark; indoors in winter was much colder. There was new language, new smells, different dogs to meet, and different landscapes to explore – no more dog parks in forests!

Again, too, our training involved a new set of leads, commands and ceremonies. This time we were in a pack with leaders (both canine and human) where the dogs (and the main trainer) were perceived as alphas, or leaders (wolves). Some methods involved negative reinforcement: giving the dogs an unpleasant experience to prevent them repeating that behaviour.

By now we had tried three different methods of dog training, each with their own failings. For example, my dog would be bored easily with repetitive acts, or we did activities that were not particularly useful or relevant in our daily lives, or she simply complied out of fear, but this was not the relationship I wanted to foster. Something began to dawn on me: the failings were ours, not the dogs’.

We might get frustrated with our dogs for not following our commands, but we are just as likely to let them down by getting distracted or being inconsistent in our reactions to particular behaviours. The dog is only trying to make sense of what we communicate, so if we give them mixed messages – perhaps by only responding to their barks if we’re not in the middle of something else more pressing – then confusion and stress ensue.

Read more: Are you walking your dog enough?

If consistency is the key, and the failure to be consistent is ours, what can we do to be more consistent and help our animals to live a stress-free life? Perhaps it is us who need a wearable vibrating device to remind us to stay on cue.

A small buzz on the wrist could “train” us to be more vigilant and attentive to our dogs, in situations where they are trying desperately to tell us something. (“There’s someone coming towards the house – I’d better keep warning my owner, more loudly this time, as I don’t think she’s heard me yet…”)

Wearables could also help alert us to the small but telltale signs of stress in our dogs: ears pinned back, hard focus of eyes, stiffening of body, and so on.

We already have a plethora of devices to help stave off boredom and loneliness for animals who are left at home alone for long hours. Maybe there’s a market for devices that ease our dogs’ stress when we’re hanging out with them too.

– ref. Training my dog taught me that it’s people who really need training – http://theconversation.com/training-my-dog-taught-me-that-its-people-who-really-need-training-99443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

Coverage of the Christchurch terrorism by Australia’s television channels raised “serious questions” about whether they had breached the television codes of practice, according to the broadcasting regulator, the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA).

However, it has declined to make specific findings that the codes were in fact breached.

Instead, it proposes to discuss with the television industry whether the codes are adequately framed to deal with the kind of material generated by the atrocity, especially the footage from the terrorist’s bodycam.

Read more: Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream

The ACMA launched its inquiry into the coverage in the immediate aftermath of the March 15 attacks, reviewing 200 hours of coverage spanning March 15, 16 and 17.

It found that no material had been broadcast explicitly showing a person being shot, injured or killed.

However, footage had been shown of

• a person being shot at

• a victim who had already been shot

• the scene inside the Al Noor mosque, where most of the victims were killed.

The report is open to the interpretation that the threshold for violence acceptable for broadcast in these circumstances is footage that does not show someone actually being shot.

That is likely to be a central point of discussion between the ACMA and the television industry in the discussions that the report says will now take place.

The most relevant clause in the existing Free TV Australia code of practice says a broadcaster cannot show material that is likely to seriously distress or seriously offend a substantial number of viewers unless there is a public interest in doing so.

Of course there was a very strong public interest case here. However, ethically speaking, a test of necessity is also required: how much and what level of violence is it necessary to show in order to convey to the audience a comprehensive account of what has happened?

The various Australian television channels answered this question differently.

Sky News, Seven and Nine all showed footage of someone being shot at.

Ten showed footage of gunfire more generally.

All four – Seven, Nine, Ten and Sky – used moving footage from the terrorist’s bodycam.

The ABC was the most cautious. It used stills from the bodycam.

SBS showed largely unedited footage from overseas in which the smoke from the gunfire was the only thing obscuring the view of people who had been shot.

A further issue that caused the ACMA concern was what it called the high degree of repetition of certain high-impact depictions within a short space of time. It stated that “excessive and gratuitous repetition may not be proportionate to the public interest and may have the effect of heightening distress or offence to the audience”.

These high-impact depictions included actions that killed a person, strongly implied that a person would be killed, or a person who had just been killed.

The ACMA also questioned whether the broadcasting of the bodycam footage from inside the Al Noor mosque, some of which included the sound of injured people, could be “properly justified”.

In this context, it suggests that in reviewing its code of practice, the television industry take account of the provisions of the new laws against the online streaming of abhorrent violent material, passed by federal parliament in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch terrorism.

The ACMA drew an important distinction between footage from inside the mosque taken from the terrorist’s bodycam and the footage from a survivor that was also shown.

The distinction was that while the bodycam footage was propaganda, the survivor’s footage was not seeking to glorify the violence but to show the horror being experienced by the victims.

The overall effect is of a report that is nuanced but very tame.

It takes a particularly narrow reading of the relevant clause in the code of practice to avoid saying it was breached.

A breach of the code should be based on a broad reading because the codes are designed to provide broad guidance to journalists making big decisions in a hurry. They are not designed to be parsed for legal niceties, but too often this is exactly what the ACMA does.

Read more: Christchurch attacks provide a new ethics lesson for professional media

At the very least, the stations should be told that the mistakes identified in the report — even if they are called “questions” – will attract a penalty if repeated in the future.

Of course this was a difficult story to cover and mistakes were made.

But the ACMA is wrong to say that it was uniquely difficult.

The genuinely unique feature of it was the use of the bodycam by the terrorist to propagandise his atrocity.

There have been many propaganda videos made by terrorists, although not from a bodycam.

When a British soldier, Lee Rigby, was run over and stabbed to death in London in 2013, there was a long propaganda video showing one of the assassins holding a bloodied knife and making a propagandising speech.

To minimise the propaganda effect, many channels cut off most of the sound and did a voice-over. Many also pixillated the bloodied knife.

And there have been many cases where footage has been taken from inside a scene of carnage, notably the Paris Bataclan dance hall terror attack in 2015.

– ref. Media watchdog’s report into Christchurch shootings goes soft on showing violent footage – http://theconversation.com/media-watchdogs-report-into-christchurch-shootings-goes-soft-on-showing-violent-footage-120577

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Hansen, Chief of Staff, The Conversation

If you’re anything like me, celebrity smiles and Colgate ads make you feel guilty about your regular consumption of coffee, red wine, tea, and all the other fun things we’re told will stain our teeth.

And the solution seems so easy – a box of whitening strips from the supermarket shelf tells us so. But does whitening teeth also remove some of what keeps them healthy? And might they be more easily stained afterwards?

We asked five experts if whitening is bad for teeth.

Five out of five experts said no…

But they all had a pretty big caveat. It’s safe provided it’s done by a dentist. So for this you’re looking at upwards of a few hundred dollars, rather than just a trip to the supermarket.

Here are their detailed responses:

If you have a “yes or no” health question you’d like posed to Five Experts, email your suggestion to: alexandra.hansen@theconversation.edu.au

Disclosures: Alexander is a Federal Councillor for the Australian Dental Association Inc. and occasionally works clinically within private dental practice. Kelly is employed by CQUniversity to teach in the Bachelor of Oral Health program. Under the supervision of registered dental professionals, students deliver professional tooth whitening procedures at the university clinic. Madhan is a NHMRC Sidney Sax Research Fellow in Public Health and Health Services at the University of Sydney and Kings College London. He is a full time oral health researcher, and is not currently involved in any clinical practice. Rebecca works in paediatric practice that does not offer whitening procedures.

– ref. We asked five experts: is whitening bad for teeth? – http://theconversation.com/we-asked-five-experts-is-whitening-bad-for-teeth-120828

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Henley, Research Fellow in Climate and Water Resources, University of Melbourne

New reconstructions of Earth’s temperature over the past 2,000 years, published today in Nature Geoscience, highlight the astonishing rate of the recent widespread warming of our planet.

We also now have a clearer picture of decade-to-decade temperature variations, and what drove those fluctuations before the industrial revolution took hold.

Contrary to previous theories that pre-industrial temperature changes in the last 2,000 years were due to variations in the Sun, our research found volcanoes were largely responsible. However, these effects are now dwarfed by modern, human-driven climate change.

Read more: 40 years ago, scientists predicted climate change. And hey, they were right

Reading the tree rings

Without networks of thermometers, ocean buoys and satellites to record temperature, we need other methods to reconstruct past climates. Luckily, nature has written the answers down for us. We just have to learn how to read them.

Corals, ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments, and ocean sediment cores provide a wealth of information about past conditions – this is called “proxy” data – and can be brought together to tell us about the global climate in the past.

Teams of scientists around the world have spent many thousands of hours of field and laboratory work to collect and analyse samples, and ultimately publish and make available their data so other scientists can undertake further analysis.

Previously, our team, along with many other proxy experts, meticulously analysed and collated temperature-sensitive proxy data covering the last 2,000 years from around the world, creating the largest database of temperature-sensitive proxy data yet assembled. We then made all of the data publicly available in one place.

Astonishing consistency between reconstruction methods

With this unique dataset in hand, our team set about reconstructing past global temperature.

We scientists are notoriously sceptical of our own analysis. But what makes us more confident about our findings is when different methods applied to the same data yield the same result.

In this paper we applied seven different methods to reconstruct global temperature from our proxy network. We were astounded to find that the methods all gave remarkably similar results for multidecadal fluctuations – a very precise result considering the breadth of the methods used.

This gave us the confidence to delve further into what drove global temperature fluctuations on decadal timescales before the industrial revolution really took hold.

What happened before human-induced climate change?

Our study produces the clearest picture yet of Earth’s average temperature over the past two millennia. We also found that climate models performed very well in comparison, and they succeed in capturing the amount of natural variability in the climate system – the natural ups and downs in temperature from year-to-year and decade-to-decade.

Using climate models and reconstructions of external climate forcing, such as from volcanic eruptions and solar variability, we deduced that before the industrial revolution, global temperature fluctuations from decade to decade in the past 2,000 years were mainly controlled by aerosol forcing from major volcanic eruptions, not variations in the Sun’s output. Volcanic aerosols have a temporary cooling effect on the global climate. Following these temporary cooling periods our reconstructions show there is an increased probability of a temporary warming period due to the recovery from volcanic cooling.

Recent warming is far beyond natural variability

There are, of course, natural changes in Earth’s temperature from decade to decade, from century to century, and also on much longer timescales. With our new reconstructions were also able to quantify the rate of warming and cooling over the past 2,000 years. Comparing our reconstructions to recent worldwide instrumental data, we found that at no time in the last 2,000 years has the rate of warming been so high.

In statistical terms, rates of warming during all 51-year periods from the 1950s onwards exceed the 99th percentile of reconstructed pre-industrial 51 yr trends. If we look at timescales longer than 20 years, the probability that the largest warming trend occurred after 1850 greatly exceeds the values expected from chance alone. And, for trend lengths over 50 years, that probability swiftly approaches 100%. So what do all these stats mean? The strength of the recent warming is extraordinary. It is yet more evidence of human-induced warming of the planet.

But hasn’t there been natural climate change in the past?

Our understanding of past temperature variations of the Earth contributes to understanding such fundamental things as how life evolved, where our species came from, how our planet works and, now that humans have fundamentally altered it, how modern climate change will unfold.

We know that over millions of years, the movement of tectonic plates and interactions between the solid earth, the atmosphere and the ocean, have a slow effect on global temperature. On shorter (but still very long) timescales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, our planet’s climate is gradually influenced by small variations in the geometry of the Earth and the Sun, for example, small wobbles and variations in the Earth’s tilt and orbit.

From the Last Glacial Maximum, about 26,000 years ago, when huge ice sheets covered large parts of the Northern Hemisphere landmass, Earth transitioned to a 12,000-year warm period, called the Holocene.

Read more: Two centuries of continuous volcanic eruption may have triggered the end of the ice age

This was a time of relative stability in global temperature, apart from the temporary cooling effect of the odd volcano. With the development of human agriculture, our prosperity and population grew. Before the industrial revolution, Earth had not seen carbon dioxide concentrations above current levels for at least 2 million years.

Following the industrial revolution, warming commenced due to human activity. With a clearer picture of temperature variations over the past two millennia we now have a better understanding of the extraordinary nature of recent warming.

It is up to all of us to decide whether this is the kind of experiment we want to run on our planet.

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the leader of this study, Raphael Neukom, and my fellow co-authors from the PAGES 2k Consortium. We also owe the teams of proxy experts much gratitude. It is their generous contribution to science and to human knowledge that has allowed for this, and other palaeoclimate compilation and synthesis studies.

– ref. 2,000 years of records show it’s getting hotter, faster – http://theconversation.com/2-000-years-of-records-show-its-getting-hotter-faster-120882

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Springer, Professor of Human Geography, University of Newcastle

At first glance, heavy metal music and academia seem like odd bedfellows. The former is often looked on with a sense of derision for its assumed lack of refinement; the latter is seen as sophisticated.

Not long after I posted a callout for applications for a PhD scholarship to examine various aspects of social geography – including homelessness, veganism and heavy metal – news about the latter went viral.

Music publication Tone Deaf ran the headline:

You can now get a PhD in heavy metal thanks to an Australian uni

Similar headlines appeared in well-known publications around the world, including SBS, NME, Newsweek and Kerrang.

I never anticipated this level of interest in a simple call for PhD applicants. But in retrospect it is somewhat unsurprising. For most, the idea of academia and heavy metal coming together under a single roof represents a paradox; it’s a misplaced assumption built on ingrained ideas about these two particular cultural forms.

Academia is often seen as an expression of high culture. Heavy metal is frequently misunderstood, typically considered lowbrow, even feared.

But for heavy metal fans the idea of a PhD scholarship focusing on their favourite genre of music suddenly made academia more accessible. People often question the relevance of academic inquiry to their own lives, considering it opaque and distant.

This opportunity reveals how scholarly work can be rooted in everyday experience.

It’s not rubbish

Many academics, including geographers, study a range of cultural forms, including literature, poetry, film, art and various forms of music. Some contend studying heavy metal is “bullshit”, but there isn’t much difference to what I have proposed for this scholarship and what many human geographers are interested in.

Human geography is the branch of geography that studies the organisation of human cultures, social practices, economies and political systems across space (hence the geography). This includes the interconnections of human activities with the physical environment.

Read more: Why I offer a university course on Beyonce – one of the world’s most powerful people

Some cultural forms that are now revered for their influence and eloquence began their lives under the same shadow of ridicule that heavy metal often receives. Shakespeare wrote for the masses and was considered rubbish in his day.

What is interesting is how so-called low culture can be transformed into high culture over space and time, and, equally so, how that transformation often does not occur.

What initiates or prevents such changes in our aesthetic understanding? These are ideal questions for social scientists to consider.

The level of misunderstanding of what my call for PhD students involves reflects a general lack of knowledge of the workings of academia. A PhD program is not a course of study. It is a higher degree achieved through independent and original research.

While it might make for a quirky story to envision me as a more advanced version of Jack Black in the School of Rock, you can’t rock your way to a PhD in heavy metal.

The degree is actually in geography and the successful applicant will already have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree with honours in human geography or a closely aligned field.

I anticipate it will be an enjoyable project to work on, but any doctoral program is a rigorous process involving many years of dedicated study.

Why study heavy metal?

The amount of interest in the PhD scholarship I am offering, in part, provides an answer to why we should study heavy metal. People are genuinely interested in heavy metal as a particular cultural form.

It is a global phenomenon, representing a major social and cultural trend for the past five decades – one that has diffused to every corner of the globe.

While the bulk of heavy metal bands originated in the northern hemisphere, particularly in northern Europe and the United States, we have witnessed the innovative melding of heavy metal into local cultures in places as diverse as Indonesia, Lebanon, Botswana and Mongolia.

Read more: Explainer: the politics of heavy metal

Although remote from the geographical heart of heavy metal culture, Australia has developed its own unique and passionate approach. This interest has resulted in a number of high-profile bands such as Psycroptic, Mortification, Thy Art Is Murder and Deströyer 666 coming out of some of the major cities.

And we’ve also seen a surprising amalgamation of heavy metal culture and Indigenous traditions in remote locations like Wadeye in the Northern Territory.

It is precisely the widespread geographical diffusion of heavy metal in the face of ongoing misunderstanding that makes it worthy of academic inquiry. My proposed area of study is not alone. The distinctiveness of Australian heavy metal in terms of its experimental nature has meant it has already begun to attract serious academic attention.

There have been a number of exciting developments in recent years, including the University of Helsinki offering a summer school program on Heavy Metal Music in Contemporary History and Society, and the International Society for Metal Music Studies organising a number of conferences that have drawn participants from universities all around the world.

These events have been about bringing people with shared interests together, which is the single most important implication of heavy metal’s lasting legacy: the ability to connect people.

– ref. Thrash not trash ?: why heavy metal is a valid and vital PhD subject – http://theconversation.com/thrash-not-trash-why-heavy-metal-is-a-valid-and-vital-phd-subject-120096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Burton, Professor of Urban Management and Planning & Director, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

Australia has no enduring tradition of having a national urban policy, unlike the UK, from where we sometimes import policies. The Commonwealth government has a long history of intervening in cities, from addressing housing shortages to funding urban infrastructure, but has shied away from a formal national settlement strategy.

Sometimes the Commonwealth claims to have no constitutional case for involvement in city planning. Yet we’re comfortable with spatial planning at the local, metropolitan and regional scale, so planning at the national level makes sense too.

We also seem comfortable with the federal government doing investment deals with individual cities and regions – so-called City Deals. Why not use this fiscal clout to drive a more systematic program of reform? Reform priorities include how our metropolitan areas are governed and how they finance much-needed investment in infrastructure.

Read more: Spills and City Deals: what Turnbull’s urban policy has achieved, and where we go from here

To date, nine City Deals have been announced. These cover Townsville, Launceston, Western Sydney, Darwin, Hobart, Geelong, Adelaide, Perth and Southeast Queensland. Could this seemingly ad hoc collection of City Deals become part of a more coherent and effective national settlement strategy? And are we up to the enduring challenge of translating these plans and strategies into action?

Are we alone in this?

In the UK, urban policy was for many years based on the principle of “bending main programs” to focus on areas judged most in need of government assistance. This was sometimes used to justify having little or no new money allocated to urban policy initiatives. However, it also reflected the reality that the main spending programs of national government are often altogether bigger with much more fiscal clout on the ground.

We also need to recognise that there is more to growth and development than investing in hard infrastructure like roads and railways. Schools, hospitals, parks and cultural facilities play a vital role in creating liveable communities at any spatial scale.

When these facilities lag behind the rapid construction of homes, our towns and cities are poorer places to live in. Nor are they places of resilience where we are better able to cope with the environmental changes and technological disruptions of the 21st century.

Why a national strategy?

The UN Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular SDG 11, recognise that having a national urban policy is an important foundation for achieving sustainable urban development. But in Australia we have not established long-term federal funding agreements for the sustainable development of major cities. Nor are there incentives to reform how we govern and deliver public services and infrastructure at the metropolitan scale.

A strategy of establishing metropolitan governance and financial reforms would assist Australian cities to compete and be successful in a 21st-century, globally connected world. At the same time, it would still enable decisions to be based on local preferences and capabilities. This reform could be the central feature of a national approach to partnership with cities.

This national cities partnership could provide a much better framework in which individual City Deals become more effective. An agreement could include national performance outcomes and help drive reforms to metropolitan governance and financing. It could also provide a platform for a national settlement strategy that finally gets to grips with where our growing population might live and live well.

By focusing on the metropolitan scale, we will also be better placed to answer difficult questions like “who should serve as Australia’s metropolitan leaders?” and “who represents metropolitan communities and works with them to make hard decisions about their future?”.

Read more: All the signs point to our big cities’ need for democratic, metro-scale governance

Currently, we have States and their agencies working at the metropolitan level. We have local governments that, understandably, focus on their local issues. Only occasionally do local councils build cooperative structures at a regional or metropolitan scale. Local government amalgamation is not a solution to this issue, as there remains an important role for local as well as metropolitan-scale institutions.

What would a national cities partnership look like?

Australia has five metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million people. When regional cities with populations over 100,000 are also considered, there are 17 major cities and metropolitan areas that could join in developing a national cities partnership agreement.

Read more: Cities policy goes regional

The core principles for this partnership could be:

• collaboration between different levels of government at scales that make economic sense and are socially meaningful – e.g. metropolitan regions for big cities, and perhaps major regional cities and their hinterlands in rural and regional areas

• reforms to allow for the emergence of city and metropolitan leaders, who can talk on behalf of major urban communities and work with stakeholders such as business and non-government actors

• working hard to engage the public as well as peak bodies in thinking about the future of their region

• translating plans into action, through ongoing community support and concerted and coherent Commonwealth investment programs.

Commonwealth needs to take the lead

Disengagement at this time by the Commonwealth government would be disastrous, so we wish Minister Alan Tudge well in keeping cities on the government’s policy agenda.

A business-as-usual approach to federal intervention may not make things worse, but it won’t set up the reforms Australian cities need to thrive and grow sustainably.

A strategy to establish a national-city partnership agreement offers a way forward. It would provide a framework to make City Deals more effective. The partnership could enable the emergence of a new breed of metropolitan and city leaders to help elevate public dialogue about the future of our cities and drive financial reforms that would allow them to deliver and be responsible to their communities.

All of this should appeal to those in government who want to see policy evolve and develop and our cities grow into more prosperous, liveable and resilient places.

This article draws on separate presentations made by the authors at the 2019 National Congress of the Planning Institute of Australia.

– ref. A patchwork of City Deals or a national settlement strategy: what’s best for our growing cities? – http://theconversation.com/a-patchwork-of-city-deals-or-a-national-settlement-strategy-whats-best-for-our-growing-cities-117839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide

Ridley Scott and James Cameron did it, and George Lucas never stops. Directors ceaselessly return to their work to tweak, tinker, chop and change.

Extended Cut, Definitive Version, Special Edition: the list goes on.

Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, Francis Ford Coppola’s supposedly definitive version of his 1979 epic Vietnam war film, will be released in Australia today. But are these new versions just an excuse for obsessive tinkering and self-indulgence?

The director’s cut refers to a version of the film that remains closest to the director’s original vision, rather than the theatrical version officially released by the studio. In an era of DVD and streaming services, these alternative cuts are becoming increasingly attractive to studio boss, director and movie lover alike.

These “new” films, often only fractionally altered, throw the commerce versus art equation that has underpinned Hollywood for more than a century into sharp relief. The studio gets another chance to market a beloved film, the fans can endlessly debate the differences between the old and new version, while the director can once more return to the editing studio, elusively seeking perfection. In that sense, everyone wins.

With director’s cuts, the romantic myth of the brilliant (usually male) director battling against numbers-obsessed Hollywood is also reinforced.

Read more: Apocalypse Now turns 40: rediscovering the genesis of a film classic

The good and the bad

Director’s cuts often seek to rectify an injustice. Studio executives will often demand last-minute edits or reshoots if test screenings go badly. Directors who bitterly complained about how studios altered their vision can now go back and showcase the film as it was meant to be seen.

For example, director David Ayer recently acknowledged his original cut of the dark superhero film Suicide Squad was radically different to the studio-sanctioned release. The studio requested significant reshoots to lighten the tone and inject more comedy – but the “Ayer cut” only can be accessed on DVD and Blu-ray.

Other director’s cuts improve on the original version by bolstering visual scope, narrative continuity and emotional engagement. For example, the 17 minutes of deleted footage from James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), since restored to the 1990 Special Edition, are a masterclass in building tension and deepening character.

Ridley Scott’s endless reworking of the science-fiction/neo-noir Blade Runner remains the gold standard. First released in 1982, Scott oversaw a new version ten years on, and then the so-called Final Cut in 2007 (re-released on Blu-ray in 2017). He removed the ponderous voice-over from Deckard (Harrison Ford), axed the happy ending and inserted opaque dream sequences that continue to nourish the film’s philosophical ambiguities.

But some directors just do not know when to stop. To coincide with the 20 year anniversary of Star Wars in 1997, George Lucas created a digitally remastered Special Edition (spruced up versions of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) followed a few weeks later). Lucas stuffed the trilogy with reinstated scenes, polished up degraded images and sound and reaped extraordinary success (US$472 million at the global box office was mightily impressive for a trilogy nearly two decades old).

There was only one problem – the Special Editions were castigated by fans. Many resented the retrofitted visuals and jarring CGI enhancements; for others, the most egregious alteration – having bounty hunter Greedo now shoot Han Solo first in a Mos Eisley cantina – compromised Han’s character arc from rogue to hero across the trilogy.

Lucas’s incessant meddling (he returned to the trilogy again in 2004 and 2011) has been seen as a way of perpetually monetising the much-beloved originals. All along, his response to such criticism has been consistent – he was waiting for technology to catch up to his original vision.

As for Coppola, he has been here before. In 2001, he presented Apocalypse Now: Redux to ecstatic reviews during the Cannes Film Festival. Nearly an hour of footage cut from the 1979 version was reinserted, including the famously woozy “French plantation” scene. This new version was hailed as extraordinary – “redux” means “a work of art presented in a new way”.

But Coppola clearly was not done. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut premiered in New York back in April, 19 minutes shorter than Redux. In Final Cut, Coppola has finessed the colour balance and sound design, no doubt hoping to add to the film’s hallucinogenic qualities.

Despite the important contributions of writer John Milius, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and sound designer and editor Walter Murch, this latest version reinforces the romantic idea of the director as the sole auteur.

Coppola’s fingerprints are all over Final Cut. Here is a powerful director who, like Spielberg, Lucas and Scott, has been given endless opportunities to refine his vision. This tells us a lot about Hollywood’s commodification of the auteur and the ongoing importance of the director’s name in selling a product.

“A work of art is never completed, only abandoned”, noted the French poet Paul Valéry. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is the latest exhibit to suggest films are never really finished – the artistic process is endlessly reworkable.

– ref. From Star Wars to Apocalypse Now, director’s cuts are all the rage. But do they make the films any better? – http://theconversation.com/from-star-wars-to-apocalypse-now-directors-cuts-are-all-the-rage-but-do-they-make-the-films-any-better-120755

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Donna Lee Brien, Professor, Creative Industries, CQUniversity Australia

Legendary Australian food writer Margaret Fulton has died aged 94. At the news of her death, many are noting her long career and her influence on cookery and eating habits in Australia. With a professional life spanning well over 60 years, she successfully managed that career and her image in the media over this long period, providing a role model for generations of Australian food writers.

With 1.5 million copies of her eponymous cookbook sold, Fulton achieved significant public recognition for her work. In 1983, she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. In 1997, she was inducted into the World Food Media Awards Hall of Fame and named as one of the National Trust’s original 100 Living Australian National Treasures.

Even more than that, though, she was trusted. Margaret Fulton, indeed, built her career on the provision of sound, trustworthy cookery advice. And she knew it.

In 1980, reflecting on her career, she recognised that her brand was built on reliability rather than novelty or extravagance, stating: “I believe my reputation is built on the fact that people can rely on me. Unlike other cookery people, I believe I’m doing the right thing by not being flamboyant. I know that’s the success of my business.”

According to her memoir, she originally dreamt of being a showgirl, but Fulton began her career during the Second World War on a public stage of a different kind – as a cookery demonstrator with the Australian Gas Light Company.

She gained valuable experience in retail – selling pressure cookers, and running the kitchen and homewares section of David Jones – before joining then-popular Woman magazine as a food writer in 1954.

At this time, she was also completing a professional cookery course at the East Sydney Technical College. Largely based on classical French cookery, she learnt recipes and techniques which stood her in good stead throughout her later career.

In 1955, Fulton joined the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, managing a number of food accounts and, when television broadcasting started in 1956, began working on television commercials for such major food brands as Kelloggs and Kraft.

Fulton learnt much from this advertising experience. Although she was to appear in major television campaigns for ingredients and appliances, and publicise named products in cookbooks such as The Margaret Fulton Crock-pot Cookbook (1976), she was able to maintain her credibility.

In 1960, Margaret Fulton commenced a 20 year association with Woman’s Day as first a writer, and then its cookery editor. It was in this role that she was especially influential in exposing her readers to both new trends in ingredients and food preparation, as well as to reliable methods of reproducing traditional dishes. Fulton was able to translate and popularise the dishes of post-war and other migrants to Australia, featuring Italian, Greek, Yugoslavian and other cuisines in her food pages.

Her life’s work

The Margaret Fulton Cookbook was published in 1968. Unexpectedly selling out its then record first print run of 100,000 copies, it went to a second printing the next year, and many more after that. This book features step-by-step illustrated guides to not only how to cook the so-called “Continental” and “Oriental” dishes that have now become our nightly fare, but also how to eat them. There were, for instance, photographs of how to twirl spaghetti on a fork and illustrations of how use chopsticks.

In the late 1970s, Fulton joined New Idea magazine as its cookery writer. At this time, while writing and promoting realistic and reliable recipes, techniques and products, she was also consolidating her own reputation in appearances in television commercials.

This mixture of reliability and creativity took her far from the food pages of women’s magazines. In 1980, for example, Fulton acted as the culinary consultant for Ansett Airlines, designing then-revolutionary snack boxes of sandwiches and fresh fruit for short flights.

By late 1982, a feature article in the Weekend Australian judged her to have had “more impact on the Australian kitchen than anything or person since the refrigerator”. Just a few months later, in 1983, Margaret Fulton’s Encyclopedia of Food and Cookery was published, cementing her place as the arbiter of Australian domestic cooking. When, over 20 years later, a revised and updated version of this volume was released in 2005, Fulton referred to it as her “life’s work”.

It was not until 1999, at the height of the personal memoir’s popularity, that Fulton published her memoir, I Sang for My Supper: Memories of a Food Writer. This was a brave act, for as well as cataloguing her achievements, this text revealed her to have met many professional, personal and financial challenges.

Long after reaching the age at which many others would have retired, her writing continued to be in demand. In 2001, Fulton co-authored Cooking for Dummies with Barbara Beckett. This book was published at the peak of the high profile series’ success.

Fulton had a long history of assisting the causes she believed in, including grassroots organisations. In 2003, she launched the second edition of a non-genetically modified ingredients True Food Guide for Greenpeace.

But it is her cookery writing that so many will not only remember, but continue to reach for. This writing truly came from her heart and although the purpose of her recipes was largely practical and educational, the results were intended to delight and nurture. On the first page of The Margaret Fulton Cookbook, she wrote, “I have always believed that good food and good cooking are part of all that is best in life, all that is warm, friendly and rewarding”.

– ref. Vale Margaret Fulton: a role model for generations of Australian food writers – http://theconversation.com/vale-margaret-fulton-a-role-model-for-generations-of-australian-food-writers-120897

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Anne Kate, Adjunct Associate Lecturer, University of New England

Dissociative disorders are often said to be rare. But our soon-to-be published analysis of international studies suggest they affect 10-11% of the population at some point in their lives. This makes them nearly as common as mood disorders (such as clinical depression).

So what are dissociative disorders, why is diagnosis controversial and how can people be treated?

Read more: Mood and personality disorders are often misconceived: here’s what you need to know

What is dissociation?

Dissociation occurs when a person experiences being disconnected from themselves, including their memories, feelings, actions, thoughts, body and even their identity.

People with dissociative disorders have one or more of the following symptoms:

• amnesia and other memory problems
• a sense of detachment or disconnection from their self, familiar people or surroundings
• an inner struggle about their sense of self and identity
• acting like a different person (identity alteration).

For some people, symptoms can last days or weeks, but for others they can persist for months, years, or a lifetime.

Dissociation allows the person to compartmentalise and disconnect from aspects of traumatic and challenging experiences that could otherwise overwhelm their capacity to cope.

A person whose spouse has died may become emotionally numb, allowing them to focus on arranging the funeral; a man who has separated from his wife and lost his job soon afterwards may become so disconnected from his identity that he no longer recognises himself in the mirror and feels his life is happening to someone else; and a young woman who is sexually assaulted may remember her attacker moving too quickly towards her, recalls being safely back in her family home, but cannot remember the assault.

Read more: How childhood trauma changes our hormones, and thus our mental health, into adulthood

If the traumatic and overwhelming experiences happen repeatedly over a long period of time, the person’s personality may become fragmented. The traumatised part of the personality that contains the emotions, thoughts, sensations and experiences relating to the trauma becomes separated from the part of the personality that is trying to get on with daily life.

This allows young children to be with frightening and abusive caregivers they can neither fight nor flee from as they are dependent on them.

Read more: Dissociative identity disorder exists and is the result of childhood trauma

The person may have no (or only some) conscious awareness of the compartmentalised memories, thoughts, feelings and experiences.

These may, however, intrude into the person’s awareness. For example, the person may be aware of thoughts, feelings and internal voices that don’t “belong” to them, or may speak or act in ways that are completely out of character.

The most extreme form of structural dissociation is dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder. This is where the person has at least two separate personalities that exist independently of one another and that emerge at different times.

These personality differences are not just psychological. Neuroimaging confirms structural differences in the brains of people with dissociative identity disorder.

A controversial diagnosis

There are two competing theories about what causes dissociation: trauma and fantasy.

With the trauma model, dissociative symptoms arise from physical, sexual and emotional abuse; neglect, particularly in childhood; attachment problems if a child fears the caregiver or the caregiver is not adequately attuned to the child’s emotional or safety needs; and other severe stress or trauma, such as experiencing or witnessing domestic violence.

This trauma model is reflected in the World Health Organisation and American Psychiatric Association past and present diagnostic criteria.

Read more: A soldier and a sex worker walk into a therapist’s office. Who’s more likely to have PTSD?

However, the fantasy model is based on the idea that dissociative disorders are not “real”. Instead, they are the delusion of people who are troubled (and often traumatised), suggestible, fantasy-prone and sleep-deprived.

Fantasy model theorist Joel Paris describes dissociative disorders as a North American “fad” that has nearly died out.

Read more: ‘Going it alone’ adds to tertiary students’ high mental health risk

Yet my analysis of 98 studies found rates are not declining. In fact, I found dissociation is an international phenomenon far more common in countries that are comparatively unsafe. This is supported by other research which finds dissociation more common in people that have experienced trauma, such as refugees.

All up, the evidence indicates dissociative disorders are real (not imagined) and caused by trauma (not fantasy).

Dissociative disorders are under-diagnosed and misdiagnosed

Even though there are accurate ways of diagnosing dissociative disorders, most people will never be diagnosed. This is due to the lack of health professional education and training about dissociation, the symptoms being less obvious to observers, and scepticism that the disorder even exists.

The person also may not realise they have dissociative symptoms. Even if they do, they may not reveal them due to fear or embarrassment, or may find them difficult to put into words.

At least three-quarters of people with a dissociative disorder will also have one or more other mental disorders. They may be diagnosed with and treated for other mental health difficulties, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, borderline personality disorder, or psychosis. They may also be treated for addictions, self-harm, and/or suicidal thoughts (2% of those diagnosed complete suicide).

They may also be misdiagnosed with schizophrenia because hearing voices is common to both.

But their dissociative disorder usually remains undiagnosed. However, treatment for other mental health issues is not likely to be effective unless the underlying dissociation is addressed.

How to treat? What does the evidence say works?

The mental health and quality of life of people with a dissociative disorder improves significantly with psychotherapy (a type of talk therapy) that recognises the impact of trauma is physiological (affecting the brain and body) as well as psychological.

In therapy consistent with international treatment guidelines, people can learn skills to cope with unbearable emotions, thoughts and physical sensations. Once people are stable and have constructive coping strategies, therapists can then help people process traumatic and dissociated memories. Dissociative, post-traumatic, and depressive symptoms improve. And hospitalisations, self-harm, drug use, and physical pain declines.

There is no medication that specifically treats dissociation.

Where to get help

Dissociative disorders are one of the most common, yet most unrecognised, mental disorders. Symptoms are often debilitating, but significant improvements are possible if the dissociation is diagnosed and treated correctly.

If you are concerned, you can speak to your GP and ask for a referral to a therapist knowledgeable about trauma and dissociation. A list of therapists with this expertise in Australia is available from the Blue Knot Foundation and worldwide from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

If this article has raised issues for you, or you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Blue Knot Helpline on 1300 657 380.

– ref. Dissociative disorders are nearly as common as depression. So why haven’t we heard about them? – http://theconversation.com/dissociative-disorders-are-nearly-as-common-as-depression-so-why-havent-we-heard-about-them-116731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asanka Gunasekara, Lecturer in Management, Swinburne University of Technology

In a multicultural country like Australia, it’s easy for migrants to keep their heritage culture alive. But our recent research that surveyed more than 300 migrants found those who adapt to Australian society, called “Australian acculturation”, have greater personal well-being than those who don’t.

Personal well-being refers to a person’s quality of life, measured at two levels. The first: how satisfied they are with their life overall. And the second: how satisfied they are with specific life domains, such as achievements, relationships, health, safety, community connectedness and security.

Read more: How do we measure well-being?

We looked at the relationships between time in the host country, acculturation and personal well-being among non-Western skilled migrants in Australia. We found that migrants who reported having a higher personal well-being also had:

• acculturated more to the Australian culture than to their heritage culture

• higher English language competency and

• an Australian identity

And we found that more time spent in Australia doesn’t necessarily lead to more personal well-being if skilled migrants don’t adapt to Australian culture.

Social connectedness

We measured personal well-being using the Australian Unity Personal Well-being Index (PWI), which measures the level of a person’s satisfaction using a points system from 0 to 100.

The average PWI of the Australian general population ranges from 74.2 to 76.8 out of 100, whereas the average PWI of our skilled migrant sample is higher, at 77.27.

Given the present study involved skilled migrants, it’s possible that their higher education, skills and salaries may have contributed to higher levels of personal well-being, compared to the Australian population as a whole.

Read more: Migrants are healthier than the average Australian, so they can’t be a burden on the health system

Skilled migrants recorded the lowest score for the “community connectedness” domain, along with the rest of the Australian population. Community connectedness refers to the number and strength of connections a person has with others in their community.

Community connectedness may be lower because:

• skilled migrants maintain close contact with ethnic and extended families

• there are few opportunities for them to be involved in the wider Australian community or

• they feel excluded from the wider community.

Biculturalism

Rather than acculturation, some skilled migrants will maintain their own culture, and add layers of cultural practices from their host country. For them, “biculturalism” – or being able to switch between host and heritage cultures – is more realistic.

Read more: Settling migrants in regional areas will need more than a visa to succeed

For example, an Indian family who moved to Melbourne will keep their culture alive through food, language and friendship circles, but might also go to the footy and support an AFL team.

Full acculturation, on the other hand, is when migrants abandon their heritage cultural practices and values when they adapt to the host culture.

For a first generation non-Western migrant, adapting to the Australian culture is even harder. Research has shown that acculturation into a Western country is unlikely for these people.

This is for a number of reasons, such as pride in their heritage culture, maintaining strong connections with relatives and friends, and the societies they move to allow them to maintain heritage cultural practices through multicultural policies.

Poor Australian acculturation can lead to social isolation

Most people migrate when they’re young, so they’re able to contribute to the socioeconomic well-being of the host country by bringing in much needed skills, knowledge, technology and investment to Australia.

But in any case, migrants grow old in a culture that’s not heritage to them, so Australian acculturation is important to help combat social isolation in their old age.

In fact, a 2015 study found older people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are at a greater risk of depression than Anglo-Australians.

So if our skilled migrant sample, with the average age of 38, are low-scoring in the “community connectedness” domain, they could fall into a social isolation trap as they age.

Read more: How cities help immigrants feel at home: 4 charts

Australia should make ageing in a new culture a more comfortable experience, and organisations – such as Australian Multicultural Community Services and Australian Multicultural Foundation – and the government should take more responsibility for their Australian acculturation, and encourage social participation.

– ref. Migrants who adapt to Australian culture say they’re happier than those who don’t – http://theconversation.com/migrants-who-adapt-to-australian-culture-say-theyre-happier-than-those-who-dont-117264

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Leibold, Associate Professor of Politics and Asian Studies, La Trobe University

As China grows more powerful and influential, our New Superpower series looks at what this means for the world – how China maintains its power, how it wields its power and how its power might be threatened. Read the rest of the series here.

In China’s far western region of Xinjiang, Chinese Communist Party officials are persecuting one of the worst human rights abuses of our time, what I labelled an act of cultural genocide in last week’s ABC Four Corners report.

Pressure is mounting on the Australian government to go beyond statements of concern and challenge China over its treatment of the Uyghur minority, particularly those Australian citizens and permanent residents being held in the vast network of “re-education camps” in Xinjiang.

Two Australian Uyghur men are meeting federal politicians in Canberra today to push for the government’s assistance in helping family members trapped in China.

Australia was one of 22 countries to sign a recent letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressing concern about the “arbitrary detention” of Uyghurs, but otherwise, its response has been muted.

In recent days, the Chinese government has defended its actions with a dubious propaganda report claiming that Uyghurs were historically forced to become Muslims and have been an integral part of China for thousands of years.

China repeatedly makes false and anachronistic claims like this about the ancient unity of the “Chinese people,” which includes ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs. Its aim is to project modern notions of sovereignty, nationhood and fixed borders back through history.

In reality, the 11 million or so Uyghurs are an indigenous Turkic-speaking people who have inhabited what they call “East Turkestan” for over a millennium. Along with the Tibetans, the Uyghurs have born the brunt of China’s settler colonial project, which seeks to assert its control over remote regions that are closer to Moscow and Tehran than Beijing.

Since March 2017, the Chinese government has interned over a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in massive, prison-like camps (including possibly 17 Australian residents), where they are subjected to coercive ideological remoulding.

Detainees are forced to denounce their religion, forbidden to speak their language, and taught how to adopt the norms of China’s Han ethnic majority, while praising President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party for salvation.

In their own words, party officials are “washing brains” and “cleansing hearts” in order to “cure” those bewitched by extremist thoughts. In Xinjiang today, non-Han thoughts and behaviour are pathologised as deviant and thus in need of urgent transformation.

What is genocide?

A litany of words and phrases have been used to describe this process. The Chinese government calls the camps free “vocational education and training centres” where Uyghurs willingly learn Chinese language and employment skills in order to assist with their “rehabilitation and reintegration”.

Scholars, journalists and rights defenders have spoken about cultural and religious “persecution” in Xinjiang, arguing the party-state’s policies amount to mass ethnic cleansing, cultural re-engineering, forced assimilation, brainwashing, or even ethnocide.

In August 2018, Gay McDougall, the vice chair of UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, referred to Xinjiang as a “no-rights zone”.

Yet, I believe the scale, sophistication and intent of China’s policies in Xinjiang merits a stronger description.

Read more: The world has a hard time trusting China. But does it really care?

The term genocide was coined by lawyer Rafael Lemkin in 1944 in reaction to Nazi Germany’s coordinated strategy to annihilate the Jews, gypsies and other non-Aryan peoples. Four years later, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with Australia one of the first counties to ratify it. The People’s Republic of China ratified it in 1983.

The convention defines genocide as

acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

It also obligates signatories to punish those who engage in genocidal acts through a “competent” domestic or international penal tribunal.

Whether genocide includes only physical acts or can extend to attacks on cultural heritage has elicited intense debate, but for Lemkin, the term includes

drastic methods aimed at the rapid and complete disappearance of the culture, moral and religious life of a group of human beings.

Genocide also requires specific intent. In the words of political scientists Kenneth J. Campbell, genocide is a

premeditated, calculated, systematic, malicious crime authorised by the state’s political leaders.

This is exactly what Communist Party officials did when they authorised and then legalised the mass internment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in “concentrated transformation-through-education centres,” ripping more than 10% of the population away from their communities so they could be deliberately re-programmed.

Various methods for erasing culture

Yet, facts arguably matter more than words when it comes to China’s policies in Xinjiang.

We now have ample evidence (including internal party documents) of the deliberate efforts to destroy Uyghur culture and identity. Everyday actions like avoiding pork, speaking Uyghur, wearing a headscarf or praying quietly are now labelled “manifestations of religious extremism,” or what party officials call “malignant tumors” requiring urgent excising in a radical form of cultural surgery.

In the city of Kashgar, for example, a party document highlights the need to sever the lineages, roots and cultural connections of Uyghurs in order to eliminate the fountainhead of potential extremism.

German researcher Adrian Zenz has uncovered evidence of the party’s efforts to separate Uyghur children from their parents in state institutions, where they can be assimilated and indoctrinated by officials. In these institutions, cultural, religious, and linguistic knowledge is intentionally ruptured.

Read more: Explainer: who are the Uyghurs and why is the Chinese government detaining them?

In some parts of Xinjiang, mosques and shrines are being bulldozed, while others are transformed into empty sites guarded by facial recognition cameras and imams on the party payroll.

In the name of strengthening “bilingual education”, Chinese is now the language of instruction across Xinjiang, from preschool to university. The use of Uyghur language, script, signs and pictures prohibited. Speaking Uyghur is now considered unpatriotic and can get one sent off for re-education.

Perhaps most disturbing, inter-ethnic marriages are being actively promoted to slowly breed out Uyghurness, with cash and other material inducements offered to Han men who take a Uyghur bride.

One can find numerous videos and messages promoting Han-Uyghur inter-marriage on Chinese social media, asserting Xinjiang is now safe and home to many beautiful and eligible Uyghur women who would appreciate a doting Han husband.

Finally, the Chinese government has intensified its family planning regime in Xinjiang to slow the growth of the Uyghur population and eliminate what party officials call “low quality births”.

Beginning in 2017, the region adopted a uniform two children policy that nullified preferential rules allowing rural Uyghur women to have additional births. In the past, Uyghur women were given 3,000 RMB (roughtly A$620) to forgo a third birth and agree to some sort of “long-term contraceptive measure.”

The Communist Party’s calculated war on Uyghur identity is quite literally tearing families and communities apart, while the rich tradition of diversity and tolerance in China is left in tatters.

The resilient nature of culture and memory means that attempts at genocide, thankfully, are rarely successful. Yet the pain they inflict is real.

– ref. Despite China’s defences, its treatment of the Uyghurs should be called what it is: cultural genocide – http://theconversation.com/despite-chinas-defences-its-treatment-of-the-uyghurs-should-be-called-what-it-is-cultural-genocide-120654

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Knake, RMIT Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Professor of Law at the University of Houston, RMIT University

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

When Grata Flos Matilda Greig walked into her first law school class at the University of Melbourne in 1897, it was illegal for women to become lawyers. But though the legal system did not even recognise her as a person, she won the right to practice and helped thousands of other women access justice. In defying the law, Greig literally changed its face.

That she did so is a story worthy of history books. And how she achieved this offers key insights for women a century later as they navigate leadership roles in the legal profession and beyond.

Flos, as she was known, grew up in a household full of possibilities unlimited by gender boundaries. Born in Scotland, as a nine-year-old she spent three months sailing to Australia with her family to settle in Melbourne in 1889. Her father founded a textile manufacturing company. Both parents believed that Flos and her siblings – four sisters and three brothers – should be university educated at a time when women rarely were.

She grew up firm in the knowledge that women could thrive in professional life, and witnessed that reality unfold as older sisters Janet and Jean trained to become doctors. Another sister, Clara, would go on to found a tutoring school for university students. The fourth sister, Stella, followed Flos to study law.

Women could not vote or hold legislative office, let alone be lawyers, when 16-year-old Flos began to study law. Yet she did not let this deter her. As she approached graduation she focused on, “the many obstacles in the path of my full success. I resolved to remove them”.

Other feminine aspirants, she noted, had previously wished to enter the profession, “but the impediments in the way were so great, that they concluded, after consideration, it was not worthwhile”.

Flos felt otherwise. She declared, even in 1903 when women were largely excluded from public life: “Women are men’s equals in every way and they are quite competent to hold their own in all spheres of life.”

‘The Flos Greig Enabling Bill’

Six years after entering the University of Melbourne, Flos witnessed the Victorian Legislative Assembly’s passing of the Women’s Disabilities Removal Bill, also known as the Flos Greig Enabling Bill. Suddenly, women could enter the practice of law. How had she made this happen?

While childhood had provided Flos with role models from both sexes, she did have to rely upon a series of men to navigate her entry into the exclusively male club of the legal profession. Her male classmates had initially questioned the capabilities of a woman lawyer and resisted her presence, but she soon persuaded them otherwise.

Not only did Flos graduate second in her class, but the men took a vote to declare – affirmatively – that women should be allowed to practice law. Their support undoubtedly fuelled her ambitions.

Next, Flos turned to one of her lecturers, John Mackey, who happened to also be a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Together they worked with other supporters to craft the legislative change. Mackey argued that by passing the law, Parliament could ease the concerns of women who believed they could not get justice from a legislative body made up only of men.

Still, Flos needed to complete a period of supervised training known as “articling” before she could be sworn into the bar. No Australian woman had ever engaged in the “articles of clerkship” before. A Melbourne commercial law solicitor Frank Cornwall employed her, and she was officially admitted to the practice of law on August 1, 1905.

At her swearing-in ceremony, Chief Justice John Madden described Flos as “the graceful incoming of a revolution”. He also expressed some scepticism about her future success:

Women are more sympathetic than judicial, more emotional than logical. In the legal profession knowledge of the world is almost if not quite as essential as knowledge of the law, and knowledge of the world, women, even if they possess it, would lie loth to assert.

Flos would prove him wrong about her knowledge of the world, both in law and in her other passion, travel.

‘What did I wear? Don’t ask me!’

At the ceremony, her name was the third called – in alphabetical order – before what was reportedly an “unusually large gathering of lawyers, laymen, and ladies … seldom seen in halls of justice”. Attendees noticed smiles that “flickered over the faces of the judges as they entered the crowded chamber” at the sight of Flos among her “somberly-clad male” counterparts.

News accounts focused more on the physical attributes of the first lady lawyer than her qualifications. When questioned by a reporter about her clothing choice for the occasion, Flos blushed, “What did I wear? Don’t ask me!” But then confessed, “Well, if you insist! I wore grey, with a greenish tinted hat, trimmed with violets!”

Another news reporter critiqued the flower-adorned hat as “a most unlegal costume”. As if there was any basis for making such an assessment – until that moment the nation had never seen the “costume” of a female lawyer. The media’s fixation with female lawyers’ appearance endures more than a century later.

Flos soon established a solo practice in Melbourne focusing on women and children. Among other endeavours, she represented the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in lobbying to establish the Children’s Court of Victoria.

Media fascination with Flos’s attire did not diminish once admitted to practice. She delivered a speech in 1905 to the third annual National Congress of Women of Victoria on a paper she wrote titled, “Some Points of the Law Relating to Women and Children”.

The reporter noted that Flos “treated her subject in a masterly manner, and gave an immense amount of useful and, at times, startling information”. But Flos’s “stylish, yet simple, gown of grey voile, with cream lace vest” was equally newsworthy as were “her pretty black hat and white gloves”. The fashion choices of other (male) speakers went unmentioned.

Flos also helped open the legal profession to other women. She founded The Catalysts’ Society in 1910. Two years later it became the prestigious Lyceum Club in Melbourne, devoted to advancing the careers of women and offering networking opportunities.

After the launch of the Women’s Law Society of Victoria in 1914, Flos was elected its first president. She cared deeply about the right of all women to vote, arguing in a 1905 debate that if “politics were not fit” for women, “the sooner they were made so the better.” (In 1908 Victorian women won the right the vote.)

Law was not Flos’s only pursuit. She travelled extensively. Two decades after graduating from law school, she took a lengthy trip through Asia, spending time in Singapore, China, Bali, Java, Malaysia and two weeks in the Burma jungle. She stayed in local homes and on her return, spoke to audiences about the experience, delighting them with tales of “leopards, tigers, wild pigs, peacocks, … and wild jungle fowl”. She lectured publicly and on radio stations about the geography, religion and race.

The end of her career took Flos to Wangaratta in Northern Victoria. She practised at a law firm headed by Paul McSwiney, and was known to explore the countryside in a “Baby Austin” tourer. She remained an activist, supporting higher education for women and the Douglas Credit Party, a political party that aimed to remedy the economic hardships of the 1930s depression.

Flos died in 1958. While she did not live to see other female firsts, such as the appointment of the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2003, Flos’ capacity to envision women as equals under the law places her among the profession’s greatest innovators.

Renee Newman Knake’s book Shortlisted: Women, Diversity, the Supreme Court & Beyond will be published by New York University Press in 2020.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Flos Greig, Australia’s first female lawyer and early innovator – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-flos-greig-australias-first-female-lawyer-and-early-innovator-119990

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

After a bruising election outcome, GetUp is regrouping around a batch of issues – with press freedom the big ticket item. The activist group’s national director Paul Oosting, who has been in Canberra for the parliamentary week, says this is “deeply, deeply important to our members right now. It’s absolutely the number one issue that they care about”.

We’re absolutely in this campaign for the long haul. How we protect press freedoms, as of today – [it] isn’t entirely clear how we get there from a parliamentary and political point of view, but we’ve absolutely got to find a way because press freedom is central to our democracy.

Post-election, GetUp has faced strong critics, most recently the Liberal member for the South Australian seat of Boothby, Nicole Flint, who has accused it and unions of “creating an environment where abuse, harassment, intimidation, shouting people down and even stalking became the new normal”.

Oosting says these claims “aren’t true” – they are “very much self-serving from the Coalition in an attempt to to muddy our brand”.

He admits GetUp made some mistakes – in a “calling script” in one electorate, and a wrong “tone” in some advertising, notably depicting a Tony Abbott figure refusing to help a drowning person.

In terms of our internal processes and how we think more broadly around those things[…][we]absolutely will carry those lessons through to future campaigns.

But in Boothby, Oosting says, “Nicole Flint doesn’t really have a high profile. So our campaign wasn’t centred on her, it was centred on issues like climate change”.

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A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

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AAP/ Joel Carrett

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Paul Oosting responds to GetUp’s critics – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-paul-oosting-responds-to-getups-critics-120886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

Last week the body that governs Australia’s energy market released a draft proposal to introduce a demand response mechanism to the wholesale electricity market.

It argues the proposal will unearth some electricity users’ “latent flexibility” to prices in the extremely volatile wholesale market, and that this will potentially promote more efficient use of electricity, more secure power systems, and lower prices.

The move comes after nearly two decades of sustained campaigning, which prompts the question: why doesn’t such a useful-sounding mechanism already exist?

Read more: Managing demand can save two power stations’ worth of energy at peak times

It’s a good question. If this demand-response mechanism does what it is claimed to do, it could be a significant development for the electricity markets in southern and eastern Australia. But the actual proposal is eye-wateringly complex and there is reason to be circumspect.

What is proposed and how does it work?

The Australian Energy Market Commission’s determination is that new market participants, to be known as “Demand Response Service Providers” (DRSPs), will be allowed to offer hypothetical demand reductions into the wholesale market at prices they determine. If the price they offer for such reductions is less than the price at which the market clears, the DRSPs will be paid the market price, as if they were a generator, for these hypothetical reductions.

One obvious difficulty here is the fact that the reductions are hypothetical. They are the difference between the customers’ demand if they did not respond to an enticement to reduce demand – the “baseline” – and their actual demand. Customers (and DRSPs) have an incentive to overstate the baseline, as this increases the volume of the reductions they offer and, if accepted, get paid for.

DRSPs profit from the demand reductions they sell, and so they have an incentive to seek out customers who are willing to reduce demand relative to the baseline.

Retailers that sell electricity to DRSPs’ customers will buy (from the wholesale market) the actual volume of electricity consumed and also the hypothetical demand reduction, and pay the wholesale price for both. The retailer charges the customer for the actual demand and charges the DRSR for the demand reduction at a regulated price equal to the 12-month average wholesale price.

Read more: Baffled by baseload? Dumbfounded by dispatchables? Here’s a glossary of the energy debate

This will typically leave the retailer out of pocket by an amount equal to the difference between the average wholesale price at which they have “bought” the demand reductions, and the 12-month average wholesale price (which will almost certainly be lower, because demand reductions will occur when wholesale prices are higher than average).

Retailers will seek to recover the shortfall from the DRSRs’ customers or, more likely, from all their customers. To the extent that they are unable to recover the shortfall, retailers are likely to try to offload those of their customers that are paid to reduce demand.

This is a simplified description of the arrangement. The complexity of the actual data and money flows between customers, DRSPs, retailers, the energy market operator, network service providers and regulators is enough to provoke a nose-bleed from the most seasoned corporate lawyers.

By now, I am sure you are wondering why all the bother with baselines and hypothetical reductions. Why not simply pay customers for actual load reductions? The answer, in short, is that the pool of possible directly contracted customers is small.

If demand response is to be extended to thousands of customers – as this proposal seeks to do – setting baselines and hence hypothetical demand reductions, with all their unwelcome consequences, is unavoidable.

Will it work?

I am not sure. It is certainly punishingly complex. The energy market operator and regulator will have their hands full ensuring that baselines are not set at a level that prints money for DRSRs and their customers, at the expense of retailers and other electricity users. If the market operator and regulator achieve this without imposing undue cost and administrative burden, this demand-response proposal has promise.

Read more: South Australia’s experience contradicts Coalition emissions scare campaign

It will be fascinating to see whether DRSRs can indeed flush out the “latent flexibility” in a manner that is advantageous to themselves, the latently flexible, and the rest of us. Like many others, I will be watching with interest.

– ref. New demand-response energy rules sound good, but the devil is in the (hugely complicated) details – http://theconversation.com/new-demand-response-energy-rules-sound-good-but-the-devil-is-in-the-hugely-complicated-details-120676

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Belinda Nicholson, Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland

Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Does the Sun spin as well as the planets? – Max, Ebony, Calissa, Daniel, Mason, Jewels, Ever, Ludah, Tyler, Finbar, Enda, Riley, ages 5 – 8, Australia.

Yes, the Sun absolutely spins.

In fact, everything in the universe spins. Some things spin faster than the Sun, some are slower than the Sun, and some things spin “backwards”.

How did the Sun start to spin? Well, when the Sun was born, it formed from a big cloud of swirling gas. This gas fell inwards and began to tighten into a ball shape to form the star. The small swirling motion turned into a lot of swirling motion and gave the Sun its spin.

And here’s another interesting Sun spin fact: the middle part of the Sun – its equator – spins more quickly than the top and bottom parts, which are called the Sun’s poles. It can do that because the Sun isn’t solid, it’s a ball of gas.

Read more: Curious Kids: how is the Sun burning?

When it was young, the Sun spun fast – very fast. It would do one rotation in a just a few Earth days.

But as it got older, the Sun slowed down. Now it spins once every 25 days at the equator and once every 35 days at the poles. That means we have to wait for nearly a month to go by here on Earth before most of the Sun finishes one complete spin.

The reason it slowed down is hard to explain, but it’s got to do with its magnetic fields. When it was young and hyperactive, Sun spun fast and had a super strong magnetic field. This big magnetic field dragged through space, acting like a brake and slowing the Sun down. The slower spin then made the magnetic field much smaller too, so today the Sun is slowing down by only a very little bit.

Some things in space spin really fast

Have you ever heard of a pulsar? That’s what’s left when a huge star dies. They spin super fast. In fact, they can do one whole rotation in a fraction of a second.

How do we know that? Well, pulsars shoot out a big beam of energy and we can pick up a flash of that beam as it goes past, rotating like this lighthouse light, only faster.

The flashes of energy from the pulsar go past very fast and very often, so we know it is spinning incredibly fast.

So as you can see, lots of things in space are spinning. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is also spinning.

With all of this spinning, why don’t we get dizzy? Humans have evolved here so we are used to the spinning, but if everything stopped spinning (which is not likely to happen) we would really feel it!

Read more: Curious Kids: What’s going to happen to the Sun in the future? Will it explode?

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 Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

– ref. Curious Kids: does the Sun spin as well as the planets? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-does-the-sun-spin-as-well-as-the-planets-119877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Markey, Emeritus Professor, Macquarie University

One of the Coalition government’s first priorities in the new parliament is the passage of its Ensuring Integrity Bill, aimed at tightening regulations on unions and union officials.

Similar legislation was introduced in 2017, but rejected in the Senate. This time around, the government is more optimistic of its chances, given the current makeup of the Senate after the May election and the recent controversy over John Setka, the Victorian state secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, Maritime and Energy Union (CFMMEU).

The bill would give the minister for industrial relations, as well as the Registered Organisations Commission and any party deemed to have “sufficient interest”, the power to apply to the Federal Court to deregister a union. Union officials are particularly concerned about the extension of this power to anyone with “sufficient interest,” as this could conceivably include employers.

Read more: Politics podcast: Brendan O’Connor on Labor’s industrial relations agenda

The disqualification of union officials would also be automatic for anyone who has committed serious criminal offences punishable by five or more years of jail time. In addition, the Federal Court could disqualify officials for breaking industrial laws or failing to stop their organisation from breaking the law, or otherwise not being a “fit and proper person.”

A public interest test would also be introduced to prevent future union mergers, such as the “super union” merger last year of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA).

In introducing the bill, Christian Porter, the attorney-general and industrial relations minister, made clear that the newly named CFMMEU was one of the bill’s main targets.

He noted that the union had been levied with penalties over A$16 million for more than 2,000 contraventions of industrial law in recent years.

This repeated lawbreaking, particularly in our vital building and construction sector, hampers the delivery of goods and services and increases the cost of vital infrastructure projects like roads, schools and hospitals.

Ammunition provided by Setka

Setka was recently convicted after pleading guilty to harassment of his then-estranged wife. Earlier, he was accused of saying at a CFMMEU executive meeting that Rosie Batty’s campaigning against domestic violence had led to a reduction in men’s rights. However, this account has been contested by Setka and others present at the meeting.

Following the report detailing Setka’s comments about Batty, Labor leader Anthony Albanese moved quickly to suspend Setka’s ALP membership. He said Setka

undermines the credibility of the trade union movement through the position he holds and the public views he’s expressed.

Sally McManus, the Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary, also urged Setka to consider the harm he was doing the union movement and resign.

There is no place for perpetrators of domestic violence in leadership positions in our movement.

Setka has often attracted negative media attention. He famously threatened to expose all Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) inspectors and make their children “ashamed of who their parents are.” On social media, he posted a picture of his children holding a placard saying “go get fu#ked” in reference to the ABCC.

Setka is a major contributor to the CFMMEU’s numerous breaches of industrial law. He has numerous convictions for theft, assault and criminal damage, mainly associated with industrial disputes.

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke is reported to have previously counselled Labor leader Bill Shorten to sever the ALP’s ties with the CFMMEU.

Labor’s fears may be realised

The government is relishing the difficulties this situation has created for Albanese and Labor.

Government members have previously highlighted that the CFMMEU is Labor’s biggest electoral donor. And Porter has challenged Albanese to back the Ensuring Integrity Bill after his condemnation of Setka:

Now is the time for Mr. Albanese and Labor to prove they’re not all talk and back their words with action.

Albanese’s swift call for Setka’s expulsion from the ALP was designed to limit damage to the party. However, Setka’s court challenge prevented a quick expulsion, and now it appears it could be blocked altogether.

Read more: Setka furore opens division within the labour movement – and there is no easy solution

McManus’s worst fears of increased union regulation following the Setka controversy also are being fulfilled.

In addition to the Ensuring Integrity Bill, the government has reintroduced a bill that would impose tighter regulatory controls on workers’ entitlement funds.

According to the bill’s language, it would prevent the “coercion” of employers to pay into particular funds for their employees’ superannuation, training or insurance. This bill also would require registered organisations (unions and employer bodies) to maintain financial management plans, keep credit card records and disclose their loans and grants to individuals or other entities.

Senate crossbenchers remain the key

The Ensuring Integrity Bill has been referred to a Senate committee, which is due to report in October.

The bill should have an easier time passing in the new Senate. Independent Senator Tim Storer, who strongly opposed the 2017 bill, is no longer in the Senate. Of the crossbench, Cory Bernardi and the two One Nation senators are likely to support it. That leaves only one more vote required from either of the Centre Alliance senators or Jacqui Lambie.

The bill has been somewhat watered down from its 2017 version to make it amenable to the crossbench and test Labor’s opposition to it.

It also more closely follows the provisions of the Corporations Act. However, questions remain as to whether membership-based organisations like unions should be expected to operate like corporations, or if unions breaching industrial laws should be treated similarly to corporations or individuals breaking criminal laws.

Read more: Where to now for unions and ‘change the rules’?

The ACTU is lobbying Senate crossbenchers to oppose the bill.

The UK-based International Centre for Trade Union Rights has also come out against the bill, arguing it is “incompatible” with Australia’s commitments under two key conventions of the International Labour Organisation. The ICTUR says it interferes with workers’ rights to establish their own organisations, set their own rules and elect officials, saying it found

no precedent for the degree of state interference in the functioning and establishment of trade unions in comparable industrialised liberal democracies.

It also compared the bill to oppressive legislation in Turkey and under the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1940s.

– ref. Fall-out from Setka affair could give Coalition easier passage of union bill – http://theconversation.com/fall-out-from-setka-affair-could-give-coalition-easier-passage-of-union-bill-120586

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Koval, Academic, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne

How does a woman feel when a man wolf-whistles at her from across the street? Or when a male coworker gives her body a fleeting once-over before looking her in the eye?

These examples may seem relatively innocent to some, but our research has found they can have negative consequences for women’s emotional well-being.

We asked women to record any incidents of sexual objectification on a smartphone app, alongside rating their feelings several times each day for a week.

When women experienced sexual objectification, in many cases it led them to scrutinise their physical appearance, which negatively impacted their emotional well-being.

Read more: Hey, sexy: objectifying catcalls occur more frequently than you might think

A cycle of objectification

The process by which sexual objectification is psychologically harmful to women was first described by psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts in the mid-1990s.

According to this theory, when women are treated as objects, they momentarily view their own bodies from the perspective of the person objectifying them. In turn, they become preoccupied with their physical appearance and sexual value to others.

This process of “self-objectification” leads women to experience unpleasant feelings such as shame and anxiety. If repeated, it can eventually lead to long-term psychological harm.

Despite hundreds of studies on the psychology of sexual objectification, convincing evidence of the process described by Fredrickson and Roberts has been lacking until now.

Read more: Explainer: what does the ‘male gaze’ mean, and what about a female gaze?

We believe our research, conducted with colleagues in the United States, is the first to demonstrate that when women are exposed to sexually objectifying events in their everyday lives, they become more preoccupied with their physical appearance.

This, in turn, leads to increased negative emotions like anxiety, anger, embarrassment and shame.

Our research

We asked 268 women aged 18 to 46 in Melbourne and St Louis (in the US) to install an app on their smartphones.

Several times each day, the app prompted them to rate their emotions, how preoccupied they were with their physical appearance (a measure of self-objectification), and whether they had recently been targeted by sexually objectifying behaviour – or had witnessed such treatment of other women.

Using smartphones to track women’s everyday experiences of sexual objectification has several advantages over other approaches used in most previous objectification research.

First, we can be sure we captured “real world” examples of sexual objectification rather than artificial scenarios that may not represent life outside the lab.

Second, instead of relying on potentially unreliable memories of past events and feelings recorded in surveys or journals, by using frequent smartphone surveys we could gather more accurate “real time” reports of sexual objectification.

Finally, repeatedly sampling women’s daily experiences enabled us to observe the psychological processes triggered by sexual objectification.

Read more: Rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment: what’s the difference?

What we found

More than 65% of women in our study were personally targeted by sexually objectifying behaviour at least once during the monitoring period. This might have included being ogled, catcalled or whistled at.

Our findings were consistent with Fredrickson and Roberts’s theory: women reported being preoccupied with their physical appearance roughly 40% more when they had recently been targeted by sexually objectifying behaviours, compared to when they had not.

Importantly, these momentary spikes in self-objectification predicted subsequent increases in women’s negative emotions, particularly feelings of shame and embarrassment.

Although these increases were small, they were reliable, and appear to be indirectly caused by exposure to sexually objectifying behaviours.

Women may think about their appearance independent of experiencing sexual objectification. Interestingly, we found when women self-objectified, they sometimes reported feeling slightly happier and more confident.

So when women think about themselves in an objectified manner, they can feel both positive and negative emotions. But self-objectification that arises as a result of being objectified by someone else appears to have an exclusively negative impact on emotions.

Read more: Women can build positive body image by controlling what they view on social media

It’s important to note that in our results, experiencing sexual objectification on its own didn’t directly lead to increases in women’s negative feelings. Rather, the harmful effects of sexual objectification occurred when it resulted in women objectifying themselves.

Seeing other women objectified

Our participants reported witnessing the objectification of other women on average four times during the week-long study period.

Witnessing the objectification of other women was also followed by reliable (albeit weaker) increases in self-objectification, with similar negative downstream consequences for emotional well-being.

Just as passive smoking is harmful to non-smokers, second-hand exposure to sexual objectification may reduce the emotional well-being of women, even if they are rarely or never objectified themselves.

Read more: Universities unveil plan to reduce sexual harassment and sexual assault on campus

Overall, our study confirms previous research showing sexual objectification of women remains relatively common.

But importantly, we’ve shown these everyday objectifying experiences are not as innocuous as they may seem. Though subtle, the indirect emotional effects of objectifying treatment may accumulate over time into more serious psychological harm for women.

This article is a co-publication with Pursuit.

– ref. Sexually objectifying women leads women to objectify themselves, and harms emotional well-being – http://theconversation.com/sexually-objectifying-women-leads-women-to-objectify-themselves-and-harms-emotional-well-being-120762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Edwards, Research Director, Australian Council for Educational Research

Australia spent A$111.8 billion on education in 2015, the most recent year for which the full dataset for all levels of education spending is available. A report from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) released today shows this was an increase of nearly 80% from 2000 spending.

The federal government contributed A$47.2 billion (42%) of the overall funding. State, territory and local governments spent A$39.1 billion (35%). A further A$25.5 billion (23%) came from private sources.

The ACER report is the first to capture data on education spending at all levels of education – from early childhood to higher education – from all funding sources.

The analysis separates funding into three sources: federal government; state, territory and local governments; and private sources (the latter includes contributions by students in the form of fees, as well as contributions by private businesses and non-profit organisations).

The report also organises spending by education sector and levels, as defined in Australia.

Spending by education level

Education funding goes through a range of transfers between the three sources. At different points in the funding cycle, the contributions by government sources are transferred to other funding sources.

Read more: Explaining Australia’s school funding debate: what’s at stake

For instance, the federal government transferred A$14 billion of its initial education funding to private sources in 2015, mainly in the form of student loans. It transferred a further A$17.7 billion to state, territory and local governments which then fund schools and other areas of education.

The final distribution of national education spending, after the transfers, was A$15.5 billion (14%) from the federal government, A$55.4 billion (49%) from state, territory and local governments and A$40.9 billion (37%) from private sources.

The bulk of Australia’s education spending is directed to three levels of education: primary schools (27%), secondary schools (28%) and higher education (26%).

The remaining 19% is spread between early childhood education, preschool, vocational education and training (VET) certificates, diplomas and advanced diplomas.

Spending as a percentage of GDP

In 2015, Australia spent A$102.4 billion on primary school and above. In real terms this spending has grown substantially since the beginning of the century and faster than student numbers.

While spending on education increased by 79% between 2000 and 2015, the number of students in the Australian education system increased by only 22%. As a result, education spending per student (primary and above) increased by 46% over this period.

Read more: Yes, education funding has increased – but not everyone benefits

Australia’s spending on education as a proportion of GDP has also increased, from 5.1% in 2000 to 5.9% in 2015.

This increase has largely been driven by private sources of funding, rather than government funds, indicating an increasing willingness by people to invest in their own (or their children’s) education.

The share of private spending on education (primary and above) after transfers increased from 26% of total education spending in 2000 to 34% in 2015.

The fastest period of growth in private spending has been since 2012. This coincided with the introduction of the higher education sector’s demand-driven funding arrangements (where universities didn’t have a cap on the number of bachelor degree students they could take).

But it’s important to remember the government allocates a significant amount of its initial funding (before transfers) to student loans.

Spending as a percentage of total government spending

Government spending on education before transfers increased by 67% in real terms between 2000 and 2015. At the same time, total government spending rose by 65%.

So, government spending on education before transfers, as a percentage of total government spending, was 1% higher in 2015 than in 2000. It peaked in 2010 due to the global financial crisis stimulus spending and fell in the interim.

Australia’s government spends a relatively large proportion of its budget on education compared to other OECD countries. In total, government spending on education is 13.5%, which ranks Australia ninth of the 39 countries in the OECD reporting.

But Australia’s total government spending for all services (including health, education, social protection, defence, public order and safety) is relatively low.

Read more: FactCheck: is Australia below the international average when it comes to school funding?

ACER’s analysis is drawn from annual expenditure data the Australian Government Department of Education submits for the joint UNESCO Institute for Statistics, OECD and Eurostat (UOE) data collection on education statistics – which the OECD releases as the Education at a Glance publication.

The Education at a Glance reports are good for obtaining a snapshot of Australian education spending in relation to other OECD countries. But until now the data have not been organised in a useful way for further examining the Australian context.

To fully appreciate the nuances of the data, we need increased expertise in the economics of education in Australia. More emphasis on this would enable long-term forecasting of the policy implications of Australia’s investment in education and would offer an additional objective voice at the education policy table.

– ref. Three charts on: how much Australia spends on all levels of education – http://theconversation.com/three-charts-on-how-much-australia-spends-on-all-levels-of-education-120076

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil Sipe, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, The University of Queensland

While car parking was a non-negotiable amenity for baby boomers, it is an eyesore to millennials and the up-and-coming iGen. Newer generations want more city and fewer cars. Globally, scrapping car parking is the latest trend in urban planning.

Read more: Freeing up the huge areas set aside for parking can transform our cities

Between 2010 and 2015, Philadelphia removed 3,000 off-street parking spaces from its city centre. Copenhagen is following the same path. Zurich has implemented a city-wide cap to llimit parking spaces to 1990s levels.

Amsterdam has announced it will remove parking spaces at a rate of 1,500 a year. The city’s 2025 goal is to eliminate more than 11,000 parking spaces from its streets to make space for cycling.

San Francisco and New York have adopted the concept of “parklets”. These are mini parks or outdoor café seating areas that temporarily replace a few parking spots during low-demand periods.

Read more: A day for turning parking spaces into pop-up parks

The theory is that as the amount of parking decreases, the appeal of driving gives way to more environmentally friendly transport modes such as walking, cycling, ride-hailing, car pooling and public transport.

Some evidence suggests reducing or capping parking pays off. In cities that have implemented these measures, driving has declined and public transport use has increased.

What’s happening in Australia?

Among the largest Australian cities, Brisbane seems to be going backwards. The Courier Mail recently published a story stating that:

Suburban streets in two Brisbane suburbs have become all-day car parks as the new residents of apartments are forced to resort to on-street parking.

In response to such sentiments, Brisbane City Council proposes to increase the number of parking spaces required for future apartment buildings across the middle and outer suburbs. Parking increases have been framed as adding to the quality of life and safety of Brisbane suburbs.

Unfortunately, Brisbane does not track the existing supply of residential parking. This lack of clarity has created an imbalance of parking supply and provides opportunities for a sharing economy of parking. Operators such as Parkhound and KERB enable residents to lease their unused parking while their neighbours exhaust the public supply of on-street parking.

Meanwhile, Sydney has officially declared a “climate emergency”, following the lead of global cities including New York, London (and then all of the UK), Auckland and Vancouver (followed by Canada). While applauded by environmentalists, this declaration does not come with a firm commitment to reduce driving or parking.

Read more: UK becomes first country to declare a ‘climate emergency’

Read more: Cognitive dissonance: Canada declares a national climate emergency and approves a pipeline

Similarly, in Melbourne, outside the CBD – where there are plans to reduce parking – there is plenty of free, and largely unmanaged, on-street parking. Residents typically believe they are entitled to this parking space.

Clearly, Australian cities are stuck in the old-fashioned “predict and provide” model of parking supply. This model relies on the idea that there will always be enough parking if every site provides spaces for all residents, staff, customers and visitors during peak demand periods.

While this approach might have been suitable in the postwar period, it is unworkable for today’s growing, congested and warming cities. The challenge for planners is how to accommodate increasing numbers of urban residents within a reasonable distance from work and amenities. Cities are running out of space for cars – be they moving or parked.

Read more: Move away from a car-dominated city looks radical but it’s a sensible plan for a liveable future

Is there a better way?

Certainly. Some cities have begun to set maximum parking standards. In other words, the cities put an upper limit on how many car parks can be provided for a given project. Sometimes these complement minimum parking requirements; in other cases the latter are eliminated.

Selling parking spaces separately from housing units, referred to as “unbundling”, is another policy that’s becoming popular. It ensures the true cost of car storage is transparent rather than hidden. And it means car-free or one-car households don’t have to pay for parking they don’t need.

Some developers are providing car-sharing spaces in new construction, instead of individual car parks.

Some employers offer a parking “cash out” option – employees receive a payment in lieu of a parking space. Those employers that continue to offer parking charge fees daily rather than monthly to avoid the “sunk cost fallacy” – having paid for parking, employees want to get their money’s worth.

Other useful (but hardly new) planning concepts include the “30-minute city” and “transit-oriented development”. These approaches help reduce the need for driving and parking by concentrating people and land uses around public transport stops and corridors.

Read more: ‘The 30-minute city’: how do we put the political rhetoric into practice?

Will reducing spaces lead to parking shortages?

People are often concerned that if parking is reduced or capped, this will create a parking shortage. This can be avoided if parking is treated as a key component of the urban transport system and managed in coordination with other elements.

Australian cities need to prepare comprehensive parking strategies at the metropolitan level. These strategies must be integrated with general transport and land use plans. Unfortunately, this is often difficult to achieve because state governments are typically responsible for planning and building the transport system while local governments are responsible for parking.

The impacts of parking reductions on urban citizens need to be offset by providing a higher quality and quantity of public and active transport. This requires substantial investments in public and active transport.

Read more: Cycling and walking are short-changed when it comes to transport funding in Australia

Finally, no parking should be free. Revenues from parking fees should be returned to local communities in the form of improved public amenities.

– ref. What can our cities do about sprawl, congestion and pollution? Tip: scrap car parking – http://theconversation.com/what-can-our-cities-do-about-sprawl-congestion-and-pollution-tip-scrap-car-parking-118393

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

Since parliament has resumed three Liberal members – Dean Smith, Russell Broadbent and Andrew Wallace – have joined a group of Nationals calling for an increase in the A$40 per day Newstart unemployment allowance.

Labor has already committed itself to both an inquiry and an increase, although it won’t specify the size of the increase. The Greens have introduced a bill that would increase Newstart by A$75 a week.

Defending the current level of Newstart on Monday, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told the ABC’s Sabra Lane that the payment was “transitional”.

Most Australians were on it for only a “very short period”

LANE: Could you live on 40 bucks a day?

CORMANN: The Newstart allowance which is I guess, what you are now raising is a transitional payment for…

LANE: It is, and you’ve diverted straight away. Could you live on 40 bucks a day?

CORMANN: Newstart allowance is a transitional payment. It is a payment that is increased twice a year. It is indexed twice a year. Most Australians who are on Newstart allowance are on that payment for a very short period.

Greens senator Rachel Siewert actually did try to live on Newstart for a week in 2012.

She introduced the bill that would lift it (and the similarly-sized youth allowance, sickness allowance, special benefit, widow allowance, crisis payment and Austudy) by A$75 a week.

On Monday she asked the Senate to “not believe what the government says”

This is not a transition payment anymore. The employment situation in this country has changed from when the unemployment benefits first came in, and it’s certainly changed since 1994. People have to survive on this payment long-term.“

Liberal Wendy Askew responded:

These allowances are not designed as a long-term payment for people, and this is shown by the fact that around two-thirds of job seekers who are granted Newstart exit income support within 12 months.

So what’s the truth? Are most Australians who go onto Newstart on it for only a short time, or are most of those who are on Newstart on it for a long time?

Short term, or long term?

As it happens, both claims are sourced from the same Department of Social Services publication, DSS Payment Trends and Profile Reports.

It says 257,494 Australians went on to Newstart between June 2015 and June 2016. Most of them (191,6800) hadn’t previously been receiving income support.

In the same 12 month period, 274,113 Australians left Newstart, 212,320 of them out of the income support system altogether.

If most of those who went on it in that year also went off it in that year then the government would be correct in saying that “two-thirds of job seekers who are granted Newstart exit income support within 12 months”.

Read more: FactCheck Q&A: is a week’s worth of Newstart equal to what a politician can claim for one night in Canberra?

But it would leave most of the rest of the 732,100 Australians on Newstart on it for an increasingly long time.

The table below shows that in June 2016, 73% of Newstart recipients were classified as long-term (one year or more), up from 71% the previous June.

Graphically, it is possible to see that in June 2016, there were both

• fewer Australians on Newstart than in the previous year (more had left Newstart than taken it up), and

• a greater proportion of them on it for more than a year

Number of Newstart recipients by duration on income support, ‘000

The apparent contradiction between most of the people who enter Newstart quickly leaving it and most people who are on Newstart being on it for a long time appears to reflect a confusion between flows and stocks.

The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences illustrates the difference using a bathtub.

The level of water in the bathtub is a stock, the water coming from the faucet is an inflow, and the draining of the water through the drain is an outflow. If we plug the drain and turn on the faucet, the net inflow will be positive, and the stock of water in the bathtub will be rising. If, instead, we close the faucet and open the drain, the net inflow of water will be negative, and the stock of water in the bathtub will fall.

Between 2015 and 2016 about 260,000 people flowed in to and out of Newstart, and as it happened more flowed out than flowed in.

But those who remained were increasingly likely to have been on Newstart for a long time, probably due to the so-called “scarring” effect that makes people less job-ready (and less attractive to employers) the longer they have been out of work.

Most current Newstart recipients are long-term

The proportion of Newstart recipients on payments for more than a year has climbed from 69% in 2014 to 73% in 2016, and according to the latest Department of Social Services figures, to 76.5% in 2018.

Senator Siewert’s observation that most Newstart recipients have to survive on it long-term is correct.

At any one time the overwhelming majority of the people on the $40 per day have been on it for more than a year.

Read more: FactCheck: do 99% of Newstart recipients also receive other benefits?

What’s more, it appears that the decline in the total number of people on Newstart has not been because more of the people on Newstart have been able to get a job, but because the flow into Newstart has slowed.

That is probably a positive development, although there is also the possibility that it is happening because of the onerous compliance burdens of job search, together with the increasing inadequacy of Newstart.

– ref. Are most people on the Newstart unemployment benefit for a short or long time? – http://theconversation.com/are-most-people-on-the-newstart-unemployment-benefit-for-a-short-or-long-time-120826

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Knake, RMIT Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Professor of Law at the University of Houston, RMIT University

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

When Grata Flos Matilda Greig walked into her first law school class at the University of Melbourne in 1897, it was illegal for women to become lawyers. But though the legal system did not even recognise her as a person, she won the right to practice and helped thousands of other women access justice. In defying the law, Greig literally changed its face.

That she did so is a story worthy of history books. And how she achieved this offers key insights for women a century later as they navigate leadership roles in the legal profession and beyond.

Flos, as she was known, grew up in a household full of possibilities unlimited by gender boundaries. Born in Scotland, as a nine-year-old she spent three months sailing to Australia with her family to settle in Melbourne in 1889. Her father founded a textile manufacturing company. Both parents believed that Flos and her siblings – four sisters and three brothers – should be university educated at a time when women rarely were.

She grew up firm in the knowledge that women could thrive in professional life, and witnessed that reality unfold as older sisters Janet and Jean trained to become doctors. Another sister, Clara, would go on to found a tutoring school for university students. The fourth sister, Stella, followed Flos to study law.

Women could not vote or hold legislative office, let alone be lawyers, when 16-year-old Flos began to study law. Yet she did not let this deter her. As she approached graduation she focused on, “the many obstacles in the path of my full success. I resolved to remove them”.

Other feminine aspirants, she noted, had previously wished to enter the profession, “but the impediments in the way were so great, that they concluded, after consideration, it was not worthwhile”.

Flos felt otherwise. She declared, even in 1903 when women were largely excluded from public life: “Women are men’s equals in every way and they are quite competent to hold their own in all spheres of life.”

‘The Flos Greig Enabling Bill’

Six years after entering the University of Melbourne, Flos witnessed the Victorian Legislative Assembly’s passing of the Women’s Disabilities Removal Bill, also known as the Flos Greig Enabling Bill. Suddenly, women could enter the practice of law. How had she made this happen?

While childhood had provided Flos with role models from both sexes, she did have to rely upon a series of men to navigate her entry into the exclusively male club of the legal profession. Her male classmates had initially questioned the capabilities of a woman lawyer and resisted her presence, but she soon persuaded them otherwise.

Not only did Flos graduate second in her class, but the men took a vote to declare – affirmatively – that women should be allowed to practice law. Their support undoubtedly fuelled her ambitions.

Next, Flos turned to one of her lecturers, John Mackey, who happened to also be a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Together they worked with other supporters to craft the legislative change. Mackey argued that by passing the law, Parliament could ease the concerns of women who believed they could not get justice from a legislative body made up only of men.

Still, Flos needed to complete a period of supervised training known as “articling” before she could be sworn into the bar. No Australian woman had ever engaged in the “articles of clerkship” before. A Melbourne commercial law solicitor Frank Cornwall employed her, and she was officially admitted to the practice of law on August 1, 1905.

At her swearing-in ceremony, Chief Justice John Madden described Flos as “the graceful incoming of a revolution”. He also expressed some scepticism about her future success:

Women are more sympathetic than judicial, more emotional than logical. In the legal profession knowledge of the world is almost if not quite as essential as knowledge of the law, and knowledge of the world, women, even if they possess it, would lie loth to assert.

Flos would prove him wrong about her knowledge of the world, both in law and in her other passion, travel.

‘What did I wear? Don’t ask me!’

At the ceremony, her name was the third called – in alphabetical order – before what was reportedly an “unusually large gathering of lawyers, laymen, and ladies … seldom seen in halls of justice”. Attendees noticed smiles that “flickered over the faces of the judges as they entered the crowded chamber” at the sight of Flos among her “somberly-clad male” counterparts.

News accounts focused more on the physical attributes of the first lady lawyer than her qualifications. When questioned by a reporter about her clothing choice for the occasion, Flos blushed, “What did I wear? Don’t ask me!” But then confessed, “Well, if you insist! I wore grey, with a greenish tinted hat, trimmed with violets!”

Another news reporter critiqued the flower-adorned hat as “a most unlegal costume”. As if there was any basis for making such an assessment – until that moment the nation had never seen the “costume” of a female lawyer. The media’s fixation with female lawyers’ appearance endures more than a century later.

Flos soon established a solo practice in Melbourne focusing on women and children. Among other endeavours, she represented the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in lobbying to establish the Children’s Court of Victoria.

Media fascination with Flos’s attire did not diminish once admitted to practice. She delivered a speech in 1905 to the third annual National Congress of Women of Victoria on a paper she wrote titled, “Some Points of the Law Relating to Women and Children”.

The reporter noted that Flos “treated her subject in a masterly manner, and gave an immense amount of useful and, at times, startling information”. But Flos’s “stylish, yet simple, gown of grey voile, with cream lace vest” was equally newsworthy as were “her pretty black hat and white gloves”. The fashion choices of other (male) speakers went unmentioned.

Flos also helped open the legal profession to other women. She founded The Catalysts’ Society in 1910. Two years later it became the prestigious Lyceum Club in Melbourne, devoted to advancing the careers of women and offering networking opportunities.

After the launch of the Women’s Law Society of Victoria in 1914, Flos was elected its first president. She cared deeply about the right of all women to vote, arguing in a 1905 debate that if “politics were not fit” for women, “the sooner they were made so the better.” (In 1908 Victorian women won the right the vote.)

Law was not Flos’s only pursuit. She travelled extensively. Two decades after graduating from law school, she took a lengthy trip through Asia, spending time in Singapore, China, Bali, Java, Malaysia and two weeks in the Burma jungle. She stayed in local homes and on her return, spoke to audiences about the experience, delighting them with tales of “leopards, tigers, wild pigs, peacocks, … and wild jungle fowl”. She lectured publicly and on radio stations about the geography, religion and race.

The end of her career took Flos to Wangaratta in Northern Victoria. She practised at a law firm headed by Paul McSwiney, and was known to explore the countryside in a “Baby Austin” tourer. She remained an activist, supporting higher education for women and the Douglas Credit Party, a political party that aimed to remedy the economic hardships of the 1930s depression.

Flos died in 1958. While she did not live to see other female firsts, such as the appointment of the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2003, Flos’ capacity to envision women as equals under the law places her among the profession’s greatest innovators.

Renee Newman Knake’s book Shortlisted: Women, Diversity, the Supreme Court & Beyond will be published by New York University Press in 2020.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Flos Grieg, Australia’s first female lawyer and early innovator – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-flos-grieg-australias-first-female-lawyer-and-early-innovator-119990

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lida Ayoubi, Lecturer, Auckland University of Technology

The New Zealand parliament seems closer to adopting a bill to amend copyright legislation to make it easier for visually impaired people to access published works.

An estimated 90% of all written works published worldwide are not available in formats accessible to people with a print disability. This barrier affects an estimated 168,000 New Zealanders.

The 2013 Marrakesh Treaty, which New Zealand joined in 2017, would help end the “global book famine” by allowing access to more written works in formats such as Braille, large print or audio. Bringing the treaty into effect in New Zealand requires changes to the Copyright Act 1994, and the amendment bill is due to go through its final reading this week.

Read more: Australia’s copyright reform could bring millions of books and other reads to the blind

Copyright law and the right to read

Currently, creating accessible formats from existing works is only possible with the permission of the copyright owner or if there are exceptions limiting the copyright owner’s rights. Combined with a lack of infrastructure and the high cost of producing accessible works, this has created a global “book famine” for visually impaired people.

This affects not only those who read for leisure but also students and researchers, especially in developing and least developed countries. This lack of access to books and other copyright material is a hurdle to the realisation of several human rights, including the right to education, access to information, the right to participate in culture and to enjoy scientific progress, as well as the rights to health and employment. This is reflected in the Marrakesh Treaty’s focus on human rights and equality for the visually impaired.

The treaty’s provisions are designed to address problems such as long waits for authorisation or accessible format copies from a copyright owner, unreasonable restrictions imposed on accessible formats, and barriers to cross-border exchange of available accessible works that often result in duplication of production efforts.

Access to copyright works and higher education

Australian research found that when universities provided their visually impaired students with access to essential or prescribed texts, students generally obtained readings late. For instance, only 50% of print disabled first-year students had access to prescribed textbooks before the semester started.

Some universities reported far more substantial delays. In such cases, students would receive their essential readings only very late in the semester or after the semester is over. The reasons for delays vary, with some students not notifying the university that they require assistance. Additionally, reading lists are often not finalised until the first week of semester and publishers fail to respond to requests to provide accessible texts in a timely manner.

Publishers generally require students to buy a print copy of the work before they will provide access to an electronic version. Some are willing to provide download links, while others, particularly in the United States, often prefer to mail disc copies. Sometimes works are only available as preprint versions, which require a considerable amount of editing before they can be provided to students. This is a drain on university resources.

Consequently, not all students who would benefit from accessible formats currently obtain them. This means their chances of demonstrating their full potential are often compromised.

Read more: It’s designers who can make gaming more accessible for people living with disabilities

New Zealand’s Marrakesh Treaty implementation bill

The bill is part of a broader review of New Zealand’s copyright legislation to ensure “the copyright regime keeps pace with technological and market developments” since its last significant amendment in 2008. It expands the reach of section 69 of the Copyright Act 1994 that addresses the reproduction and distribution of accessible works.

One of the main changes is to broaden the scope of current exceptions and improve access for visually impaired New Zealanders. The bill also introduces measures to facilitate international sharing of accessible works. These changes help realise visually impaired people’s “right to read”.

A contentious issue for the implementation of the treaty in New Zealand and elsewhere is the so called “commercial availability test”. The test is currently a requirement in New Zealand for an “authorised entity” to make reasonable efforts to obtain an accessible copy at an ordinary commercial price. By far the cheapest, fastest and most convenient means of obtaining accessible format works is if they are available for sale through the normal channels.

But in the absence of easily available accessible copies, the test creates uncertainty and imposes an administrative burden on institutions that provide the visually impaired with accessible copies. This is why after hearing submissions on the bill, a select committee recommended the removal of the test.

The proposed changes to copyright legislation would allow people with a print disability to make accessible format copies or to receive those made by an authorised entity in New Zealand or elsewhere, without infringing copyright. While broadening the scope of the current exceptions, the bill has checks and balances in place that protect reproduced accessible formats, contrary to a misconception of allowing free-riding on copyright works.

This is of significance to university students as some may self-declare disabilities while others are reluctant to disclose an impairment. Universities emphasise that they provide a safe place for disclosure, but speedy provision of services remains an issue.

The increase in the availability of electronic texts has helped to meet needs, but it is not keeping pace with student demand and expectation. As part of an increasingly technology savvy student population, students with impairments now request electronic versions of texts and use technology to adapt them to their needs. Students no longer want enlarged or scanned material as this is much harder to manipulate. The amendments in the bill would enable them to create their own accessible formats, or source them without having to identify as print disabled.

Overall, the proposed law change is a positive step towards improving access to copyright works for visually impaired New Zealanders. It also helps New Zealand maintain its good global citizen status by allowing an exchange of accessible works with other Marrakesh Treaty members.

– ref. NZ considers changes to copyright law as part of promise to help end global ‘book famine’ – http://theconversation.com/nz-considers-changes-to-copyright-law-as-part-of-promise-to-help-end-global-book-famine-117891

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Roderick, Professor, Research School of Earth Sciences and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, Australian National University

The federal parliament has voted to funnel A$200 million to drought-stricken areas. What exactly this money will be spent on is still under consideration, but the majority will go to rural, inland communities.

But once there, what can the money usefully be spent on? Especially if there’s been a permanent decline in rainfall, as seen in Perth. How can we help inland communities?

Read more: Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 years

Let’s look at the small inland town of Guyra, NSW, which is close to running dry. Unlike our coastal cities, Guyra cannot simply build a billion-dollar desalination plant to supply its water. Towns like Guyra must look elsewhere for its solutions.

Running dry isn’t just about rainfall

“Running dry” means there is no water when the tap is turned on. It seems to make sense to blame the drought for Guyra’s lack of water. But the available water supply is not only determined by rainfall. It also depends on amount of water flowing into water storage (called streamflow), and the capacity and security of that storage.

While Perth has had a distinct downturn in its rainfall since the 1970s and has built desalination plants to respond to this challenge, no such downturn is evident at Guyra. Indeed, to date, the driest consecutive two years on record for Guyra were 100 years ago (1918 and 1919).

Despite the differences, there are some similarities between Perth and Guyra. As a rule of thumb, in Australia, significant streamflow into water storages does not occur until annual rainfall reaches around 600mm. This occurs as streamflow is generally supplied from “wet patches” when water can no longer soak into the soil. Thus, if annual rainfall is around 600mm or below, we generally anticipate very little streamflow.

While Guyra has seen some rain in 2019, it is not enough to prompt this crucial flow of water into the local water storage. The same is true for Perth, with annual rainfall in the past few decades now hovering close to the 600mm threshold.

Importantly, rainfall and streamflow do not have a linear relationship. Annual rainfall in Perth has declined by around 20%, but Perth’s streamflow has fallen by more than 90%.

With little streamflow filling its dams, Perth had little choice but to find other ways of increasing its water supply. They built desalination plants to make up the difference.

Let’s return to Guyra in NSW and the current drought. The rainfall records do not indicate there is a long-term downward trend in rainfall. But even without a rainfall trend, there are still dry years when there is little streamflow. Indeed, in Guyra, the rainfall record shows that, on average, the rainfall will be 600mm or less roughly one year out of every ten years.

Build more storage

So how do the residents of Guyra ensure a reliable water supply, given that they cannot build themselves a desalination plant?

Well, in this case, you can simply get water from somewhere else if it is available. A pipeline is currently under construction to supply Guyra from the nearby Malpas Dam, and is expected to be in operation very soon.

But that’s not always an option. A made-in-Guyra water solution means one thing: expanding storage capacity.

Guyra can generally store around 8 months of their normal water demand (although of course demand varies with the seasons, droughts, water restrictions and price per litre).

To give a point of comparison, Sydney can store up to five years of its normal water demand, and has a desalination plant besides. Despite these advantages, Sydney residents are now under stage one water restrictions which happens when its storages are only 50% full. Yet, even when Sydney’s glass is only half-full, that city still has at least another two years of water left to meet the expected water demand even without using desalination.

By comparison, when water storages in Guyra are 50% full, they have less than six months normal water supply.

It is astonishingly difficult to find accurate data on small-town water supplies but in my experience Guyra is not unique among rural towns. There is a big divide between the water security of those living in Australia’s big cities compared to smaller inland towns. Many rural communities simply do not have sufficient water storage to withstand multi-year droughts, and in some cases, cannot even withstand one year of drought.

Read more: Droughts, extreme weather and empowered consumers mean tough choices for farmers

Nature, drought and climate change cannot be blamed for all of our water problems. In rural inland towns, inadequate planning and funding for household water can sometimes be the real culprit. Whether Australians live in rural communities or big cities, they should be treated fairly in terms of both the availability and the quality of the water they use.

– ref. There’s a simple way to drought-proof a town – build more water storage – http://theconversation.com/theres-a-simple-way-to-drought-proof-a-town-build-more-water-storage-120504

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

Scott Morrison on Tuesday had a firm message for his troops in the Coalition party room. Don’t go freelancing in public.

Discipline is important in politics and Morrison is intent on trying to impose it – it’s not the first time since the election he’s made the point.

After he became PM in August the proximity of the poll put its own constraints on Coalition MPs (even if they were quite frequently breached). But now the rules have to be reset, and Morrison wants to whip the backbench into line early.

He told the party room everyone needed to be “mindful of what we took to the election and what we didn’t take”. Members shouldn’t run off on other matters, especially not publicly.

Backbenchers should use internal processes if they wanted to push issues – committees, approaches to ministers, the party room.

Going outside these processes was showing “disrespect to colleagues”, he said (a convenient high-minded pitch that probably carries little weight in the competitive environment of attention-seeking backbenchers clawing their way towards the front).

Morrison threw in a few examples where using these processes had led to positive results for advocates on issues, such as eating disorders and suicide.

Apparently he didn’t give instances of where people had been kicking over the traces.

He could have been thinking of Monday’s front page in The Australian where a number of Liberals MPs were urging the government to stop the legislated increase in the superannuation guarantee. One was Andrew Hastie, a prominent MP out to make a name for himself as a leader among the conservatives.

Then there were comments from Western Australian Liberal senator Dean Smith, who shot to prominence in the 2017 same-sex marriage debate. Smith told the Senate on Monday he thought Newstart should be increased. Liberals, he said, “should pay very, very close attention to the comments of former leader John Howard on this matter”.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Centre Alliance’s Stirling Griff on Newstart

Howard is on record favouring a rise. The government’s talking points, in sharp contrast, are full of arguments (mostly spurious) against an increase.

With his authority as high as it will ever be in the foreseeable future, it’s not surprising Morrison, a disciple of discipline and control, is laying down markers. The question is the extent to which they’ll be heeded.

There are some incorrigibles, such as Barnaby Joyce, the frustrated former Nationals leader who’s never likely to take any notice of Morrison.

Beyond that, the siren call of opportunity for self-promotion presented by voracious news channels can be strong for backbenchers, regardless of counselling against it.

And then there are issues that go to ideology. The degree to which Morrison can restrain backbenchers as the religious freedom debate heats up will be a significant test.

As he moves to corral his own team, Morrison’s tactic against Labor has been hyper-aggressive. The kill Bill strategy has morphed into axe Albo. A nod to bipartisanship gives way to demands this week, whatever the issue, for Labor to say “whose side they are on”.

This kicking the ALP when it’s down – despite the exhausted voters looking for less conflict – is partly driven by Morrison believing in the need to keep your foot on your opponent’s neck from the start. He told the Coalition party room not to underestimate Labor.

Read more: Bills, banks and promises: here’s what you can expect as ‘government business’ starts again

There may have been a lot of talk about how Morrison is well set up for the next election, but he’s equally aware how quickly an opposition can come back.

At the moment the ALP can’t avoid looking rather discombobulated, with its policies in limbo and juggling what to support and what to oppose in parliament. It inevitably appears conflicted when it criticises legislation and then says it will back it, even though that might be the best course in the circumstances.

In caucus on Tuesday, Albanese called Morrison a “negative, nasty politician, where it’s all about tactics”.

But Albanese also highlighted his own tactics, on display in parliament on Tuesday, which have changed markedly from those of Bill Shorten. Pointed, short, no frills questions have contrasted with the more discursive, rhetorical approach under the former leader.

Energy minister Angus Taylor was the target, with questioning on rising emissions, nuclear power, and a controversy involving the clearing of endangered grasslands on a property in which he holds shares through his family investment company. Taylor, not a strong performer in the House, floundered.

It’s an effective question time approach, particularly where there are several fronts on which to attack a minister. Even when the questions are spread, the more specific they are, the greater the effort required from the government. Ministers will need to be better prepared. This is especially the case as Speaker Tony Smith is showing he is intent on being an enforcer of relevance.

Read more: The Morrison government’s biggest economic problem? Climate change denial

The opposition’s sharper tactic has the potential to improve question time, and even extract some government accountability during it.

Having had to sit through the pummelling of his minister, Morrison said at the end, “I would invite the opposition to ask me a question tomorrow. You didn’t do that today. Maybe tomorrow”.

A remark that suggested a little concern about his soft ministerial targets.

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison cracks the whip – http://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrison-cracks-the-whip-120846

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Tormey, Professor of Politics, University of Sydney

To no-one’s great surprise, Boris Johnson has been elected by the members of the Conservative Party to be the new leader, and by extension prime minister of the United Kingdom, taking over from Theresa May.

Such a turn of events seemed highly improbable a few months ago. Johnson is a polarising figure not just for the country at large but for his own party. An instantly recognisable figure with his unruly blonde mop, rotund Billy Bunteresque figure and fruity Etonian accent, Johnson is political Vegemite. He delights those who look for “authenticity” in their political leaders, often code for plain speaking, unscripted rudeness and lack of civility. He appals those who expect politicians to abide by some basic principles, uphold integrity in public life and seek to defend the common interest through negotiation and compromise.

Those who detect similar qualities in Johnson to those characterising Donald Trump would not be wrong. Both are noted for improbable haircuts, but beyond that they share a penchant for seeing politics in simplistic and antagonistic terms. Politics is a zero-sum game.

Read more: Tory leadership race: it’s Jeremy Hunt (who?) vs Boris Johnson (yes, really), with the future of the UK at stake

For some to win, others must lose, and those others invariably include every shade of minority identity, whether it be Muslims, homosexuals, immigrants or otherwise feckless folk who need to try harder, do more, speak better English or in some other way accommodate themselves to the dominant majority.

For all of her faults (and there were many), Theresa May at least stood for a certain even-handedness, a recognition of the need for a centre-right party to build a coalition across disadvantage as well as advantage, and to respect differences. That accommodating rhetoric is likely to disappear with the end of her premiership.

But Johnson will succeed or fail on the back of the single dominant issue that dominates British politics: Brexit. How will his approach differ from that of his immediate predecessor?

Johnson has promised throughout his campaign to be leader of the Conservative Party that he will bring Britain out of the European Union by October 31, “do or die”. No going back to the withdrawal agreement. No compromise with the Northern Ireland backstop or with many other elements that so irritate the “hard Brexit” wing of the party.

So much for the rhetoric. The reality is that the EU is not going to change the withdrawal agreement. Nor will the House of Commons permit a no-deal Brexit. Only last week an amendment was passed that effectively demonstrated the strength of the anti-no deal majority in parliament.

This leaves very little room to manoeuvre. If Johnson remains true to the no deal rhetoric then we can expect a vote of no-confidence quite quickly in parliament, leading to elections perhaps as soon as November.

If, as seems more likely, Johnson manages to get the EU to change some words in the political declaration, such as the non-binding part of the withdrawal agreement, then he may seek to re-present what in essence was May’s deal back to the house in the hope that enough Labour MPs can be persuaded to join with the bulk of the Conservative Party (though not the hard-core European Research Group wing) to get it over the line. But this also seems improbable, likely leading again to an election.

A third possibility is that he recognises the intractability of the situation, and also the perils of calling an election as far as the prospects for his own party and premiership are concerned, and seeks a further period of negotiation with the EU. This might be for six months, a year or even more. Given Johnson’s well-documented desire to exercise power, such a scenario should not be ruled out.

But there is also fourth possibility, and this is the one that is exercising the greater speculation among the chattering classes in the UK. This is that recognising the lack of a majority for a no-deal Brexit in parliament, Johnson decides to “prorogue” parliament, a fancy term for suspending parliament in order to ram through an agreement on an executive basis.

Read more: Why Boris Johnson would be a mistake to succeed Theresa May

In effect, this is using the idea of “the will of the people” to overturn parliamentary democracy. The last time it was used in the UK was in the 1940s in order to undertake much-needed constitutional change to the status of the House of Lords.

The worry here, of course, is that this looks much more like the kind of “putsch”-style politics we are accustomed to seeing in banana republics than in one of the oldest democracies in the world.

So what many are wondering is whether behind the carefully confected image of a bumbling, playful figure so beloved of a certain wing of the conservative electorate, lies a neo-fascist figure willing and perhaps able to sacrifice democracy on the altar of English, as opposed to British, nationalism.

Let the games begin.

– ref. Boris Johnson, ‘political Vegemite’, becomes the UK prime minister. Let the games begin – http://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-political-vegemite-becomes-the-uk-prime-minister-let-the-games-begin-119467

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese Keane, Associate Professor, Deputy Chair Department of Education, Swinburne University of Technology

A cute human-like robot taught students in a small, rural school how to code while also helping them learn their local Aboriginal language.

The Maitland Lutheran School is an independent, co-educational primary and middle school in the farming district of Maitland, Yorke Peninsula, in South Australia. It is located on the traditional lands of the Narungga people.

The school has around 240 students from Kindergarten to Year 9, and 16% of them are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Many of these students have Narungga heritage.

The school wanted to support its students to connect with the heritage of the Narungga people, in partnership with the local Aboriginal community.

Past research has shown digital technologies can help rediscover lost Indigenous languages. Technologies with culturally responsive ways of teaching have also been shown to improve engagement and learning among Indigenous students in STEM subjects.

Read more: Reviving Indigenous languages – not as easy as it seems

So, the school’s principal, David Field, decided to employ a small robot named Pink to help students understand their local culture and language. And it worked.

By learning to program a humanoid robot, students developed 21st-century skills while also engaging with an Indigenous culture and language. The project also strengthened the connection between school, home and Country.

Why did Pink work so well?

The Maitland Lutheran School had long wanted to connected its students with Narungga culture and language. About eight years earlier, the school bought paper dictionaries of Narungga, but children had shown little interest in them.

The principal engaged the only fluent speaker of Narungga to work with the school’s teachers and students. The aim was to engage the school’s Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students in learning about both innovative technologies and Narungga culture.

Humanoid robots look like humans and have movements that are human-like. So students are drawn to them and want to make them function like a human, by making them talk, move their arms and walk.

Some research has shown school students feel more comfortable – less anxious and self-conscious – learning a new language when they can practise on a robot compared to a human.

Apart from the cuteness factor, students believe the robot is not judgmental when they make mistakes.

Read more: Why more schools need to teach bilingual education to Indigenous children

How it panned out

It didn’t take long for Pink to captivate the students. Students formed a relationship with the robot and became attached to it. One of the teachers said her students treated the robot like “they would a younger child”.

Another teacher said the students:

… humanised the robot within seconds, came and touched Pink’s hand to shake it and waved goodbye on leaving the room. All students wanted to be the first to talk, touch and engage with Pink.

As the students’ enthusiasm and confidence using the robot increased, they wanted Pink to have more functionality, so they started learning how to program her.

They wanted Pink to speak Narungga. But they discovered Pink could not pronounce the Narungga words when they typed the words correctly into the programming language.

So, using their problem-solving skills, students trialled the phonetic spelling of the words until they achieved the correct Narungga pronunciation.

A Year 1 and 2 teacher said:

Deep learning occurred in terms of cultural awareness and language acquisition. Most of the students knew very little, if any, Narungga words. (Some did not even know the word Narungga!) In terms of information technologies the students have truly grown from not understanding that Pink was programmable to programming her to do a variety of things.

So, the students at Maitland Lutheran School learnt not only the Narungga language but also how to use a programming language to control a humanoid robot. It was a steep learning curve to learn and understand two different ways of communicating, one old and one new.

The work with the robot turned into community engagement as students’ enthusiasm involved many teachers and the wider school community. Teachers observed students saying “Hello” in Narungga to other staff members.

The principal said the school community was starting to express pride in the traditional culture of the area, which was not evident before. The principal said:

This has not only engaged our students; it has engaged our staff as well. It has given them encouragement in what they have seen from the students to keep progressing with the [Narungga] language as well as the digital side of things.

It hasn’t just been for our Narungga students, it’s been across the board with all of our students. It’s been a great way of getting them to network together […] to work on something that has an Indigenous perspective but means a lot to everybody.

Emerging technologies can play a role in engaging young people with the languages and cultures of Australia’s First Peoples.

Read more: Robots likely to be used in classrooms as learning tools, not teachers

The educators in this school recognised the importance of coding and robotics for their students’ future and the far-reaching opportunities to integrate this technology in ways that build respect and understanding between cultures.

This project was part of a larger three-year study investigating the impact of humanoid robots on students’ learning and engagement.

This article was co-authored with Monica Williams, Educational Consultant at the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia.

– ref. How a robot called Pink helped teach school children an Aboriginal language – http://theconversation.com/how-a-robot-called-pink-helped-teach-school-children-an-aboriginal-language-119810

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

The two Centre Alliance senators, Stirling Griff and Rex Patrick will often be pivotal to the fate of government legislation. The smaller non-Green Senate crossbench this term means that if the government can muster Centre Alliance support, it only needs one other crossbencher to pass bills, as was the case with the government’s tax package.

In this podcast Michelle Grattan talks with Stirling Griff about the party’s position on a range of issues – including the widespread pressure for an increase in Newstart.

Griff says Centre Alliance is willing to use its bargaining muscle to try to get the government to raise the payment.

We’ll exert as much pressure as we possibly can to, at the very least, have a minor increase from where [Newstart] is now.

Centre Alliance has struck up a consultative relationship with Tasmanian independent Jacqui Lambie. “Ahead of a sitting week, or a sitting fortnight, we share our thoughts on which way each of us intends to vote and if we can arrive at a common position we will do so.”

Meanwhile, Senate leader Mathias Cormann remains apparently well-placed to wrangle the cross-bench. “[Cormann] is held in very high regard by pretty much everyone in the chamber. Certainly, we have a very good relationship with him.”

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Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

Image:

AAP/ Sam Mooy

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Centre Alliance’s Stirling Griff on Newstart – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-centre-alliances-stirling-griff-on-newstart-120830